Open peer commentary on the article “Assessing Subjective Processes and Vulnerability in Mindfulness-based Interventions: A Mixed methods Exploratory Study” by Sebastián Medeiros, Carla Crempien, Alejandra Vásquez-Rosati, Javiera Duarte, Catherine Andreu, Álvaro I. Langer, Miguel Ibaceta, Jaime R. Silva & Diego Cosmelli Sánchez. Abstract: Medeiros et al. implement a mixed methods approach to explore the mechanisms underlying individual transformation during mindfulness-based interventions. We provide critiques, questions and suggestions to increase the validity of the present study and fruitfulness of future mixed methods endeavors. We frame our commentary in existing guidelines for the design and implementation of mixed methods.

Open peer commentary on the article “Enactive Metaphorizing in the Mathematical Experience” by Daniela Díaz-Rojas, Jorge Soto-Andrade & Ronnie Videla-Reyes. Abstract: Welcoming their scholarly focus on metaphorizing, I critique Díaz-Rojas, Soto-Andrade and Videla-Reyes’s selection of the hypothetical constructs “conceptual metaphor” and “enactive metaphor” as guiding the epistemological positioning, educational design, and analytic interpretation of interactive mathematics education purporting to operationalize enactivist theory of cognition - both these constructs, I argue, are incompatible with enactivism. Instead, I draw on ecological dynamics to promote a view of metaphors as projected constraints on action, and I explain how mathematical concepts can be grounded in perceptual reorganization of motor coordination. I end with a note on how metaphors may take us astray and why that, too, is worthwhile.

What evolutionary account explains our capacity to reason mathematically? Identifying the biological provenance of mathematical thinking would bear on education, because we could then design learning environments that simulate ecologically authentic conditions for leveraging this universal phylogenetic inclination. The ancient mechanism coopted for mathematical activity, I propose, is our fundamental organismic capacity to improve our sensorimotor engagement with the environment by detecting, generating, and maintaining goal-oriented perceptual structures regulating action, whether actual or imaginary. As such, the phenomenology of grasping a mathematical notion is literally that – gripping the environment in a new way that promotes interaction. To argue for the plausibility of my thesis, I first survey embodiment literature to implicate cognition as constituted in perceptuomotor engagement. Then, I summarize findings from a design-based research project investigating relations between learning to move in new ways and learning to reason mathematically about these conceptual choreographies. As such, the project proposes educational implications of enactivist evolutionary biology.

Key words: constructivism, design, education, enactivism, mathematics

Enactivism theorizes thinking as situated doing. Mathematical thinking, specifically, is handling imaginary objects, and learning is coming to perceive objects and reflecting on this activity. Putting theory to practice, Abrahamson’s embodied-design collaborative interdisciplinary research program has been designing and evaluating interactive tablet applications centered on motor-control tasks whose perceptual solutions then form the basis for understanding mathematical ideas (e.g., proportion). Analysis of multimodal data of students’ hand- and eye- movement as well as their linguistic and gestural expressions has pointed to the key role of emergent perceptual structures that form the developmental interface between motor coordination and conceptual articulation. Through timely tutorial intervention or peer interaction, these perceptual structures rise to the students’ discursive consciousness as “things” they can describe, measure, analyze, model, and symbolize with culturally accepted words, diagrams, and signs – they become mathematical entities with enactive meanings. We explain the theoretical background of enactivist mathematics pedagogy, demonstrate its technological implementation, list its principles, and then present a case study of a mathematics teacher who applied her graduate-school experiences in enactivist inquiry to create spontaneous classroom activities promoting student insight into challenging concepts. Students’ enactment of coordinated movement forms gave rise to new perceptual structures modeled as mathematical content.

Open peer commentary on the article “Assessing Subjective Processes and Vulnerability in Mindfulness-based Interventions: A Mixed methods Exploratory Study” by Sebastián Medeiros, Carla Crempien, Alejandra Vásquez-Rosati, Javiera Duarte, Catherine Andreu, Álvaro I. Langer, Miguel Ibaceta, Jaime R. Silva & Diego Cosmelli Sánchez. Abstract: I focus on the impact of mindfulness practice in the face of aversive experience and argue that it is more than merely changing one’s cognitive strategy. Shifting perspective instead may be rooted in an emergent qualitatively different subjective awareness of self and phenomena - leading to a different way of relating to any kind of experience.

This paper presents a pilot study that explores instances of objectless awareness during sleep: conscious experiences had during sleep that prima facie lack an object of awareness. This state of objectless awareness during sleep has been widely described by Indian contemplative traditions and has been characterised as a state of consciousness-as-such; while in it, there is nothing to be aware of, one is merely conscious (cf. Evans-Wentz, 1960; Fremantle, 2001; Ponlop, 2006). While this phenomenon has received different names in the literature, such as ‘witnessing-sleep’ and ‘clear light sleep’ among others, the specific phenomenological profile of this state has not yet been rigorously studied. This paper aims at presenting a preliminary investigation of objectless consciousness during sleep using a novel tool in qualitative research that can guide future research. Five participants experiencing objectless consciousness during sleep were interviewed following the Micro-phenomenological Interview technique (MPI; Petitmengin, 2005, 2006). All participants reported an experience they had during sleep in which there was no scenery and no dream. This period labelled as ‘No Scenery/Void’ was either preceded by the dissolution of a lucid dream or by other forms of conscious mentation. The analysis of the results advances four experiential dimensions during this state of void, namely (1) Perception of absence, (2) Self-perception, (3) Perception of emotions, and (4) Perception of awareness. While the results are primarily explorative, they refer to themes found in the literature to describe objectless sleep and point at potential avenues of research. The results from this study are taken as indications to guide future operationalisations of this phenomenon.

Key words: dreamless sleep, micro-phenomenological interview, qualitative research, witnessing-sleep

Open peer commentary on the article “Anchoring in Lived Experience as an Act of Resistance” by Claire Petitmengin. Abstract: In her target article, Petitmengin calls for us to return to our own lived experience as an “act of resistance.” In my commentary, I suggest that this call comes too late: in the age of advanced technologies, what Petitmengin defines as the lived experience has become technological, leaving us with nowhere to return to. As sad as it may be, in the current age, the lived experience is no longer a remedy but, rather, part of the disease.

Open peer commentary on the article “Phenomenological Properties of Perceptual Presence: A Constructivist Grounded Theory Approach” by Aleš Oblak, Asena Boyadzhieva & Jure Bon. Abstract: Oblak et al. portray perceptual presence (PP) as an individually driven reflective operation. I question their account and suggest that PP involves a socially induced pre-reflective awareness of the lived environment. Within this primary framework, the wholeness of things is available to the subject, and deeper examination of perceived objects (if needed) comes to the fore.

Radical embodied cognitive science is split into two camps: the ecological approach and the enactive approach. We propose that these two approaches can be brought together into a productive synthesis. The key is to recognize that the two approaches are pursuing different but complementary types of explanation. Both approaches seek to explain behavior in terms of the animal–environment relation, but they start at opposite ends. Ecological psychologists pursue an ontological strategy. They begin by describing the habitat of the species, and use this to explain how action possibilities are constrained for individual actors. Enactivists, meanwhile, pursue an epistemic strategy: start by characterizing the exploratory, self-regulating behavior of the individual organism, and use this to understand how that organism brings forth its animal-specific umwelt. Both types of explanation are necessary: the ontological strategy explains how structure in the environment constrains how the world can appear to an individual, while the epistemic strategy explains how the world can appear differently to different members of the same species, relative to their skills, abilities, and histories. Making the distinction between species habitat and animal-specific umwelt allows us to understand the environment in realist terms while acknowledging that individual living organisms are phenomenal beings.

Open peer commentary on the article “Systems Theory and Algorithmic Futures: Interview with Elena Esposito” by Elena Esposito, Katrin Sold & Bénédicte Zimmermann. Abstract: Elena Esposito’s interview is a great opportunity to ponder on the applications of Niklas Luhmann’s systems theory to current social themes. Among these, I consider the meaning of a theory of society in sociology, the value of critical theory, and the use of algorithms in communication. I differ from Esposito regarding my views on these topics, in that she seems hesitant to make a clear statement regarding the constructivist stance of systems theory’s proposals, in contrast with other approaches.