The Middle Way

Abstract

The Middle Way Evocations of GroundlessnessOur journey has now brought us to the point where we can appreciate that what we took to be solid ground is really more like shifting sand beneath our feet.We began with our common sense as cognitive scientists and found that our cognition emerges from the background of a world that extends beyond us but that cannot be found apart from our embodiment.When we shifted our attention away from this fundamental circularity to follow the movement of cognition alone, we found that we could discern no subjective ground, no permanent and abiding ego-self.When we tried to find the objective ground that we thought must still be present, we found a world enacted by our history of structural coupling.Finally, we saw that these various forms of groundlessness are really one: organism and environment enfold into each other and unfold from one another in the fundamental circularity that is life itself.Our discussion of enactive cognition points directly toward the heart of our concerns in this chapter and the next.The worlds enacted by various histories of structural coupling are amenable to detailed scientific investigation, yet have no fixed, permanent substrate or foundation and so are ultimately groundless.We must now turn to face directly this groundlessness of which we have had multiple evocations.If our world is groundless, how are we to understand our day-to-day experience within it?Our experience feels given, unshakable, and unchangeable.How could we not ex perience the world as independent and well grounded?What else could experience of the world mean?Western science and philosophy have brought us to the point where we are faced with, in the words of the philosopher Hilary Putnam, "the