O’Regan and Noë’s sensorimotor approach rejects the old-fashioned view that perceptual experience in humans depends solely on the activation of internal representations. Reflecting a wealth of empirical work, for example active vision, the approach suggests that perceiving is, instead, a matter of bodily exploration of the outside environment. To this end, the approach says the perceiver must deploy knowledge of sensorimotor contingencies, the ways sense input changes with movement by the perceiver or object perceived. Clark has observed that the approach (...) faces a challenge accounting for the experience of temporal duration, since event-like properties cannot be characterised by reference to the sensory consequences of possible movements. This paper argues that the account can best be shored up by emphasising, more than Noë does, the dependence of perceptual experience, in general, on temporally extended, organismic interaction with the outside environment. The paper argues, moreover, that an ‘extensionalist’ account of temporal experience could help make sense of object experience, which is itself, plausibly, an experience of temporal duration. (shrink)

I discuss the quantum mechanical theory of consciousness and freewill offered by Stapp (1993, 1995, 2000, 2004). First I show that decoherence-based arguments do not work against this theory. Then discuss a number of problems with the theory: Stapp's separate accounts of consciousness and freewill are incompatible, the interpretations of QM they are tied to are questionable, the Zeno effect could not enable freewill as he suggests because weakness of will would then be ubiquitous, and the holism of measurement in (...) QM is not a good explanation of the unity of consciousness for essentially the same reason that local interactions may seem incapable of accounting for it. (shrink)

One of the most serious challenges (if not the most serious challenge) for interactive psycho-physical dualism (henceforth interactive dualism or ID) is the so-called ‘interaction problem’. It has two facets, one of which this article focuses on, namely the apparent tension between interactions of non-physical minds in the physical world and physical laws of nature. One family of approaches to alleviate or even dissolve this tension is based on a collapse solution (‘consciousness collapse/CC) of the measurement problem in quantum mechanics (...) (QM). The idea is that the mind brings about the collapse of a superposed wave function onto one of its eigenstates. Thus, it is claimed, can the mind change the course of things without violating any law figuring in physical theory. I will first show that this hope is premature because energy and momentum are probably not conserved in collapse processes, and that even if this can be dealt with, the violations are either severe or produce further ontological problems. Second, I point out several conceptual difficulties for interactionist CC. I will also present solutions for those problems, but it will become clear that those solutions come at a high cost. Third, I shall briefly list some empirical problems which make life even harder for interactionist CC. I conclude with remarks about why no- collapse interpretations of QM don’t help either and what the present study has shown is the real issue for ID: namely to find a plausible integrative view of dualistic mental causation and laws of nature. (shrink)

Welcome to my philosophy page. My central research focus is the elucidation of what I call the radically temporal approach to philosophy. In the papers below I endeavor to articulate the varying ways that radical temporality manifests itself in the phenomenological perspectives of Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger and Eugene Gendlin. I also discuss Jacques Derrida’s deconstructive project and George Kelly’s personal construct theory as examples of radically temporal thinking. With the aim of clarifying and further defining the nature of this (...) orientation , I have delineated the important ways in which it differs from a range of interlinked approaches in philosophy and psychology that includes hermeneutic and radical constructivisms, 4EA (Embodied, Embedded, Enactive, Extended, and Affective) cognition, Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of corporeal intersubjectivity, autopoietic self-organizing systems theory and American pragmatism. Among the authors whose work I have submitted to critique from the radically temporal perspective are: Francisco Varela (autopoietic self-organizing systems), Shaun Gallagher, Evan Thompson, Matthew Ratcliffe, Maxine Sheets-Johnstone, Dan Zahavi, Hanne De Jaegher, Thomas Fuchs (enactive, embodied ('4EA') cognition), John Protevi (Deleuzian biopolitics), Kym Maclaren ( critical phenomenology) and Jan Slaby (critical neuroscience). -/- I argue that these authors’ accounts of intersubjectivity and empathy, and their integration of affect, motivation, intentionality and will, remain burdened by traditional presuppositions that the radically temporal philosophies of Heidegger et al put into question. -/- . (shrink)

The physical singularity of life phenomena is analyzed by means of comparison with the driving concepts of theories of the inert. We outline conceptual analogies, transferals of methodologies and theoretical instruments between physics and biology, in addition to indicating significant differences and sometimes logical dualities. In order to make biological phenomenalities intelligible, we introduce theoretical extensions to certain physical theories. In this synthetic paper, we summarize and propose a unified conceptual framework for the main conclusions drawn from work spanning a (...) book and several articles, quoted throughout. (shrink)

_sciousness called ‘neurophenomenology’ (Varela 1996) and illustrates it with a_ _recent pilot study (Lutz et al., 2002). At a theoretical level, neurophenomenology_ _pursues an embodied and large-scale dynamical approach to the_ _neurophysiology of consciousness (Varela 1995; Thompson and Varela 2001;_ _Varela and Thompson 2003). At a methodological level, the neurophenomeno-_ _logical strategy is to make rigorous and extensive use of first-person data about_ _subjective experience as a heuristic to describe and quantify the large-scale_ _neurodynamics of consciousness (Lutz 2002). The paper (...) foocuses on_ _neurophenomenology in relation to three challenging methodological issues_ _about incorporating first-person data into cognitive neuroscience: (i) first-person_ _reports can be biased or inaccurate; (ii) the process of generating first-person_ _reports about an experience can modify that experience; and (iii) there is an ‘ex-_ _planatory gap’ in our understanding of how to relate first-person, phenomeno-_ _logical data to third-person, biobehavioural data._. (shrink)

There are two fundamental models to understanding the phenomenon of natural life. One is thecomputational model, which is based on the symbolic thinking paradigm. The other is the biologicalorganism model. The common difficulty attributed to these paradigms is that their reductive tools allowthe phenomenological aspects of experience to remain hidden behind yes/no responses (behavioraltests), or brain ‘pictures’ (neuroimaging). Hence, one of the problems regards how to overcome meth-odological difficulties towards a non-reductive investigation of conscious experience. It is our aim in (...) thispaper to show how cooperation between Eastern and Western traditions may shed light for a non-reductive study of mind and life. This study focuses on the first-person experience associated withcognitive and mental events. We studied phenomenal data as a crucial fact for the domain of livingbeings, which, we expect, can provide the ground for a subsequent third-person study. The interventionwith Jhana meditation, and its qualitative assessment, provided us with experiential profiles based uponsubjects' evaluations of their own conscious experiences. The overall results should move towards anintegrated or global perspective on mind where neither experience nor external mechanisms have thefinal word. (shrink)

An updated survey of the research scope in Integral Biomathics.

I argue that conscious visual experience is essentially a non-representational demonstration of a skill. The explication and defense of this position depends on both phenomenological and empirical considerations. The central phenomenological claim is this: as a matter of human psychology, it is impossible to produce a conscious visual experience of a mind-independent object that is sufficiently like typical cases, without including concomitant proprioceptive sensations of the sort of extra-neural behavior that allows us to there and then competently detect such objects. (...) I then argue that this view, which is a version of enactivism, best explains the temporality of conscious experience—what is often called the specious present. (shrink)

Forty-two years ago, Capra published “The Tao of Physics” (Capra, 1975). In this book (page 17) he writes: “The exploration of the atomic and subatomic world in the twentieth century has …. necessitated a radical revision of many of our basic concepts” and that, unlike ‘classical’ physics, the sub-atomic and quantum “modern physics” shows resonances with Eastern thoughts and “leads us to a view of the world which is very similar to the views held by mystics of all ages and (...) traditions.“ This article stresses an analogous situation in biology with respect to a new theoretical approach for studying living systems, Integral Biomathics (IB), which also exhibits some resonances with Eastern thought. Stepping on earlier research in cybernetics1 and theoretical biology,2 IB has been developed since 2011 by over 100 scientists from a number of disciplines who have been exploring a substantial set of theoretical frameworks. From that effort, the need for a robust core model utilizing advanced mathematics and computation adequate for understanding the behavior of organisms as dynamic wholes was identified. At this end, the authors of this article have proposed WLIMES (Ehresmann and Simeonov, 2012), a formal theory for modeling living systems integrating both the Memory Evolutive Systems (Ehresmann and Vanbremeersch, 2007) and the Wandering Logic Intelligence (Simeonov, 2002b). Its principles will be recalled here with respect to their resonances to Eastern thought. (shrink)

• An adequate conceptual framework is still needed to account for phenomena that (i) have a first-person, subjective-experiential or phenomenal character; (ii) are (usually) reportable and describable (in humans); and (iii) are neurobiologically realized.2 • The conscious subject plays an unavoidable epistemological role in characterizing the explanadum of consciousness through first-person descriptive reports. The experimentalist is then able to link first-person data and third-person data. Yet the generation of first-person data raises difficult epistemological issues about the relation of second-order awareness (...) or meta-awareness to first-order experience (e.g. (shrink)

In this paper we aim to show that phenomenal consciousness is realized by a particular level of brain operational organization and that understanding human consciousness requires a description of the laws of the immediately underlying neural collective phenomena, the nested hierarchy of electromagnetic fields of brain activity – operational architectonics. We argue that the subjective mental reality and the objective neurobiological reality, although seemingly worlds apart, are intimately connected along a unified metastable continuum and are both guided by the universal (...) laws of the physical world such as criticality, self-organization and emergence. (shrink)

Current scientific research on consciousness aims to understand how consciousness arises from the workings of the brain and body, as well as the relations between conscious experience and cognitive processing. Clearly, to make progress in these areas, researchers cannot avoid a range of conceptual issues about the nature and structure of consciousness, such as the following: What is the relation between intentionality and consciousness? What is the relation between self-awareness and consciousness? What is the temporal structure of conscious experience? What (...) is it like to imagine or visualize something, and how is this type of experience different from perception? How is bodily experience related to self-consciousness? Such issues have been addressed in detail in the philosophical tradition of phenomenology, inaugurated by Edmund Husserl (1859-1938) and developed by numerous other philosophers throughout the 20th century. This chapter provides an introduction to this tradition and its way of approaching issues about consciousness. We first discuss some features of phenomenological methodology and then present some of the most important, influential, and enduring phenomenological proposals about various aspects of consciousness. These aspects include intentionality, self-awareness and the first-person perspective, time-consciousness, embodiment, and intersubjectivity. We also highlight a few ways of linking phenomenology and cognitive. (shrink)

It is now conventional wisdom that conscious experience — or in Nagel’s canonical characterization, “what it is like to be” for an organism — is what makes the mind-body problem so intractable. By the same token, our current conceptions of the mind-body relation are inadequate and some conceptual development is urgently needed. Our overall aim in this paper is to make some progress towards that conceptual development. We first examine a currently neglected, yet fundamental aspect of consciousness. This aspect is (...) the spontaneity of consciousness, by which we mean its inner plasticity and inner purposiveness. We then sketch a “neurophenomenological” framework for thinking about the relationship between the spontaneity of consciousness and dynamic patterns of brain activity as studied in cognitive neuroscience. We conclude by proposing that the conscious mentality of sentient organisms or animals is active and dynamic, and that this “enactive” conception of consciousness can help us to move beyond the classical dichotomy between materialism and dualism. (shrink)

in Cambridge Handbook of Consciousness edited by Zelazo P., Moscovitch M. and Thompson E. (2007).

Francisco Varela’s work is a monumental achievement in 20th century biological and biophilosophical thought. After his early collaboration in neo-cybernetics with Humberto Maturana (“autopoiesis”), Varela made fundamental contributions to immunology (“network theory”), Artificial Life (“cellular automata”), cognitive science (“enaction”), philosophy of mind (“neurophenomenology”), brain studies (“the brainweb”), and East- West dialogue (the Mind and Life conferences). In the course of his career, Varela influenced many important collaborators and interlocutors, formed a generation of excellent students, and touched the lives of many (...) with the intensity of his mind, the sharpness of his wit, and the strength of his spirit. In this essay, I will trace some of the key turning points in his thought, with special focus on the concept of emergence, which was always central to his work, and on questions of politics, which operate at the margins of his thought. I will divide Varela’s work into three periods – autopoiesis, enaction, and radical embodiment – each of which is marked by a guiding concept; a specific.. (shrink)

Current approaches in psychology have replaced the idea of a centralized, self-present identity with that of a diffuse system of contextually changing states distributed ecologically as psychologically embodied and socially embedded. However, the failure of contemporary perspectives to banish the lingering notion of a literal, if fleeting, status residing within the parts of a psycho-bio-social organization may result in the covering over of a rich, profoundly intricate process of change within the assumed frozen space of each part. In this paper (...) I show how Heidegger, Derrida and Gendlin help us think from this more intimate process to transform current views of metaphor, the unconscious, and the relation between affect and cognition. (shrink)

Current approaches in psychology have replaced the idea of a centralized, self-present identity with that of a diffuse system of contextually changing states distributed ecologically as psychologically embodied and socially embedded. However, the failure of contemporary perspectives to banish the lingering notion of a literal, if fleeting, status residing within the parts of a psycho-bio-social organization may result in the covering over of a rich, profoundly intricate process of change within the assumed frozen space of each part. In this paper (...) I show how thinking from this more intimate process may transform current views of metaphor, the unconscious, and the relation between affect and cognition. (shrink)

It is the every person's daily phenomenal experience that conscious states represent their contents as occurring now. Following Droege (2009) we could state that consciousness has a peculiar affinity for presence. Some researchers even argue that conscious awareness necessarily demands that mental content is somehow held “frozen” within a discrete progressive present moment. Thus, phenomenal content seems to be minimally conscious if it is integrated into a single and coherent model of reality during a “virtual window” of presence.

The paper presents, first, some general remarks about Husserl’s philosophical Phenomenology in view of relating it to the scientific study of consciousness, and recalls some of the basic methodological tenets of a Husserlian phenomenology of consciousness (I). It then introduces some recent work on so-called “mental imagery” in cognitive psychology and neuroscience (II). Next, a detailed exposition of a reflective analysis of conscious experiences that involve “imagery” or “images” is given (III), arguing thereby that reflective conceptual clarifications of various forms (...) of such experiences could contribute to research into their finer details. In order to show more distinctly that the conscious experiences involved in the contemporary cognitive and neuroscientific imagery research are indeed differently structured, a simple notation for designating the various structural components of the experiences under study will be used. In concluding (IV), some methodological assets concerning the present proposal of integrating the method of Husserlian phenomenology into the present-day, and hopefully even more so into the future study of consciousness are highlighted! (shrink)