What Self in Self-Organization? Engaging Varela's Epistemology for the Co-embodied Self

A non-dualistic epistemology, grounded in Francisco Varela's early work 'Not One, Not Two' (1976), supports the argument that the human self is fundamentally social and co-embodied, not merely individual. The enactive view of the self, which Varela and Evan Thompson developed, treats the self as self-organized and organismically autonomous, but it remains ambiguous whether social interactions are constitutive of the minimal self or only a secondary, shaping factor. Drawing on Varela's epistemology, the author argues that the minimal self-organizational network of the human self inherently includes both individual bodily processes and joint co-embodied processes, making the self constitutively social from the start.

Study at a glance

Abstract

I focus on an early article by Francisco Varela, 'Not One, Not Two' (1976), to argue that his non-dualistic epistemology entails a paradigm shift towards a fundamentally co-embodied, and thus social, view of self. Varela argued that the mind–body duality could be resolved by understanding the mind as embodied. Both Varela and Evan Thompson have later elaborated on this and suggested an enactive, essentially embodied view of the self in terms of selforganized, organismic autonomy. I will argue that the enactive view of the self remains ambiguous with regards to the role of social interactions: are they constitutive for the minimal self-organization of the self or do they only play a shaping, secondary factor? I rely on Varela's epistemology in 'Not One, Not Two' to support my argument that the minimal self-organizational network that is the human self entails both individual bodily and joint co-embodied processes so that the self is already and constitutively social.