Life, sense-making, and subjectivity. Why the enactive conception of life and mind requires phenomenology
Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: One of the ideas that characterises the enactive approach to cognition is that life and mind are deeply continuous, which means that both phenomena share the same basic set of organisational and phenomenological properties. The appeal to phenomenology to address life and basic cognition is controversial. It has been argued that, because of its reliance on phenomenological categories, enactivism may implicitly subscribe to a form of anthropomorphism incompatible with the modern scientific framework. These worries are a result of a lack of clarity concerning the role that phenomenology can play in relation to biology and our understanding of non-human organisms. In this paper, I examine whether phenomenology can be validly incorporated into the enactive conception of mind and life. I argue that enactivists must rely on phenomenology when addressing life and mind so that they can properly conceptualise minimal living systems as cognitive, as well as argue for an enactive conception of biology in line with their call for a non-objectivist science. To sustain these claims, I suggest that enactivism must be further phenomenologised by not only drawing from Hans Jonas’s phenomenology of the organism (as enactivists often do) but also from Edmund Husserl’s thoughts on the connection between transcendental phenomenology and biology. Additionally, phenomenology must be considered capable of providing explanatory accounts of phenomena
Source: Synthese
Author: Juan Diego Bogotá
Institutions: University of Exeter, Universidad Nacional de Colombia
Language: English
Subfield: Cognitive Neuroscience
Field: Neuroscience
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $2,990
Award: G2282821957
OpenAlex ID: W4402277495