Upshot: We respond to three main challenges that the commentaries have raised. Firstly, we clarify our misunderstood intention of introducing a newcomer to the neurophenomenological family. Rather, we situate our approach under the broader umbrella of phenomenology. Secondly, we argue that from our empirical position it is questionable that the strategy we pursued in the target article left the black box of consciousness completely closed. Thirdly, we argue that the subjective fluctuations that may appear as outcomes in an experimental paradigm are not to be considered with a resigned attitude but as valuable information to work with. We conclude our response by agreeing with the concerns of two of the commentators about extending the perspectives and plurality of the methods to investigate the explanatory gap problem.

Upshot: I offer responses to the commentaries on my target article in five short sections. The first section, about the plurality of lived worlds, concerns issues of quite general interest to readers of this journal. The second section presents some reasons for rejecting “enabling” as well as “constitutive” representational approaches to understanding the mind. In the remaining three sections, I clarify aspects of sensorimotor direct realism relating to the self, qualia, counterfactuals, and the notion of “mastery.”

Context: The constructivist approach to the definition (or analysis) of the fundamental meanings of language in Ernst von Glasersfeld’s work. Problem: Has this approach achieved better results than other approaches? Method: Review of a book chapter by von Glasersfeld that is devoted to the analysis of the concepts of “unity,” “plurality” and “number.” Results: The constructivist approach to the semantics of the fundamental elements of language (some of which are fundamental for sciences too) seems to have produced positive results; moreover these are in a field where other approaches have produced results that do not objectively seem satisfactory.

Key words: semantics, numbers, mental operations, attention, language

Excerpt: The capacity to engage in collective intentionality is a key aspect of human sociality. Social coordination might not be distinctive of humans – various nonhuman animals engage in forms of cooperative behavior (e.g., hunting together) – but humans seem to possess a specific capacity for intentionality that enables them to constitute forms of social reality far exceeding anything that can be achieved even by nonhuman primates. During the past few decades, collective intentionality has been discussed under various labels in a number of empirical disciplines including social, cognitive, and developmental psychology, economics, sociology, political science, anthropology, ethology, and the social neurosciences. Despite all this work, however, many foundational issues remain controversial and unresolved. In particular, it is by no means clear exactly how to characterize the nature, structure, and diversity of the we to which intentions, beliefs, emotions, and actions are often attributed. Is the we or we-perspective independent of, and perhaps even prior to, individual subjectivity, or is it a developmental achievement that has a firstand second-person-singular perspective as its necessary precondition? Is it something that should be ascribed to a single owner, or does it perhaps have plural ownership? Is the we a single thing, or is there a plurality of types of we?

The conception of the non-dualizing model of interpretation formulated by Josef Mitterer, is representative for his philosophy of the non-dualizing way of speaking. Founded on the anti-essentialistic and anti-ontologizing assumptions, non-dualizing model of interpretation – in opposition to the dualizing model – assumes that the interpretation starts from the text which functions as the interpretation so far changed in the interpretation from now. The aim of the interpretation – understood as a process – is the change, not the truth. As the consequence, plurality of interpretation is preferred in the opposition to the notion of the only one, true or adequate interpretation. In the situation of conflicts in which there are at least two concurrent interpretation, the non-dualizing logic prefers the formulation of new descriptions to which there could be reached a kind of compromise. We do not activate the other side of the discourse as the authority which is able to solve the conflict. This model of interpretation provokes some critical remarks, for example: the problem of the (potential) differences between description and interpretation, the notion of change as the aim of the interpretational process, the way in which new descriptions are established and stabilized. However, the non-dualizing model of interpretation seems to be an interesting option for dualizing discourses of the contemporary humanistic.

Key words: interpretation “so far” / interpretation “from now on”, non-dualizing model of interpretation.

According to enactivism all living systems, from single cell organisms to human beings, are ontologically endowed with some form of teleological and sense-making agency. Furthermore, enactivists maintain that: (i) there is no fixed pregiven world and as a consequence (ii) all organisms “bring forth” their own unique “worlds” through processes of sense-making. The first half of the paper takes these two ontological claims as its central focus and aims to clarify and make explicit the arguments and motivations underlying them. Our analysis here highlights three distinct but connected problems for enactivism: (i) these arguments do not and cannot guarantee that there is no pregiven world, instead, they (ii) end up generating a contradiction whereby a pregiven world seems to in fact be tacitly presupposed by virtue of (iii) a reliance on a tacit epistemic perspectivalism which is also inherently representationalist and as a consequence makes it difficult to satisfactorily account for the ontological plurality of worlds. Taking these considerations on board, the second half of the paper then aims to develop a more robust ontologically grounded enactivism. Drawing from biosemiotic enactivism, science and technology studies and anthropology, the paper aims to present an account which both rejects a pregiven world and coherently accounts for how organisms bring forth ontologically multiple worlds.

Key words: agency, biosemiotic enactivism, enactive cognitive science, epistemic perspectivalism, ontology, organismic worlds, representationalism.

Abstract: I reformulate and elaborate on important claims relevantly put for debate by the commentators, i.e., (a) counterfactuals are a form of observable experience rather than a plurality of inaccessible worlds; (b) experience cannot be observed in descriptions, but can be observed in films; (c) counterfactuals are a syntactic unity, or a synthesis, of relationally changing attentional objects.

Excerpt: I am working toward an integrative proposal that includes the plurality of elements found in the Piagetian conception of epistemology: the psychogenetic, biological, and social components; the logical and empirical components; the historical, cultural, and scientific components. In my view, the only conceptual methodological analysis capable of carrying out this integration must be based on a theory of development of knowledge as a complex system. To this end, I consider it necessary to show how we conceive of the analysis of complex systems today. I am going to argue, against the majority of his critics, that Piaget was a brilliant precursor of ideas that have arisen in contemporary science in recent decades.

During the last decade, radical constructivism has gained a certain currency in the fields of science and mathematics education. Although cognitive constructivists have occasionally referred to the intuitionist approach to the foundational problems in mathematics, no effort has so far been made to outline what a constructivist’s own approach might be. This paper attempts a start in that direction. Whitehead’s description of three processes involved in criticising mathematical thinking (1925) is used to show discrepancies between a traditional epistemological stance and the constructivist approach to knowing and communication. The bulk of the paper then suggests tentative itineraries for the progression from ele-mentary experiential situations to the abstraction of the concepts of unit, plurality, number, point, line, and plane, whose relation to sensory-motor experience is usually ignored or distorted in mathematics instruction. There follows a discussion of the question of certainty in logical deduction and arithmetic.

Key words: philosophy, mathematics, radical constructivism

This book gives a definitive theoretical account of radical constcuctivism., a theory of knowing that provides a pragmatic approach to questions about reality, truth, language and human understanding, The chapter are: (1) “Growing up Constructivist: Languages and Thoughtful People,” (2) “Unpopular Philosophical Ideas: A History in Quotations,” (3) “Piaget’s Constructivist Theory of Knowing,” (4) “The Construction of Concepts,” (5) “Reflection and Abstraction,” (6) “Constructing Agents: The Self and Others,” (7) “On Language, Meaning, and Communication,” (8) “The Cybernetic Connection,” (9) “Units, Plurality and Number,” and (10) “To Encourage Students” Conceptual Constructing."

Key words: philosophy, radical constructivism, cognition, communication