Skip to content

The Pragmatics, Embodiment, and Efficacy of Lived Experience Assessing the Core Tenets of Varela's Neurophenomenology

Tom Froese, John J. Sykes

Journal of Consciousness Studies December 1, 2023 DOI: 10.53765/20512201.30.11.190 (opens in new tab)

Relevant Not relevant

Study at a glance

AI-extracted from the abstract
Characteristics Critical review Peer reviewed
Topics Philosophy of mind
Citations 10
Key findings Neurophenomenology has focused on only one of its three original tenets, and to reach its full potential it must integrate all three, particularly demonstrating that lived experience makes a difference to the living body's dynamics.

Abstract

Varela's enactive approach to cognitive science has been elaborated into a theoretical framework of agency, sense-making, and sociality, while his key methodological innovation — neurophenomenology (NP) — continues to inspire empirical work. We argue that the enactive approach was originally expressed in NP as three core tenets: (1) phenomenological pragmatics, (2) embodied cognition, and (3) conscious efficacy. However, most efforts in NP have focused on applying tenet 1, while tenet 2 has received notably less attention, and there is even explicit distancing from tenet 3. By way of a critical review of four case studies, we show how NP thereby falls short of its full potential. Crucially, it needs to demonstrate that the first-person perspective matters, not only as a source of correlations with third-person data, but because lived experience, as such, makes a difference in its own right to the living body's dynamics. Given that methods for improving subjective reports have become accepted in human neuroscience (tenet 1), and given the increasing availability for recording multi-scalar organismic activity during embodied action (tenet 2), we propose it is time to integrate these research strands by using this issue of conscious efficacy as a pivot point (tenet 3). The development of genuinely experience-involving accounts of neurophysiological activity during embodied action holds promise for rebooting neurophenomenology in stronger form.

Comparable studies

Other narrative reviews on philosophy of mind, most cited first.

Study Year Design Participants
Body Consciousness: A Philosophy of Mindfulness and Somaesthetics 2008 Review article
Phenomenology, Structure, and Dynamic of Psychedelic States 2016 Review
Classic Hallucinogens and Mystical Experiences: Phenomenology and Neural Correlates. 2018 Review
The lived experience of psychosis: a bottom-up review co-written by experts by experience and academics. Individuals with lived experience of psychosis, family members, and carers 2022 Co-written bottom-up review
From autopoiesis to neurophenomenology: Francisco Varela's exploration of the biophysics of being. 2003 Review

Citations in the library

Cited by 5

Related reading

Explore topics

Philosophy of mind