PHENOMENOLOGY, PHILOSOPHY, AND THE COGNITIVE SCIENCES

Abstract

The importance of bringing together perspectives in cognitive science and phenomenology cannot be overemphasized. Cognition as enacted, that is to say, as embodied action, is about the interdependence of world and mind. It is a mutuality of dependence made evident in the relations between mind and world, involving interaction or embodied action. Hence cognition as embodied action seems to be a genuine understanding of the Buddhist groundlessness. The aim of this Buddhist tradition is realizing egolessness in one’s own experience and manifesting it in actions towards others. Our meditative mindfulness/awareness of our co-dependent origination, emptiness, compassion, and naturalness helps us achieve this praxis-oriented, mind-body, I-neighbor philosophy. It is this co-dependent origination that matches the Western experience of groundlessness and its relation to the science of the mind and the notion of enacting. Nothing has an independent existence. Things are entirely empty and groundless due to their co-dependent origination. Their co-dependent origination empties them of any ultimate or independent existence. As one becomes mindful/aware of one’s experience, one realizes the irrational impulse to seek after foundations. It is then that one begins to acquire and cherish emptiness. One is empty of a specific fact of experience, for instance, empty of the obsession of wanting to understand and explain everything, because one realizes the emptiness of this urge; for, experience appears to teach one of the apparent groundlessness of things. One’s prejudices and Angst are empty of the groundings one ascribes to them, and thus, are