Traditional cognitive psychology treats the environment as a source of information that does not alter basic cognitive processes, relying on controlled lab experiments with precisely timed stimuli. New research shows the environment does influence cognition, prompting proposals like cognitive ethology, which draws inspiration from real-world phenomena before testing them in the lab. Cognitive ethology appeals to embodied cognition for its focus on agent-environment relationships but retains traditional assumptions about cognitive processes. The authors argue cognitive ethology should adopt the ontology of less radical embodied cognition, leading to new methodologies such as comparing real-world and lab studies to understand how cognition depends on environments.
Existential moods such as emptiness, meaninglessness, and anxiety for freedom and nothingness are not universal or timeless features of human existence but arise primarily from urbanity and modernity; most people worldwide do not experience autonomy, freedom, or relativity. Classic existentialist thought (Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Sartre) neglects both the outer and inner nature of humans. The authors propose a natural existential psychology grounded in modern neuroscience, evolutionary psychology, comparative psychology, and phenomenology to remedy this shortcoming and provide further knowledge about basic existential moods and species-specific resonances of being-in-the-world.
Radical behaviorism can address Merleau-Ponty's challenge to scientific psychology by treating behavior as a phenomenon in its own right, avoiding the dichotomous stalemate between mentalism and physiologism. The paper examines various understandings of behavior in B. F. Skinner's work and behavior-analytic literature, adopting Merleau-Ponty's view that ambiguity is a constitutive characteristic of behavioral phenomena. It presents an understanding of behavior based on a relational ontology that responds to Merleau-Ponty's challenges, updating radical behaviorism's philosophical potential for dialogue with traditions seeking to overcome mentalism and physiological reductionism.
Subjective experience arises from an experiential field, a morphogenetic space that continuously shifts states. Signification is the primary structuring force, organizing perceptual flow and modulating the interplay between presence and absence as two co-implicated topological domains. Presence anchors meaning with stability and continuity, while absence is not a void but a generative force that reorganizes meaning trajectories and fosters transformation. Three conceptual propositions illustrate how presence and absence interact to shape unique subjective experience. Clinically, the framework offers a structured lens for meaning-making dynamics in therapy, and a case example shows how integrating absence can open new possibilities for change.