Froese, Tom and Sykes, John (2023) The pragmatics, embodiment, and efficacy of lived experience: Assessing the core tenets of Varela’s neurophenomenology. [Preprint]
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Abstract
Varela’s enactive approach to cognitive science has been elaborated into a theoretical framework of agency, sense-making, and sociality, while his key methodological innovation – neurophenomenology (NP) – continues to inspire empirical work. We argue that the enactive approach was originally expressed in NP as three core tenets: (1) phenomenological pragmatics, (2) embodied cognition, and (3) conscious efficacy. However, most efforts in NP have focused on applying tenet 1, while tenet 2 has received notably less attention, and there is even explicit distancing from tenet 3. By way of a critical review of four case studies, we show how NP thereby falls short of its full potential. Crucially, it needs to demonstrate that the first-person perspective matters, not only as a source of correlations with third-person data, but because lived experience, as such, makes a difference in its own right to the living body’s dynamics. Given that methods for improving subjective reports have become accepted in human neuroscience (tenet 1), and given the increasing availability for recording multi-scalar organismic activity during embodied action (tenet 2), we propose it is time to integrate these research strands by using this issue of conscious efficacy as a pivot point (tenet 3). The development of genuinely experience-involving accounts of neurophysiological activity during embodied action holds promise for rebooting neurophenomenology in stronger form.
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| Item Type: | Preprint | |||||||||
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| Keywords: | consciousness, neuroscience, phenomenology, mental causation, agency | |||||||||
| Subjects: | General Issues > Causation Specific Sciences > Cognitive Science Specific Sciences > Neuroscience Specific Sciences > Psychology |
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| Depositing User: | Dr. Tom Froese | |||||||||
| Date Deposited: | 08 Aug 2023 13:38 | |||||||||
| Last Modified: | 08 Aug 2023 13:38 | |||||||||
| Item ID: | 22373 | |||||||||
| Subjects: | General Issues > Causation Specific Sciences > Cognitive Science Specific Sciences > Neuroscience Specific Sciences > Psychology |
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| Date: | 5 April 2023 | |||||||||
| URI: | https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/22373 |
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The pragmatics, embodiment, and efficacy of lived experience: Assessing the core tenets of Varela’s neurophenomenology. (deposited 05 Apr 2023 13:07)
- The pragmatics, embodiment, and efficacy of lived experience: Assessing the core tenets of Varela’s neurophenomenology. (deposited 08 Aug 2023 13:38) [Currently Displayed]
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