Abstract Contemporary phenomenology and cognitive science have increasingly converged on the idea that social understanding is embodied, interactive, and enacted in real-time engagement. Interaction theory and enactivism have challenged cognitivist models of social cognition by emphasizing direct perception, affective attunement, and participatory sense-making. Yet while current interactive...
Abstract Knowing when one feels fatigued, and not just tired or expending effort, matters. When fatigue is correctly detected, physician-patient misunderstandings can be avoided (Long et al., 2022), occupational safety concerns can be addressed (Van der Linden, 2011), and injury as well as loss of well-being can be reduced in athletic contexts (Saw et al., 2016). Although existing empirical...
Abstract Teleosemantics explains meaning by appealing to the biological norms that make error possible, but most work in the field still anchors those norms in evolutionary “selected-effect” functions. We develop an organismic alternative grounded in the self-maintenance of autonomous systems. Elaborating upon and within sensorimotor theory and enactivism, we reconceptualise goals as higher...
Abstract This paper reconstructs and defends Jean-Paul Sartre’s realism about consciousness as articulated in the Introduction to Being and Nothingness, situating his position within contemporary debates on illusionism and anti-realism in the philosophy of mind. While Sartre’s descriptions of consciousness as “nothingness” and his emphasis on the contingency of the subject–world relation may...
Abstract This article proposes a reconceptualization of action and cognition within Cognitive Linguistics (CL) by re-examining its foundational metaphorical models. While meaning in the field is often defined as embodied and usage-based, its dominant metaphors remain static, privileging stability over process. Methodologically, the research in this paper adopts the principles of the “Cognitive...
Abstract Ego-dissolution experiences are perhaps the most philosophically germane effect of psychedelic drugs. Psychedelic ego-dissolution self-reports, in varying expressions, often claim completely selfless episodes. Some have called the experiences referred to in these reports ‘total ego dissolution,’ arguing that they lack all self-awareness while being phenomenally conscious. I identify...
Abstract This paper investigates whether the concept of “phenomenal consciousness” is an integral component of ordinary folk psychology or a theoretical construct devised within a specific epistemic community. Advocates of what I term the Folk- “Consciousness” Thesis argue that laypeople already possess such a concept, citing experimental findings in support of this view. In contrast, I draw on...
Abstract This essay develops an account of aesthetic form. Aesthetic form is not a matter of genre, style, or presentation, but the organization of appearance in which ordinary orientation breaks down and becomes a claim on thought. It requires a discipline of preserving both resistance and surrender in the face of what disturbs sense. Written in celebration of the twentieth anniversary of Alva...
The Freudian concept of the unconscious is generally presented in terms of a region of the mind that is inaccessible to consciousness. Against this background, classical phenomenologists insisted that, be it latent dream-thoughts or repressed wishes, the mind can disguise the inappropriate content and repress the unwanted only if it somehow “knows” what it thereby represses and disguises. What...
Abstract This paper aims to contribute to the growing interest in the role of imagination in Merleau-Ponty’s thought by exploring how the phenomenon of mental imagery would be characterised under Merleau-Ponty’s framework, and questioning whether or not his conception of mental imagery is of relevance to contemporary research and debates on the topic. To frame the investigation, I will...
Abstract This article revisits Alva Noë’s claim that perception is a skilful activity enacted through sensorimotor engagement, asking what happens when the temporal conditions that scaffold such skill become unstable. Drawing on ethnographic material from Sámi reindeer herding and Inuit hunting and herding practices in Arctic environments, I argue that action and perception can slip out of...
Abstract It is surprisingly difficult to provide an account of hallucination that captures all the cases that clinicians typically class as hallucinations, without at the same time admitting cases that would not typically be classed as such. Most attempts to specify exactly what a hallucination is supposed to be fails to meet at least one of these conditions, as we show in the first part of the...
Abstract Both phenomenology and anthropology study lived experience, but they have traditionally done so in different ways. Phenomenology aims to identify universal structures of experience via the epoché, reduction and eidetic variation. Anthropology, by contrast, foregrounds cultural diversity as documented through ethnography. Ethnographic accounts provide thousands of cases of lived...
Abstract The language of the “pathology paradigm” is not merely a vocabulary for describing autism—it participates in shaping the “affective atmospheres” that autistic people inhabit and move through. Drawing on some recent contributions to the phenomenology of affective atmospheres from Joel Krueger, Tonino Griffero, and Enara García, this paper develops the concept of “neuronormative...
This article explores the notion of first-person authority (FPA) in self-disorders (SD). It will be argued that the ‘ipseity disturbance model’ (IDM) of SD cannot account for the FPA of reports of disturbed mineness in SD. Moreover, it will be argued that the phenomenological account of a ‘loss of common sense’ - typically coupled with the IDM - cannot account for the FPA of reports of...
Abstract Irruption Theory (IT) offers a novel approach to understanding mind-brain interaction in decision-making. IT suggests that the mind’s influence on brain dynamics can manifest as “irruption” — the emergence of noise or physical fluctuations that alter brain activity. Lately, Irruption-Absorption Theory (IAT) has also incorporated the idea of “absorption,” which refers to the mental...
Abstract Philosophical approaches to psychopharmacology have paved the way for an important but still largely unexplored area in the philosophy of psychiatry. Some of these approaches have addressed conceptual, explanatory, and moral questions posed by psychopharmaceuticals, while shedding light on epistemological and methodological issues inherent to psychopharmacological practice. Yet, most...
Abstract The term “cognitive phenomenology” may be understood as referring to the idea that there is something it is like to entertain thoughts. One of the main problems in the debates on cognitive phenomenology is the question of how it should be construed, for instance in terms of being in a particular phenomenal state. In order to give a concise idea of what cognitive phenomenology is, I...
Abstract Sometimes our ability to make sense of the world breaks down. Such breakdowns of sensemaking give rise to a range of phenomena, including extreme experiences such as crisis and epiphany, as well as day-to-day forms of learning, frustration, or indifference. Various accounts in the domains of phenomenology and the neurocognitive and neurophysiological sciences capture facets of...
The feeling of being alive points to an intricate connection between the organic process of life and foundational subjective experience, or between life and experience ( Leben and Erleben ). Based on this premise, I argue that self-experience cannot be understood as an internal mental space or a “self-model” that could be produced and localized in the brain, but rather that it is a...
Contemporary phenomenological psychopathology has raised questions concerning selfhood and its possible alterations in schizophrenia spectrum disorders. Although the notion of the self is central to several accounts of anomalies, it remains a question how exactly the radically minimal experiential features of selfhood can be altered. Indeed, the risk is to reduce the notion of selfhood so...
The “scaling-up” problem concerns radical embodied cognition’s (REC) supposed inability to extend its explanatory reach beyond simple cognitive phenomena. This paper questions the problem’s main assumption, that is, the possibility of sorting phenomena according to their inherent cognitive complexity or representation-hunger. To do so, I focus on a class of phenomena whose degree of...
This article takes its point of departure from the second (embodied) linguistic turn represented by the enactivist notion of humans as linguistic bodies, using resources from Hans Georg Gadamer in order to propose a view of the relation between art and everyday experience as one of symbolic transformation. Conceiving art as a form of linguistic phenomenon wherein one can engage in original...
This paper is an investigation into the possibility of institutional agency and proceeds via the elaboration of two, nested claims. First, if genuine agency is attributable to certain social institutions, it would not be the full-blown, intentional agency that characterizes human activity, but would rather fall under a minimal modality of agency. Moreover, since enactivists aim to articulate...
This article contains my response to the commentaries by Mazviita Chirimuuta, Tom Froese, Miriam Kyselo, and Claudia E. Vanney on The Blind Spot: Why Science Cannot Ignore Human Experience (Frank et al., 2024 ).