De cuerpo presente. Las ciencias cognitivas y la experiencia humana

by Francisco J. Varela, Evan Thompson, Eleanor Rosch

Para las ciencias cognitivas, la experiencia humana cotidiana es hasta ahora un hecho importante pero difícil de incluir como tema de investigación. Los autores se proponen ir más allá de esta limitación formulando una teoría de la circularidad transformacional entre mente y experiencia. Esta investigación se define como una continuación moderna de la fenomenología de Maurice Merleau-Ponty que demuestra las fecundas perspectivas que se abren cuando las ciencias cognitivas se combinan con la filosofía budista. Esta combinación permite superar la crisis del yo occidental, surgida a partir del reconocimiento de su falta de fundamento último. A este falso yo, que dio lugar a posiciones nihilistas y pesimistas, se opone un sujeto en proceso, un sujeto que se va redefiniendo y reconociendo de un modo necesariamente parcial, descentrado y no originado o fundante de un movimiento en el que se articulan y reajustan constantemente los procesos cognitivos y la experiencia. El budismo enseña que la aceptación dela ausencia de fundamentos últimos puede llevar a nuevas perspectivas éticas y científicas, basadas en la compasión. Hay que repensar y redefinir este concepto más allá dela tradición cotidiana para entender su alcance como un nuevo deseo de conocer que puede dar un rumbo diferente a las metas de la ciencia contemporánea.

Genres: Philosophy, Psychology, Science, Nonfiction, Neuroscience, Buddhism, Spirituality

318 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1991

About the author

Francisco Varela was a biologist, philosopher, and neuroscientist who, together with his teacher Humberto Maturana, is best known for introducing the concept of *autopoiesis to biology*, for bringing phenomenology and first-person approaches to biology and neuroscience, and for co-founding the Mind and Life Institute to promote dialog between science and Buddhism.

Reviews

[Greg · Rating 4 out of 5]

For the past year or so I've been steeped in literature in cognitive science focused on addressing issues surrounding representation. Human beings can represent all sorts of things; chairs and cups, dogs and cats, the smell of a glass of wine, hunger and thirst, the meanings of words, and on and on. We can represent things that are directly in front of us, as well as things that not present to our senses (tracking a person walking around a corner, recalling last year's vacation, imagining a unicorn). At any point in your moment to moment experience, your mental states are in some sense “about” something that the brain is capable of representing. But brains are just a vast web of interconnected cells, passing chemicals back and forth. Where is it that thoughts and concepts arise? How is it that representation can arise out of the electrochemical functioning of the brain?

Various theories have been proposed over the years to account for this, but the foremost theories in cognitive science, computationalism and connectionism, each are riddled with a myriad of problems in regards to an account of representation. Which isn't to say these views aren't of theoretical interest. Each of these research paradigms has allowed for really great breakthroughs, for example, in the functioning of computer and robotic systems. But while there has been some success in mimicking certain cognitive functions (to some degree), providing an unproblematic account for representation, for intelligence and for consciousness has remained elusive(there's also problems to do with learning, as well as what's known as the frame problem).

Along come embodied cognition and dynamic systems literature. These theories are radical departures from standard cognitive science, rejecting the fundamental assumption in cognitive science that the brain is basically an information processing device, and instead focusing on the embodied sensorimotor coupling of a dynamic system (whether biological or not). Research in these fields has produced robotic agents capable of engaging in many varied behaviors thus far outside the reach of classical theories. Each of these platforms separately provide strong predictive and explanatory power when dealing with issues of cognition or intelligent behavior, and combining them is an extremely promising research strategy. The only problem is...these theories eschew the concept of representation all together. And my main question coming into this book was...how? I really like many of the ideas in these fields, but how exactly do they account for consciousness, for subjective experience, for qualia?

I picked up this book hoping for an answer to that question, and I didn't get it. But I still found the book to be excellent on the whole. Their criticisms of standard cognitive science were in my opinion, spot on. Those sections alone would be worth it for anyone interested in these issues to pick up and read. And the real kicker is that for the most part I agree strongly with their own theories of cognition, or embodied action as they call it. Below are two quotes I pulled out of the book that I think do the best job of summarizing their basic points:

Embodied action: by using the term embodied we mean to highlight two points: first, that cognition depends upon the kinds of experience that come from having a body with various sensorimotor capacities, and second, that these individual sensorimotor capacities are themselves embedded in a more encompassing biological, psychological, and cultural context. By using the term action we mean to emphasize once again that sensory and motor processes, perception and action, are fundamentally inseparable in lived cognition. Indeed, the two are not merely contingently linked in individuals; they have also evolved together.

Enaction: perception consists in perceptually guided action and cognitive structures emerge from the recurrent sensorimotor patterns that enable action to be perceptually guided.

I think I'm with them 100% here, and if you're not quite ready to buy into what they say from those quotes alone, I can only say, pick up the book. They provide plenty of justification for these ideas and it squares with much of my own recent research.

Where I disagree with them is the conclusion they draw given this theory they've constructed. Which is that there is no such thing as representation. Worse, there is actually no objective pregiven world (an unavoidable conclusion give many of their arguments, but a regrettable one). Their basic criticisms of representation are indeed well grounded, but only given certain naive (albeit historically dominants) conceptions of representation, where representation is viewed as the "act of re-presenting pregiven features of the world through a process of recovery of information from sensory signals". Their criticism hinges on the mistaken notion that there is an optimal fit correspondence between a pregiven world and our representation of it. i.e. - there is an object world, sensory signals hit us, our brain processes the information, and re-presents it accurately.

Sure, acknowledged. We don't experience a pregiven world. We experience a construction of that world. But some sort of object reality does exist. We interact with it with our sensory systems, and our construction as a result of this interaction can be in error. So what? What is it about about the possibility of representational error that is so hard to stomach? They don't address this idea. In fact, they seem to assume that all the theories of representation out there don't account for the possibility of error, don't even think they need to. Now, if they had argued that no popular theories successfully account for the normativity of representation, I would agree. But all theories agree that representation is a normative phenomena. In fact, this is the starting point for many accounts of representation. Representations can be correct or incorrect, true or false. What evidence we have for thinking our representations of the world are accurate is certainly tricky (we can't compare our representation of the world with the actual world, since all we have access to is our own internal representation. No matter how much "external" justification you have, it must always be filtered through an internal cognitive process. this is a serious problem in epistemology), but this is a different matter.

So what is one of their main justifications for this argument against representation? It's an argument against a certain brand of evolutionary theory. What they argue against is the notion of evolution as resulting in organisms that have an optimal fit for their environment, and thus against the notion that our sensory systems can accurately represent the environment since they themselves are not optimally fit for representation. Again, I found this really frustrating to read because most of their criticisms against an "optimal fit" theory of evolution are also correct. To be fair, they're not even saying anything particularly new, but in general their chapter on evolution could have been excellent, if its sole purpose wasn't to argue that if you accept what they say about evolution you have to accept what they say about representation. Sure, evolution is not involved in optimization. They describe it perfectly; "selection discards what is not compatible with survival and reproduction. Organisms and the population offer variety; natural selection guarantees only that what ensues satisfies the two basic constraints of survival and reproduction." I.e - what is selected for is not what is optimal, but what is viable.

I come across moves like this all too frequently. Someone will come out with a brilliant work detailing the problems in some widely accepted theories, explaining in a more comprehensive way how things actually do work, and then simply throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Varela, Thompson, and Rosch are right on in embracing a future, action oriented process approach to cognition. Perception is not a passive process of representing the world, but an active process of construction. Objects aren't represented by sensory signals, objects present affordances for action through the sensorimotor coupling of a biological system interacting with sensory signals in the environment. None of this means representation doesn't exist. It means that our naive conceptions of representation as "sensory encodings" must be put behind us. It means that representation isn't "of things", but emerges from an internal process facilitated by "contact" with things. It means these insights into how cognition actually works themselves need to be accounted for in a theory of representation. I don't suggest this is easy, but look where getting rid of gets these authors. There is no pregiven objective reality. Not only that, but they have no account, not even a mention, of anything to do with consciousness or subjective experience.

I really do highly recommend this book, even with all my criticisms. Just keep in mind when you're reading their embodied action section that what they are saying should be input for theories of representation, not arguments against it.

[Blaine Snow · Rating 5 out of 5]

Way ahead of its time, this is the book that coalesced the embodied mind paradigm. There were others that came before such as Bateson's Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unity (Advances in Systems Theory, Complexity, and the Human Sciences): Gregory Bateson and Maturana & Varela's The Tree of Knowledge: The Biological Roots of Human Understanding but this volume was first to set out against the established cognitive science approaches of both cognitivism and connectionism as being different versions of the representationalist-computationalist-disembodied view of mind in order to lay out an agenda for a biological-body-environment- and dynamical system-based view of mind and cognition. The new view first put forth in this book, enactivism, is now an established research approach in cognitive science (see my Listopia list, Embodied Cognition, https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/7...).

And, don't be put off by the sections of this book that deal with Buddhist philosophy of mind and consciousness - instead realize that the authors are tapping into the collective knowledge and investigations of some of the world's greatest philosophical minds, even if you haven't ever heard of them. Instead, if you haven't already done so, get off your Western colonialist ass and start reading the philosophy of India, China, Tibet, and Japan!

NOTE: This is a review of the original first edition of the book. A newer second edition was published by Thompson and Rosch with a revised introduction, this one: The Embodied Mind, revised edition: Cognitive Science and Human Experience.

Edited 4-22-21

[Nelson Zagalo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tenho passado os últimos anos em busca de variáveis e modelos capazes de dar conta da essência e espectro que definem a Experiência Humana. Motiva-me a identificação daquilo que suporta a nossa experiência, da sua construção e variabilidade, para assim poder conceber modelos de interação humano-computador no campo do design de narrativa interativa (com propriedades de agência, jogo ou procedimentais) mais efetivos, ou seja, mais consentâneos com as propriedades ótimas do ser-humano. Nesse sentido, as leituras têm sido diversas: da psicologia à filosofia, passando pela cibernética, neurociência, computação, fenomenologia, emoção, desenvolvimento, biologia, etc., no fundo tudo aquilo que, de um modo ou de outro, tem servido as ciências cognitivas nas últimas décadas. Como sempre, em qualquer campo do conhecimento mas mais acentuado ainda no mundo multidisciplinar, quanto mais fundo escavamos mais problemas encontramos, mais dúvidas desenvolvemos, menos certezas conseguimos, mas não deixa de ser interessante o modo como vamos encontrando pontes entre as diferentes disciplinas, e as vamos anotando como espécie de nós relevantes. Estes elementos dão conta de conclusões provenientes de fundamentos díspares, mas que pela sua semelhança carregam consigo elementos fundamentais do conhecimento, que nos podem ajudar a tornar mais evidente o design do conhecimento que buscamos.

Continuar a ler no VI:
https://virtual-illusion.blogspot.com...

[Andrew]

An at-times remarkably elegant text on cognitive science, philosophy both analytic and continental (more big-ups for Merleau-Ponty!), evolution as being more in the negative (genetic drift is a big thing, and natural selection is better at weeding out maladaptive traits than promoting adaptive traits, spandrels 'n such), mindfulness, and the apparent disconnect between the notion of a "self" and the raft of evidence that suggests that this just ain't the case, and the weird feels that gives you.

Varela and Co. attempt to use Buddhism to reconcile this, and specifically the philosophy of Nagarjuna, and the principle of mindfulness as enacted. Now I've been saying for years that mindfulness is the main concept of Asian philosophy that was never independently developed in the Western philosophical tradition, and it's an important one. But I don't know if the argument holds water. They're pretty keen on saying anyone who disagrees with them is either a foolhardy positivist or a hopeless nihilist, but I prefer American pragmatist philosophy as a more effective route to combating nihilism when confronted with the divide between illusory experience and scientific truth. Buddhism seemed kind of shoehorned in to be honest.

[Michal · Rating 2 out of 5]

The implementation of Merleau-Ponty's framework into modern cognitive science is definitely important and well presented (hence the 2 stars). But that's where the value of this book ends (IMHO).

What again is the added value of all the Buddhist references? Mindfulness is undoubtedly a promising research tool. However, I am a bit tired of all the "look, they used it for thousand of years, we have to listen to them". Show how Buddhist phenomenology can refine the western one or how it can offer a superior conceptual framework for our research of consciousness. If your whole point is show that it might and should be relevant, then I am not impressed. I want to see HOW. And if you want to - based on these weak arguments and related alleged authority - jump to some ethical conclusions, then I am not interested.

[lille rev · Rating 5 out of 5]

Denne boka er punk, og implikasjonene av den blomstrer enda rundt oss. Tett og tung å lese, men verden ser annerledes ut etterpå. Her følger kort tekst om hvorfor denne boka er punk.

Hvordan vi ser verden har alt å si for hvordan vi handler i den, og hvilket spørsmål som er relevante når vi prøver å forstå den. Den verden der sola kretser rundt jorda er en annen enn den der jorda kretser rundt sola. De forskjellige antakelsene tillater på sett og hvis forskjellige spørsmål, som gir forskjellige svar, som fordrer nye spørsmål, etc. Alt dette igjen fører til forskjellige måter å være på og handle i verden. Du vet jo dette.

I kognitiv vitenskap har man operert med noen antakelser om hvordan verden er som har gitt opphavet til mye kult. I sin spede begynnelse antok man at kognisjon (og dermed sinnet) er et system som representerer verden symbolsk og bearbeider symboler. Dette førte til at vi lagde datamaskiner. Seinere antok man at kognisjon er informasjonsbearbeiding av velding mange små deler som til sammen danner et system som er større enn alle delene, et emergent nettverk. Maskinlæring. Disse måtene å se oss selv på henger igjen i dagligtalen. Jeg inviterer deg til å ta en liten pause for å prosessere dette. Om du kanskje er litt lav på dopamin, så javel ta deg en kalddusj og fortsett med selvinstrumentaliseringen. Talast

Igjen radikalt forenkla: disse synene opererer under antakelsen om at kognisjon skjer i den skallebundne geleklumpen din. Måten vi da igjen svarer på spørsmålet "hvordan fungerer kognisjon", blir da ved å undersøke hva som skjer i hjernen, på mange forskjellige plan.

Dette prosjektet er ikke feil, eller galt, det har bært megen frukt. Vi vet nå mye mer enn det vi gjorde før. Det er bare at det er ikke hele bildet, og det begrenser oss(radikalt begrenser oss, i en utvida forstand).

Alt er bare nevronale signaler i geleklumpen din. Til og med kjærlighet. Bare vi kan dytte litt på de riktige knappene så forelsker du deg. Litt mer oksytosin, litt mer dopamin, litt mer prolactin, også voila, du er nå hemmelig tiltrukket av morra di. Skru mer på knottene og du har nå ADHD, som alle andre, og du er deprimert, og forelska i morra di. Hjælp.

Skallebundne maskiner i en instrumentell forstand. Det er det vi er, ikke sant? Men du gjetta det, forfatterne er ikke enig. Greit nok at du har en hjerne, og den er en helt nødvendig del av kognisjon, men kognisjon skjer ikke utelukkende i hjernen din. Thompson har flere analogier. En fugl trenger vinger for å fly, men en fugl flyr ikke med vingene sine alene. Fuglen flyr med hele sitt vesen, som igjen er uløselig forankret i verden, i et miljø. Du trenger en hjerne for kognisjon, men kognisjon skjer ikke utelukkende i hjernen. Hjernen din er i kroppen din og kroppen din har en oppheta politisk diskusjon med din fulle onkel etter julemiddagen. Enkelt og radikalt.

Om man finner opp en pille som uten å feile løfter folk ut av depresjon, har man da kurert depresjon? Kan det være at siden din deprimerte hjerne er plassert i din deprimerte kropp som befinner seg alene i studioleiligheten din heller føler seg grundig fremmedgjort i et senkapitalistisk samfunn, at man heller maskerer, individualiserer og instrumentaliserer et problem som strekker seg langt utenfor legevitenskapen?

Jeg tenker og jeg føler og jeg gjør ting som å hoppe inn i en taxi og bælje "til biblioteket! Klampen i bånn!". Og jeg gleder meg til konsekvensene av denne boka springer ut i full blomst. Og jeg er ikke alene, for vi er så mye mer enn det vi tror

[Taka · Rating 2 out of 5]

Meh, Not So Fast--

I was far more impressed by Anthony Chemero's treatment of the subject than this classic text (though I have to take into consideration that Varela et al. were writing in a completely different period and context, and, as ushers of a new paradigm, had to deal with a different set of difficulties from those Chemero had to deal with, writing 18 years later). Most of the explanations felt incomplete, inadequate, and unconvincing (especially their exposition on the no-self, critique of adaptationism in evolution, and presentation of Nagarjuna's logic in refuting independent existence), the diagrams were unhelpful and useless (esp. those on cellular automata, which I felt lacked enough explanation), and they seemed to take Buddhist views for granted (because, apparently, they have been again and again confirmed by meditation practitioners) when those views had to be argued for, ESPECIALLY in the context of cognitive science and in making the case for the fusion of cognitive science and the mindfulness/awareness tradition (which they do, but failed to convince). If the book was as unconvincing and unsatisfying even for someone sympathetic to their project (and Buddhism), I don't know how the book even survived in a milieu where Buddhism wasn't such a buzzword and mindfulness so popular. Anyway, I thought about putting the book down around page 120 when they cover a central Buddhist notion of co-dependent arising and the Abbhidharma view of consciousness, because the discussions felt frustratingly shallow, as if the authors didn't feel the need to try to even argue for them. There were also many, many passages that were hard to follow mostly because they were not all that well-written. In short, the book lacked enough explanations and argumentation, and when there were explanations and argumentation, they were often poorly presented.

Compared to Chemero, though, some of the concepts covered, like those in cognitivism, connectionism, and society of minds were reader friendly (Chemero assumes the reader's familiarity with the subject already). And I mean, kudos to them for trying to bridge Buddhism and cognitive science when no one else was trying to do it.

[Cormac Avila · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was an epoch-defining work that reinvigorated discussion on an anti-dualistic alternative to conventional anthropologies. In keeping with its attempt at a paradigm shift, the book covers a lot of ground; it moves rapidly through developments in mathematics, cognitional theory, history of philosophy, and evolution, all the while introducing new ideas and terms. However, the authors take pains to emphasize the practical and ethical implications of their ideas for modern everyday living, giving the book an especially "human" feel. The only drawback was the book's academic writing style, the lack of poetry at odds with the significance of its content.

[Julian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Given the increasingly integrative nature of fields of study pertaining to the science of human experience (or is the experience of human science?) previously conceptualized as separate and distinct (i.e neurobiology, cognitive psychology, buddhism, philosophy etc), it was initially of historical interest that I picked up this book.
Reading it from the viewpoint of a practicing psychiatrist/psychotherapist with inclinations toward buddhist practices rather than a neuroscientist or a philosopher, I found it initially hard-going to say the least!
However, as one persisted, this book was discovered to be a finely written piece that highlighted several themes clearly: our dualistic tendencies to distinguish between subject and object, and the reification of representation in our framing of experience: both projected outward (idealism) onto objects in the world that can then contain and give shape to our inner representations, or assimilated symbols of an independent world 'out there' (realism). This concept of Absolutism is then shown to be somewhat faulty from research fields such as cognitive psychology, AI and lingustics.
However, a risk of the tearing down of the altar of objective truth is then the spectre of Nihilism (arising out of and dependent on absolutism), as expressed and articulated in various Western philosophies. The authors then suggest that there is an alternative perspective that at the time of writing had not been considered by 'Western' Science and Philosophy: that of the groundlessness of being as taught by the Mahdyamika school of Buddhism. Here via the focussed introspective study of experience and in particular expressed by the concept of the 12 aggregates of dependent arising, it is shown that groundlessness need not lead to nihilism. In fact nihilism only occurs because we continue to grasp onto the framework of objectuve representations. In fact, with ongoing practice of mindfulness meditation, groundlessness will in fact lead to the arising of spontaneous compassion. The authors then illustrate their viewpoint via examples of 'natural drift' in evolution, and 'structural coupling' leading to embodied 'enactions' from cognitive psychology and AI. I am glad to have read this book, and glad to have seen increasing integration since this was written in the early 1990's.

[Dennis Murphy · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience by Francisco Varela, Evan Thompson, and Eleanor Rosch is a book that came highly recommended to me, but it is a little bit weirder than I first thought it would be. A large chunk of this book is aimed at habituating the reader to Buddhist approaches to consciousness, and ultimately using it as a basis to talk about how we have no permanent self, nor do we have a permanent reality. Uh, okay. When you move on and you here what the authors are actually trying to say about Cognitive Science and Computer Science then you see a fair bit that is rather quite useful. But useful is about as far as I'd go. This is a framework to think about understanding human experience and scientific approaches, though I find the idea of there being a lack of any real foundations to be rather strange. The authors spend a lot of their initial time trying to tear down the foundations, and then introduce Buddhism as a salve to these problems. Its not really that persuasive.

It is almost juvenile to bring up that cognition and understanding is based on comparing and contrasting, but the idea that something is "smaller" or "taller" than something else does not mean there is no such thing as "tall" or "small." We move from one to all when we think about things and learn to differentiate among things from larger categories to smaller ones and then regroup the specific to the general. But does that make everything a form of codependent emptiness? Of course not. Buddhism is here being used to erode a sense of existence or independence because our understanding of things are built off of comparisons of some form or another --- all the way down to dismantling the idea of an independently existing world, as well as an independently existing self. The act of cognition is a strange metaphysical benchmark for what exists, especially as it relates to sense-making, especially when there's so much work put into disassembling the idea of a thing to make sense of a world that cannot be judged objectively. It places us into a weird set of contradiction if we accept all these premises, unless we lean on the Buddhist teachers extensively quoted and cited in the text.

If anything, this book is almost more useful to see how people are using Buddhism to make sense of advances in computer and cognitive science, than it is about the fields themselves.

[A · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars. This is one of the books I should have read long time about. It walks between adventurous theories of cognitive philosophy and unscientific new age bullshit. While the main premise of the book is unorthodox but reasonable, a good part of the book is spent in straw man fallacies and unprovable beliefs.

There are a couple of important ideas here: cognition in human beings are formed by multiple components, however we feel as one unit. As such, symbolic models don't offer an accurate view of human cognition, and even more, they authors claim, there is no representation whatsoever. Cognition is not a process that occurs (only) in brain, but it is a process the involves the organism's body (and the environment, proponents of the extended mind would say). I think there is some truth on this version, but symbols do exist in cognitive systems, maybe at a much higher level, but they can't be dismissed completely. Another important discussion is about the existence of the _self_. Regardless of the opinion of the authors, it seems to me the existence of the ego-self is validated by some evolutionary advantage as to not having one, despite all the philosofical acrobacies used to prove otherwise.

One red flag for me is the use of Buddhism meditation and midfulness as a way to explain natural phenomena. It is common for some western scientist to look at eastern philosophies and assume they have everything figured out, simply because they look mysterious and ancient. Maybe they do, but for me this is a mild version of orientalism. Overall, the argument is that we need to expand cognitive science methods and include the individual experience in our analysis. While I completely agree in principle, I don't think that this should become a free pass for any method of analysis without some minimum of rigour: just because **I** feel this way, doesn't mean eveyrbody does (hence it is not cognitively generalizable), especially when the authors come from W.E.I.R.D. societies. The classic counterargument for this refutation is that standard scientific practice is not open minded enough, but we already have a huge problem with replicability with existing structured and formal methodologies; we don't need more noise over the already existing one.

Another red flag is the dismissal of the pre-given world: I'm not sure the extent of this claim, do the authors really refer to the whole natural universe (13Ga old) or only when humans are involved? Regardless, it seems pretty confusing to me.

Regarding the opinions on evolution, the authors try to prove wrong a version of natural selection and adaptation that nobody is actually claiming exists. It is true you can't track the specific advantages or progress made by one particular gene, being pleitropy only one of the factors involved. But we can't measure the position of a specific molecule of gas in a container and that doesn't invalidate statistical mechanics, so there is no problem with that. Additionally, nobody is claiming there is no mutual relationships between organism and environment, co-evolution, extended phenotypes and other mutual interactions have been part of standard evolutionary theory for years.

The final chapter ends adding a bunch of commentaries regarding morality ethics, global thinking, etc. I think those are topics way above the level of what is and how cognition works, and it feels more like propaganda than
actual science. Some examples:

> (If the reader thinks that Nagarjuna’s argument is a linguistic one, that is because he has not seen the force of the Abhidharma.)

or

> As the student goes on, however, and his mind relaxes further into awareness, a sense of warmth and inclusiveness dawns.


Overall, I think this is a very brave book that present unorthodox ideas. While many of them are wrongly justified, I think the main concepts of embodied cognition is probably true. As a final thought, I would love to know Varela's opinion given the recent criticism on mindfulness and the explosion of connectivist deep learning models that are being deployed nowadays.

[Stuart Macalpine · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this book Eleanor Rosch who developed Prototype theory in concept based learning explores Buddhist traditions of mindfulness to suggest a new way of studying the mind that avoids the "objective world" and "mind as computer" naivety of cognitivism, and also the rather solipsistic subjectivism of the extremes of idealism and skepticism.

Her point is actually pretty basic, but the text is dense. The basic point is that ideas arise in the mind and exist in the world due to a structural-coupling and ongoing action. These brain systems "exhibit emergent properties when endowed with network architectures". These emergent properties include 'concepts' and more broadly 'representation'. This resolves a problem that whilst 'concepts' are used to explain thinking and processing by cognitivist models, you can not find them in the brain at all. So instead Rosch et al. are suggesting that all thinking is sub-representational, but representations appear as an emergent property from this highly networked and interaction based engagement with the world. Again it is less as Nietzsche would say, that we invent truths to suit us, but rather thinking emerge from our interactions with the world in a way which is not subject to language and concepts, but produces them. The word for this growing area of neuroscience is connectivism.

Her earlier work identified 'taxa' or 'natural prototypes' that seems to emerge across cultures to identify objects in the world based upon:
1) Are used or interacted with , by similar motor actions
2) have similar perceived shapes and can be imaged
3) have identifiable humanly meaningful attributes
4) are catagorised by young children
5) have linguistic primary

This links with the work of Mark Johnson on basic catagorisation and also Larkoff whose book I recently reviewed.

Her point in this text is that the next step of realising that in Wordsworth's words we "half create, And what perceive" the world, is to make the link to Heidegger and Buddhist traditions of mindfulness. In the traditions represented by Rosch et al. codependent arising is described by Buddhism and the point to 'break the wheel' is the link between "feeling" and "grasping" and rather than immediate action in the world, to be mindfully aware of aversion or desire and the feelings that give rise to them. For Rosch this also is the space to explore the working of the mind, as all other mental representations, are the product of this cycle. It is here that she is offering a new way of thinking about the mind.

I found the text dense and filled with presumptions that I did not share, so had to work quite hard at understanding. However, I think it is saying something very important about our ability to step back from the 'way we think about things' in order to understand the mind. It also bizarrely helped me understand her earlier prototype theory much better, which was not her aim!

[Ihor Kolesnyk · Rating 4 out of 5]

Книга про те як наука (чи різні науки) ведуть у сторону до людини і її самопізнання. Тут є багато когнітивних наук, біології, еволюційної теорії у різних формах, фізики, філософії, феноменології, буддизму і буддійської медитації. Все доволі академічне, радше для науковців та інституцій, але якщо маєте бажання зазирнути у перспективні напрями руху науки і медитації, то тут є ескізи багатьом речам.

[Alan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Amazing discussion of cognitivism, connectionism, and enactivism. Quite difficult to get through at times, as Varela delved into the gritty details of certain theories. Ultimately, however, this book is a great scientific introduction to the practice of mindfulness/awareness, stripped of its religious baggage.

[Regina Andreassen · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 stars. It is basic, good for beginners though so 2.5 stars.

[Peter · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book is centred around a conflict between Cognitive Science and Human Experience: 1) cogsci findings show that the mind is fragmented into various divisions, 2) despite that, it feels like there is a single self that unifies our experience. To resolve this conflict the authors suggest that Human Experience should be expanded by Mindfulness/Awareness meditation to develop an intuitive feeling for the lack of a unified self. Likewise cognitive science should also be expanded by ideas of Enaction.

Classic ideas of cognitive cognitive science: cognitivism and connectionism. Cognitivism postulates that cognition comprises symbols which are physically-realised and have semantic content by representing pre-given properties in a pre-given world. Connectionism also hold that the mind represents properties in a pre-given world but suggests that this global state ‘emerges’ through local interaction among many ‘simple’ parts. There are many problems with this representational view of the mind.

Enaction rejects the representationalist idea that the world contains pre-given properties that the cognitive system has to re-produce. Instead Enaction views cognition as bringing about a domain of distinctions through internal dynamics (‘operational closure’) + coupling to the environment (‘structural coupling’). These kinds of self-organising autonomous systems cannot be described by representationalist models. Simple cellular automata can be structurally coupled to a random environment of stimuli, yet the internal dynamics and this coupling give rise to a domain of distinctions in that random environment: for example the automata can be selective to odd sequences of stimuli even though this was not hard coded anywhere. This principle applies to all biological systems.

This is the empirical project: a cognitive system can be described on two levels: 1) breaking down the cognitive system into parts, 2) analysing the possible couplings of the cognitive system as a whole to its milieu. Research should proceed by swapping between these types of descriptions, in order to determine the mechanisms of how the environment constrains the system and the mechanisms for how constraints are specified by the sensorimotor structure of the system. The enactive approach tries to understand perception by determining the lawful sensorimotor structures of the perceiver which permit action to be perceptually-guided. The mechanism will then shine light on how specific regularities arise. This has impacted fields such as robotics. For example Rodney Brooks: Intelligence without representation.

[zynphull · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is something else.

Francisco Varela, along with Evan Thompson and Eleanor Rosch, present an assortment of "middle ways," in special, between objectivism and nihilism, science and experience.

Science is traditionally concerned with what is 'verifiable' in a very peculiar way: that which is describable in words or diagrams, and that can be measured, compared, and usually reproduced. That works wonders for basically anything involving the creation of technology or the study of the natural world. But what of the mind?

Highlighting the difference between descriptions (science's main output) and experience (our daily, direct experience given through our perception and mind) the authors assert that the latter has been largely, and unfortunately, ignored by Western scientific knowledge. But that is not the case for the tradition of mindfulness/awareness meditation hailing from centuries-old Buddhism: indeed, the open-ended study and exploration of perception and consciousness is at the heart of meditation practices of many schools of Buddhism, and -as the authors explain- has some things in common with a few Western practices such as psychotherapy (e.g. Klein's object relations theory and, I'd say, the present-day "mindfulness" fad) and, especially, phenomenologists Husserl's and Mearleau-Ponty's forays on systematic explorations of perception and experience.

The authors' declared goal is to attempt and build a bridge between these two disconnected but complementary, traditions, specifically cognitive science and mindfulness/awareness. Varela builds upon his previous work with former partner Humberto Maturana (see Tree of Knowledge) and, from the perspective of cognitive science, develops a theory of mind dubbed "enactivism" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enactivism). Their writing is as clear as can be, and they go through the previous two 'waves' of cognitive science explaining in detail how previous theories attempted to understand the mind (broadly, cognitivism, computationalism and connectionism), and where they fell short. Far from trying to impose an alien theory out of the blue, the authors make sure to connect their theory with then contemporary (this was the 90s!) authors and developments. Enactivism is thus seen as closely related to 'situated cognition' and 'embodied cognition'. In doing so, the authors also take a slight detour to talk about evolution theories, which was very interesting in itself, but more importantly, makes a crucial point for considering cognitive science and evolution hand in hand.

Throughout the book, however, the authors make it clear that their theory is just one piece of a larger whole. Connecting science and direct (mindful) experience is their end-game, and they do so through careful analogies between mindfulness meditation and findings in cognitive science. The descriptions developed by science on the fragmentation of the mind (or should I say the 'self'?) point toward a lack of self, a lack of 'objective' ground. Instead of following through such theories to their conclusion - namely, in the authors' view, the lack of an ultimate 'Self' -, philosophers and scientists do not follow their conclusions unto experience, insisting that though science and philosophy point to the inexistence of a self, humans cannot help but to cling to the illusion that we exist; that, somehow, we are something. This discovery of no-ground thus often leads to nihilism - the craving for something one knows cannot be true.

It need not be like that. Rather, one should aim for a middle way. To concede that the Self as we picture it - a messy aggregate of wills, memories, perceptions, beliefs, etc. - is just that, i.e. a messy aggregate of things our minds desperately grasp to in order to feel 'existent,' needs not lead to madness or anxiety. But on the lack of a dedicated tradition and techniques to explore such emptiness (in fact, to truly explore one's mind), Western thought has, after the fall of the old symbols of modernity, been mainly skeptical and cynical (some parts of post-modern thought, at least). Buddhism and its dedicated techniques, the authors assert, should be explored just for that. The idea of a no-self; that is, the idea that any person is just a mind grasping to that messy set of things as if they were the person itself, has been around for centuries in Buddhist thought. Entire schools of thought have been devoted to just this: reaching śūnyatā and beyond.

Traditional Western thought, however, fixed as it is on language, words, on descriptions of experience, has mostly missed this point (analytic philosophy in special). We cling to words as if they alone can fix our grasping and our troubles, but we forget that we preexist words, concepts and explanations. We do not exist in words. We are not our theories.

Well, we are not, I'd say.

Varela, Rosch and Thompson's The Embodied Mind is a natural step after reading Maturana and Varela's The Tree of Knowledge. It is also (in my view) a somewhat accessible introduction to the main problems and theories of cognitive science itself. It won't teach you how to meditate (you should seek an accredited teacher for that, apparently), but it will serve to show you that what roughly the other half of the world has spent centuries doing can't be waived away as 'religious nonsense' or autosuggestion. It is a dedicated, serious tradition aimed at truly understanding consciousness and human experience. The longer we in the West keep believing we got it all figured out because we can heal illnesses and build spaceships (simultaneously believing in stuff like Law), and keep insisting that "reason" consists simply in laying down words carefully enough so as to make them "true," the longer we'll stay blind to the true causes our differences, struggles and turmoils. Scientific research has not been entirely blind to this, but the general public (and many academics) still needs not only to let go of such prejudices, but actively seek out alternative traditions in order to overcome its own limitations.

Language and conscious thought has set us apart from other animals - but we have not 'transcended matter.' We are still animals, but animals that are able to gain true insight and understanding of our own condition.

[Pavlogreen]

Tres décadas después de la publicación de este libro casi parece fácil hacer ciencia cognitiva sin comparar nuestra inteligencia con ordenadores y estudiando no solo el cerebro, sino también el resto del cuerpo y su relación con el entorno. Casi parece fácil combinar la ciencia, la filosofía occidental y las creencias y filosofías orientales como el budismo. Casi parece fácil reconocer la validez práctica y empírica de la meditación y otros ejercicios más bien espirituales. Casi parece fácil criticar el objetivismo y el realismo metafísico y a la vez no caer en el relativismo o el constructivismo social burdo. Etcétera. Pero cuando pienso que este libro se publicó hace treinta años solo puedo quitarme el sombrero ante estos genios y genia por su gran labor pionera. Y ojo. He dicho "casi". A pesar del tiempo transcurrido y por mucho que se haya normalizado todo lo que he dicho, sigue siendo increíble leer este libro, pues no ha perdido su actualidad y las múltiples tesis que en él se exponen con claridad y una firmeza no exenta de humildad son tan vigentes hoy como en su día. Sin duda una de las grandes obras de ¿filosofía? ¿ciencias cognitivas? ¿budismo? del siglo XX y una parada necesaria para quien se haya preguntado alguna vez por la naturaleza de la mente.

[Muhammad Arqum · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant!!
One of those books that teach you so much about a subject that it is difficult to write a review with so much newly found, overwhelming knowledge inside your head which is yet to form concrete grounds. Being a tech geek and having academic background in the IT/CS field I had already quite a decent familiarity with IA and cognitive sciences and such subjects, and the fact that this domain had always fascinated me was the reason I picked this book. Without having a clear idea of what the term "embodied mind" referred to. This book starts by investigating a little into the history of cognitive science. Touches the philosophy of being and the self. Slowly constructs a self and then destroys it. Touches upon Budhist philosophy of nothingness. Examines, different philosophies related to cognition and the nature of being and first person understanding of the experience itself. What is experience? Does the world exist as an objective reality or is it our mind's construct? What is representation and semantics and so fourth. Slowly unrolls the central concept of embodiment and "enaction". You are not your mind. Your cognitive self is more than your physical brain. It is a coupling of your brain, your nervous system and the environment outside that shapes your cognition. A crash course on evolution and natural selection is provided also to make a stronger argument.
One does not have to agree with the ideas of course but there is a plethora of information about so many different fields and references about so much outside the book that it becomes such an interesting journey merely reading this book. Of course, you have to do your little wikipedia researches throughout the course of the read in order to make sense of basically anything but yea like I said in the beginning, once you finish reading this book you know A LOT more about cognitive science than before. Which is basically so much cooler.
So yea, pick it up if you are interested in the subject, or philosophy in general.

[Mitch · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found this book very disappointing, as it wasn't very clear and most of its arguments fell flat. In their defence, Varela, Rosch and Thompson were not aiming to articulate a completed position so much as 'lay down a new path for thinking'; nonetheless, it would have been nice to see more arguments and less crude analogies with Buddhism and the experience of meditators. I don't doubt that meditation and Buddhism can teach us a lot about the mind, but this book doesn't make much of a case for it, nor is it ever entirely clear what Varela et al. think differentiates Buddhist meditation from phenomenology, introspectionism, and other techniques for examining first-person experience which they reject.

2 stars because I am genuinely sympathetic to their project - I like phenomenology, connectionism and Buddhism in equal measure, and the book started an important movement in cognitive science. Still, if you're looking for a book which will discuss these topics in-depth, this is the wrong one.

[Alex Athanassakos · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a very "dense" book that would appeal to people a) with a lot of background in the philosophy of mind and b) looking for alternative approaches to those provided by western philosophy. However, if you have not read anything yet in that area, I suggest you start with something easier and more introductory.

The authors provide a good review of the problems around "what is mind" and I really enjoyed the connection they make between objectivism and nihilism. However, they seem to have a particular bias towards Buddhism's theory of mind and although are critical of western ideas they do not seem to be applying the level of scrutiny to the ideas coming out of the Buddhism tradition. I understand that the authors wanted to provide more of a practical guide the lived experiences, but if that was the case then they did not need to be highly critical of western thought on that matter.

[Simon Lavoie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Le nihilisme est obligation de croire en des valeurs que nous savons impossibles de défendre et de fonder. Nous cherchons des repères et des fondements clairs en autant d'entités logeant dans nous-même et dans le monde. De tels espoirs sont déçus et ruinés du moment que la science prend ces entités pour objet. Elle y révèle des successions d'états qui, de la fumée au cristal, ne laissent découvrir l'emprise d'aucun centre souverain, d'aucun noyau orienteur et essentiel. Varela et ses collaborateurs retracent la dissipation du point de vue personnel (du soi ou "self") par les sciences cognitives afin d'en tirer une théorie qui ne confine pas au nihilisme ambiant, ainsi qu'une règle de vie misant sur les potentiels de transformation de l'expérience ordinaire qu'étoufferait notre crispation sur l'identité personnelle (et son cortège d'orientation à l'intérêt personnel, à l'authenticité, et autres). Cette théorie s'appelle l'énaction, et cette règle de vie semble être : la compassion sans attente.

Certaines des intuitions du philosophe français Maurice Merleau-Ponty servent de prémisse et d'inspiration au présent ouvrage. Ces intuitions concernent au premier chef l'étroitesse d'imbrication de l'action (le motorium, selon la terminologie empruntée) et de la perception (le sensorium) : l'une et l'autre évoluent ensemble, se spécifient l'une en vue de l'autre, en même temps qu'elles font émerger un environnement. La fructification de cette ligne de raisonnement compte, les auteurs y insistent, parmi les contributions les plus significatives de l'ouvrage à la théorie cognitive. Une autre part des intuitions de la phénoménologie mise en exergue et prise comme moteur de la réflexion concerne l'irréductibilité d'un arrière-plan de croyances partagées (d'une base commune, culturelle, voir aussi Tomasello Origins of Human Communication) sous-tendant et habilitant toute pensée consciente; arrière-plan également au cœur de l'herméneutique chez Martin Heidegger et Hans Gadamer (p.149-150). "[W]hat counts as relevant is contextually determined by our common sense » (p.145). Si la première intuition prend effectivement un essor remarquable avec The Embodied Mind , la seconde demeure à la traîne, et j'estime qu'une fusion de l'énaction avec les travaux du penseur de la cognition le plus stimulant et prometteur que nous ayons présentement (le précité Michael Tomasello) semble, pour compenser les lacunes mutuelles, indiquée, possible - à la limite nécessaire.

L'originalité de ce livre tient en partie au fait qu'il porte, sur l'épuisement de l'affrontement typique de la philosophie et de la science qui nous sont familières (affrontement du subjectivisme, le sujet qui projette ses représentations sur le monde et de l'objectivisme, le monde qui entre comme problème ou comme information dans le sujet) un regard élargi au-delà du dialogue entre occidentaux auquel Rorty ramène le problème (Varela et ses collègues s'en distinguent sur ce plan comme ils prennent soin à le noter, tout en partageant l'anti-représentationnalisme campé dès Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature). Cet élargissement procède du recours à la tradition Bouddhiste Madhyamyka (ou voie du milieu), et de la méditation pleine-conscience. Celle-ci est comprise comme une tradition d'observation et d'expérimentation pratique de la conscience par elle-même qui pallie au caractère exclusivement théorique et abstrait de la théorie cognitive et de la philosophie (la phénoménologie incluse). L'enseignement de la méditation bouddhiste est employé comme pont entre une compréhension ordinaire de soi qui demeure campée sur le soi et le monde pré-constitué, et une théorie qui dissipe ce soi et ce monde sans en tirer et sans en communiquer d'implication praticable. La méditation pleine-conscience est également considérée comme un exemple de prise en compte sérieuse de l'absence de fondement permanent du monde et du soi à laquelle la théorie cognitive parvient. Prise en compte permettant, comme le philosophe japonais (ancien élève de Heidegger) Nishitani Keiji (cité chapitre 11) le soutient, de surpasser le nihilisme inabouti de notre situation. Varela et ses collègues capturent ce problème avec la même netteté qui caractérise leur propos dans son ensemble (à peu d'exceptions près) : notre situation de perte de l'objectivisme demeure campée dans une posture de recherche d'absolu et de permanence. De la constatation objective de l'inexistence de fondements objectifs éternels ou permanents, certains sont passés à l'objectivité de l'inexistence comme nouveau fondement irréfutable. "[T]he mere absence of an objective ground is reified into an objective groundlessness that might continue to serve as an ultimate reference point » (p.240).

"It is our contention that the rediscovery of Asian philosophy, particularly the Buddhist tradition, is a second renaissance in the cultural history of the West, with the potential to be equally important as the rediscovery of Greek thought in the European renaissance" (p.22). Les auteurs recourent, pour exposer les thèses du karma, de l'apparition co-dépendante monde-conscience, pour détailler les thèmes centraux de l'absence de soi (egolessness, selflessness) ainsi que l'identification de l'absence de fondement ("groundlessness") avec la compassion sans attente, à des lectures, à des résultats d'entrevues et d'observations avec des étudiants et praticiens de différentes écoles bouddhistes. Leur analyse s'impose comme minutieuse, détaillée et solide. Elle est en retrait de toute utilisation new-age de cette philosophie à des fins de célébration de soi et d'auto-promotion similaire à la construction d'une image de marque.

Une force du livre, en plus de son recours approfondi à une tradition de pensée non-occidentale, tient en la fermeté de sa maîtrise de l'histoire récente des sciences cognitives (de ses différentes périodes), et à l'habileté, quoi que rimant avec économie, de l'alliage opéré entre cette dernière et cette première. Varela et ses collègues soutiennent que la période des travaux inauguraux en cybernétique (1943-1953) était porteuse d'hypothèses et de pistes injustement sacrifiées par les tenants du cognitivisme - du cerveau ordinateur miroitant la sémantique des symboles dans leur syntaxe via le programmeur. Hypothèses et pistes partiellement ressuscitées par le connectionnisme et son déplacement d'accent, des règles locales, vers les ensemble globaux et la coopération neuronale (entre ensembles et sous-ensembles) (p.94).

Pour partielle que soit ma compréhension de cet ouvrage ambitieux et stimulant, bien que décontenançant, il me semble approprié d'en souligner quelques lacunes :

La séparation de la science cognitive et de l'expérience vécue ordinaire est dépeinte comme une circularité, qui plus est comme une circulation fondamentale (chapitre 1), alors que tout indique que les auteurs s'attachent surtout à dénoncer, et à tenter de remédier à une impasse, à un blocage des communications de l'un à l'autre.

Ce problème pointe vers ce qui semble être une conséquence des concepts centraux de l'énaction : soit la clôture organisationnelle et le couplage structurel.
« A system that has operational closure is one in which the results of its processes are those processes themselves. This notion of operational closure is thus a way of specifying classes of processes that, in their very operation, turn back upon themselves to form autonomous networks. Such networks do not fall into the class of systems defined by exernal mechanisms of control (heteronomy) but rather into the [140] class of systems defined by internal mechanisms of self-organization (autonomy). The key point is that such systems do not operate by representation. Instead of representing an independent world, they enact a world as a domain of distinctions that is inseparable from the structure embodied by the cognitive system » (p.139). Partant, alors qu'elle est traditionnellement déconsidérée et traitée comme terme honteux, la circularité devient maintenant maître mot, elle s'invite et semble contraindre, par un curieux revirement, les auteurs à la voir à l'oeuvre partout ou peu s'en faut.

Varela et al. considèrent que la phénoménologie a échoué à adresser la circularité créée par son propre postulat : si toute croyance et pensée humaine est précédée d'un arrière-plan social de représentations, en quoi, pourquoi en irait-il autrement de la phénoménologie comme effort pour remonter en amont de l'arrière-plan vers l'expérience pure. Ce problème se pose au plan de la prétention des auteurs à pouvoir contribuer à l'avènement d'un nihilisme plus raffiné et mature par l'importation des enseignements du Madhyamyka. Se peut-il que les conditions ou arrière-plans culturels dans lesquels le bouddhisme s'est développé en répandu ne puissent être supposées satisfaites (présentes), suffisamment satisfaites pour livrer ce qui en est attendu ? Pour que le bouddhisme fasse sens une fois importé ici – pour qu'il livre les promesses miroitées par les auteurs – , il nous faut supposer une relative égalité d'arrière-plan dans les croyances entre ici et là-bas. Cette question se soulève d'elle-même en prenant en considération le renversement de la hiérarchie des valeurs souligné diversement par Hannah Arendt (La condition de l'homme moderne), Max Weber, Marcel Gauchet dans son caractère exceptionnel (exceptionnel à l'occident - quelque délimitation puissions-nous en donner maintenant) : soit le reversement portant la vie active , transformatrice, de la base inférieure de l'édifice à son sommet, au-dessus ou à égalité avec la vie contemplative , laquelle s'est vue progressivement écrasée sous la cage d'airain de la formalisation (automatisation, mécanisation, prévisibilité d'accroissement des nombres) qui anime la première.

Il est vrai, comme la réflexion bouddhiste le souligne sans doute mieux que nos traditions philosophiques, que nous connaissons notre pensée comme vacillante, agitée, sans répit, se lançant loin à chaque instant de l'expérience en cours. « [T]he mind is seized constantly by thoughts, feelings, inner conversations, daydreams, fantasies, sleepiness, opinions, theories, judgments about thoughts and feelings, judgments about judgments » (p.25). Mais au terme de la lecture de The Embodied Mind une question demeure : en quoi le recentrement de la pensée sur l'expérience en cours ouvre-t-elle, davantage que la rêverie sans trêve, à de nouvelles possibilités ? Se peut-il que la rêverie puise à, ou assouvisse partiellement une, soif de possibilités, d'excédent par rapport au donné, qui est constitutive de la pensée et de sa raison d'être ? Un stade présumé avancé dans l'exercice bouddhiste est la pensée incorporée, non dissocié du corps. À quoi cela ressemble-t-il? La non-figuration des états du corps dans ceux de la pensée claire n'est-elle pas une caractéristique constitutive de la pensée – clôture opérationnelle étant ? Le corps n'est-il pas au cerveau pensant ce que l'oeil voyant est à l'image qu'il participe à créer (à savoir, ce qu'il ne saurait voir) ?

Ce dernier point m'incite à questionner la justesse du postulat selon laquelle il nous faudrait tenir la frénésie de pensée, de même que le problème corps/esprit (p.30), pour ethnocentrique. Là où l'introspection psychologique a échoué (donnant son feu vert au béhaviorisme) un examen par questionnaire des opérations meublant tant cette frénésie nous révèle qu'elles ne sont pas quelconque (leur caractère transculturel est supposé chez les auteurs cités ci-après davantage que démontrés, ceci dit). S'y trouvent les opérations caractéristiques d'un "avocat intérieur" oeuvrant sans relâche à justifier nos décisions passées, ou nos décisions à venir, devant un tribunal virtuel, mais non sans conséquence (Joshua Bell, dans Moral Tribes: Emotion, Reason, and the Gap Between Us and ThemMoral Tribes, et Jonathan Haidt, dans The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion en ont traité, ainsi que Tomasello dans A Natural History of Human Morality). Pourquoi cette défense de nos croyances et décisions ? La concentration de l'agitation et de la frénésie de la pensée sous les deux intitulés du "craving" et du "grasping" dans la pensée bouddhiste, pour utile qu'elle soit, s'avère d'une pertinence limitée sur ce plan.

L'investigation de cette agitation et de son caractère non-quelconque peut conduire à une théorie de la nature sociale-coopérative de l'esprit humain, en vertu de laquelle nous pensons comme agent collaborateur réel ou virtuel, face à autrui et face à un groupe, par responsabilité et par attente de « accountability ». Cette nature sociale-collaborative éclaire l'arrière-plan dont la thématisation est rapidement reprise à la phénoménologie dans The Embodied Mind , mais la collaboration hors cerveaux, entre agents ou individus au sein d'un groupe, forme, mon avis, une énorme omission dans l'ouvrage. Varela et al. prennent grand soi de souligner que le fonctionnement du cerveau donne motif et sens au concept de clôture opérationnel du fait de l'interconnection massive de ses aires, et de la spécification mutuelle des activités et processus de celles-ci (coordination mutuelle des opérations internes comptant pour davantage que le contrôle sensoriel extérieur).

L'inexistence ou la rareté de travaux comparatifs en psychologie du développement à l'époque de la conception The Embodied Mind peut expliquer le besoin d'un correctif à caractère réciproque entre l'énaction et la coopération tomasellienne.
Le soi permanent peut être tenue pour une illusion et une inutilité pour une pensée strictement individuelle et asociale, mais il en va autrement pour des partenaires sociaux d'interaction. L'expérience ordinaire de soi comme agent unifié est utile, davantage pour les membres d'un groupe (cette unité est d'abord ascribed ou attribuée), que pour l'individu solitaire (Haidt op. cit. et Jesse Prinz dans Beyond Human Nature: How Culture and Experience Shape the Human Mind soulignent le même point au sujet de la confiance – elle est d'abord, dans le temps, et davantage, utile venant des autres que de l'individu à son propre égard). Ces considérations nous rapprochent d'une voie de résolution possible, mais manquante à l'appel, au problème de l'attribution d'une conscience de soi continue, et l'échec à trouver cette conscience.

Varela et ses collègues soulignent que les deux solutions offertes jusqu'ici par nos théories consistent (i) à simplement ignorer le problème pratique, pour la psychologie ordinaire, que pose la dissolution analytique du soi comme foyer organisateur et originateur continu, ou à (ii) positionner un soi, une conscience transcendantale qui précède, surplombe, et se réalise à travers l'expérience. L'autre solution offerte par le fusionnement de la théorie du développement psychologique et du développement social est (au risque de nous répéter), à la base, la suivante : le soi continu est d'abord une attribution répondant aux besoins de coordination sociale, avant d'être une perspective sur soi.
Il est difficilement une langue et une situation, notamment de travail en commun, pour un but commun avec rôles différenciés mais complémentaires et interdépendants, où la question "Qui a vu y " / "Qui a fait x " ne peut être, ni posée, ni résolue dans l'anticipation d'une réponse centrée sur un sujet (un "self"). La réforme proposée par Varela et al. sur la base de l'enseignement bouddhiste conduirait-elle, si elle réussissait, à une situation où, non pas "Moi" ou non pas "Paul", mais "le 5e agrégat", servirait de réponse à l'une des questions précédentes, que nous serions en bonne position de voir si (i) l'identité tant illusoire d'aujourd'hui (dans notre monde théorique) se serait alors effectivement décomposée, et avec elle son cortège d'intérêt de crispation, ou (ii) simplement recomposée.

Les sciences cognitives n'ont pas tant découvert l'inexistence du soi constant et permanent, qu'adopté un type d'hypothèse à base informatique et technologique qui rend la constitution de ce soi impossible ou injustifié, inobservable.« [T]he cognitivist challenge does not consist simply in asserting that we cannot find the self; it consists, rather, in the further implication that the self is not even needed for cognition » (p.51). Comme le soi permanent ou continu est socialement pertinent, sinon tout le temps, du moins pour la plupart de nos interactions avec les autres, ne s'ensuit-il pas que les hypothèses de science cognitive inaptes à rendre compte de ce soi soient elles-mêmes, simultanément, impertinentes pour orienter la plupart de nos interactions avec les autres, et partant, impertinentes pour éclairer notre conscience de nous-mêmes ?

Finalement, la lecture de l'ouvrage laisse ouverte la question de savoir quelle est cette expérience dont les sciences cognitives sont priées de prendre acte et qu'elles sont sommées de transformer. S'agit-il de cette expérience corporelle dans le moment présent que la pensée fuit, par une agitation frénétique, continue et non apprivoisée ? Ou de la pensée comme expérience à part entière (aussi égarée dans ses propres soifs – grasping – soit-elle) ? Ou s'agit-il de l'expérience de l'absence de soi et de fondement contemplée avec compassion par le bouddhisme ? Comme ce terme, expérience, est vaste et sans contour (particulièrement à une époque où les expériences, autant sinon davantage que les biens tangibles, sont l'objet du commerce), ce problème ne manquera pas d'irriter le lecteur.

[Teo]

2018.11.19–2018.11.22

Contents

Varela FJ, Thompson E, & Rosch E (1991) (10:54) Embodied Mind, The - Cognitive Science and Human Experience

Dedication

Foreword to the Revised Edition (Jon Kabat-Zinn)
• Notes

Introduction to the Revised Edition (Evan Thompson)
• Notes
• References

Introduction to the Revised Edition (Eleanor Rosch)
• Enaction Clarified
• • Phase 1 Enaction
• • Phase 2 Enaction
• Personal Experience: Why Buddhism?
• Science and Buddhism
• • Mindfulness
• • Beyond Mindfulness: Basic Knowledge Questions
• Science and Enaction
• The Future
• • Neuroscience and the Mind
• • The Future of Enaction
• • Ending Note
• Notes
• References

Acknowledgments

Introduction
• Notes

Part I: The Departing Ground

01. A Fundamental Circularity: In the Mind of the Reflective Scientist
• An Already-Given Condition
• What Is Cognitive Science?
• Cognitive Science within the Circle
• The Theme of This Book
• Notes

02. What Do We Mean “Human Experience”?
• Science and the Phenomenological Tradition
• The Breakdown of Phenomenology
• A Non-Western Philosophical Tradition
• Examining Experience with a Method: Mindfulness/Awareness
• The Role of Reflection in the Analysis of Experience
• Experimentation and Experiential Analysis
• Notes

Part II: Varieties of Cognitivism

03. Symbols: The Cognitivist Hypothesis
• The Foundational Cloud
• Defining the Cognitivist Hypothesis
• Manifestations of Cognitivism
• • Cognitivism in Artificial Intelligence
• • Cognitivism and the Brain
• • Cognitivism in Psychology
• • Cognitivism and Psychoanalysis
• Cognitivism and Human Experience
• Experience and the Computational Mind
• Notes

04. The I of the Storm
• What Do We Mean by “Self”?
• Looking for a Self in the Aggregates
• • Forms
• • Feelings/Sensations
• • Perceptions/Impulses
• • Dispositional Formations
• • Consciousnesses
• Momentariness and the Brain
• The Aggregates without a Self
• Notes

Part III: Varieties of Emergence

05. Emergent Properties and Connectionism
• Self-Organization: The Roots of an Alternative
• The Connectionist Strategy
• Emergence and Self-Organization
• Connectionism Today
• Neuronal Emergences
• Exeunt the Symbols
• Linking Symbols and Emergence
• Notes

06. Selfless Minds
• Societies of Mind
• The Society of Object Relations
• Codependent Arising
• • 1 Ignorance
• • 2 Volitional Action
• • 3 Consciousness
• • 4 The Psychophysical Complex
• • 5 The Six Senses
• • 6 Contact
• • 7 Feeling
• • 8 Craving
• • 9 Grasping
• • 10 Becoming
• • 11 Birth
• • 12 Decay and Death
• Basic Element Analysis
• • 1 Contact
• • 2 Feeling
• • 3 Discernment
• • 4 Intention
• • 5 Attention
• Mindfulness and Freedom
• Selfless Minds; Divided Agents
• Minding the World
• Notes

Part IV: Steps to a Middle Way

07. The Cartesian Anxiety
• A Sense of Dissatisfaction
• Representation Revisited
• The Cartesian Anxiety
• Steps to a Middle Way
• Notes

08. Enaction: Embodied Cognition
• Recovering Common Sense
• Self-Organization Revisited
• Color as a Study Case
• • Color Appearance
• • Color as a Perceived Attribute
• • Where Is Color?
• • Color as a Category
• • Linguistic Aspects of Color
• • Color and Cognition
• • Color and Culture
• Cognition as Embodied Action
• • Heideggerian Psychoanalysis
• The Retreat into Natural Selection
• Notes

09. Evolutionary Path Making and Natural Drift
• Adaptationism: An Idea in Transition
• A Horizon of Multiple Mechanisms
• • Linkage and Pleiotropy
• • Development
• • Random Genetic Drift
• • Stasis
• • Units of Selection
• Beyond the Best in Evolution and Cognition
• Evolution: Ecology and Development in Congruence
• Lessons from Evolution as Natural Drift
• Defining the Enactive Approach
• Enactive Cognitive Science
• In Conclusion
�� Notes

Part V: Worlds without Ground

10. The Middle Way
• Evocations of Groundlessness
• Nagarjuna and the Madhyamaka Tradition
• The Two Truths
• Groundlessness in Contemporary Thought
• • The Lack of an Entre-deux
• • Interpretationism
• • Transformative Potential
• Notes

11. Laying Down a Path in Walking
• Science and Experience in Circulation
• Nihilism and the Need for Planetary Thinking
• Nishitani Keiji
• Ethics and Human Transformation
• • The View from Social Science
• • Compassion: Worlds without Ground
• • In Conclusion
• Notes

Appendix A: Meditation Terminology
Appendix B: Categories of Experiential Events Used in Mindfulness/Awareness
Appendix C: Works on Buddhism and Mindfulness/Awareness

References
Index

List of Illustrations
• Figure 1.1 A conceptual chart of the cognitive sciences today in the form of a polar map, with the contributing disciplines in the angular dimensions and different approaches in the radial axis.
• Figure 1.2 Interdependence or mutual specification of structure and behavior/experience.
• Figure 1.3 Interdependency of scientific description and our own cognitive structure.
• Figure 1.4 Interdependency of reflection and the background of biological, social, and cultural beliefs and practices.
• Figure 1.5 Interdependency of the background and embodiment.
• Figure 4.1 The momentariness of experience.
• Figure 4.3 The grasping toward an ego-self as occurring within a given moment of experience.
• Figure 4.2 Postulation of a transcendental self as a ground for the momentariness of experience.
• Figure 4.4 Experimental setup to investigate the natural parsing of perceptual events. See text for description. From Varela et al., Perceptual framing and cortical alpha rhythm.
• Figure 4.5 Results of experiments revealing temporal parsing of perceptual events around 100–150 msec. See text for more details.
• Figure 4.6 (a) Montage of 15 electrodes over a subject’s head to extract event related potentials when confronted with a simple visuo-motor task. (b) One example of such ERP from the parietal derivation, showing a sequence of electrical events over 0.5 seconds, and differing between the two tasks only in the later 300–500 msec portion. (c) The overall electrical pattern moves and changes over this temporal frame like a “shadow of thought.” Here solid lines indicate strong correlation with the electrode encircled in the move task. High correlation in the no-move task displays a different pattern (not shown). From Gevins et al., Shadows of thought.
• Figure 5.1 Constructing a simple cellular automaton.
• Figure 5.2 Emergent cooperative patterns (or “attractors”) in cellular automata.
• Figure 5.3 Connections in the visual pathway of mammals at the thalamic level.
• Figure 5.4 The ART model for visual processing through attentional-orienting subsystems. See text for more details. From Carpenter and Grossberg, A massively parallel architecture for a self-organizing neural pattern recognition machine.
• Figure 6.1 Codependent arising as the Wheel of Life.
• Figure 8.1 Cellular automata Bittorio in a random soup of 1s and 0s.
• Figure 8.2 Bittorio’s life history showing changes in this history depending on the perturbations it encounters.
• Figure 8.3 A Bittorio of rule 10010000, choosing only odd sequences of perturbations.
• Figure 8.4 A Bittorio responsive to a sequence of double perturbations.
• Figure 8.5 Parallel streams in the visual pathway. From DeYoe and Van Essen, Concurrent processing streams in monkey visual cortex.
• Figure 8.6 Tetrachromatic vs. trichromatic mechanisms are illustrated here on the basis of the different retinal pigments present in various animals. From Neumeyer, Das Farbensehen des Goldfisches.
• Figure 9.1 Segmentation in the embryo of the fruit fly Drosophila.
• Figure 9.2 Behavior-based decomposition. From Brooks, Achieving artificial intelligence through building robots.
• Figure 9.3 Finite state machines are wired together into layers of control. Each layer is built on top of existing layers. Lower levels never rely on the existence of higher-level layers. From Brooks, Intelligence without representation.

[Frank Rissanen · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Embodied Mind is an attempt to account for human cognition by using a multidisciplinary approach that interweaves arguments from phenomenology, computer science, evolutionary biology, cognitive sciense and buddhism. It elegantly manages to show how factors from all of these domains work together in order to determine the nature of human experience. The conclusions reached in The Embodied Mind are not, however, intended to ground this understanding in an objective reality. The recuring epistemological themes in the book constantly prevents such foundationalist conclusions from being made. The main point of this investigation is to be ethical, empirical-scientific and phenomenological all at once - while not adhering too strictly to either one of them, or even its own approach for that matter. From what I gather, The Embodied Mind is mainly about questioning our assumptions about differences between different epistemological methods by uncovering hidden interrelations between fields of knowledge that might otherwise seem contradictory or unrelated.

To do this effectively the authors have to cut ties with any foundationalist ambition that exist within any of its fields of study. This is done early on in the book when it leaves the hard-lined Husserlian phenomenology behind in favour of Merleau-Pontys understanding of phenomenology that sees cognition as something that is rooted in the body, and that enacts its knowledge rahter than represetning it as mental objects. This results in a move from cognitivism as well, while at the same time integrating cognitivist explanations that were actually good. This constant moving away from assuming an epistemological bedrock is what enables The Embodied Mind to continually integrate different dimensions of the human experience and it is what makes this book truly unique. Instead of looking at approaches to understanding the human experience as being essentially separate, The Embodied Mind succeeds in showing that the integration of vastly different styles of investigation (such as for example buddhism and cognitive science) can result in a broader understanding that also is capable of releasing us from the anxious grip of foundationalism.

While an otherwise excellent book, it does at times delve too deep in to specific debates that require expert knowledge to be understood. This it could have rather done without. I would also have liked to see a clearer historical contextualisation of the different debates and disciplines and a clearer linking between the different chapters. This would have made the reading experience more enjoyable and easier to understand. I also disliked the graphs, since they confused me rather than to fasciliting a better understanding.

[Alex Lee · Rating 4 out of 5]

I came to this book a little late. It is definitely more "along the way" than Pylyshyn's Computation and Cognition: Toward a Foundation for Cognitive Science... although that came out in 1984 and this one came out in 1991... the introduction of computers did a number of cognitive psychology! With machine learning and now buddhism, the discipline of cognitive science has taken an even wider turn towards considering issues like consciousness and mind... even subjectivity is up for debate again!

Given my interest in Buddhism and psychology it seemed only natural the two could benefit from each other. The authors are definitely cognizant of their field, the way it has changed and how radically different their mandate (manifesto? should I call it) for their peers to alter their field of study is. They even go into philosophy and try to tackle their field from that vantage point. Certainly very difficult book to read, given the way it is laid out. But I guess that is fine. It is 3 different people, and their styles and ways of phrasing make for a strange tone of voice. Were it one author then we might get some quirky expressions and relationships, jumping about where it seemed sane to do so. Still that's fine.

Enacted action, is one way to see it. Embodiment. It's not a matter of representation, its more a matter of how we perform/embody our performance... this cognitive turn is interesting, and what it picks up from computers is definitely unique... because it is in some sense also seeking to include certain computers activities/algorithms as a form of cognizing too... and that might be a very unintended reading for the authors to take, because their subtitle is "cognitive science and human experience". The embodiment makes for the experience, but as computers "represent" to us what they are doing differently (see life systems, cybernetics/control systems) and sometimes we want to claim that what they are doing is alive, so their "experience" is the presentation of their data. Being able to account/model for that seems to be one way to include as "embodying". Still, interesting book, and one that isn't really for people who want to just "go at it" in such a direct way as this includes many ways (with the cavet that enaction is The (best) way) because it can account for phenomenal experience.

Just what are we anyway? We are doing/enacting/embodying and that can seem to change the flavor of our experience/being in some strange ways.

[James Davies · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great wide-ranging survey of the state of cognitive science. Commendations for being one of the few works from within science to take seriously the issue that almost all scientific findings leave us absolutely cold, and change almost nothing about our own experience. This is still a serious problem, and only seems to be worsening as our culture becomes more inundated with scientific factoids – the gap between such facts and experience is only widening. Also plenty of love for the emphasis on contemplative practice.

As to the positive thesis – I still have no idea what enactivism is. Something a little hand-wavy about structural coupling, and how subject and world are mutually entailed and enfolded together. I don't disagree with the general sentiment, but it felt largely heavy on assertion and weak on demonstration. They gesture towards a non-representational theory of cognition and my senses perk up, waiting to be shown how that might work. They gesture towards a theory of embodied cognition, where sensorimotor coupling to the world might minimise representation. But my anticipations to actually be shown how this might work remained, unfortunately, unfulfilled.
Enactivism needs a great deal more elaboration before it can feel like a genuine position, let alone a theory. They might have started by trying to answer the question of how an enactivist approach might change the way we do research (the only practical pointer offered is a single gesture to Brooksian robotics – but what about the human case?). And as for the title (I know, I know – it wasn't Varela et al.'s first choice for the book title, but still) – there is remarkably little elaboration of the embodied cognition view. Would've loved more attempts to have been made into some of the issues where the rubber hits the road.

[Humilis Memoriam · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book changed how I read both cognitive science and Buddhist philosophy, because it took the dialogue between them seriously in a way that neither field had done on its own.

The central argument — enaction — holds that cognition is not computation performed on representations inside the skull, but the ongoing process of a living body engaging its environment. We don't perceive a pre-given world; we enact a world of significance through our action. The groundlessness this implies — that there is no fixed foundation beneath experience — turns out to converge precisely with what Buddhist philosophy calls śūnyatā, emptiness, the lack of inherent, fixed existence in all phenomena.

What I find most honest about the book is its acknowledgment that this convergence creates a practical problem. If there is no fixed self and no fixed world, if all experience is groundless, how do you live? The authors call this the "fundamental disorientation" — and they don't pretend to have resolved it. What they do instead is point to contemplative practice as the means by which human beings have historically worked with that recognition rather than fleeing into false certainties.

The explicit conversation with vipassana practice, with Madhyamaka philosophy, with the phenomenological tradition — this is what makes the book unusual. It isn't using Buddhism as a metaphor for neuroscience. It's treating Buddhist observation as empirical data about the mind that cognitive science needs to take seriously.

I've since worked with practice systems that attempt exactly the integration this book describes: scientific rigor and contemplative depth in a single methodology. Reading Varela gave me the theoretical ground for why that integration is necessary, not optional.

This text is Book 15 in The Mysterious Thread curriculum. The complete architecture can be found via The Collective Press.

[Louis Korczowski · Rating 3 out of 5]

Il faut se farcir la moitié du livre assez obscur où les idées sont mal organisées et l'illustration des théories alternatives pour, qu'enfin, une claire définition de l'énaction apparaisse. Cette première partie se base quasi-exclusivement sur de la théorie philosophique dans un style très littéraire mais vraiment peu convaincant scientifiquement. Vous n'y observerez que très peu d'exemples concrets. J'adore la philosophie mais n'ayant pas n'étant pas des plus à l'aise avec le jargon ni avec la manipulations d'idées ex-nihilo, ce fut tout simplement peu intéressant et pénible.

La suite est largement plus convaincant car les auteurs présentent enfin des exemples concrets où la théorie de l'énaction peu faire mieux que les théories actuelles. J'ai surtout l'impression que les auteurs trouvent leur théorie de l'énaction tellement innovante qu'elle nécessite une certaine pureté qu'ils leur empêchent de la présenter simplement et clairement de peur qu'elle soit travestie.

A mon sens, s'introduire à l'énaction par ce bouquin est sous optimal et je cherche encore un livre mieux écrit, plus orienté ce que l'énaction fait de mieux en prédiction dans la littérature scientifique.

Par ailleurs, il me semble très clair que l'inspiration du bouddhisme pour leur théorie scientifique et philosophique représente a la fois une force et une faiblesse. Si certains textes bouddhistes sont inspirants, ils n'en restent pas moins aussi divers, contradictoires, et illuminés. Pour moi, leur évocation n'a représenté a aucun moment un argument convaincant et leur place mériterait certainement moins, voir à titre d'anecdote.

La place du phénomène d'émergence dans le vivant reste la contribution la plus convaincante de ce livre mais cela aurait nécessité une démonstration plus développée.

[Victor · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sometimes we can't explain why we feel the way that we do; or why we even feel anything in the first place. Why is there something it is like to be me?

This kind of searching expresses itself most famously in David Chalmer's "hard problem of consciousness," though here it's motivated by all sorts of dissatisfaction against what's sometimes called "scientific materialism."

After all, what can FMRIs and PET scans and EEGs and a mindset sometimes described as "scientific materialism" do to explain the contents of the primary stream of experience?

Varela, a Chilean biologist "cybernetician" wunderkind, from a long lineage of authors presented this semester that the STEM-trained managerial millieu might call a little "woo," pulls on insights from Tibetan Buddhism. References abound to skandhas, the building blocks of first-person experience, and so on. How does one reconcile any glimpse of what Buddhists identify as the dependently originating and thus empty nature of every single thing with the regularity with which ordinary life intercedes upon it? This is the middle way of "enactivism."

Varela expands on the intuition felt by many people who meditate that such an activity, not just calming and focusing, is also privileged to a pure state of consciousness. He draws from Buddhist scholarship to make his point. Above all, he thinks we need a better sense of how the stuff in our life arises than such dominant theories like computationalism or cognitivism, which can never explain the existence of phenomena in themselves, and this should draw from the intuition of our physical bodies.

Best chapter? Read the authors' moving rejection of the Darwinian "retreat into natural selection."

[Roger Whitson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Even though this book was written in 1991, it remains one of the best academic accounts I've seen of the intersections between mindfulness, cognitive science, and artificial intelligence. I say this knowing little about cognitive science. I've read Thompson's more recent book WAKING, DREAMING, BEING - which has some interesting descriptions of various cognitive states, but the comprehensiveness of the theories laid out by Varela, Thompson, and Rosch here is particularly interesting. And as a non-scientist, I found the language *mostly* easy to follow, despite articulating a large number of difficult ideas. There's even a chapter surveying neo-Darwinian accounts of evolution as a way to understand their elaboration of an enactive cognitive process. I can't imagine anyone dealing with nuance issues in new materialism without understanding developments in evolutionary theory like the ones they describe in this chapter.

I've been using mindfulness techniques for about a year, and just started getting into the intersections of cognitive science and philosophy of mind through the work of Thompson and Andy Clark. This book is a welcome discussion of the three dominant basic theories of cognition, as well as the way they interact with epistemology in Buddhism and mindfulness. Of course, again, it was published in 1991, so I don't quite know how enactive cognition measures up to more recent theories like Clark's work on predictive processing. But it's still a powerful, mind-altering, book nonetheless.