See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.

net/publication/321699894

Varela’s radical proposal: How to embody and open up cognitive science

Article  in  Constructivist Foundations · November 2017

CITATIONS READS

0 380

1 author:

Kristian Moltke Martiny

University of Copenhagen
11 PUBLICATIONS   61 CITATIONS   

SEE PROFILE

All content following this page was uploaded by Kristian Moltke Martiny on 16 December 2017.

The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.

 Enaction

Varela’s Radical Proposal:

How to Embody and Open Up
Cognitive Science
Kristian Moltke Martiny • University of Copenhagen, Denmark • kmartiny/at/hum.ku.dk

> Context • The scientific landscape of cognitive science is today influenced, as are other areas of science, by the open
science movement, which is seen, for instance, in the recently launched Open MIND project. > Problem • More than
25 years ago Varela introduced the idea of opening up cognitive science. He called for a radical transformation of val-
ues, training and ways to conduct cognitive science. Yet, his radical proposal has been neglected in the discussions in
cognitive science. > Method • I describe Varela’s proposal by revisiting his philosophical arguments, his embodied and
enactive view of cognition, and the methods he proposed as an alternative, namely the neurophenomenological and
the second-person method. > Results • I show how cognitive scientists neglect Varela’s proposal, because as scientists
we are part of a scientific tradition and community that has not developed a research practice that enables us to inte-
grate his proposal. I discuss different attempts to integrate the proposal into the research practice of cognitive science
using the phenomenological interview, and argue for an even more radical approach. > Implications • If we, as cogni-
tive scientists, do not develop “how” we do cognitive science and change the scientific community we are embedded
in, we will not be able to open up cognitive science and fully address the experiential, embodied and enactive aspects
of cognition. Varela’s radical proposal for how to do so is therefore as important today as ever. > Key words • Cognitive
science, embodying the mind, enaction, phenomenological interview, intersubjective validation.

Introduction
« 1 »  The scientific landscape of cogni-
tive science is today much influenced, as are
other areas of science, by the open science
movement. The notion of “open” can refer
here to “opening up” different dimensions of
the scientific process, such as method (open
methodology), software (open source), da-
taset (open data), peer review (open peer re-
view), publication (open access), or teaching
(open educational resources) (Watson 2015;
see also OpenScience ASAP at http://open-
scienceasap.org/open-science; Kraker et al.
2011). In the newly launched Open MIND
(OM) project, however, Thomas Metzinger
and Jennifer Windt understand “openness”
in cognitive science more broadly, namely as
a new epistemic practice and attitude for do-
ing cognitive science: Openness is about tak-
ing more risks, allowing for uncertainty in
the research process and seeing no research
topic as taboo, and the aim of openness is
to ask better questions, to question or reject
prior commitments, to see ambiguity and
the possibility of falsification as indicators
of great scientific progress, and to promote
new and sustainable forms of collaboration.
« 2 »  According to Metzinger and
Windt, being “open-minded” scientists
means breaking down demarcations be-
tween disciplines in cognitive science
(Metzinger & Windt 2015: 4) and promoting
interdisciplinary collaboration between sci-
entists from different cultures, periods and
age groups (ibid: 20). The primary outcome
of this open-minded practice within the OM
project is, for the time being, to publish re-
search through new formats of open access.
While this open-access proposal is part of
the solution, it is not sufficiently “open,” ei-
ther from a more general open science per-
spective or from a cognitive science perspec-
tive. To be fair, Metzinger and Windt (ibid:
2) stress that OM is both the beginning of
a conversation on how an open-minded at-
titude can be cultivated in cognitive science
and an invitation for further development of
the matter.
« 3 »  Working with openness and a
change of mind set in cognitive science is
one of Francisco Varela’s main contributions
to research in cognitive science. His attempt
to do so took its point of departure more
than 25 years ago in The Embodied Mind
(EM) (Varela, Thompson & Rosch 1991),
and was further developed through his work
with neurophenomenology (Varela 1996),
first-person methodologies (Varela & Shear
1999), with ethical know-how (Varela 1999) 59
and the pragmatics of becoming aware (De-
praz, Varela & Vermersch 2003).
« 4 »  The aim in this article is to revital-
ize Varela’s proposal to continue the conver-
sation of how to open up the cognitive sci-
ences. I will revisit Varela’s works, because
part of the originality of Varela’s contribu-
tion has been completely overlooked in the
discussions of his work. Varela called for a
radical transformation and expansion of
values, training, style and ways to conduct
cognitive science. It was a call for transform-
ing research communities in cognitive sci-
ence, in fact a transformation of the entire
culture of science.
« 5 »  Varela’s radical proposal can be
captured by what I will call the premise of
“embodying cognition,” which is a prag-

http://constructivist.info/13/1/059.martiny
 matic claim that, as cognitive scientists, “we
should do as we say.” If we, as advocates of
the E-approaches (i.e., embodied, embed-
ded, enacted and extended approaches),
argue that the mind is embodied, embed-
ded, enacted and extended, we should be
embodying these considerations in the
method and ways of studying cognition. The
change from the passive voice in embodied
cognition, i.e., that cognition should be un-
derstood as embodied, to the active voice
in embodying cognition illustrates that, not
only should cognition be understood as em-
bodied (the “what” of the investigation), but
that, when studying cognition, we, as scien-
tists, should ensure that this fact is reflected
in our practice (the “how” of the investiga-
tion) (see also Martiny 2015a).
Cognitive science Concepts in Enaction
« 6 »  The article is divided into two
parts that elaborate further on this premise
of embodying cognition. The first part de-
scribes in more general terms what Varela
meant by his radical proposal of embody-
ing the study of cognition and why the pro-
posal has been neglected in contemporary
cognitive science. The second part is an
exposition of the proposal in practice, dis-
cussing Varela’s suggestion to use the open
process of phenomenologically inspired in-
terviews.1
« 7 »  The phenomenological interview
is suggested by Varela because it constitutes
a specific kind of openness of knowledge-
generation processes. It is a way to situate
the knowledge, because, as an interviewer,
the cognitive scientist directly encounters
60 another living subject and therefore first-
handedly can take the lived experience of
1 |  I will use the notion “phenomenological
interview” to describe in broad terms a frame-
work and method that integrates interview tech-
niques with phenomenological philosophy. There
are many ways to facilitate such integration, but
for Varela it was, as I will show later, done by in-
tegrating the “explication interview” techniques
(Vermersch 1994) with phenomenology. To-
day, this concrete integration goes by the name
of “micro-phenomenological interview.” I will,
however, preserve the notion “phenomenological
interview” to highlight that for Varela such inte-
gration was more about the open-ended method
of embodying cognitive science than about one
specific way to integrate interview techniques and
phenomenology.
Constructivist Foundations vol. 13, N°1
that subject seriously. The interview situ-
ation therefore allows for an exchange of
both a lot of discursive “knowledge that”
(the “what” of the interview) and for a lot of
tacit, situated and embodied knowledge of,
for example, body language, facial expres-
sion, tone of voice, etc. (the “how” of the
interview). The interview also lets the two
subjects, i.e., interviewer and interviewee,
interact in order to co-generate the knowl-
edge. To be able to do so, the scientist, how-
ever, should adopt the open-ended, non-
objectifying and self-reflective stance that
Varela and Jonathan Shear (1999: 10) call
the second-person perspective. This per-
spective means taking up an empathic and
reciprocal position whereby the experience
and understanding of interviewer and inter-
viewee dynamically and openly resonate.
« 8 »  For the specific application of
phenomenological interviews in cogni-
tive science, Pierre Vermersch and Claire
Petitmengin have done excellence work in
clarifying the skills and techniques that are
required by an interviewer to do phenom-
enological interviews and how micro-analy-
sis of both discursive and embodied features
are done (e.g., Petitmengin 2006; Vermersch
2009). One exemplification of best practice
is Petitmengin’s work with people with epi-
lepsy (Le Van Quyen & Petitmengin 2002;
Petitmengin, Navarro & Baulac 2006; Petit-
mengin, Navarro & Le Van Quyen 2007),
where the aim is to use the phenomeno-
logical interview to understand their experi-
ence of seizures in order to anticipate them.
However, one can also learn a lot from more
traditional qualitative science methodology,
which provides good rules of thumb and
best practice (e.g., Brinkmann & Kvale 2014;
Flyvbjerg 2011), from situated theories of
learning, which discuss reciprocal interac-
tion and how to be a reflective practitioner
(Schön 1987), and from ethnomethodologi-
cal work (e.g., Leiter 1980).
« 9 »  I will elaborate further on the open
method of phenomenological interviews in
the second part of the article, and discuss
how it is used in different contemporary at-
tempts to implement Varela’s proposal. I will
characterize these attempts as “not radical
enough,” because Varela’s proposal comes
with a heavy price to pay. I will argue that
the price is heavy because it requires us, as
cognitive scientists:
ƒƒ to value lived experience, which means
also evaluating scientific knowledge on
performative conditions;
ƒƒ to question the observational and objec-
tivist premises that underlie, for exam-
ple, most laboratory experiments;
ƒƒ to work with first-, second-, and third-
person positions in one’s research.
« 10 »  I will draw on cases from my own
research in cerebral palsy that is influenced
by Varela’s radical proposal to suggest how
this could be done. One could
ƒƒ collaborate with subjects outside aca-
demia, valuating their lived experiences,
ƒƒ engage with subjects in the world of ev-
eryday life by rethinking the concept of
a laboratory, and
ƒƒ work with audiovisual media to account
for first-, second-, and third-person po-
sitions.
What has been neglected
and why?
« 11 »  In the pioneering work EM, Varela,
Evan Thompson and Eleanor Rosch (VTR)
criticize the traditional ways of conducting
cognitive science, defined generally as cog-
nitivism and connectionism, for focusing
solely on explanations that read cognition in
mental terms (e.g., in terms of symbolic or
subsymbolic representations) and for situat-
ing it within the skull. Such approaches are
untenable and even paradoxical, because
they neglect an already-given condition for
doing cognitive science, namely what VTR
call “a fundamental circularity” (EM: 3).
This circularity refers to the fact that any
investigation, explanation or description
of cognition is always done by a cognizing
subject and is thereby a product of the sub-
ject’s cognitive structures. Yet, the subject is
only able to perform such an investigation of
cognition because of an already-given back-
ground of biological, social and cultural be-
liefs and practices. However, the postulation
of such a background is something that we,
as cognitive scientists, are doing as already
situated, embodied, living and experiencing
subjects (ibid: 11). This adding of additional
layers of abstraction to the investigation of
cognition could go on indefinitely, and it
highlights the fundamental circularity of
our situation, as cognitive scientists. Our ex-

periential, situated, embodied and enacting
point of departure is a necessary condition
for doing cognitive science.
« 12 »  Since the fundamental circular-
ity is an epistemological necessity for doing
cognitive science, we should embrace the
circularity as part of our research in cogni-
tive science (EM: 9). However, instead of
continuing to add layers of abstraction, VTR
see it as a necessary condition to go back to
the particularity of our concrete lived expe-
rience, as cognitive scientists. The main con-
cern of EM, as emphasized in the introduc-
tion, is therefore
“  to open a space of possibilities in which the
circulation between cognitive science and human
experience can be fully appreciated and to foster
the transformative possibilities of human experi-
”
ence in a scientific culture. (ibid: xviii)
Embodied cognition: An experiential
approach
« 13 »  As VTR emphasize, the idea that
science is founded upon a fundamental
circularity was already highlighted by the
philosophical tradition of phenomenology.
It is therefore impossible to investigate and
understand this circularity, along with its
experiential grounding, without focusing
explicitly on the notion of “embodiment”
coming from this tradition. The authors are
here referring primarily to Maurice Mer-
leau-Ponty’s understanding of embodiment,
namely an understanding of our bodies as
both physical structures (as an object) and as
lived, experiential structures (as a subject).
Within phenomenology it is usually charac-
terized in German as a distinction between
“Körper” and “Leib” (Husserl 1973), and in
French between the “corps objectif ” and the
“corps propre,” or “corps vécu” (Merleau-
Ponty 1945).
« 14 »  This double sense of embodiment,
VTR argue, has been absent from traditional
cognitive science, where scientists, highly
influenced by the Cartesian body-mind di-
vide, have overlooked and dismissed how
our cognitive abilities depend on the lived
aspects of our human embodiment. By the
notion of “embodiment,” the authors want to
highlight that
“ cognition depends upon the kinds of experi-
ence that come from having a body with vari-
Enaction
Varela’s Radical Proposal Kristian Moltke Martiny
ous sensorimotor capacities, and second, that
these individual sensorimotor capacities are
themselves embedded in a more encompassing
”
biological, psychological, and cultural context.
(EM: 173).
« 15 »  The dismissal of the embodied
nature of cognition dominated cognitive
science at the time EM came out. However,
this is not the case today where the embod-
ied cognition approach has joined forces
with the other so-called E-approaches to
become an alternative to traditional cog-
nitivism and connectionism. From being a
buzz and a trend in cognitive science, the
E-approaches have become increasingly in-
fluential (Ward & Stapleton 2012). Scholars
are currently referring to them as a new sci-
ence of the mind (Rowlands 2010) or a new
paradigm of cognitive science (Stewart,
Gapenne & Di Paolo 2010).
« 16 »  This does not mean that all ad-
vocates of the E-approaches acknowledge
and emphasize the experiential and lived
aspects of cognition, as they were empha-
sized by VTR. Even within the E-approach-
es, many still continuously disregard these
aspects. Both the scholars that do and those
who do not acknowledge the experiential
and lived aspects of cognition have over-
looked the radical implications of what the
embodied mind approach entails for how
we should do cognitive science. VTR argue
that their work should be seen as a modern
continuation of Merleau-Ponty’s research
program (EM: xv), but the ambition of this
continuation is more radical than cognitive
scientists have taken it to be.
A search for pragmatics
« 17 »  This becomes clearer if we look
at VTR’s critique of phenomenology. Al-
though the authors were inspired by phe-
nomenology, they were displeased with its
lack of pragmatic dimensions (EM: 19).
For Edmund Husserl, they argue, the turn
to experience and “the things themselves”
was entirely a philosophical and theoreti-
cal endeavor with no life beyond the theory.
Their argument is not that Husserl did not
acknowledge the practical and lived aspects
of experience, because in his last work, The
Crisis of European Sciences and Transcen-
dental Phenomenology (Husserl 1970), he
described the “lived-world” as the practical
and social background that all theoretical
and scientific activity presupposes. Husserl
was here criticizing the dominant objectiv-
ist conception of science that understood
the world in an idealized manner, indepen-
dent of the knowing subject, to get the lived
experience back in to science. However,
as VTR question: if all theoretical activity
presupposes the life-world, what about phe-
nomenology?
« 18 »  Here the fundamental circularity
enters and it is in relation to this circularity
that the authors’ argument against Husserl
should be understood. The argument is not
about “what” he described, the content of
his descriptions, but about “how” he did it.
According to VTR, the reason why Husserl
could not integrate science and experience
was not because he did not describe the
embodied and lived aspects of experience
and therefore the lived background that all
sciences presuppose. It was because he did
not pragmatically include such aspects in
the method of how he did phenomenology
(EM: 19). This argument, the authors state,
also applies to other phenomenologists such
as Martin Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty,
because they both described the pragmatic,
embodied context of human experience,
but did so still in a purely theoretical way.
Methodologically, they did not take seri-
ously their own descriptions of embodi-
ment and of how the lived and embodied
experience is grounded in the background
of cultural beliefs and practices (ibid).
« 19 »  VTR argue that the reason why
this is the case in traditional phenomenol- 61
ogy is because the phenomenologists’ own
cognitive abilities are grounded in a Western
cultural tradition of how to do philosophy.
Philosophy is here done by pure abstract
and theoretical reflection and reasoning,
and by means of arguments and demonstra-
tions. This philosophical practice has been,
ever since the Greeks, the standard way to
do philosophy and although the phenom-
enological tradition has criticized many
philosophers within this tradition, its own
practice has continued along this path (EM:
20). This is seen, for example, in relation to
the critique of Descartes’s description of the
disembodied, thinking cogito, where the
phenomenologists use the same practice of
disembodied reflection to develop the cri-
tique. As VTR state:
http://constructivist.info/13/1/059.martiny
 “  [E]ven though it has recently become quite
fashionable to criticize or ‘deconstruct’ this stand-
point of the cogito, philosophers still do not de-
part from the basic practice responsible for it.
(ibid: 28)
” part of how we do cognitive science, which
The disembodying nature
of cognitive science
« 20 »  The main argument in EM, ex-
emplified by the critique of phenomenology,
is that we need to embody cognition. This
means to include in our methods and prac-
tice of cognitive science the experientially
lived and embodied aspects of cognition.
For our cognitive abilities that we are trying
to research and understand, as cognitive sci-
entists, are conditioned by those very same
experientially lived and embodied aspects as
Cognitive science Concepts in Enaction
well as the background of biological, social
and cultural beliefs and practices that go
hand-in-hand with them. If we, according
to VTR, do not embody cognition and ig-
nore this fundamental circularity, the con-
sequence is that we slowly rip apart science
and experience, where, on the one hand,
natural science will disregard experience
and define a genuine understanding of cog-
nition as behavior or neural dynamics, and,
on the other hand, the humanities will de-
fine cognition as lived experience and argue
that there cannot be a science of the human
life-world (EM: 13f).
« 21 »  So, why have the cognitive sci-
ence community neglected Varela’s radical
proposal of embodying cognition? As seen
in the case of the phenomenologists using a
62 disembodying philosophical practice to de-
scribe the embodied nature of the mind, the
community of cognitive science is based on
a tradition of practicing science that precise-
ly dismisses and neglects the experientially
lived and embodied aspects of cognition.
This is, as VTR emphasize, because of our
training and practice as Western scientists.
We learn to ask:
“  ‘What is mind?,’ ‘What is body?’ and proceed
to reflect theoretically and to investigate scientifi-
cally […] But in the course of these investigations
we often forget just who is asking this question
and how it is asked. By not including ourselves in
the reflection, we pursue only a partial reflection,
and our question becomes disembodied […]
(EM: 27)
” scriptions and commentaries on mind that grew
Constructivist Foundations vol. 13, N°1
« 22 »  Due to the fundamental circular-
ity of cognitive science, this dismissal of our
own embodiment as scientists is an integral
means that although we might acknowl-
edge the experientially lived and embodied
aspects of cognitive science as the “what”
of our investigations, we end up neglecting
many of these very same aspects, because we
do not acknowledge them in the “how” of
our investigations.
« 23 »  Other cognitive scientists have
argued for the same disembodying nature
of cognitive science (Neisser 1980; Gal-
lagher & Marcel 1999: 287). The academic
and analytic attitude that is the goal of west-
ern schooling involves the ability to detach
oneself from worldly and pragmatic context.
This makes the interests, questions, meth-
ods, and answers of cognitive science to a
great extent disembodied and decontextual-
ized.
First attempts: Not radical
enough!
« 24 »  Since Varela, Thompson & Rosch
presented the idea to embody the study of
cognition, the spectre of embodied cogni-
tion has, according to some cognitive scien-
tists, been haunting the laboratories of cog-
nitive science (Goldman & de Vignemont
2009). How are we as cognitive scientists to
include the experientially lived and embod-
ied aspects of cognition in our labs, investi-
gations and knowledge processes?
Contemplative science
« 25 »  To find a practical answer to this
question, one solution for Varela was to turn
to the Asian tradition of Buddhism. Within
the Buddhist tradition it was especially the
method of mindfulness meditation that Va-
rela focused on, because, as Varela, Thomp-
son & Rosch describe:
“  [M]indfulness techniques are designed to lead
the mind back from its theories and preoccupa-
tions, back from the abstract attitude, to the situ-
ation of one’s experience itself. Furthermore, and
equally of interest in the modern context, the de-
out of this tradition never became divorced from
living pragmatics: they were intended to inform
an individual as to how to handle his mind in per-
sonal and interpersonal situations, and they both
informed and became embodied in the structure
”
of communities. (EM: 22).
« 26 »  What is present in the Buddhist
traditions are techniques that were devel-
oped from living pragmatics, and a teaching
that is still embodied and embedded within
the Buddhist communities. For Varela, the
Buddhist tradition, its techniques and teach-
ings were therefore a source of inspiration
for developing the pragmatics of how to
conduct cognitive science, so as to become
better at studying the experientially lived
and embodied aspects of the mind.
« 27 »  This approach has now become
the foundation for what can be called Con-
templative Science, which is claimed to be a
new era for mind studies (Debordes & Negi
2013; Dorjee 2016). Through educational ef-
forts and rigorous programs, the aim for this
approach is to establish a common ground
for collaboration between cognitive science
and contemplative traditions (e.g., Bud-
dhism), using the already well-established
techniques and teachings of these tradi-
tions to better navigate the experiential and
embodied aspects of the mind. This means,
for instance, that cognitive scientists should
receive contemplative and meditative train-
ing, or that they should use contemplative
practitioners in their research. Cases of
such collaborative attempts already exist
in contemporary cognitive science, in, for
example, studying emphatic and emotional
responses (Lutz et al. 2008; Klimecki et al.
2014), in studying startle responses (Leven-
son, Ekman & Ricard 2012), and in studying
the process and neural impact of medita-
tion itself (Lutz et al. 2004; Petitmengin et
al. 2017).
« 28 »  Many such cases also incorporate
phenomenological interviews, but it is cru-
cial to bear in mind here that for Varela the
solution to embodying the mind was not “to
dwell on Asian traditions per se but to use
them as a distant mirror of what we needed
to cultivate in our science and the western
tradition” (Varela 1996: 346). The aim was
not to abandon a Western understanding of
cognitive science, but to develop it further.
This was done first and foremost with an-
other attempt to embody cognition, namely
Varela’s method of neurophenomenology.

Neurophenomenology:
Mild or radical?
« 29 »  Varela introduced the research
method of neurophenomenology as a way
to tackle the so-called “hard” problem of
consciousness in cognitive science. The idea
was to develop methodological sophistica-
tion. The development of more and more
sophisticated technologies, techniques and
methods of the empirical disciplines within
cognitive science (e.g., brain imaging), re-
quires more fine-grained descriptions of
corresponding experience in order for sci-
entists to make sense of, for example, the
neural recordings of such experience. We
therefore need to develop more and more
sophisticated ways of drawing phenomeno-
logical discriminations and descriptions of
the phenomena we aim to study. According
to Varela, a mutual constraint should ex-
ist between first-person and third-person
methods in validating both subjective re-
ports and empirical data.
« 30 »  At the time when Varela was ar-
guing for such a solution, cognitive science
was showing limited interest in including
subjective reports of first-person experi-
ences in its research and experimental
settings. Subjective reports were taken as
scientifically problematic, since subjects
can, for instance, be mistaken, biased, in-
accurate and unreliable when giving their
reports (Nisbett & Wilson 1977). However,
to give precise descriptions of one’s experi-
ences does not mean simply relying on un-
critical introspection, a “just-take-a-look”
process – the method should not be “open”
in that sense.
« 31 »  Varela used the philosophical
tradition of Phenomenology as his point of
departure for developing a rigorous first-
person method, but criticized it for its lack
of pragmatics. What he found in Vermer-
sch’s (1994) development of the “explicita-
tion interview” (EI) (in French “entretien
d’explicitation”) was an inspiration for
developing such phenomenologically in-
spired pragmatics within cognitive science.
EI is an attempt to reinterpret and improve
the use of introspection (Vermersch 1999),
by phenomenologically grounding the in-
terview techniques and practices coming
from introspective psychology. This at-
tempt might at first seem to be in contrast
to phenomenology, which historically has
Enaction
Varela’s Radical Proposal Kristian Moltke Martiny
criticized introspective psychology. Verm-
ersch, however, turned to the tradition of
introspection because it is a more prag-
matic approach than classical phenomenol-
ogy (ibid: 17). Thus, for Varela, EI became
one concrete example of the pragmatics he
would use to embody cognition.
« 32 »  Scholars have since been debat-
ing theoretically how to integrate phenom-
enology, EI and cognitive science, and how
to employ this integrative method empiri-
cally. Reviewing two decades of literature,
Aviva Berkovich-Ohana (2017) found less
than thirty publications where cognitive
scientists have tried to employ neurophe-
nomenology empirically and twenty pub-
lications where they engage in theoreti-
cal debates about neurophenomenology.2
According to Berkovich-Ohana, this high
ratio between theoretical and empirical
work on neurophenomenology shows that
the framework was – and still is – a great
source of inspiration, but it is, at the same
time, extremely difficult to implement
(ibid: 157).
« 33 »  Here it is crucial to distinguish
between what Petitmengin (2017) calls
a “light or mild” and a “deep or radical”
interpretation of neurophenomenology.
Neurophenomenology can be said to be
light or mild, if the aim is to implement it
to either establish correlations between the
“first-person” and “third-person descrip-
tions, or to validate first-person descrip-
tions through objective standards (ibid:
139f). A paradigmatic case of such a “mild”
approach is Lutz’s first attempt to employ
neurophenomenology (Lutz et al. 2002;
Lutz 2002). Lutz used the framework on an
illusory depth perception task, where the
participants were trained in phenomeno-
logical methodology in order to give ver-
bal reports of the experience of seeing the
depth illusion using phenomenal categories
(first-person data). In addition, the partici-
pants’ brain activity was recorded by EEG
while performing the task (third-person
data). The aim was to show, empirically,
how employing first-person reports could
guide the electrophysiological analysis and
thereby explore the mutual constraints be-
tween the two.
2 |  A full list of the publications is found in
Berkovich-Ohana (2017).
A heavy price to pay
« 34 »  Most scholars employing neuro-
phenomenology have tried to implement
the mild approach and appraised the meth-
odological implications it has for bridging
first-person and third-person methods, per-
spectives and data. The same appraisal also
occurs in the case of contemplative science,
highlighting the scientific advantages that
follow from working with contemplative
techniques, teachings and practitioners. My
aim here is not to go into the debates of how
to integrate the first-person and third-person
methods, techniques and data, which should
not be taken as a disregard of the scientific
advantages of contemplative science or mild
neurophenomenology. The latter has, for in-
stance, helped to reduce “neural noise” when
using neural measures (Lutz et al. 2002; Lach-
aux 2011), helped to develop Richard Nisbett
and Timothy Wilson’s findings further, show-
ing that it is in fact possible to access our deci-
sions processes through specific mental acts
(Petitmengin et al. 2013) and helped to de-
velop the Rubber Hand Illusion protocol, by
describing the genesis and nuance of the sub-
jective experience occurring in the illusion,
which is the experience of a rubber hand
suddenly being your own hand (Valenzuela-
Moguillansky, O’Regan & Petitmengin 2013).
Nevertheless, while scholars appraise these
advantages, the radical implications of what
neurophenomenology means is overlooked
(Bitbol & Antonova 2016).
« 35 »  A radical interpretation of neu-
rophenomenology tackles the “hard” prob-
lem of consciousness by “investigating the 63
very process of separation of the objective
and subjective poles, at the root of the hard
problem, within lived experience” (Petit-
mengin 2017: 141). As Varela clearly stated:
“Lived experience is where we start from
and where we all must link back to, like a
guiding thread” (Varela 1996: 334). To do
so, is nevertheless, as Varela puts it, a price
heavier than what most cognitive scientists
are willing to pay (Varela 1996: 331).
« 36 »  As argued above, Varela’s radi-
cal proposal was to embody cognition by
changing the disembodying tradition and
scientific community of cognitive science as
such. This is a heavy price to pay, because it
“  implies that every good student of cognitive
science who is also interested in issues at the level
http://constructivist.info/13/1/059.martiny
 of mental experience, must inescapably attain a
level of mastery in phenomenological examina-
tion in order to work seriously with first-person
accounts. But this can only happen when the en-
tire community adjusts itself – with a correspond-
ing change of attitude in relation to acceptable
forms of argument, refereeing standards and edi-
torial policies in major scientific journals – so that
this added competence becomes an important di-
mension for a young researcher […] It requires us
to leave behind a certain image of how science is
done, and to question a style of training in science
which is part of the very fabric of our cultural
”
identity. (Varela 1996: 347).
« 37 »  The “hard” problem of conscious-
ness requires a pragmatic and cultural rem-
edy:
Cognitive science Concepts in Enaction
ƒƒ to develop the pragmatics, tools and
methods of cognitive science, to make it
attractive to acquire a level of phenom-
enological mastery and work seriously
with first-person experiences and their
expression in subjective reports; and
ƒƒ to change the scientific habits and at-
titudes, the style of work, the focus of
research programs, the scientific train-
ing, so as to accept and cultivate the new
pragmatics, tools and methods (Varela
1996).
How to work with an open
method?
« 38 »  Despite Petitmengin’s (2017) at-
64 tempt to clarify what is meant by Varela’s
radical neurophenomenology, Berkovich-
Ohana remains “perplexed as to how a
neuroscientist can actually implement this
‘radical’ line of research in the lab” (Berko-
vich-Ohana 2017: 158). Radical neuroph-
enomenology is appealing philosophically,
but it is technically and practically too ambi-
tious. In addition, there is a striking lack of a
single paradigmatic attempt that shows how
to implement this radical proposal. Nonethe-
less, Berkovich-Ohana ends up arguing that
the current situation is a catch-22. As long as
it is the same traditional scientific minds that
review the experimental designs of neuroph-
enomenology, it will keep preventing the
long-sought-for development of the method.
It is necessary for the scientific community
to practice an attitude shift (ibid).
Constructivist Foundations vol. 13, N°1
« 39 »  According to Varela, such a radi-
cal attitude shift requires first and foremost
that it become a value to the community of
cognitive science to include the experiential-
ly lived aspects of cognition, not to exclude
them. The radical method for doing so, as
Varela described in several places, requires
what he calls a pragmatic, open-ended view
of knowledge (EM: 27–31; Varela 1996: 346;
Depraz, Varela & Vermersch 2003: 17–19).
« 40 »  In On Becoming Aware (OBA),
Varela, Natalie Depraz and Vermersch de-
scribed that knowledge in this open-ended
view should be evaluated by its processual
character (Depraz, Varela & Vermersch
2003: 18). This means that, as cognitive sci-
entists, we should reflect openly upon our
own cognitive involvement in the scientific
knowledge processes. In the following, I dis-
cuss the radicality of working with such an
open-ended pragmatics as comes from the
EI interview techniques and traditional phe-
nomenological methodology.
To enact lived experience
« 41 »  In the lecture Ethical Know-How,
Varela describes the notion of “pragmatic”
by arguing that in recent times the knowl-
edge produced within the Western tradi-
tion of cognitive science can be character-
ized as being “rationalistic,” “Cartesian,”
“objectivist” and altogether “abstract” (Va-
rela 1999: 6). The aim of embodying cog-
nition requires a “radical paradigm shift”
in our understanding of knowledge within
cognitive science, to “situate knowledge”
and include an overlooked dimension of
knowledge that is “concrete,” “embodied,”
“incorporated” and “lived.” The aim is not
to dismiss the abstract form of knowledge,
but to understand the role and relevance
of abstract and concrete forms of knowl-
edge. To do so, Varela includes the famous
distinction from John Dewey (1922: 177)
between explicit and propositional knowl-
edge, a knowing that, and a tacit, experien-
tial and pragmatic knowledge, a knowing
how (ibid: 19).
« 42 »  Varela argues that it is the know-
ing how that has been overlooked in West-
ern cognitive science and to account for this
neglect he proposes, as already seen in EM
(EM: Chapter 8), what he calls an enactive
approach to cognitive science. Inspired by
phenomenology, this approach criticizes the
assumption within traditional Cartesian and
objectivist cognitive science that knowledge
of the world consists of “representations”
of that world by a cognitive system that ex-
ists independently of it. Instead, we should
fundamentally understand knowledge as
dependent on an experiencing subject that
pragmatically enacts (brings forth) knowl-
edge. The basic idea is “that experiential
structures ‘motivate’ conceptual under-
standing and rational thought” (Varela 1999:
15f). Varela’s point is that if we accept the
enactive approach to cognitive science we
should acknowledge the experiential, lived,
and embodied aspects of cognition.
« 43 »  In OBA, the authors further elab-
orate on the pragmatic horizon and practical
implications of such an enactive approach.
They start by pointing out that the way we
should understand such an approach is at
the level of action and not theory. In oppo-
sition to theoretical declaration, contempla-
tion and discourses of practice, the approach
is synonymous with “doing” (Depraz, Varela
& Vermersch 2003: 17). We should therefore
talk about knowledge at a methodological
(en)active level rather than at a theoretical
level. In other words, the evaluation of the
knowledge do not concern the “what” of, for
example, the method’s underlying a priori
principles, but “how” the method is done.
This means:
ƒƒ that the success, efficacy and functional-
ity of the research depends on how the
conducted method adapts to a situation;
ƒƒ that the methodological conduct gen-
erates knowledge within itself and in
changing the world and the (en)actor of
the method by concrete action, by ac-
complishing a task and by how well one
is able to put into practice one’s tech-
niques.
« 44 »  Thus, the truth-conditions for
an enactive approach should be evaluated
by how well the scientist has been enacting,
embodying and situating his or her cogni-
tive abilities and knowledge processes. De-
praz, Varela & Vermersch describe this as
how well the cognitive scientists “handle
his or her own cognition” (Depraz, Varela &
Vermersch 2003: 163) and to what extent the
scientist has “become aware” through a first-
person, hands-on and open attitude.
« 45 »  Petitmengin and Michel Bitbol
(2009) calls this enactive evaluation of re-

search the performative view. From such
a view, it makes sense that Varela turned
to practical insight gained in many of the
professions working “hands-on” with expe-
rience in human practice and interaction.
He collaborated not only with practitioners
coming from the Buddhist tradition, but
also with practitioners coming from differ-
ent areas such as education, sports train-
ing, therapy, rehabilitation, clinical work,
consultancy and art. This collaborative ten-
dency is seen especially in OBA and is an
inspiration for scholars that have taken Va-
rela’s collaborative efforts further in work-
ing, for instance, with change management
in French railway companies (Remillieux et
al. 2010) or in working with the subjective
experience of astronauts (Reinerman-Jones
et al. 2013).
« 46 »  The performative view extends
the realm of people that can take part in the
knowledge processes in cognitive sciences
from being only scientists to practitioners
and citizens. One example, employing Vare-
la’s radical proposal in working with citizens
is, as already mentioned, Petitmengin’s work
with people with epilepsy.
« 47 »  In my work, I have also used
Varela’s proposal and the phenomenologi-
cal interview to investigate the experience
of living with the physical disability called
cerebral palsy (CP) (Martiny 2015a). I have
done so, as a way of opening up the inves-
tigation into understanding what it means
to live with CP, in order to help those liv-
ing with CP. One example of such an open
strategy was collaborating with healthcare
practitioners (psychologists, physiothera-
pists and occupational therapists) to develop
an intervention where we could work with
the experience of control in CP (Martiny &
Aggerholm 2016). The phenomenological
interview was used as a way to investigate
the experience of control in CP and to evalu-
ate whether the intervention was successful
and made sense for people with CP. The aim
of this work has therefore not only been to
evaluate it scientifically and contribute to
healthcare research and cognitive science,
but to evaluate it performatively and find
out if it was meaningful to the daily life of
people living with CP.
« 48 »  To open up the knowledge proc-
esses and the evaluation criteria for cogni-
tive science as seen in the the performative
Enaction
Varela’s Radical Proposal Kristian Moltke Martiny
view is not that far from cases of citizen sci-
ence in Open Science and the Open Mind
project in cognitive science. The aim is never
to lose sight of the bigger picture, since our
research is embedded in a social cultural
world (Metzinger & Windt 2015: 15). This
means that we should open up science to
this world and its people, so that they can
take part in the knowledge-generation, re-
view and evaluation processes.
Working with experience
« 49 »  Inspired by EI, Varela and Shear
(1999) transformed the first-person method
of neurophenomenology into a second-per-
son method. Because an interview does not
play out in theoretically neutral space, it is
important, as Varela argues, to be openly
aware of one’s fundamental circularity in
the co-generation of knowledge. Varela
uses techniques and methodological skills
coming from the tradition of phenomenol-
ogy to open up the knowledge process and
to help with the interpretation and analysis
of descriptions. I will not go into considera-
tions about the phenomenological analysis
of experience, since they have been taken
up elsewhere by Varela (Varela 1996; Varela
& Shear 1999; Depraz, Varela & Vermersch
2003; see also Høffding & Martiny 2016). I
will instead highlight the epistemological
and ontological commitments that condi-
tion those skills, since they are typically
misunderstood or overlooked, and they are
partly what accounts for the radicality of
Varela’s proposal.
« 50 »  First of all, the classical dictum
to go “to the things themselves,” means that
we should take experience seriously in our
knowledge and research processes, begin-
ning, for example, with the first-person per-
spective of the subject one is studying. This
can happen through the interview, but this
does not mean that we are only interested
in the particular “here and now” aspects of
the interviewees’ first-person experiences.
The aim is to use the interview to be able to
disclose invariant phenomenological struc-
tures, such as that of the embodied nature
of cognition. Thus, it is important that we
separate the pragmatics of the phenomeno-
logical interview from that of introspection,
which looks at a person’s particular experi-
ence here and now (Varela 1996: 338). This
also means that the classical criticism of
introspection should not apply to the phe-
nomenological interview.3
« 51 »  From an objectivist scientific
perspective, one might think that the aim
should be to ensure the correspondence
between an experience and its description.
One will be skeptical about whether the
description of the experience corresponds
to the actual experience, whether the inter-
viewee is lying or has the correct memory
of the experience. This perspective, however,
falls prey to confusion between objectivity
and subjectivity.
« 52 »  From a phenomenological per-
spective experience is not a thing, an ob-
ject or static data to which one can retro-
actively return. It is not hidden inside the
head waiting to be dug up by memory and
a skillful interviewer. Experience is em-
bodied and enacted in the world together
with other experiencing subjects. So, in
both the interview and the interpretation
of the interview we should not aim at mak-
ing the interviewees’ descriptions accurate
representation of their experience as it
happened at a specific time. Descriptions
should in fact be understood as a different
manifestation of that very same experi-
ence. According to Dan Zahavi, reflecting
and describing are not a falsification of
originary or pre-reflective experience, but
an opening up of it (Zahavi 1999: 181–189,
2005: 89–96, 2011). The skills required by
the interviewer are the ones that help open
up the interviewee’s experience through the
interview and analysis.
« 53 »  Because experiences are embod- 65
ied, embedded and enacted in the world, it
makes it difficult, as already emphasized,
to include the lived aspects of cognition
in our scientific labs. The recent interac-
tive turn (de Jaegher, Di Paolo & Gallagher
2010) has been influenced by Varela’s ideas
of a second-person method to tackle this
problem in relation to the laboratories of
social cognition. The interactive turn criti-
cises the so-called mindreading approaches
for focusing solely on explanations of so-
cial cognition that read cognition in men-
tal terms and situate it within the skull, and
3 |  To argue for this claim would go beyond
the scope of this article, but Petitmengin (2006)
elaborates nicely on the claim, and in Høffding &
Martiny (2016), I have argued along the same lines.
http://constructivist.info/13/1/059.martiny
 for adopting an observational and specta-
tor stance for doing so. This stance is char-
acterized by both “isolation paradigms”
and “experimental quarantines” of passive
observation (Becchio, Sartori & Castiello
2010; Schilbach et al. 2013), and by an ob-
jectivist scientific approach to cognition.
« 54 »  The interactive turn therefore
aims to develop a so-called second-person
study of social cognition (Thompson 2001),
which is defined by including aspects of
experiential and emotional engagement
and reciprocal interaction when trying to
understand and study social cognition (de
Bruin, Van Elk & Newen 2012; Schilbach
et al. 2013; Satne & Roepstorff 2015). As
has become explicit in current discussions
in social neuroscience, to include such
Cognitive science Concepts in Enaction
second-person aspects of engagement and
interaction is, however, problematic, since
a brain scanner’s technical conditions limit
the possibilities for interpersonal engage-
ment and interaction in the lab.
« 55 »  In working with CP, I have there-
fore experimented with the conditions that
constitute a lab. To investigate the social
attitudes that people have towards persons
with physical disabilities, we took Ulric
Neisser’s (1980) suggestion to collaborate
with theater in social cognitive research
seriously (Martiny 2015a). The idea was
to collaborate with theater professionals to
understand the social world, much in the
same way that citizen-science approaches
use masse-experiments. We, so to say, tried
66
to extend the lab of social cognition to the
theater, to understand attitudes to physi-
cal disability in the world of everyday life.
To engage the audience with a person with
CP, we developed a theater play about liv-
ing with CP, based upon ideas coming from
embodied cognitive theory and second-
person methodology. To investigate the
audiences’ experience, we used multiple
methods and combined phenomenological
interviews, with explicit measures in quan-
titative questionnaires and behavioural and
implicit measures in Implicit Associations
Tests (IAT-test). While such a methodolog-
ical experiment was challenging, we saw
that it was practically possible to extend
the lab by using theater and that this strat-
egy would be extremely effective if the aim
were to create engagement and reciprocal
interaction.
Constructivist Foundations vol. 13, N°1
Intersubjective validation
« 56 »  As acknowledged by Varela and
Shear (1999: 13), the epistemological sta-
tus of the descriptions of experience and its
analysis is, nevertheless, subject to the so-
called hermeneutical objection. The knowl-
edge we obtain through the use of the inter-
view and analysis is fallible. But then again,
such fallibility applies to all methods that
rely on reflection, phenomenology includ-
ed, as well as to (cognitive) science as such.
In order to deal with the hermeneutical di-
mension in science, Varela and Shear (1999:
10) present the methodological solution of
“intersubjective validation,” which is a way
to conduct rigorous science of experience,
while maintaining a phenomenological un-
derstanding of experience. This means that
one should not consider the interviewees’
descriptions of their experience as static
data, but rather conceive of experience as
subject to dynamically, open and develop-
ing processes and interpretations. The way
we should validate such processes and in-
terpretations is, according to Varela, by un-
derstanding validation as an intersubjective
practice, which requires the mastery of both
first-, second-, and third-person positions in
one’s research.
« 57 »  In OBA, Depraz, Varela and Ver-
mersch (2003: 78) develop this understand-
ing of intersubjective validation further.
They claim that: “Validation intrinsically
concerns the intersubjective establishment
of criteria of veracity in an investigation”
(ibid: 80). This intersubjective establishment
has multiple gradations, which differentiate
between the first-, second- and third-person
position of the investigation.
« 58 »  The third-person position is
based upon the scientific method as the
classical de facto method of validation and
requires the skills for conducting such vali-
dation. This should not be understood as an
objectivist position, where a detached Car-
tesian observer is gathering empirical data,
because, as Depraz, Varela and Vermersch
point out:
“  Establishing an empirical fact as ‘scientific’
brings with it the entire edifice of the scientific
enterprise as a network of social actors, including
their aesthetic, political, and geographical idio-
”
syncracies [sic] […]. (Depraz, Varela & Verm-
ersch 2003: 80)
« 59 »  The product of such scientific
processes and the core of the social network
of scientific life are typically publications,
but the validated knowledge and the “sci-
entific truth” is only objective in the sense
that references to subjective judgment are
removed by the scientific method. However,
as Depraz, Varela and Vermersch insist, the
skillset of a social mediator, as seen in the
phenomenological interview, is still at work
in such an objective stance, since it is a “spe-
cific way of placing social actors in a struc-
ture that can appear free of any reference to
individual experience […]” (ibid).
« 60 »  In contrast to the third-person
position, one finds the first-person posi-
tion, which should be understood from the
first-person perspective of the experiencing
subject. The first-person position should be
distinguished from its typical interpreta-
tion, namely that it is about the particular
and individual experience that is a private
and inaccessible experience to everyone
that does not experience it. The first-person
position is of course about the subjectivity
of the experience, i.e., of “how” subjects
becomes aware of their first-person experi-
ences, but as Depraz, Varela and Vermersch
state:
“  [A]ll first-person work must eventually, soon-
er or later, assume the position of a direct expe-
rience that refuses continued isolation and seeks
intersubjective validation. Without intermittently
opening up to the other, the process of becoming
(Depraz, Varela & Vermersch 2003: 85)
”
aware risks a vicious privacy or even solipsism.
« 61 »  It is in relation to the process of
opening up that the second-person position
becomes relevant, and as I have described in
the example of using the phenomenological
interview as a second-person method, the
“second-person position is an exchange
between situated individuals focusing on
a specific experiential content developed
from a first-person position” (Depraz,
Varela & Vermersch 2003: 81). Such a
second-person position is already at play
in contemporary science in the way that
more senior researchers train more junior
researchers to conduct science. Neverthe-
less, all such second-person mediations are
“studiously ignored in the article published
in a scientific journal” (ibid).
 Enaction
Varela’s Radical Proposal Kristian Moltke Martiny

{ Kristian Moltke Martiny

obtained, in 2015, a PhD in philosophy and neuroscience from the University of Copenhagen,
working transdisciplinarily on the phenomenological and neurological aspects of living with
brain damage, specifically cerebral palsy (CP). The work was done in collaboration with the
Center for Subjectivity Research and the Elsass Institute, where Martiny, since 2015, has
held a joint position as a post-doc researcher and head of the Department for Psychological
and Social Research. Characteristic of Martiny’s research is that he works with collaborators
coming from outside of academia, as seen for instance in his PhD project, where he worked
with artists to make a documentary film about living with CP (Natural Disorder) and a theater
play at the Royal Danish Theater about the social aspects of CP (Humane Liquidation).

« 62 »  What we should take from De-
praz, Varela and Vermersch’s description of
validation within science is that the three
positions are not differentiated by the con-
tent they address, the “what” of the investi-
gation, but by “how” they are inserted in a
social network. It is the particular role that
the cognitive scientists as social actors take
and the skills they use in each investigation
that determine their belonging to one or
the other position. This means, first of all,
that Depraz, Varela and Vermersch reject
a strict opposition between public and pri-
vate, or objective and subjective, in favor of
the three gradations of positions in a social
network. Secondly, it means that in order for
the scientists to even conceive of the differ-
ent gradations of validation, the scientific
community should be sufficiently advanced
in the mastery of all the different gradations.
In the case of cognitive science, it means that
the scientific community should develop a
meaningful research practice, with corre-
lating intersubjective conditions for valida-
tions, for all three gradations. As Depraz,
Varela and Vermersch conclude:
“ […]a true expansion of styles of validation,
encompassing a wider range of phenomenal data
from third- to second- and first-person sources,
will entail a necessary and important restruc-
turing of the social edifice of contemporary sci-
”
ence. (Depraz, Varela & Vermersch 2003: 96)
« 63 »  In working with CP, I have ex-
perimented with the idea of Open Media, to
develop such a meaningful practice (Marti-
ny, Pedersen & Birkegaard 2016). The idea is
to use supplementary media other than the
written to open up the research processes of
cognitive science to include both first-, sec-
ond- and third-person sources and data. In
one experiment, I collaborated with a docu-
mentarist to develop the documentary film,
Natural Disorder, which is about the experi-
ence of living with CP. We argue, as other
scholars also have (Suchman & Trigg 1995;
Roschelle 1998), that using the audiovisual
medium in one’s research processes is an ex-
emplary way to work with:
ƒƒ first-person experiences, because the
medium, in contrast to written media,
makes it possible to show what it means
for the person to live with CP;
ƒƒ third-person approaches, since the me-
dium can be used as an observational
and diagnostic medium for CP, utilizing
software programs and other visual rep-
resentations to increase the reliability of
the video analysis; and
ƒƒ a second-person position using the me-
dium for engaging and collaborating
interdisciplinarily with scholars from
academia and transdisciplinarily with
persons coming from outside academia,
such as persons with CP, their relatives
and professionals working with CP.
Open-ended conclusion
« 64 »  Contemporary cognitive science
is highly influenced by the open science
movement, as seen in, for instance, the Open
Mind (OM) project. The aim of this article
has been to revitalize Varela’s radical propos-
al as a way to continue the conversation of
how to open up the cognitive sciences.
« 65 »  Depraz, Varela and Vermersch
(2003: 79) find themselves in the paradoxical
situation of developing a new open method-
ology for cognitive science without having
the means of presenting detailed research
projects using their proposed methodology.
The passing of Varela meant that he was not
able to further develop his radical proposal
and attempt to embody cognition. As we
have seen, the method of contemplative sci-
ence, neurophenomenology and the use of
the phenomenological interview have flour-
ished within certain areas of cognitive sci-
ence and they constitute practical attempts
to implement Varela’s proposal.
« 66 »  However, I have argued that these
attempts are not radical enough, according
to Varela’s own standards, and that his radi-
cal proposal to embody cognition has been
neglected due to the disembodying nature of
cognitive science, its tradition, values, com-
munity, and research practice. The point
being, that if we, as cognitive scientists, do
not develop “how” we do cognitive science
and change the scientific community we are
embedded in, we will not be able to open up
cognitive science and fully address the em- 67
bodied and enactive aspects of cognition.
« 67 »  I have argued that this open-
ing up of cognitive science means to value
lived experience, to question objectivist and
observational premises and to work with
first-, second-, and third-persons positions
in one’s research. Drawing on cases from
my research in cerebral palsy, I suggest that
one could collaborate with subjects outside
academia and value their lived experiences,
engage with subjects in the world of every-
day life by rethinking the concept of a labo-
ratory, and work with audiovisual media to
account for first-, second-, and third-person
positions.
Received: 24 April 2017
Accepted: 19 September 2017

http://constructivist.info/13/1/059.martiny
 Open Peer Commentaries
on Kristian Martiny’s “Varela’s Radical Proposal: How to Embody
and Open Up Cognitive Science”
Loud Crisis, Quiet Crisis:
Varela’s Proposal
Resonates in Contemporary
Cognitive science Concepts in Enaction
Psychological Science
Marek McGann
Mary Immaculate College, Ireland
marek.mcgann/at/mic.ul.ie
> Upshot • Varela’s proposal that science
should be open to the phenomena of
experience is radical primarily because
of the strangely constrained practices of
psychological science. Methodological
and professional crises within contem-
porary psychological science resonate
with the issues raised by Varela and oth-
ers, and addressing them effectively will
mean following Varela’s, and Martiny’s,
68 advice.
« 1 »  Kristian Martiny opens his target
article with mention of the significant shift
toward openness within contemporary sci-
ence. Within psychological science, this shift
toward openness is closely associated with
an on-going crisis of trust and confidence.
Open methods, open review, open analysis,
are all part of an attempt to address “perverse
incentives” (Bouter 2015), and problematic
practice in psychological research (Nosek,
Spies & Motyl 2012), whereby professional
reputation and awards of promotion often
depend more on the sheer number or novel-
ty of results than their accuracy or reliability.
Psychologists have increasingly recognised
flaws in standard practices, and the fragility
of conclusions in the face of under-powered,
Constructivist Foundations vol. 13, N°1
improperly controlled, or badly analysed ex-
periments (Nosek & Bar-Anan 2012).
« 2 »  The past few years have seen sig-
nificant effort made in raising awareness of
these failings and to identify effective means
of addressing them. The diagnoses for these
problems have focused almost exclusively
on issues of methodology and profession-
alism. Questionable research practices
(QRPs), under-powered experiments, pub-
lication bias, and other systemic problems
are to be mitigated through improved edu-
cation in statistics, better checking of data,
much greater transparency in procedures,
materials, and data (Nosek, Spies & Motyl
2012). In addition, the changing of incen-
tive structures to focus on methodological
soundness over novelty of findings or statis-
tical significance, through such innovations
as pre-registration of studies (Chambers
2013; Nosek & Lakens 2014), should help
to improve the state of our research culture
and professionalism, by providing better
goals to aim for.
« 3 »  Almost all of the conversation con-
cerning this crisis in the science is directed
at such practical and pragmatic issues. The
methodological concerns, and attendant
professionalism-related problems, are a loud
crisis. But there is also a quiet crisis in psy-
chological science, one brushed against by
Martiny’s discussion of the need for a more
radical change to our approach: we are just
not good at theory.1
1 |  Cf. “Theory, and why it’s time psychology
got one” by Andrew Wilson, retrieved 13 Octo-
ber 2017 from http://psychsciencenotes.blogspot.
com/2011/11/theory-and-why-its-time-psychol-
ogy-got.html
« 4 »  Psychologists distinguish very
clearly between the reliability and valid-
ity of measurements (Haslam & McGarty
2003 and other textbooks on psychological
research methods). Both of these concepts
come in several different flavours, but the
broad description of each is as follows: reli-
ability concerns whether the measure is con-
sistent (and therefore measuring the same
thing each time it is used); validity concerns
whether you are measuring what you think
you are measuring.
« 5 »  Of these two concepts, it is easier
to think about reliability, and easier to ad-
dress it. Most of the changes to practice
proposed as mitigations of QRPs or prob-
lematic incentives address the reliability of
our practices and measurements. This is the
right place to start. Until you are consist-
ently measuring or observing something,
you cannot hope to properly address the
question of what that something is. We need
reliability in our methods.
« 6 »  Validity, on the other hand, is de-
termined by how good our theories are. In
order to be confident that we are measuring
what we think we are measuring, however
reliably, we must have a clear and coherent
concept of what it is that is being measured.
We should also be able to explain why the
measurements in question are appropriate
to that concept.
« 7 »  The concerns about the clear limi-
tations of our current psychological knowl-
edge focus almost entirely on factors affect-
ing the reliability of the methods used to
develop that knowledge. This is a loud crisis,
one that has seen arguments, proposed solu-
tions, counter-arguments, and controversies
flow through journals, blogs, and twitter.

It has spawned enormous research efforts
(Open Science Collaboration 2012, 2015),
and even professional societies.2
« 8 »  A currently much quieter crisis is
that the problems with these methods are
not new, and the existing body of knowl-
edge developed using those flawed methods,
which determines how we frame questions,
design procedures, and interpret results,
cannot be drawn upon without great care.
The current revision of approaches to meth-
ods in our science needs a complementary
revision of our approach to theories.
« 9 »  This is not a novel observation.
Like the statistical and methodological con-
cerns now commanding the discipline’s at-
tention, questions about theory have been
raised numerous times in the history of psy-
chological science (e.g., Fiedler 1991; Gig-
erenzer 1998, 2010; Meehl 1978; Watkins
1984).
« 10 »  The theories we have are also a
product of our practices, but not simply
those of statistics, or experimental control.
Rather, they are our practices of research
question identification, results interpreta-
tion, and explanation (Danziger 1994; Kuhn
1970). Theories are driven by the phenom-
ena we choose to investigate, the means by
which we choose to engage with them, and
the techniques that frame our interpretation
of them. Addressing this issue, improving
our theories, will require a kind of openness,
and honesty with ourselves, akin to that ad-
vocated by Francisco Varela, and others, but
one that is radical only within the strange
confines of psychological science.
« 11 »  Decades ago, researchers were al-
ready noticing that psychology had closed
its doors to the world around it, paying
close attention only to behaviours that go
on within the sterile environments of its
laboratories, with little heed paid to “the
psychologist-free environment” (Barker
1968: 4). James Gibson (1967) lambasted
psychologists for being too closed-minded
about the phenomena of interest. Regard-
less of whether cognitivist or behaviourist,
psychologists had decided that explanations
involved the characterisation of the relation-
ships between stimuli and responses, and
not the manner in which an organism is
2 |  Cf. Society for the Improvement of Psy-
chological Science, http://improvingpsych.org
Enaction
Loud Crisis, Quiet Crisis Marek McGann
embedded in and coordinates its activities
with the ecosystem of energy, objects, and
other patterns of activity around them (Gib-
son 1960, 1966, 1986). As a result, rather
than developing theories of behaviour, we
developed micro-accounts of encapsulated
laboratory-created phenomena.
« 12 »  Gerd Gigerenzer (1998, 2010) has
noted for years the striking lack of interest in
building theories, or integrating them, with-
in professional psychological research. This
runs counter to practice in such disciplines
as chemistry, biology, and physics. A failure
to set theories beside one another, to run ex-
periments that directly compare their power
to explain behaviour, leaves psychological
studies isolated from one another, with little
to nothing by way of over-arching structure
to explanations. This lack of structure within
our collection of theories, in turn, makes it
next to impossible to draw clear lines of im-
plicature between research conducted and
the base phenomena of everyday behaviour
and mental life.
« 13 »  Martiny’s re-emphasis of Varela’s,
and others,’ exhortations to be open to life as
it is experienced would therefore not be con-
sidered radical at all in other sciences – any
more than relating biological science back to
the animals living in their habitats would be
considered a radical proposal to biologists.
This is, after all, the very stuff of psychology!
That it can be considered radical, and is met
with such distress, or distrust, by psycholo-
gists and other cognitive scientists, is an in-
dication of how carefully we have conspired
to limit our investigations to behaviour that
can be elicited within the blandly empty and
white-painted rooms of university psycho-
logical laboratories.
« 14 »  Following Gibson’s work, Alan
Costall (2017) has recently made the radical
claim that we must do away with psychology
as a discipline altogether, a claim driven by
precisely the kind of openness, and sensitiv-
ity to life, behaviour, and the psyche, that
Varela suggests. He argues that under open-
minded scrutiny, the kind of encapsulated
psychological subject assumed by modern
Western science (and society), simply does
not show up, and interpretations (or scien-
tific disciplines) that depend upon its exis-
tence become problematic.
« 15 »  What, then, do we do? Well, in
the first instance we note that Varela was
not alone in arguing for such an openness
to the world, to phenomena, and phenom-
enology, typically foreclosed upon by psy-
chologists. Enactive theorists have allies
amongst Gibsonians (see, e.g., Chemero
2009; though any such alliance will not be
without its wrinkles; Fultot, Nie & Carello
2016).
« 16 »  Other psychologists have also re-
cently argued for the production of knowl-
edge of the cognitive system, not in the ab-
stract, but in its messy and variegated details,
precisely mirroring the recommendation
of Varela (1999) in his lecture series Ethi-
cal Know-How. The work of psychologists
studying developmental (e.g., Fischer et al.
1993) and individual differences (Mischel
& Shoda 2010), along with those who have
identified fundamental mathematical prob-
lems with the kinds of inferences upon
which a great deal of the extant research
literature depends (Molenaar 2008), has
been used to argue for a “science of the in-
dividual” (Molenaar 2004; Rose, Rouhani &
Fischer 2013; Rose 2016). A recognition of,
and open-eyed grappling with, psychologi-
cal phenomena as textured, dynamic, and
context-dependent.
« 17 »  There exists, at present, a readi-
ness to change the way psychological science
is done. Achieving this requires not only be-
ing open to the phenomena of our science
(as any good science should), but also to the
interdisciplinary coalition of other scientists
with whom we share common, if often un-
acknowledged, ground.
69
Marek McGann completed his doctoral studies
at the University of Sussex, and has since
worked in the Department of Psychology at Mary
Immaculate College ~ University of Limerick.
Received: 13 October 2017
Accepted: 20 October 2017
http://constructivist.info/13/1/059.martiny
 Embodiment, Knowledge-
Generation and
Disciplinary Identity
Allan Køster
Aalborg University, Denmark
akos/at/hum.aau.dk
> Upshot • I welcome the perspective
presented in Martiny’s target article. In
this commentary I push for clarity on
three matters: (a) The concept of embodi-
ment; (b) The status of the type of knowl-
edge generated in the phenomenological
interview; and (c) The notion of openness
in relation to interdisciplinarity and the
disciplinary identity of the cognitive sci-
ences.
Cognitive science Concepts in Enaction
Embodiment
« 1 »  The first issue I wish to address in
my commentary on the target article per-
tains to the concept of embodiment, and the
work we expect this to do for us in specifying
domains of research and appropriate meth-
odologies. The notion of embodiment is cen-
tral to Kristian Martiny’s argument insofar as
he situates his call for a more open cognitive
science through an appropriation of Fran-
cisco Varela’s active notion of “embodying
cognition” (§5). According to Martiny, this
amounts to a pragmatic claim that we should
understand cognition through what has be-
come known as the E-approach in recent
years (cognition as embodied, embedded,
70 extended and enacted).
« 2 »  From the onset, I should make it
clear that I have no substantial disagreement
with this perspective, nor with Martiny’s
ambition of a radicalisation hereof. Quite
on the contrary, I fully endorse an embodied
perspective on cognition. However, as I will
argue, a consistent appropriation of such a
perspective has the unfortunate consequence
of making the term embodiment tricky, at the
very least.
« 3 »  The problem is the tendency in the
cognitive sciences to speak as if embodiment
is something that starts from the neck and
down. This, arguably Cartesian, framing is
reflected in the very terms embodiment and
incorporation, which both allude to the idea
that there is something that is em-bodied or
in-corporated; as if the mind were something
Constructivist Foundations vol. 13, N°1
external to the body – something that may or
may not be embodied (Waldenfels 2000).
« 4 »  From a phenomenological point of
view, this tendency troubles me. I can point
to no experience that, when thought through
consistently, is not grounded in bodily ex-
istence, and I can therefore fully commit to
Friedrich Nietzsche when he tells us: “Body
am I entirely, and nothing else; and soul is
only a word for something [ein Etwas] about
the body” (Nietzsche 1976: 146).
« 5 »  I do not expect Martiny to have
any significant objections to this claim. In
fact, I suspect such intuitions to be part of
his motivation for endorsing a radicalisation
of embodiment. So, what is the problem, one
might ask?
« 6 »  The problem is that if we consist-
ently commit to this idea, we must inevita-
bly face the issue that the term embodiment
is too generic to designate its own specific
cognitive research domain. If all cognitions
are ultimately expressions of, and rooted in,
the structures of our bodily existence, what
do we then add when we speak of embody-
ing cognition? The term body is, in this re-
spect, a “word in excess,” as Jean-Luc Nancy
points out (Nancy 2008: 21). Arguably, this
also goes for the notion of radicalisation: if
human existence is fundamentally bodily,
how does it make sense to grade cognitions
on a scale as more or less embodied? Surely,
the aspectual qualities of body-as-object
(Körper) or body-as-subject (Leib) might
announce themselves to varying degrees in
different experiences – changing the mode of
self-manifestation of the body (Køster 2016,
2017) – but that does not make any of the
experiences more or less em-bodied.
« 7 »  In response to this line of argu-
ment, one might object that while it may
be correct to state this, it only makes sense
within a historical vacuum that disregards
the particular development that has defined
the cognitive sciences since the second half
of the 20th century – with its focus on sym-
bol manipulation, computation, etc. This is,
of course, a valid point, one that not only
pertains to the way research has been done
(confined and controlled experiments), but
also to the particular conceptual and theo-
retical frameworks employed.
« 8 »  However, I will maintain that we
are confounding the issue if we continue
to speak of embodiment as something that
only starts from the neck and down. Strictly
speaking, experiments in the laboratory are
no less bodily than the kind of phenomeno-
logical interview Martiny himself is a propo-
nent of, and the particular human mode for
symbol manipulation should be seen as an-
chored in a capacity of the human body. The
human body is a complex entity susceptible
to various modes of inscription and capable
of various modes of expression, mediating its
constitutive entanglement with the world.
« 9 »  Rather than perpetuating the seg-
regation of cognitions into embodied and
disembodied kinds, I wonder if the time
might not be ripe for simply stating our
bodily existence as a matter of fact, and from
there systematically inquiring how we might
best let the various and complex dimensions
of this phenomenon come to full expression
through our research methodologies? From
this perspective, Martiny’s phenomenologi-
cal interview is not more embodied; rather,
it is more situated, more interactive, it brings
out more constituents, more context – with
all the advantages and pitfalls that this may
entail.
« 10 »  I am aware that this way of ad-
dressing the matter breaks with established
orthodoxy, and may challenge research
identities. Personally, however, I have ex-
perienced the confusion that the notion
of embodiment produces – particularly in
interdisciplinary contexts – and I fear that
the continued talk of embodiment, and the
identification of embodiment with the E-
approach (which problematically includes
embodiment as a constituent), will produce
more problems than clarification. What we
should focus on is how we design the most
adequate research methodologies to address
our bodily existence in its full and rich com-
plexity. This clearly involves, inter alia, no-
tions such as being embedded, extended and
enacted.
The phenomenological interview
« 11 »  In his plea for open and more
situated research methodologies, Martiny
takes up the idea of working with experience
through a second-person perspective and
promotes the idea of the phenomenological
interview. This is an important move, one I
am currently occupied with, and one phe-
nomenology is terribly in need of as a result
of its increasing ambitions to abandon the
 Enaction
strictly philosophical/transcendental focus
and to rather engage with concrete empirical
phenomena such as, e.g., psychopathology,
where the phenomenologist cannot, as such,
be expected to rely on first-person access.
« 12 »  However, it is unclear to me ex-
actly what kind of knowledge it is Martiny
envisions will be generated through his con-
ception of the interviews. Following Varela,
Martiny situates his phenomenological in-
terview within the E-approach to cognition,
and makes it clear that we should not under-
stand the explored experiences as instances
of inner representations, as if they were ob-
jects to which we could retroactively return
(§41). Rather, we are told that the generated
knowledge is something the experiencing
subject pragmatically enacts (ibid), and that
we should therefore talk about the gener-
ated knowledge “at a methodological (en)
active level rather than at a theoretical level”
(§42). This, in turn, is taken to imply that
“the success, efficacy and functionality of
the research depends on how the conducted
method adapts to the situation” (ibid).
« 13 »  Although I am highly enticed
by the prospects of such a perspective on
knowledge as enactive and emerging in
the situation, I must admit that I feel a bit
disorientated as to what this might actually
look like or even mean? What would an ex-
ample of such knowledge production look
like, when resulting from a phenomenologi-
cal interview? And, just as importantly, if it
is in fact radically situated and enacted in a
pragmatic context, how does it generalise to
become relevant outside of the particular
enacted context from which it achieves its
meaning?
« 14 »  My disorientation increases when
I, in a subsequent paragraph, am told that in
the phenomenological interview, we are not
interested in the particular “here and now”
aspects of the interviewees’ first-person ex-
periences, but that the aim of the interview
is to disclose “invariant phenomenological
structures” (§50). These appear to me as two
diverging ambitions: how does the phenom-
enological interview simultaneously succeed
in focussing on enacted experiences within a
situated methodology, and at the same time
manage to draw out something as conclusive
as invariant phenomenological structures?
« 15 »  Although we certainly need more
clarity as to what characterises the kind of
Embodiment, Knowledge-Generation and Disciplinary Identity Allan Køster
pragmatic and enacted knowledge that Mar-
tiny emphasises, I believe, as I will point out
below, that an equally pertinent issue relates
to how we approach the phenomenological
notion of invariant structures when moving
phenomenology into second-person meth-
odologies.
« 16 »  The problem is that although such
prominent contemporary phenomenologists
as Shaun Gallagher and Dan Zahavi (2012)
insist on the notion of structural invariance
as indispensable to phenomenology, there
are very few such structures that are con-
sidered indisputably invariant. Therefore,
it is worthwhile considering in what ways
this notion should be retained when moving
phenomenology into the more “messy” em-
pirical setting, or if it should rather be seen
as a relic of the transcendental/philosophical
aspirations of Husserlian phenomenology?
« 17 »  Personally, I do think there are
important roles for the notion of invariant
structures to play in guiding phenomenolog-
ically oriented interviews, in so far as these
are aimed at exploring pre-reflective dimen-
sions of experience. The reason for this is –
as recognised in both the phenomenologi-
cal tradition as such and the contemporary
micro-phenomenological framework of,
inter alia, Claire Petitmengin (2006) – that
pre-reflective layers of experience do not of-
fer themselves easily to reflection or verbali-
sation. It may therefore be necessary to guide
the interviewee’s attention towards such
structures of experience, in order to assist
her in an elaboration on how they concretely
manifest in her experiential reality. However,
it is not clear to me what would make the re-
verse (and stronger) claim plausible, that we
can arrive at invariant experiential structures
through a phenomenological interview? In
this respect, it is perhaps illustrative of the
problem that the example Martiny points to
is the “embodied nature of cognition” itself
(§50). Surely, second-person methodolo-
gies may illustrate the ontogenetic variants
of how cognition concretely embodies, but
is it also the right medium for arguing that
embodiment is in fact an invariant structure?
Openness and disciplinary identity
« 18 »  The last issue I wish to address is
how the proposed opening of the cognitive
sciences might relate to interdisciplinarity,
and if there potentially is an issue of com-
promising the disciplinary identity of the
cognitive sciences.
« 19 »  From the onset, it should be rec-
ognised that cognitive science is, of course,
a highly interdisciplinary enterprise ranging
across such diverse disciplines as neuro-
science and anthropology. It should also be
recognised that the kind of opening of the
methodologies that Martiny is proposing is
not necessarily new to cognitive psychology.
One could, for example, point to the field of
memory studies, where ideas of bringing the
study of memory outside the lab date back
to at least Ulrich Neisser’s Memory Observed
(Neisser 1982) – though it was also standard
in psychology as such before WWII.
« 20 »  Despite this type of precedence, I
wonder if there are some features of the dis-
cipline of cognitive science that still define it
in opposition to other disciplines, such as a
focus on inner representations, experimen-
tal setups and a somewhat mechanistic point
of view on human cognition? All of these
aspects are challenged in Martiny’s perspec-
tive, and it makes me wonder if his research
perspective might not resonate better with
other disciplines in psychology, such as, e.g.,
sociocultural psychology in the tradition
stemming from Lev Vygotsky and Aleksej
Leontjev, where many of the perspectives
promoted by Martiny are perhaps not new,
but welcomed and accepted. Notions such as
the extended mind, moving research outside
the lab, and the extensive use of interviews
belong to its traditional repertoire.
« 21 »  Is there a reason why Martiny re-
mains committed to the cognitive tradition 71
in spite of his critique of its basic assump-
tions, and if so, what might the assump-
tions be that he still identifies with and sees
as constituting the disciplinary unity of the
field of cognitive science?
Allan Køster is currently a post-doctoral researcher
in the Department of Communication and Psychology,
Aalborg University. He is particularly interested
in researching the pre-reflective dimensions of
human experience as it relates to both ontogeny
and narrative dimensions from a phenomenological
perspective. Currently he is applying these
perspectives to an empirical investigation of the
existential dimensions of grief and bereavement.
Received: 15 October 2017
Accepted: 24 October 2017
http://constructivist.info/13/1/059.martiny
 The Perils of “Open Science”:
How Radical and How Many?
Simon Høffding
University of Copenhagen,
Denmark
simon.hoeffding/at/gmail.com
> Upshot • I ask exactly how “open” we
should be in “opening up cognitive sci-
ence” and how many scientists should
embrace the radical openness Martiny
advocates. I suggest that the most fruit-
ful realization of Martiny’s vision would
consist in the creation of research groups
with a balance between scholars of sin-
gular disciplines and transdisciplinary
cognitive scientists.
Cognitive science Concepts in Enaction
« 1 »  Kristian Martiny’s article aims
to “revitalize Varela’s radical proposal as a
way to continue the conversation of how to
open up the cognitive sciences” (§64). This
aim is consistent with Martiny’s overall ar-
gument, which I endorse a long stretch of
the way.
« 2 »  The aim is consistent with Mar-
tiny’s argument insofar as it is exhortative
rather than analytic. That is to say, though
it does avail an understanding of Francisco
Varela’s work, it first and foremost encour-
ages us to do something, namely to do
cognitive science in a different way. Again,
this is in line with “the performative view”
(Petitmengin & Bitbol 2009), which, in
72 Martiny’s case, I take to be that it is insuf-
ficient for our science to merely understand
something, but that it must be directed at
helping something or someone (§§45f).
« 3 »  It should come as no surprise that
I endorse Martiny’s exhortation. Together,
Martiny and I, with extensive help primar-
ily from Susanne Ravn and Dorothée Le-
grand, but also from Dan Zahavi and Shaun
Gallagher, developed what we called the
“phenomenological interview” (Høffding
& Martiny 2016), one of the open science
methods Martiny uses. Martiny, however,
has gone further than most in opening up
cognitive science. It is rare for a researcher
trained in phenomenology and philosophy
of mind to engage in interview methodolo-
gies, devise interventions for people with
cerebral palsy (CP), help in the design of
Constructivist Foundations vol. 13, N°1
sculptures that reflect the world of living
with CP, stage grand theatre performances,
and advise on and take part in documen-
tary films (Natural Disorder).
« 4 »  Martiny claims that research in-
spired by Varela so far has not been as radi-
cal as he would have wanted it (§65). His
own research practice of “opening up cog-
nitive science” is supposedly in line with
Varela’s radical hopes.
« 5 »  In this commentary, I want to ask
two questions about the feasibility of Mar-
tiny’s radical, open science.
Q1: Just how open should open science
strive to be?
Q2: How many scientists should conduct
open science?
« 6 »  As for Q1, we can identify several
kinds of openness in Martiny’s article:
Methodological openness: being open to oth-
er disciplines and opening the lab with
its ecological constraints to life and art
(§§25–27, 55).
Theoretical openness: Conducting research
whose hypotheses are falsifiable (§1).
Democratic openness: Being open to the pub-
lic and communicating one’s research in
ways that are understood and appreci-
ated by the general public (§§10, 45).
Experiential openness: Allowing lived expe-
rience to enter research facilities. Reflec-
tion and expression as an opening of
pre-reflective experience (§52).
« 7 »  To reiterate, openness here is
not merely a theoretical disposition but a
pragmatic attitude. But can we take this too
far and become “too open”? The classical
example would be that of the anthropolo-
gist who, wishing to “fully” understand an
indigenous tribe, “goes native” and never
comes back to the world of research to
share her results. Openness must be bal-
anced with other academic virtues. For in-
stance, in the context of a phenomenologi-
cal interview, the interviewer must exactly
not identify herself with the interviewee,
but retain a respectful and analytic distance
in order to lift her posterior analysis – what
we have called “tier two” (Høffding & Mar-
tiny 2016: 557) – from the specific and con-
textual to the general and universal.
« 8 »  In spite of the radicality pro-
posed, however, I do not think Martiny
advocates complete openness or getting as
close to experience as possible. Rather, it is
in the interplay, when sufficiently playful I
might add, between the first-, second- and
third-person perspective, that new knowl-
edge can emerge. An example of such a
constructive tension between the three
perspectives can be found in a past ERC
project, TESIS,1 drawing on enactivism
(Ezequiel Di Paolo & Hanne De Jaegher),
phenomenology (Zahavi & Gallagher),
developmental psychology (Vasudevy
Reddy), psychiatry (Thomas Fuchs), and
neuroscience (Vittorio Gallese). In such
collaboration the three perspectives are
instantiated by different people working
together. But Martiny wants to go further:
the individual researcher must be able to
embody all three herself. This leads us to
the second question.
« 9 »  How many researchers are sup-
posed to open themselves to such a degree
as to master the techniques and theories of
all three perspectives? (Q2) Evidently, such
a venture is incredibly demanding. In this
light, my second question mirrors Marti-
ny’s own, namely: “So, why have the cogni-
tive science community neglected Varela’s
radical proposal of embodying cognition?”
(§21). I do not think Martiny gives a clear
answer to this himself, so here is a sug-
gestion, based on my own work trying to
bridge the gap between first- and second-
person methods: It is too demanding!
« 10 »  It is demanding because it pre-
supposes leaving the realm of one’s prac-
ticed methodology and venturing into a
new territory. This takes time, effort and
compromise. For a philosopher of mind,
for instance, it takes time to learn the
methods of interviewing, to find the right
people to interview, to perform the inter-
views, and to transcribe and analyze them.
Doing all of this only gets her back to the
usual theoretical starting point of philoso-
phy of mind, namely that of finding in-
teresting theories, data or experiments to
criticize and develop philosophically (with
a very important difference, of course, that
it is now the philosopher herself who has
1 |  See https://tesisnetwork.wordpress.com/
network

generated the empirical material on which
to do the relevant theory building). It takes
effort to start again as a beginner who per-
forms badly at the outset, to confront col-
leagues in her home field who disapprove
of her approach or scholars in the field she
has ventured into who reproach her for
not being thorough enough. And it takes
compromise, because the knowledge de-
veloped in an interview is different from
that found in a book or an article. From a
philosopher’s perspective it could be said
that working with dynamic, malleable and
contextual knowledge upsets every fiber
in one’s theoretical body, because it dif-
fers from the epistemology of the true vs.
the false, the logical vs. the arbitrary, and
the well-argued vs. the unfounded. It takes
hard work and long argumentations (and
requires a kind of second epoché) to inte-
grate these two sources of knowledge.
« 11 »  But even if demanding, Mar-
tiny’s work shows that following Varela’s
radical proposal is worth the effort. He
has provided an understanding of what it
is like to live with CP and because of his
transdisciplinary and radical openness, he
has designed interventions and established
art forums that improve the conditions for
those living with CP.
« 12 »  Besides the demanding nature
of the endeavor, there is another risk for
Martiny’s radical openness, as it potentially
comes at the expense of monodisciplinary
rigor. It is not possible to perform inter-
views, design interventions and experi-
ments with people with CP, and master the
whole corpus of phenomenological writ-
ings. In order to do good transdisciplinary
work, one must work with, and be trained
by, researchers who fully master their own
disciplines. It can be argued that Martiny’s
work, as well as my own with expert musi-
cians, could not have been done well with-
out mentoring from excellent phenomenol-
ogists such as Zahavi and Søren Overgaard.
« 13 »  What can we conclude from all
of this? Firstly, Martiny’s radical proposal
consists in researchers individually com-
ing to master techniques and theories from
first-, second- and third-person methodolo-
gies, and who employ their research “per-
formatively,” i.e., to benefit those they work
with and society at large. Secondly, Martiny
argues that more people should conduct
Enaction
The Reflective Science of Ethnography William J. Clancey
their work in this way. I believe there are
certain indications that things are mov-
ing in this general direction,2 but I do not
think all researchers in cognitive science
should become so radically open, as this
could jeopardize monodisciplinary rigor.
The practical solution to find this balance
could be the construction of cognitive sci-
ence research centers, where some members
of the research community would work in
accordance with Martiny’s suggestion. Yet
they would collaborate with others with a
monodisciplinary background. An open ex-
change between two such groups would be
of mutual benefit and ensure radically open,
yet theoretically and methodologically rig-
orous research.
Simon Høffding completed his PhD on “A
phenomenology of expert musicianship” in
2015 at the Centre for Subjectivity Research,
University of Copenhagen. Since, he has taken/
is taking up postdoctoral work at the Interactive
Mind Center, University of Aarhus; Department
of Psychology, University of Copenhagen; and
Department of Musicology, University of Oslo.
His research interests include phenomenology,
musicianship, expertise, aesthetic experience,
self-consciousness, bodily consciousness, 4E
cognition, and interdisciplinary methodology.
Received: 13 October 2017
Accepted: 23 October 2017
2 |  Going to conferences such as the recent
“HerbstAkademie” at the University of Heidel-
berg on “Embodied Aesthetics,” http://www.upd.
unibe.ch/research/symposien/HA19, I find an
increasing number of young scholars who from
the perspective of neuropsychology are trying
to bridge into phenomenology and inversely of
philosophers of mind trying to embrace second-
person methods.
The Reflective Science
of Ethnography and Its Role
in Pragmatic Design
William J. Clancey
Florida Institute for Human and
Machine Cognition, USA
wclancey/at/ihmc.us
> Upshot • Analyses of the epistemo-
logical premises of modern ethnography
suggest that “opening up” cognitive sci-
ence is problematic, caught between a
theoretically impossible “translation” of
another world view or culture and revert-
ing to an autobiography. Rather, an eth-
nography might be viewed as a “poetic”
expression of interpersonal experiences,
whose writing is a new experience con-
tributing to ongoing conversations with
ethical value. In particular, one can adopt
an instrumental perspective in which an
ethnography is a tool for engineering de-
sign; thus the “opening” is manifest as
applied science within a design collabo-
ration.
Introduction
« 1 »  Kristian Martiny provides an in-
cisive, constructive analysis of Francisco
Varela’s proposal to embody and open up
cognitive science, illustrated by using the
phenomenological interview; he argues for
an even more radical reflective method.
« 2 »  Martiny’s analysis focuses on neu-
rophenomenology, following Varela (1996: 73
347), which specifically addresses the study
of consciousness:
“ This research programme seeks articulations by
mutual constraints between the field of phenom-
ena revealed by experience and the correlative
field of phenomena established by the cognitive
”
sciences.
« 3 »  Martiny’s thrust throughout and
challenge to the community is to “open up
the cognitive sciences” in general, in accord
with the broader analysis of The Embodied
Mind (Varela, Thompson & Rosch 2016)
and the subsequent initiatives of Thomas
Metzinger and Jennifer Windt (§§2f).
« 4 »  In the broader critique of methods
in cognitive science, the radical proposal is
http://constructivist.info/13/1/059.martiny
 grounded in foundational issues regarding
cognitivism and objectivity (§11), which
were previously encountered in the social
sciences, particularly by anthropologists us-
ing the ethnographic method. Contempo-
raneous use of ethnography in engineering
design provides an alternative perspective
on opening up what we might call “applied
cognitive science.”
Relation of ethnography to
phenomenological interviews
« 5 »  An ethnography, a scientific docu-
ment describing a culture or people, is
typically based on interviews, photographs/
videos, and first-person “participant obser-
vation” in everyday settings. Ethnography is
a fundamental method for studying and ar-
Cognitive science Concepts in Enaction
ticulating the practices of a community, in-
cluding people’s roles, habits, facilities, tools,
clothing, ways of talking, etc. James Sprad-
ley (1980: 26) characterizes the participant
observer as an “explorer […] seeking to de-
scribe a wilderness area, rather than to ‘find’
something.”
« 6 »  The ethnographic approach fits
Martiny’s description of the phenomeno-
logical interview in which “the cognitive
scientist directly encounters another living
subject and therefore first-handedly can
take the lived experience of that subject
seriously” (§7). Like ethnographic obser-
vations, the interviewer considers “tacit,
situated and embodied knowledge” includ-
ing “body language, facial expression, tone
of voice, etc.” (ibid); her approach is “em-
74 pathic and reciprocal” (ibid). The challenge
in studies of consciousness is to “take first
person accounts seriously as valid domain
of phenomena” (Varela 1996: 346). Inso-
far as first-person accounts are inherent in
ethnography, an epistemological critique of
ethnography is relevant to the phenomeno-
logical interview.
« 7 »  As Martiny explains, Varela be-
came aware of the circularity inherent in
first-person accounts because “the study of
mental phenomena is always that of an ex-
periencing person” (Varela 1996: 346). Con-
sequently, cognitive scientists should “reflect
openly” on their “cognitive involvement in
the scientific knowledge processes” (§40).
Hence, Martiny speaks of two subjects (§7),
one of whom is the scientist conducting an
inquiry.
Constructivist Foundations vol. 13, N°1
« 8 »  Varela’s approach is to “cultivate”
this circularity, which means to include “the
experientially lived and embodied aspects”
of cognition (§20) by developing skills such
as “attentive bracketing,” intuition, and
systematic “reflection on the spot” (Varela
1996: 337f). This reflective process creates
“a ‘circulation’ between sciences of the mind
(cognitive science) and human experience”
(Varela, Thompson & Rosch 2016: lxi).
« 9 »  Iterating between experienc-
ing/observing and reflecting is familiar to
anthropologists using the ethnographic
method. However, some researchers have
viewed the process as a form of transla-
tion: “A translation discovers the meanings
in one culture and communicates them in
such a way people of another cultural tradi-
tion can understand them” (Spradley 1980:
161). This claim is undermined by the first-
person circularity because the scientist is
necessarily acting within her own cultural
tradition.
« 10 »  A central theme of Stephen Ty-
ler’s critical analysis in The Unspeakable is
that an ethnography cannot be viewed as
a “translation” of another culture because
textual mapping of world views is incoher-
ent, it conflates meaning and description:
“[E]thnography creates its own objects in
its unfolding and the reader supplies the
rest” (Tyler 1987: 214) (contra Spradley
1980). The alternative of framing the eth-
nography as an autobiography is unaccept-
able, for then the author becomes the focus
of study.
« 11 »  The problem with ethnography
lies in the nature of writing itself and how
the text is viewed. Accordingly, Tyler (1987:
216) prescribes a shift from viewing text as
“data” to using it as a “meditative vehicle.”
Rather than equating an ethnography with
experiences of others or the author (the
text as a mirror of “reality,” an idealized,
context-free and impersonal scientific ac-
count), an ethnography can be viewed as
an evocative expression, whose writing is
a purposeful experience in some ongoing
activity. The collaborative production of
the ethnography within the culture being
studied and its later uses, often within an
academic Western culture, ground the text
within lived experience, “the oral world of
everyday expression and commonsense un-
derstanding” (ibid: 215).
Précis of Tyler’s The Unspeakable
« 12 »  Tyler’s linguistic-philosophical
analysis concerns the “epistemological chal-
lenges that underlie modern anthropology”;
in essence, speaking alienates thought from
action and writing alienates language from
speech (Tyler 1978: 17). Operating then on
their own productions, linguists question
how words are related to things, concepts,
experiences and performances, in analyses
that further “alienate language from the
self ” (ibid). Edmund Husserl’s critique of
the objectivist, idealized conception of sci-
ence and the distance from “lived experi-
ence” (§17) is similar.
« 13 »  The Unspeakable is beautifully
written in a semi-poetic style. However,
Tyler’s pithy encapsulations may appear as
incomprehensible riddles to readers who
do not already understand their theoretical
foundations. For example, Tyler says that
the resolution of the tension between sub-
jectivity and objectivity is expressing “the
subjective creation of ambiguous objectivi-
ties that enable unambiguous subjectivity”
(ibid: 213). The text is deliberately crafted
to be contemplated and interpreted: “Post-
modern ethnography forgoes the tale of the
past as error and denies the myth of the fu-
ture as utopia” (ibid: 215).
« 14 »  Martha Kendall’s (1987) cogent
review of The Unspeakable is helpful for in-
terpreting Tyler and thus may prove useful
for carrying out Varela’s radical proposal.
She emphasizes how ethnography (and de-
scription more generally) is “compromised
and problematic,” because it necessarily
“erases” the involved people, both the indi-
viduals being studied and the observer:
“  It […] adopts a posture of disinterested ob-
servation and description, while at the same
time arguing that human perception is cultur-
ally influenced or culturally determined. Eth-
nography is compromised in that it is grounded
in first-hand experience, yet it cannot be about
that experience. Ethnographies are supposed to
be scientific descriptions, not personal accounts.
This guarantees that ethnographers will not only
erase themselves from their work, but erase as
well any real flesh-and-blood people they en-
countered in the field, substituting in their places
pale abstractions, phoney folk, counterfeit coin of
a fake social realm […including] the Participant-
”
Observer. (ibid: 322)

« 15 »  Even in the physical sciences sci-
entists erase themselves in their reports.
For example, planetary scientists adopt a
third-person stance in Science (Squyres et
al. 2009), describing programmed, robotic
laboratories as “exploring craters” and “ex-
amining outcrops.” Erasing the science
team’s individual contributions and experi-
ences makes the work appear impersonal
and properly “objective” (Clancey 2012).
The scientists are well aware of the limits of
their data and analysis – exploring through
the rover is like “trying to make your way
through a dark cluttered room with nothing
but a flashbulb […]” (Vertesi 2008: 2526).
But published accounts, with the broad
panoramic snapshots of Mars, create a larg-
er-than-life illusion of completeness, just
like ethnographies (Kendall 1987: 322f), as
Tyler describes:
“  Ethnographers project their fragmentary and
incomplete experience of exotic culture onto a
rhetorical form that creates the illusion of a com-
prehensive and coherent whole, and readers, by
prior acquaintance with this form, fill in missing
parts, creating in their imaginations what is not
given but must be there by implications drawn
from the form itself. (Tyler 1987: 95)
« 16 »  The essence of the radical chal-
lenge for scientists is to recognize this eli-
sion in their accounts, hence their subjec-
tive, interest-laden nature. In particular,
the ethnographic study, Working on Mars
(Clancey 2012), relates the scientists’ per-
sonal experience to their scientific meth-
ods. The robotic exploration system enables
a form of virtual presence, in which the
scientists project themselves into the body
of the rover, enabling them to do field sci-
ence on another planet. The scientists’ first-
person experience reveals how the scientific
knowledge of Mars “is an expression of the
relation between our embodied cognition
and the world that it purports to know”
(Thompson 2016: xxvii).
« 17 »  The first step in reframing the role
of ethnographies in science is to appreciate
how they construe a “living dialogue” as a
collection of labeled and organized data.
Tyler explains that a dialogue “appears in
the text only as a means of verisimilitude in
the interest of empirical verification, or as
an object of linguistic analysis.” The actual
Enaction
The Reflective Science of Ethnography William J. Clancey
dialogue is reported not as an interpersonal
experience, but as “‘controlled elicitation’ of
‘evidence’ for the ethnographer’s interpreta-
tion of native categories” (Tyler 1987: 99).
« 18 »  Kendall states the problem and
its “post-modern” resolution – to locate the
production and interpretation of ethnogra-
phies within an ongoing discourse:
“ [An ethnography] is a ‘construction’ of the
world put together largely through discourse
about it, through naming and labeling and talk-
ing about it.[…] [I]n post-modern anthropology,
language – that is, talk – is central. The focus of
post-modern anthropology is the study of human
beings talking. (Kendall 1987: 323, emphasis
added)
« 19 »  Martiny’s interpretation of phe-
nomenological interviews is similar: “ex-
perience is not a thing, an object or static
data to which one can retroactively return”
(§52); “Descriptions should in fact be un-
derstood as a different manifestation of that
very same experience” (ibid); and:
“  one should not consider the interviewees’ de-
scriptions of their experience as static data, but
rather conceive of experience as subject to dy-
namically, open and developing processes and
”
interpretations. (§56)
As summarized more generally by Tyler:
“  [Ethnography] is not a record of experience at
all; it is the means of experience. That experience
became experience only in the writing of the eth-
nography. Before that it was only a disconnected
array of chance happenings. No experience pre-
ceded the ethnography. The experience was the
ethnography. Experience is no more an object in-
dependent of the ethnography than all the others
”
– behavior, meanings, texts, and so on. (Tyler
1987: 215)
« 20 »  In §27, Martiny, following Va-
rela (1999), consequently advocates “col-
laboration between cognitive science and
contemplative traditions (e.g., Buddhism),”
which fits viewing ethnographic writing
as a “method of mindfulness meditation”
(§§25f). Tyler, like Varela, stresses that this
perspective seeks an ethical inquiry of hu-
man experience. The ethnography is “coop-
eratively evolved,” intended “to provoke an
aesthetic integration that will have a thera-
peutic effect. It is in a word, poetry […]”
(Tyler 1987: 202). The ethical call is to treat
the subjective, first-person aspect openly, as
part of the factual story, making it part of
the interaction:
“  The critical function of ethnography de-
rives from the fact that it makes its own contex-
tual grounding part of the question and not from
hawking pictures of alternative ways of life as
instruments of utopian reform.[…] I call ethnog-
raphy a meditative vehicle because we come to it
not as a map of knowledge nor as a guide to ac-
tion, nor even for entertainment. We come to it as
the start of a different kind of journey. (ibid: 216,
emphasis added)
« 21 »  Martiny characterizes the inter-
action of the two subjects, interviewer and
interviewee, as co-generating knowledge
(§7). For Kendall, this means that the eth-
nography is a conversation with the native
people, “not the ‘report’ of an ‘observer.’”
And “no one’s version of the tale [is] privi-
leged over other versions.” In essence, this
means treating the ethnography with an in-
tegrity that is both more scientific and mor-
al, facilitating an activity with “a genuine
concern” for other people (Kendall 1987:
324).
Relating science and experience
in practical design projects
« 22 »  Tyler’s analysis of modern eth-
nography was framed within the rubric of
basic science, studying a culture for its own 75
sake. In contrast, over the past 30 years,
ethnography in “workplace studies” (e.g.,
Dourish & Button 1998) provides a scien-
tific grounding to the design of work sys-
tems (e.g., roles, procedures, facilities, and
especially computer tools). In particular,
ethnography informs computer simula-
tions of work practices, enabling a feedback
“circulation” between the scientific models
and experience – an iteration of imagining,
designing, making, experimenting (collect-
ing data), analyzing, reflecting, and reimag-
ining (Clancey et al. 2008). Scientists and
engineers pursue a “participatory design”
approach with the people they seek to help,
co-developing an ethnical transformation
of their roles and practices, which Rosch
(2016: xlviii) characterizes as “mutual par-
http://constructivist.info/13/1/059.martiny
 ticipatory sense-making.” A similar method
has been used to relate instructional theo-
ries and practices (Clancey 2011).
« 23 »  Donald Schön’s (1987) pioneering
study of “the reflective practitioner” demon-
strates a similar “circulation,” stressing the
role and relation of imagination, intuition,
talk, and play in an empirical, embodied
design practice. The inherent circularity of
first-person reports (including ethnogra-
phy) is embraced in an iterative “represent–
act–represent–act…” feedback process of
invention – the dynamic interplay between
changing the perceivable world and mental
experiences (Bamberger & Schön 1983).
« 24 »  In conclusion, the issues relating
the observer and the phenomena of inter-
est raised in Tyler’s critique and the general
Cognitive science Concepts in Enaction
analysis of cognitive science in the Embod-
ied Mind, appear less problematic when
scientific methods of observation, measur-
ing, and modeling are placed in the context
of a pragmatic, iterative design project that
adopts a reflective, participatory approach,
opening up the relation between the scientif-
ic study of the work practice and role-play-
ing experiences (“empirical requirements
analysis,” Clancey et al. 2011). In particular,
interviews and ethnography more generally
in multidisciplinary projects are embedded
in the workplaces, schools, hospitals, etc.
that researchers seek to improve, such that
the reflective circulation between work
and inquiry accomplishes a “direct, hands-
on, pragmatic approach to experience with
which to complement science” (Varela,
76 Thompson & Rosch 2016: lxiv) and thus ef-
fectuates a “radical” methodology.
William J. Clancey (Computer Science PhD Stanford;
Mathematical Sciences BA Rice) is a senior research
scientist at the Florida Institute for Human and
Machine Cognition. His research has related cognitive
and social science in the study of work practices
and the design of agent systems at the Institute
for Research on Learning and as Chief Scientist of
Human-Centered Computing, NASA Ames. He is a
Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science,
the Association for the Advancement of Artificial
Intelligence, National Academy of Inventors, and
American College of Medical Informatics.
Received: 18 October 2017
Accepted: 23 October 2017
Constructivist Foundations vol. 13, N°1
On Embodying Decision-
Making and the
Endless Circularity of
Understanding the Mind
Toma Strle
University of Ljubljana, Slovenia
toma.strle/at/pef.uni-lj.si
> Upshot • To provide an illustration of
some of the author’s theses, I firstly dis-
cuss contemporary accounts of embod-
ied decision-making. I argue that they
do not endorse the embodied cognition
thesis in its essential (or radical) scope
and thus cannot provide a meaningful
account of decision-making. Secondly, I
briefly discuss researchers’ intrinsic em-
beddedness in their scientific culture
and life-world and the associated in-
separability of the subject and the world.
I end the essay with a question pertain-
ing to the seemingly endless circularity
of knowledge emergence in cognitive
science which, arguably, entails that
we cannot reveal the “invariants of the
mind.”
« 1 »  In theoretical as well as empiri-
cal accounts of the mind, one cannot but
notice the growing trend of discussing and
researching cognition as embodied, embed-
ded, extended and/or enacted (the 4Es; see
Vörös, Froese & Riegler 2016). But this, as
Kristian Martiny rightfully claims in his
target article (in §16, for instance), does not
mean that the thesis of embodied cognition
and the consequences it entails – at least as
it was spelled out by Francisco Varela, Evan
Thompson and Eleanor Rosch in The Em-
bodied Mind (1991) – are taken into account
in their full and essential scope.
« 2 »  This holds especially for the pro-
fessed third-person sciences (such as neu-
roscience or behavioural sciences) that ad-
vocate the embodied nature of cognition.
There, one often “discovers” phenomena,
claimed to be embodied in this or the other
way, that are “embedded” in, conceptualised
and researched from the perspective of the
cognitivist (i.e., representationalist) frame-
work (see e.g., Varela, Thompson & Rosch
1991: 134f). These so-called “embodied”
approaches conceptualize the researched
phenomena as objects, existing somewhere
in a pregiven world, independent of the
observer, of social and cultural practices
and devoid of values (of individuals or re-
searchers), experience and first-person(al)
perspective (see also Strle 2013, 2016a). As
such, these approaches essentially cannot
be called embodied cognition (enaction)
proper (or, said to be embodying cognition,
as Martiny puts it) and considered to be in
any way (radically) transforming cognitive
science, for they linger in the cosy grounds
of the tradition (see also Vörös & Gaitsch
2016 for a similar claim).
« 3 »  A good example is decision-mak-
ing research, where more and more scientists
– with good intention, of course – are trying
to “embody” decision-making. They claim,
for instance, that the brain’s sensorimotor
regions are crucial for perceptual decision-
making (e.g., Filimon et al. 2013); attempt
to understand bidirectional influences be-
tween actions and decisions (e.g., Lepora
& Pezzulo 2015); advocate the importance
of studying real-time decisions of animals
in interaction with their environment (e.g.,
Cisek & Pastor-Bernier 2014); or argue, for
instance, for so-called embodied econom-
ics (e.g., Oullier & Basso 2010). Moreover,
since most studies of decision-making are
carried out in labs and use extremely sim-
ple “choice” tasks, some are beginning to
show concern for the ecological validity of
such studies (e.g., Camerer & Mobbs 2017)
– however, without any reflection on the
traditionally accepted presuppositions and
methodological practices of third-person
research they endorse.
« 4 »  Notwithstanding the efforts to
overcome the traditional assumptions and
directions in decision-making research,
none of the above-mentioned studies and
approaches, even though most could be put
under the umbrella of one or some of the
4Es in the “weak” sense, take the thesis of
embodied cognition seriously enough, or
consider – even though some do refer to
it (e.g., Oullier & Basso 2010) – embodied
cognition in the enactive sense of Varela,
Thompson & Rosch (1991).
« 5 »  Although one can identify many
“points of departure” from the enactive
understanding of cognition in the so-
called embodied accounts of decision-

making, I will first and foremost discuss
their ignorance of the experiential and the
consequences it entails and second, their
unawareness of their own intrinsic embed-
dedness in a specific (third-person, in this
case) scientific culture.
« 6 »  Quite typically, the “weak” em-
bodied accounts of decision-making do
not focus any research energy on the ex-
periential and first-person aspects of deci-
sion-making – an essential methodologi-
cal as well as epistemic step for any proper
embodied account of decision-making
(furthermore, they also do not even touch
upon the “double nature” of embodiment).
Accordingly, they do not have any insight
into what meaning (decision) situations,
if any, have for decision-makers. They do
not, for instance, know whether a situa-
tion is understood as a decision situation
by the alleged decision-makers (deemed as
such by researchers) in the first place; how
alternatives are understood and created by
the agents; what subjective consequences (if
any) a decision situation entails for decision-
makers or how subjective consequences and
their importance are “evaluated”; how deci-
sions are interwoven with decision-makers’
goals, values and their interactions with
their environment, etc. How – if at all –
situations and decisions are constituted and
created by and for the agents is quite beyond
such approaches (see Strle 2016a for a more
detailed account and critique of the “weak”
embodied accounts of decision-making).
Thus, the purportedly embodied accounts
of decision-making provide a rather shal-
low and possibly a false account of decision-
making. Allow me to illustrate some of the
claims by means of an example.
« 7 »  Imagine a person walking towards
a coffee house, sitting down, browsing the
menu for some time and, when the op-
portunity arises, ordering a cup of coffee.
From the perspective of the third-person
accounts of decision-making (non-embod-
ied and embodied), the person obviously
went through a decision-making process
(e.g., looking at what the menu has to of-
fer) and made a decision (e.g., ordering a
cup of her favourite brand of coffee). But
this might not be the case at all – at least
from the (experiential) perspective of the
purportedly deciding subject. She might
just be looking at the menu to conform to
Enaction
Embodying Decision-Making Toma Strle
social rituals of being in a coffee house and
might be, when pretending to browse the
menu, actually thinking about something
else entirely and not considering any op-
tions after all. Furthermore, it could be that
her “decision” to order a cup of coffee was
not a decision at all, for she always orders
a cappuccino and thus simply follows her
habit: no decision-making to be “found” in
this case. On the other hand, we can imag-
ine the same situation but a different person
who has just “decided” to start leading a
healthier lifestyle. Although she dislikes the
potential consequences such a “decision”
entails, she yields to her friends’ conviction
that unhealthy habits need to be changed.
When in the coffee house, she furiously
struggles in her mind whether she should
order the juice with cream she so likes or
the healthier, but to her not-so-tasty, green
tea – possibly quite a difficult decision for
that specific person in that specific (social)
situation, full of anxiety, elaborate delibera-
tions about the alternatives and subjective
consequences, reflections on her own goals
and values, etc.
« 8 »  How a “purely” third-person ac-
count of decision-making could even differ-
entiate between the two radically different
ways of decision-making is quite unclear.
Admittedly, the example is simplified and
only representative of rather “simple” deci-
sions (at least from a third-person perspec-
tive), but nonetheless indicates that deci-
sion-making cannot be understood without
taking into account the experienced sense
and meaning a subject brings forth into a
situation that essentially emerges out of the
interaction of the subject and the world. As
such, decision-making, as any other cogni-
tive “phenomenon,” cannot be understood,
at least not in any meaningful way, from the
sole perspective and methodological tools
of objectivistic sciences.
« 9 »  The phenomenological study of
decision-making of parents of infants in in-
tensive care by Michael van Manen (2014),
on the other hand, is, to my knowledge, one
of the few studies of decision-making that
takes the thesis of embodied cognition fur-
ther than most other embodied accounts of
decision-making (and towards Martiny’s
more radical proposal, as described in
§§44–46, for instance). And, although van
Manen does not speak of decision-making
as embodied, he allowed ordinary persons,
with their specific values, cultural back-
grounds and experience, to co-generate
knowledge about decision-making. Among
other findings, he could, by pursuing a phe-
nomenological take on decision-making,
show that the way parents experienced and
interpreted “decision” situations – in which
they had to “decide” between trying a very
risky procedure that could leave their in-
fants severely disabled and terminating
the life-support on which they depended
– strongly determined whether the situa-
tion was even understood as a situation that
affords decision-making. That is, for some
parents, the presented situation was not un-
derstood (and felt) as a decision situation at
all. A conclusion that could not have been
reached by any third-person – embodied or
not – account of decision-making.
« 10 »  All in all, the “weak” approaches
to embodied decision-making and cogni-
tion in general – not valuing the lived expe-
rience, not questioning their observational
and objectivistic premises and not taking
and working with any but the third-person
perspective (§9) – thus do not by any means
endorse any stronger and essential commit-
ments of the embodied (enacted) view of
cognition.
« 11 »  Let me elaborate on the second
point of this essay, pertaining to the essen-
tial commitments of embodied cognition.
The “weak” embodied accounts of cogni-
tion (and decision-making), of which most
endorse the traditional presupposition of
third-person sciences, do make inferences 77
about the subjective matters of the mind.
But one should note that such inferences
are not objective third-person inferences,
as free from first-person content as most
third-person scientists would like to have it.
That is, they cannot be claimed to be “third-
person,” for they are made by persons,
trained in specific ways of doing science
and accustomed to accept specific presup-
positions about, and conceptualisations of,
the mind. Moreover, first-person content of
such inferences emerges from the life-world
(see §20 and §21, for instance) in which re-
searchers (as any other person) are intrinsi-
cally embedded (e.g., from their everyday
experience and “naïve” theories they have
about the mind or decision-making). As
Varela nicely expresses the point:
http://constructivist.info/13/1/059.martiny
 “  [T]he usual opposition of first-person vs.
third-person accounts is misleading. It makes us
forget that so-called third-person, objective ac-
counts are done by a community of concrete peo-
ple who are embodied in their social and natural
1996: 340)
”
world as much as first-person accounts. (Varela
« 12 »  What is problematic is that this
double-natured embeddedness (in a scien-
tific culture and life-world) of inferring has
remained unreflected and not researched in
cognitive science. But if we are to radically
embody cognitive science, as Martiny ar-
gues (e.g., in §§9, 11, 20, 66), we cannot stop
at systematic research of experience or at
uncovering correlations with third-person
accounts of mental phenomena, the “mild”
Cognitive science Concepts in Enaction
neurophenomenology promises (see Petit-
mengin 2017 for the distinction between
light or mild and deep or radical neurophe-
nomenology). What is required, is (system-
atic) reflection upon and research (see, e.g.,
Kordeš 2016 and Petitmengin 2017) into our
own theoretical stance(s), presuppositions
and practices (whatever they are: third-,
first- or second-person). Namely, theories,
research and findings are structured around
and constituted by presuppositions, prac-
tices and values of the research community
and the life-world we are embedded in.
« 13 »  If we do not try to understand
and research how our own practices, values
and viewpoints bear upon the findings and
conclusions we draw from our research, and
if we do not try to understand how the world
78 we inhabit bears upon the very practices,
values and viewpoints we passionately de-
fend, we cannot understand (or claim to be
endorsing) the full scope of the circularity
that is intrinsic to any research and under-
standing of the mind (and, possibly of the
enactive view of cognitive science). As is suc-
cinctly put forth by Maurice Merleau-Ponty
towards the end of his Phenomenology of
Perception:
“  The world is inseparable from the subject, but
from a subject who is nothing but a project of the
world; and the subject is inseparable from the
”
world, but from a world that it itself projects.
(Merleau-Ponty 2012: 454)
« 14 »  The hard question of course is,
whether endorsing such a seemingly end-
Constructivist Foundations vol. 13, N°1
less circularity of knowledge emergence
means that we, in the end, cannot reveal
“invariants of the mind” (see also Strle
2016b). For instance, “invariant phenom-
enological structures, such as that of the
embodied nature of cognition” (§50) that
Varela (1996) seems to hope for (but see
Petitmengin 2017) in his neurophenom-
enological programme. And, would we not,
by presupposing that such invariants do, in
fact, “exist to be discovered,” end up behav-
ing in a similar way to the way third-person
sciences do?
« 15 »  What is more, is it not that cogni-
tive science is, in fact, about “variant enti-
ties of the mind” that, to use the language
of Ian Hacking (quoted from Brinkmann
2005), change according to the classifica-
tions, descriptions and actions pertaining
to them? That is, are not “entities” that cog-
nitive science tries to understand actually
much more “fluid” and “unstable” than we
would want to admit, possibly ever chang-
ing according to how we approach them? I
am not sure whether the author is willing to
endorse such a radical opening up of cog-
nitive science and it would be interesting to
hear what he thinks about the possibility of
such an endless “looping” of understanding
the mind that has been, in somewhat differ-
ent words, already described by Varela in,
for instance, his 1984 article “The Creative
Circle: Sketches on the Natural History of
Circularity.”
« 16 »  Admittedly, even though the in-
trinsic circularity of trying to understand
the mind, the world and their relation is,
arguably, unavoidable, and awareness of it
possibly necessitates a kind of existential
uncertainty, we should not try to escape
from it by remaining in the “safe” grounds
of third-person sciences or, nowadays, in
“mild” neurophenomenology. For, only by
allowing uncertainties to remain a part of
our life-world, can we, in fact, claim to be
opening up cognitive science and, to quote
Varela, allow for ethics to be “the very foun-
dation of knowledge, and also its final point”
(Varela 1984: 323).
« 17 »  All said, I strongly sympathise
with Martiny’s call for opening up cognitive
science. His take on what it means to be an
embodied cognitive scientist is, in my view, a
welcome illumination and critique of cogni-
tive science.
Toma Strle is a philosopher, cognitive scientist, and
assistant professor at the University of Ljubljana.
He holds a bachelor’s degree in philosophy and a
doctorate in philosophy and cognitive science (he
did his PhD on the topic of the role of metacognition
in decision-making). His main research interests
include decision-making, metacognition,
consciousness and the relation between first- and
third-person approaches to studying the mind.
Received: 7 October 2017
Accepted: 12 October 2017
Varela on the Pragmatic
Dimension of Phenomenology
Andrea Pace Giannotta
University of Florence, Italy
andreapacegiannotta/at/gmail.com
> Upshot • I examine Varela’s relation-
ship with Husserl’s phenomenology,
highlighting Varela’s acknowledgment
of the pragmatic dimension of its phe-
nomenological reduction. I argue that
Varela sees, in some developments of
phenomenology, a deconstruction of the
subject-object duality and an embodied
view of the mind. I also highlight the
existential dimension of Varela’s radical
proposal, which contributes to further
opening up and embodying cognitive
science.
« 1 »  Kristian Martiny’s target article
successfully shows how to “open up” and
“embody” the cognitive sciences. Draw-
ing on his research on cerebral palsy, Mar-
tiny argues that the cognitive scientist must
question the objectivist and observational
premises that are present in most of the clas-
sical cognitive sciences, by working simul-
taneously with first-, second- and third-per-
son approaches and by the rethinking of the
concept of what a laboratory is by, e.g., en-
gaging with subjects in the everyday world
and working with audio-visual media and
theatre. Martiny argues that these strategies
for opening up the cognitive sciences were
first introduced by Francisco Varela more
than 25 years ago, with his radical proposal
of an enactive approach to cognitive science
 Enaction
Varela on the Pragmatic Dimension of Phenomenology Andrea Pace Giannotta
and the subsequent development of neu-
rophenomenology and the second-person
method.
« 2 »  I consider Martiny’s development
of Varela’s project effective and fruitful.
However, I will focus my commentary on
an aspect that is only briefly touched upon
by Martiny: the relationship between Va-
rela’s proposal and Edmund Husserl’s phe-
nomenology, especially in §§17–19. Here,
Martiny takes up Varela’s opinion that Hus-
serl’s phenomenology lacks a pragmatic di-
mension, without investigating Varela’s later
comments to the contrary. In addition, I
would like to highlight a further, existential
dimension of Varela’s radical proposal that is
not mentioned in Martiny’s article, one that
contributes to further opening up and em-
bodying cognitive science.
« 3 »  According to Martiny, a crucial
aspect of Varela’s radical proposal consists
in embodying cognition, in contrast to the
disembodying aspects of classical cognitive
science. In §17ff., Martiny parallels these
disembodying aspects with similar ones
that are present in Husserl’s phenomenol-
ogy and that are criticized by Varela, Evan
Thompson, and Eleanor Rosch (VTR) in
The Embodied Mind (EM; Varela, Thompson
& Rosch 1991). Notwithstanding the fact
that Husserl’s phenomenology is an essential
source of inspiration for the development of
the enactive proposal of EM, VTR argue
that, in the end, it was “entirely theoretical”
and that it “completely lacked any pragmatic
dimension” (ibid: 19). Martiny stresses this
firm judgment, which sees in Husserl’s phe-
nomenology an example of “disembodying
philosophical practice” (§21). However, I
would like to point out the fact that the rela-
tionship between Varela and Husserl’s phe-
nomenology is more complex than what can
be seen in these passages. This is an aspect
of Varela’s proposal that is easily overlooked
but is important in order to understand the
development of Varela’s view and the enac-
tive approach as originally formulated in
EM. The issue is: in what way does phe-
nomenology lack a pragmatic dimension
for VTR? In addition: why do VTR contrast
phenomenology with the living pragmatics
of mindfulness/awareness meditation in the
Buddhist tradition?
« 4 »  Martiny claims that the criticisms
addressed by VTR to Husserl concern not
“what” he described but “how” he did it
(§18). VTR acknowledge the fact that, espe-
cially in The Crisis of European Sciences and
Transcendental Phenomenology (Husserl
1970), Husserl acknowledged the practical
and lived aspects of experience by devel-
oping the notion of “life-world,” but he did
so in a purely theoretical way, developing a
disembodied reflection on the embodiment
of the mind. However, if we look at the de-
velopment of both Varela’s and Thompson’s
philosophies after EM, we become aware
that the criticism that they had in mind
concerned not only the “how” but also the
“what” of the phenomenological analysis
of experience. These authors thought that,
apart from some elements in Husserl’s later
works such as the notion of life-world, most
of the phenomenological analyses present us
with an abstract and disembodied concep-
tion of subjectivity. In the words of Thomp-
son:
“ In The Embodied Mind, we asserted (i) that
Husserl was a methodological solipsist (p. 16);
(ii) that his theory ignored ‘both the consensual
aspect and the direct embodied aspect of experi-
ence’ (p. 17); (iii) that his theory of intentionality
was a representational theory (p. 68); (iv) that his
theory of the life-world was reductionistic and
representationalist (that he tried to analyze the
life-world ‘into a more fundamental set of con-
stituents’ (p. 117) consisting of belief understood
as mental representations (p. 18)); and (v) that his
phenomenology was a purely abstract, theoreti-
cal project lacking a pragmatic dimension (p. 19,
”
117). (Thompson 2007: 413)
Thompson devotes appendix A of his Mind
in Life (Thompson 2007: 413–416) to ex-
plaining in detail his “change of attitude” to-
ward Husserlian phenomenology. Thomp-
son claims that “our earlier interpretation
of Husserl was mistaken” (Thompson 2007:
413) and that:
“ Husserlian phenomenology has far more re-
sources than we realized for productive cross-
fertilization with both the sciences of mind […]
and Buddhist thought […]. In particular, I now
believe (i) that Husserl was not a methodological
solipsist; (ii) that he was greatly concerned with
the intersubjective and embodied aspects of expe-
rience; (iii) that his theory of intentionality was
not a representational theory; and (iv) that his
theory of the life-world was not reductionistic and
”
representationalist. (Thompson 2007: 413f)
« 5 »  Thompson details the reasons why
he and the other authors of EM were mis-
taken, admitting that, when they wrote EM,
their knowledge of Husserl was limited and
that they were misled by Martin Heidegger’s
“largely uncharitable […] reading of Hus-
serl” (Thompson 2007: 414) and by Hubert
Dreyfus’s influential interpretation of Hus-
serl as a “representationalist and proto-
cognitivist philosopher” (Thompson 2007:
414).1
« 6 »  This reappraisal had already been
made by Varela, whose reference to Husserl’s
phenomenology became more and more
central after the publication of EM. Martiny
(§31) acknowledges that the subsequent de-
velopment of neurophenomenology (Varela
1996) and the second-person method (Vare-
la & Shear 1999) are essentially based on the
phenomenological analysis of experience. In
contrast to the hasty dismissal of Husserl’s
project in EM, considered a “failure” (Varela,
Thompson & Rosch 1991: 19), Varela (1996)
considers the method of neurophenomenol-
ogy to be in accordance with the phenom-
enological method. I would like to stress the
fact that this reappraisal concerns both the
theoretical and pragmatic dimensions of
phenomenology. Varela takes the concept
of phenomenological reduction (PhR, ibid:
336) and places it at the core of his neu-
rophenomenology. We should note that the
PhR has been pointed out by Husserl’s crit-
ics as being responsible for the abstract and
disembodied nature of phenomenological
79
investigations. The typical example of this
kind of criticism can be found in Heidegger
(1992: 109ff.). Varela, on the contrary, sees
in the PhR the “how” of the phenomenolog-
ical inquiry, which has significant theoreti-
cal and pragmatic implications.
« 7 »  Varela likens PhR to mindfulness/
awareness meditation (Varela 1996: 331,
346), which constitutes the “living pragmat-
ics” that lies at the basis of the enactive ap-
proach of EM. Varela considers the PhR to
be a “capacity for becoming aware” (ibid:
341), through which one can shift from the
1 |  These claims are reiterated by Thompson
in his introduction to the revised edition of EM
(Thompson 2016).
http://constructivist.info/13/1/059.martiny
 natural, ordinary attitude of everyday life
to a new, phenomenological attitude that
looks at the same ordinary experience in a
reflexive way. The method of PhR allows us
to investigate the nature and the structural
invariants of mental processes, by changing
the unexamined experiences of the natural
attitude into reflexive ones (ibid: 336). The
ensuing phenomenological descriptions
constitute an “‘embodiment’ that incarnates
and shapes what we experience” (ibid: 337).
So conceived, the method of PhR is very
similar to mindfulness/awareness medita-
tion. This is a method for examining ex-
perience by becoming present with one’s
mind (Varela, Thompson & Rosch 1991:
23). Through mindfulness/awareness the
meditator can interrupt the ordinary state of
Cognitive science Concepts in Enaction
unmindfulness, cutting the chain of habitual
thought patterns and preconceptions (ibid:
27), in order to become acquainted with her
experience and to examine the nature of
both cognition and the objects of cognition.
« 8 »  Varela considers the PhR a skill
and a discipline that requires sustained
training and that must be cultivated (Varela
1996: 346). He also complains about the lack
of pragmatic elaboration of the phenomeno-
logical method, whose potentialities for the
investigation of the mind are yet to be fully
utilized. Martiny (§31ff) shows well the sub-
sequent successful applications of Varela’s
proposal made by him and his followers
to open up and embody cognitive science.
However, I would like to stress the fact that
these developments and applications are
80 based on a pragmatic dimension that Varela
sees as already present in the phenomeno-
logical method.
« 9 »  Furthermore, Varela points out
some aspects of Husserl’s phenomenol-
ogy that call into question the idea that it
amounts to an abstract and disembodied
view of subjectivity. Such a view would be
based on a hypostatization of the duality
between the cognizing subject and the cog-
nized object. On the contrary, according to
Varela,
“  [PhR] does not sustain the basic subject-ob-
ject duality but opens into a field of phenomena
where it becomes less and less obvious how to dis-
tinguish between subject and object (this is what
Husserl called the ‘fundamental correlation’).
(Varela 1996: 339).
” all phenomena, both subjective and objec-
Constructivist Foundations vol. 13, N°1
« 10 »  Varela clearly sees that a certain
line of development of Husserl’s phenom-
enology is the foundation of an embodied
view of the mind, which converges with
and complements the enactive approach.
In Pace Giannotta (2016) I have argued for
this convergence and complementarity be-
tween Varelian enactivism and Husserlian
phenomenology, especially in its genetic
development. In particular, the genetic
analysis of the intentionality of the mind re-
veals a primordial process of co-constitution
of subject and object in reciprocal depend-
ence. This notion converges with that of co-
dependent arising that is at the heart of the
enactive approach of EM (Varela, Thomp-
son & Rosch 1991: 110ff, 220ff).
« 11 »  This way of understanding Hus-
serl’s phenomenological project allows us
to disclose its embodied aspect. As argued
by Rudolf Bernet (2013), the investigation
of the living and lived body as flesh, which
is developed by phenomenologists such as
Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Emmanuel Levi-
nas and Michel Henry, is first introduced
by Husserl himself in his analysis of bodily
consciousness (especially in Husserl 1989).
Claire Petitmengin also highlights the con-
tinuity between Varela’s neurophenomenol-
ogy and Husserl’s genetic phenomenology
(Petitmengin 2017: 146), arguing that both
investigate the “process of co-constitution”
(ibid:142) of the “objective and subjec-
tive poles […] within lived experience”
(ibid:141).
« 12 »  However, having stressed the
continuity between the theoretical and
pragmatic aspects of both Varela’s proposal
and phenomenology, we can detect an im-
portant difference between Husserl’s phe-
nomenology, including its most “embodied”
developments, and the pragmatics of mind-
fulness/awareness meditation that plays
such an important role in Varela’s view. I
would like to refer to it as the existential di-
mension of Varela’s radical proposal. A large
part of EM is devoted to describing how the
practice of mindfulness/awareness leads the
meditator to acknowledge the emptiness of
the notion of a substantial, permanent and
independent reality of both the self and the
world. In its stead, the meditator becomes
acquainted with the impermanent nature of
tive, and their co-dependent origination.
The pragmatics of mindfulness/aware-
ness meditation embodies these theoreti-
cal achievements in a lived experience and
a practice that is cultivated and shared by
a vast community of practitioners. The
pragmatic and existential implications of
this practice are stressed by VTR: it allows
the meditator to progressively free him-
self from the existential suffering (dukkha)
that characterizes the human condition on
many levels. This condition derives from
the “grasping” attitude of the mind, which
is naturally inclined to conceive of phenom-
ena as permanent and substantial. In his
turn, the meditator sees the groundlessness
and the emptiness of the notion of a sub-
stantial reality of all phenomena as a source
of freedom, joy, and compassion (Varela,
Thompson & Rosch 1991: 122f, 248). VTR
point out the profound implications that
the pragmatics of mindfulness/awareness
meditation has on the life of practitioners
and of the transformative potential that it
can have on Western societies and culture at
large. I would like to highlight this aspect of
the enactive approach of EM and of Varela’s
proposal, because it is often overlooked in
subsequent discussions of “enactivism.” It
is an “existential” dimension that addresses
the fundamental issue of the meaning of the
human condition.2
« 13 »  Concerning this existential ques-
tion, Husserl’s phenomenology does not
appear on the surface to have much to say.
Notwithstanding this, its deconstruction of
the subject-object duality is consistent with
the notions of selflessness and co-depend-
ent arising. This applies also to some impli-
cations of the cognitive sciences that point
toward the fragmentation or disunity of
the self (Varela, Thompson & Rosch 1991:
48ff) and of some strands of Western phi-
losophy, such as Hume’s deconstruction of
the notion of a substantial self (ibid: 59ff).
However, according to VTR, in these views
there is also at play a refusal to confront the
existential implications of the discovery of
selflessness. On the contrary, the pragmat-
ics of mindfulness/awareness meditation
2 |  The central role of this existential aspect
in Varela’s work is highlighted by Bitbol and Elena
Antonova (2016: 356), Bitbol (2017: 151), Petit-
mengin (2017: 146), and Sebastjan Vörös (2017:
150).

consists in facing this discovery in order to
find within it the source of existential trans-
formation.
« 14 »  At the same time, these existen-
tial implications have repercussions on a
theoretical level, loosening the “grasping at-
titude” that is at the basis of the search for an
absolute metaphysical ground beyond the
all-pervasive impermanence and emptiness
of phenomena. Michel Bitbol (2008, 2012)
refers to this crucial aspect of Varela’s view
as the “Varelian” or “neurophenomenologi-
cal” stance.3 This stance leads us to dissolve
the so-called “hard problem” of conscious-
ness (Chalmers 1995), by dismantling the
foundationalist attitude that gives rise to it
(see Bitbol & Antonova 2016: 355, Vörös
2014: 104) and by experiencing the dis-
solution of the subject-object duality (Pe-
titmengin 2017: 145). In my opinion, this
existential stance is a crucial component of
Varela’s radical proposal and constitutes a
further dimension of its way of embodying
and opening up cognitive science.
Andrea Pace Giannotta obtained his PhD in Philosophy
from the University of Florence in 2016. His main topics
of investigation encompass phenomenology, philosophy
of mind and philosophy of perception. His research
focuses on genetic phenomenology, 4E cognition,
neurophenomenology and phenomenal intentionality.
Received: 21 October 2017
Accepted: 25 October 2017
3 |  The Varelian stance also leads us to high-
light the anti-foundationalist and anti-metaphys-
ical orientation of the original enactive approach
of EM, in contrast to some contemporary forms
of “domesticated enactivism” (Vörös, Froese &
Riegler 2016: 198) that are characterized by a
“shift towards realism” (ibid: 194).
Enaction
On the Second-Person Method Susanne Ravn
On the Second-Person
Method: Considering
the Diversity and Modes
of Subjects’s Descriptions
Susanne Ravn
University of Southern Denmark,
Denmark
sravn/at/health.sdu.dk
> Upshot • Varela’s description of how
first-, second- and third-person posi-
tions are inserted in a network of so-
cial exchange forms a central ground
for using a second-person position as
a mediator in a phenomenological ex-
ploration of lived experiences. Based on
Martiny’s arguments that we should
expand the notion of the lab, I suggest
that the fundamental circularity of the
scientist and the first-person experienc-
es investigated needs to be considered
in an extended form when involving a
second-person method taking place in
the conditions of the world of everyday
life.
« 1 »  Kristian Martiny’s target article
about ways to conduct cognitive science
does not only present a very welcome over-
view of Francisco Varela’s proposals on how
to open up and develop the way in which
cognitive science is performed. He also, in
the second part of the article, argues for
how to use interviews – or “second-per-
son methods” to generate descriptions of
experiences as lived. As my own research
is based in the interdisciplinary field(s)
of combining short-term ethnographical
fieldwork/qualitative research methodolo-
gies with phenomenological analysis, in the
following, I will primarily focus on outlin-
ing interdisciplinary considerations related
to the latter part of Martiny’s article. Draw-
ing on the manner in which first-, second-
and third-person positions are described
as inserted in a network of social exchange
– and change – in Varela and Jonathan
Shear’s article (1999), I will specifically fo-
cus on how the use of the second-person
position constructively mediates explora-
tions of the circulation that unfold between
first- and third-person descriptions of phe-
nomena. I will argue that if the purpose of
a second-person method is to contribute
to the promotion of new and sustainable
forms of collaboration (as claimed in §1),
the fundamental circularity of the scientist
and the investigation of lived experience
need to be considered in an extended form
that:
ƒƒ involves methodological considerations
on how the samples of the “cases” (the
subject’s experiences of a phenomenon/
class of phenomenon) are selected and
how relational conditions of the inter-
view situation are handled;
ƒƒ clarifies the different communicative
modes that can be at play when opening
up the lab to involve the lived experi-
ences of subjects in a direct and/or per-
formative way.
« 2 »  Firstly, Martiny presents an infor-
mative account of how Francisco Varela,
Evan Thompson and Elanor Rosch (VTR)
(1991) find it necessary to go back to the
particularity of experiences as embodied
and lived by the subject. Subsequently, he
argues for the necessity of expanding the
notion of the lab and involving explorations
of phenomena as they unfold in and as part
of the world of everyday life. In that sense,
Varela’s insistence on including thorough
exploration of first-person methodolo-
gies in cognitive sciences is aimed at being
radically extended by involving the second-
person method of interviewing. Pursuing
this aim, Martiny, however briefly, makes a
reference to Bent Flyvbjerg’s work. Without
embarking on a further description of Flyv- 81
berg’s methodological discussions, it seems
fair to ask for considerations of the strate-
gies of the enquiry when dealing with “the
detailed examination of a single example
(or case) of a class of phenomena” (Flyvb-
jerg 2011: 301). Flyvbjerg very explicitly
connects the characteristics of the design of
such a study to how the different types of
design influence the way results of analysis
can be interpreted and contribute to general
theoretical knowledge. Absolutely central to
his work, and of specific relevance for the
ambition of combining the second-person
method with phenomenological analysis, is
that Flyvbjerg presents four different strat-
egies related to the information-oriented
selection of cases (all quotes are from Fly-
vbjerg 2011: 307):
http://constructivist.info/13/1/059.martiny
 ƒƒ Paradigmatic cases – which are specifi-
cally selected to develop “a metaphor or
establish a school” for the phenomenon
that the case concerns;
ƒƒ Critical cases – which are specifically
selected “to achieve information that
permits logical deductions of the type
‘if this is (not) valid for this case, then it
applies to all (no) cases’”;
ƒƒ Maximum variation cases – which are
selected to “obtain information about
the significance of various circumstanc-
es” as related to and defining the case;
ƒƒ Extreme or deviant cases – which are
selected to obtain descriptions of cases
that are specifically unusual or spe-
cifically good in a more closely defined
sense. These cases are often intended to
Cognitive science Concepts in Enaction
challenge the limits of existing theories.
« 3 »  The lived experiences of subjects
are thereby, as cases of lived experience,
placed from the onset among a diversity of
lived experiences of the phenomenon un-
der investigation. Accordingly, drawing on
Flyvbjerg’s considerations on the case-study
design, a subject living with, for example,
cerebral palsy (CP) is not ipso facto to be
considered a paradigmatic case of what
it means to live with CP, but rather to be
thoroughly considered, in a methodological
sense, a case among other cases of CP.
« 4 »  If we want to follow Martiny and
take Varela’s work outside the lab and en-
gage with subjects in the world of every-
day life, we need to acknowledge that the
epistemological necessity of understanding
82 the fundamental circularity of conducting
cognitive science demands considerations
that reach beyond the interactions unfold-
ing in the interview situation. With refer-
ence to Flyvberg’s work, I find it essential to
remember that the circularity of knowledge
generation is also to be recognised as form-
ing part of a wider circularity of how cases
become identified as cases in the world of
everyday life. In accordance with Varela and
Shear (1999), Martiny (§§49–55) specifi-
cally emphasises that the interviewees’ de-
scriptions unfold in the dynamic conditions
of the interview and that the validation
should be considered an intersubjective
practice. Considerations on the authority of
the researcher and the role that the author-
ity inevitably plays in the interview situa-
tion are, however, not touched upon. The
Constructivist Foundations vol. 13, N°1
interviewer’s skillset as a social mediator
(§59) is undoubtedly important to how the
interviewees revisit and partly relive their
experiences, but if we want to understand
thoroughly the complexities of how the cir-
cularity unfolds in a second person-method
of interviewing, we also need to consider
the framing of the interview as constituting
a research interview. Such considerations
would, in more concrete terms, include
reflections on which words and concepts
come into use during the interview – es-
pecially who presents central concepts and
themes and on which premises these are
presented (e.g., Ravn & Hansen 2013; He &
Ravn 2017). In other words, the social di-
mension of this fundamental circularity is
to be more actively considered. Concretely,
the second-person position of the research-
er demands further methodological con-
siderations aside the active preparation of
being able to take the role of “a coach or a
midwife” empathically resonating the inter-
viewee’s experiences (Varela & Shear 1999:
10).
« 5 »  Until now, such considerations
have been surprisingly absent not only in
Varela and Shear’s descriptions of how the
interviewer, from a second-person position,
interprets the “traces and manifestations of
mental life” of the interviewee (Varela &
Shear 1999: 10) and in Martiny’s article,
but also in related articles specifically argu-
ing for using the qualitative interview for
phenomenological analysis (e.g., Gallagher
& Francesconi 2012; Høffding & Martiny
2016). While understanding the fundamen-
tal importance of Varela’s clarifications of
the mediating possibility of the second-per-
son position, I suggest that socially related
conditions should be given further consid-
eration in the continuous ambition of open-
ing up cognitive sciences.
« 6 »  Martiny presents different proj-
ects in which he has actively worked with
the conditions that constitute the lab. I have
the deepest respect for his wide engage-
ment, and not least competence to engage
across different academic and artistic fields.
Few dare and are able to deal with the meth-
odological risk such projects demand. That
said, I am also a bit sceptical about how the
manifestations of lived experiences are – so
to say – put into performance in the proj-
ects presented.
« 7 »  I have no doubt of the relevance
and importance of exploring and possi-
bly constructively changing people’s atti-
tudes to physical disability (like CP) in the
world of everyday life through the project
of a theatre performance. However, it is not
clear to me how the theatre performance,
which focuses on presenting a life with CP,
relates to the interests of cognitive science?
As the project is presented, however briefly,
the staging of CP and the questionnaires to
the audience seem rather to be related to
the domains of cultural analyses and social
sciences. For example, analyses concerning
stigmatisation (e.g., Goffman 1986) and our
pragmatic way of living our lives as story-
tellers (e.g., Bruner 1990).
« 8 »  More importantly, however, open-
ing up the lab to include theatre perform-
ances demands thorough considerations
of the relation between the descriptions of
experiences as presented during interviews
and the manifestation of experiences per-
formed on a stage. A theatre performance in
which CP is orchestrated in the conditions
of the theatre is hardly “just” to be consid-
ered another manifestation of the very same
experience – as is explicitly discussed with
reference to Zahavi in §52. The theatre per-
formance does not “just” present a differ-
ent manifestation of the same experience.
Rather, in the process of creating a per-
formance, the descriptions of lived experi-
ences become transformed so that they can
be communicated in the specific conditions
of the theatre. In that sense, the presenta-
tion of lived experience changes modus.
This kind of interdisciplinary cooperation
specifically demands us to present a clearer
understanding of the difference between
descriptions generated in the condition of
the interview versus the processed version
of the interview used for communicating
the descriptions as a result.
« 9 »  Varela opened the door to con-
structively connecting cognitive science to
first-person methodologies. In the first part
of The Embodied Mind, VTR argue that even
the most hard-core biologist would have to
admit that there are many ways in which the
world is “depending on the structure of the
being involved and the kind of distinction it
is being able to make” (1991: 9). In order to
engage in second-person methods outside
the lab we are required to expand our meth-

odological understanding of how to handle
the diversity of lived experiences not only
across biological species, but also across
physical, cultural and social conditions.
Presenting an enactive phenomenology in
the latter part of the book, VTR specifically
point out that perception also contributes
to the enactment of the surrounding world
(ibid: 172–175). Our experiences of colour
and smell are not passive mappings of ex-
ternal features, but present a “creative form
of enacting significance on the basis of the
animal’s embodied history” (ibid: 175). To
involve second-person methods outside the
lab forces us to take this aspect of Varela’s
description of the enactive approach more
actively into consideration when dealing
with the complexity of intersubjective vali-
dation. As indicated in this commentary
on Martiny’s article, we are methodologi-
cally challenged to re-investigate how we
may bring first- and second-person posi-
tions into active dialogue when generating
descriptions – a challenge first pointed out,
and constructively clarified in, the work of
Varela.
Susanne Ravn is an associate professor and
head of the research unit, Movement, Culture
and Society, at the Department of Sports Science
and Biomechanics at the University of Southern
Denmark. In her research, she critically explores
the embodied insights of different movement
practices and actively deals with the interdisciplinary
challenges of employing phenomenological
thinking in the analysis of these practices.
Received: 16 October 2017
Accepted: 27 October 2017
Enaction
Author’s Response Kristian Moltke Martiny
Author’s Response
Degrees of Openness,
Embodiment, Circularity,
and Invariance
Kristian Moltke Martiny
> Upshot • I clarify Varela’s radical pro-
posal by discussing different degrees of
“openness,” “embodiment,” “circularity”
and “invariance.” In doing so, the aim is
to further describe and exemplify how
his proposal is indeed radical.
« 1 »  First of all, I would like to thank
all the commentators for their productive
contributions and suggestions, as well as
their critical questions and clarifications of
how to understand and potentially develop
Francisco Varela’s radical proposal. It is the
variety of these fruitful commentaries that
makes it possible to further clarify three
key issues of my target article, i.e., questions
concerning “radical openness,” degrees of
embodiment, and the level of circularity and
invariance in the phenomenological inter-
view framework.
Openness: Why and how?
« 2 »  The first issue I would like to ad-
dress concerns the reason why there is a
need for “radical openness” in cognitive
science, and whether this openness is radi-
cal at all. Marek McGann highlights that my
re-emphasis of openness in terms of Varela’s
radical proposal resonates within current
psychological science, where a “loud” and a
“quiet” form of crisis is said to exist (§3). The
former refers to a crisis of reliability in the
research practice, which exists due to per-
verse incentives structures (§§1–5, 7). This
crisis is, however, so loud that it goes beyond
psychological science and echoes within sci-
ence in general (see Martiny, Pedersen &
Birkegaard 2016). The quieter crisis pertains
to the validity of psychological science and
its theoretical foundation and attitude (§§4,
6, 8). As McGann emphasizes, this quiet crisis
is not new, since it has been raised on several
occasions throughout the history of psycho-
logical science (§9).
« 3 »  The point McGann makes is that
the (current, practice-oriented) loud and
(historical, theory-oriented) quiet crises
are interrelated, since the theories we use
are a product of our practice (§10). This is
the same point made by Varela (1996: 346f),
who states that we cannot deal with the
theoretical issues of cognitive science (quiet
crisis) if we do not deal with the practical is-
sues (loud crisis), but that the reverse rela-
tion applies as well. I argue that to do so, we
need to radically (re)open cognitive science,
as proposed by Varela.
« 4 »  McGann, by contrast, points out
that Varela’s proposal is not as radical as I
claim. With regard to, for example, a plea
for “opening up the lab” in cognitive science,
ecological psychologists, Gibsonians (§11),
scholars coming from biological science
(§§12f), many current psychologists (§16),
and enactive theorists (§15) would not find
this radical or new. This point is also made
by Allan Køster (§§19f).
« 5 »  Whether a proposal is radical de-
pends, of course, on what you compare it
to. Varela would be much more radical if
compared to a traditional cognitivist than
if compared to an ecological psychologist,
Gibsonian, or enactive theorist. That being
said, however, I still find Varela’s proposal
radical, even when compared to the latter
three. This relates to what openness means
for how we do cognitive science and thereby
connects to Simon Høffding’s commentary.
The first question (Q1) he raises is: how
open should (cognitive) science strive to
be? More specifically, can this openness go
too far and compromise academic virtues
(§7) and theoretical monodisciplinary rigor
(§§12f)? 83
« 6 »  I agree with Høffding’s surmise that
I do not opt for complete openness (§8),
which comes at the expense of academic
and theoretical rigor. I also agree with him
that I understand radical openness as the
interplay between the first-, second-, and
third- person perspective (ibid). In rela-
tion to this interplay, Høffding asks a second
question (Q2): how many scientists should
conduct open (cognitive) science and open
themselves to master the techniques and
theories of all three perspectives? Høffding
takes my position to be that individual re-
searchers should be able to take up the three
perspectives by themselves, which he takes
to be too demanding (§§9f, 13), although he
recognizes that it’s worth the effort (§11). In-
stead, Høffding presents a practical solution
http://constructivist.info/13/1/059.martiny
 of developing fruitful collaborations (§8)
and research communities where members
work with a balanced exchange between the
radical proposal and theoretically mono-
disciplinary and methodologically rigorous
research (§13).
« 7 »  I endorse many aspects of this
practical solution, but I do not find it radical
enough. There are three reasons for that:
« 8 »  First, my proposal, which I also
take to be Varela’s, is not that the cognitive
scientist should individually be able to per-
form and master the methods and research
practices of all three positions. That would
be too demanding. Open cognitive science
should be seen as a collaborative effort, as
it is continuously presented by Varela in his
works and by the pragmatic fact that, in do-
Cognitive science Concepts in Enaction
ing his research, he was constantly collabo-
rating with scholars from other disciplines
such as philosophers Evan Thompson and
Natalie Depraz, and psychologist Eleanor
Rosch, and Pierre Vermersch (to name only
a few). To be able to collaborate openly, the
cognitive scientist should strive to take up
the first-, second- and third-person posi-
tion, which is about taking on a specific
open attitude and being able to see your
research from the three positions when col-
laboratively doing your research.
« 9 »  Second, the individual cognitive
scientist should take on such an open at-
titude and strive to take up all three posi-
tions, because the proposal requires a radi-
cal form of disciplinary collaboration. This
form is open in the sense that it goes beyond
84 monodisciplinarity and multidisciplinarity,
where the collaboration is within one scien-
tific discipline or where different scientists
do not take up one another’s positions, but
keep their own disciplinary perspectives.
However, it is also open beyond interdisci-
plinary collaboration, where scientists take
up one another’s positions to cut across
the disciplinary boundaries, but they do
so within the narrow confines of academia.
The aim should be to open up science so
as to include transdisciplinary collabora-
tion, which would transcend disciplines
and academia to engage other disciplinary
scientists as well as, for example, citizens,
therapists and practitioners of meditation.
It is, in short, a call for radically opening up
academia to lived experience and everyday
life.
Constructivist Foundations vol. 13, N°1
« 10 »  Finally, the reason why this radi-
cal openness appears to be too demanding
is precisely because the current research
culture promotes opposing incentives struc-
tures (loud crisis). It is too demanding to
take up the three positions and engage in
transdisciplinary collaboration if the end
goal is publications (“publish or perish”), or
it is too demanding, as Høffding describes, if
you find yourself within a research culture
that does not acknowledge and promote
such openness (§10). This means that Vare-
la’s radical proposal is not neglected, because
it is too demanding per se, but because it is
too demanding within the current scientific
culture. As Varela stated, to follow his pro-
posal means to pay a heavy price, because it
necessitates that, in addition to altering its
incentive structures, we should also adjust
the scientific community itself (Varela 1996:
346f).
« 11 »  It is for these three reasons that
I find Varela’s proposal radical, even if we
compare it to ecological psychologists, Gib-
sonians or enactive theorists. To clarify this
further, I am reluctant to understand the
proposal as applied cognitive science, as
suggested by William Clancey (§4). I want to
refrain from using this concept on account
of its being heavily “connotation-laden.”
Typically, applied science is used in opposi-
tion to basic science, where the applied form
is seen as an approach for practical prob-
lem solving and not in-depth theoretical
research. This is different from what Varela
is proposing, since his aim was to promote
both basic/theoretical and practical/prag-
matic research, and not either/or. This is not
to say that examples of practical design proj-
ects that Clancey presents (§§22–24) could
not be good cases of how to conduct such
radical research.
« 12 »  To also address Køster’s (§18) and
McGann’s (§§14f) worry, we should not go,
as already stated, for complete openness.
The idea is not anti-disciplinary in the sense
of trying to dissolve cognitive science alto-
gether. We are still doing science. So, to reply
to Køster’s question as to what assumptions
I see then “as constituting the disciplinary
unity of the field of cognitive science” (§21),
I will repeat what I take to be the radical pro-
posal’s three main assumptions:
ƒƒ to value lived experience and work with
performative conditions;
ƒƒ to question objectivist and observa-
tional premises to engage with cognitive
subjects; and
ƒƒ to work with first-, second-, and third-
person positions in one’s research.
Embodiment: What and how?
« 13 »  The second issue of this response
concerns the concept of “embodiment.”
Køster problematizes my use of embodi-
ment in describing the radical proposal
(§2), because if we fully commit to the idea
of embodied cognition, then it must be ac-
knowledged that all cognition is bodily ex-
perienced and there should not be a specific
research domain in cognitive science labeled
as “embodied” (§6). Hence, Køster thinks it
makes little sense to talk about radicalization
and degrees of embodiment in cognitive sci-
ence, as if something is more or less embod-
ied. He therefore proposes that we drop the
talk of embodiment, as it opens more prob-
lems than clarifications.
« 14 »  I find Køster’s suggestion of doing
away with the concept of “embodiment” too
extreme. This is not because I do not agree
with Køster’s (phenomenologically inspired)
claim that all cognition is embodied, but be-
cause there are different ways of understand-
ing how cognition is embodied and different
ways of implementing this understanding
into how we do research. For example,
Adrian Alsmith and Frédérique Vignemont
distinguish between a “weak” and a “strong”
account of embodied cognition. Weak em-
bodiment is understood as (neural) repre-
sentations of the body, whereas in strong em-
bodiment the (non-neural) body is taken to
play a significant role (Alsmith & Vignemont
2012: 3). Shaun Gallagher has recently de-
scribed accounts that operate with different
degrees of strong embodiment and they can
be seen as embodied in a functionalist, bio-
logical and enactivist sense (Gallagher 2017:
chapter 2). In the strongest enactive sense,
we are talking precisely about “radical em-
bodiment,” as presented by Thompson and
Varela (2001).
« 15 »  From this it follows that one as-
pect that determines whether one’s account
is more or less embodied is relegated to the
theoretical level: the concept of “embodi-
ment” spans different levels, from neural
representations to enactive bodily experi-
ence. In his commentary, Toma Strle fruitfully

shows how a specific theoretical understand-
ing of embodiment influences the degree to
which the scientist embodies her research
practice. He gives a concrete example of
how a “weak” embodied account defines
contemporary embodied decision-making
research (§2ff). This means that the research
in question still operates within an objectiv-
ist, cognitivist and representationalist frame-
work and is carried out in labs using only the
third-person perspective. In a radical sense,
this is not what is meant by embodiment and
how we should embody our research.
« 16 »  Køster, by contrast, points out that
experiments in the lab should not be seen
as being less embodied than the phenom-
enological interview (§8). I fully agree with
Køster’s point at the theoretical (“what”) level,
but I am arguing at the pragmatic level of
how to embody your research. This concerns,
as Strle (§12) frames it, whether and how you
reflect on your own embodied and embed-
ded circularity and on the implications this
has for your “own theoretical stance(s), pre-
suppositions, and practices (whatever they
are: third-, first-, or second-person).” As both
Strle (§§11–13) and I highlight, this is not to
say that one of the three positions is more or
less embodied, because all of the positions
are carried out in a social embedded com-
munity of embodied persons (Varela 1996:
340; Depraz, Varela & Vermersch 2003: 80).
The question is how one works with this em-
bodied point of departure in one’s research,
which, as Strle also points out in §12, is a way
to differentiate between a “mild” and “radi-
cal” neurophenomenology.
« 17 »  A last aspect that determines the
degree to which your research can be seen
as more or less embodied concerns Andrea
Pace Giannotta’s commentary. Pace Giannotta
takes issue with my claim, inspired by Va-
rela, Thompson & Rosch’s (1991) The Em-
bodied Mind (EM), that Edmund Husserl’s
phenomenology lacks a pragmatic dimen-
sion (§2). He claims that, in EM, the critique
of Husserl was both theoretical (pertaining
to “what”) and pragmatic (pertaining to
“how”), and not just the latter, as I argue.
This means that in EM Husserl is seen as
“completely” lacking any pragmatic dimen-
sion (§3) and that his concept of “life-world,”
for example, presents us with an abstract
and disembodied conception of subjectiv-
ity (§4). Drawing on Thompson’s change of
Enaction
Author’s Response Kristian Moltke Martiny
attitude towards Husserl’s phenomenology
(§§4f), Pace Giannotta points out that Varela’s
attitude towards Husserl also changed when
he was developing his method of neurophe-
nomenology. Here, Husserl’s phenomenolo-
gy, especially his method of phenomenolog-
ical reduction (PhR), is seen as having both
a theoretical and a pragmatic dimension.
« 18 »  I agree that Husserl’s influence
on Varela’s radical proposal is more complex
than what I have presented, since I did not go
into great depth with this. I also accept that I
have presented a somewhat biased interpre-
tation of Husserl in EM. My understanding
of Husserl’s phenomenology is highly influ-
enced by Dan Zahavi rather than by, for ex-
ample, Martin Heidegger and Hubert Drey-
fus. This means that, contrary to EM, I do
not see Husserl’s phenomenology as “com-
pletely” lacking any pragmatic dimension. I
take Husserl to describe subjectivity as both
embodied and pragmatic at the theoretical
(“what”) level. However, I still maintain that
Husserl’s phenomenology, to an important
degree, lacks a pragmatic dimension and is
therefore disembodied. This has to do with
how Husserl performed his phenomenol-
ogy. Although Pace Giannotta argues that the
PhR can be understood as living pragmat-
ics (§7), it is still a first-person method for
a phenomenologist, scientist or meditative
practitioner to become aware of her own
mind. This method is embodied, but to a
lesser degree than the radical proposal I am
submitting, because it does not include the
second- and third-persons positions in how
the research is performed. To reiterate, my
point is that for an approach to be radically
embodied the method should include both
the first-, second- and third-person posi-
tions at both the theoretical (“what”) and the
pragmatic (“how”) level of research.
The interview: Circularity and
invariance
« 19 »  I argue that one way to open up
(Husserlian) phenomenology and embody
it in cognitive science is by using the phe-
nomenological interview. This concerns the
third and last issue of this response. When
discussing the case of using the phenom-
enological interview to “open up the lab” via
theater performance, Susanna Ravn (§7) and
Køster (§20) question whether this is in line
with the interests of cognitive science and
whether the radical methodology would
not fit better within other sciences such as
sociocultural or cognitive psychology, and
cultural analyses and social science.
« 20 »  Based on the brief description I
gave about how to embody the research of
cognitive science by opening up the lab, I
fully understand the doubts about how the
phenomenological interview and present-
ing a life of cerebral palsy (CP) in a theater
performance could make sense in cognitive
science. To further elaborate on the theater
experiment, the aim was not to use the phe-
nomenological interview to understand the
experiences of living with CP and then to
portray it on stage, as Ravn (§8) thinks. If
that were the case, I would agree with her
that communicating the experiences of liv-
ing with CP on stage would be very different
from the experience of living with CP. The
aim was, in fact, to use the phenomenologi-
cal interview to understand the audiences’
attitudes towards and experiences of the
person with CP on stage. The reason why
this is interesting for cognitive science is
first of all that the concept and discussions
of “attitudes” towards persons with physi-
cal disabilities is a significant part of social
cognitive science. The second reason is that
the transdisciplinary approach we used does
not include “only” first- and second-person
methods such as questionnaires and phe-
nomenological interviews, but also third-
person behavioral and implicit measures
such as implicit association tests. It is in this
way that I see the experiment as relevant for
cognitive science and as a way to embody 85
research.
« 21 »  This ties in to a misunderstanding
in almost all commentaries, i.e., a tendency
to overlook that I am presenting a radical
and transdisciplinary method that integrates
both first-, second- and third-person per-
spectives in an attempt to establish collabo-
ration with people outside academia. I am
not presenting a re-invention of first- and
second-person methodologies, through the
combination of, for example, phenomenol-
ogy and ethnography. In other words, the
third-person position and methodology
of (cognitive) neuroscience plays a crucial
part in my work, as it does in Varela’s radi-
cal proposal more generally. Being critical of
observational and objectivist approaches to
cognition is in no way meant to disregard the
http://constructivist.info/13/1/059.martiny
 third-person position, but instead to reframe
it within a more open and embodied frame-
work that includes first- and second-person
methodologies.
« 22 »  That being said, the commentar-
ies offer a great deal of constructive criticism
on how to work with the phenomenological
interview within a first- and second-person
methodology. One such general criticism
is that I have not presented and considered
the fundamental circularity of being a cogni-
tive scientist in its full extent. If the radical
method is embodied, enacted and embed-
ded through our fundamental circularity it
requires methodological considerations of:
ƒƒ strategies of designing the interview
(e.g., case selection), the authority of the
researcher and the role this plays, and the
Cognitive science Concepts in Enaction
words and concepts used (Ravn §§2, 4);
ƒƒ the existential implications and dimen-
sions of practicing the method (Pace Gi-
annotta, §§12–14);
ƒƒ the epistemological problems of the sci-
entist being confined by her own cultural
traditions (Clancey, §§5–21); and
ƒƒ the use of the conception of “invari-
ant structures,” to draw generalizations
outside the particular embodied context
(Strle §§14–16 and Køster §§13–17).
« 23 »  In Høffding & Martiny (2016),
we try to consider many of these worries,
although we do not address the role of au-
thority in the interview or the importance of
the existential dimension, which I agree are
areas that should be further developed. We
do, however, address challenges of concep-
86 tualizations, of “invariant structures” and of
using cases to understand the worldview of
persons with CP or expert musicians. So, let
me both repeat and elaborate further on the
considerations we present, within the radi-
cal framework that I am proposing here.
« 24 »  In Høffding & Martiny (2016),
the idea was to present the framework for
how to integrate phenomenology and quali-
tative research methodology. The conceptu-
alizations we therefore use before perform-
ing the interview and afterwards (in coding
the descriptions and analyzing them) come
from phenomenology. This philosophical
tradition has a long history of developing
descriptive and analytic conceptualizations
of experience, which is where we find our
conceptual and theoretical inspiration. This
does not mean that we use phenomenologi-
Constructivist Foundations vol. 13, N°1
cal concepts such as “motor intentionality”
or “pre-reflective experience” in the inter-
view, since that would make no sense for
the interviewees. We do, however, let these
concepts guide our thematic structuring
and design of the interview (as Køster also
emphasizes in §17), in a way similar to what
Gallagher called “front-loading phenom-
enology” in relation to the use of phenom-
enological concepts in experiments (Galla-
gher & Sørensen 2006).
« 25 »  The way we balance this theoreti-
cal and conceptual point of departure with
the aim of understanding the interviewees’
worldview in a case-study of, for example,
CP is by understanding the research pro-
cess as an open and dynamic co-creation of
knowledge. To understand the interview as
such is also the way in which Clancey deals
with the epistemological challenges of un-
derstanding both the particular and general-
ized knowledge aspects of the interview. He
describes it as an interpersonal living dia-
logue (§§17–21) or, in the words of Rosch,
as a “mutual participatory sense-making”
(§22). The way this open co-creation is con-
cretely understood in Høffding & Martiny
(2016) is by dividing the research process up
into two tiers that dynamically interact. The
first tier represents the interview and the sec-
ond tier the phenomenological analysis.
« 26 »  We use the phenomenological
interview (first tier) to take a point of depar-
ture in the first-person perspectives of, for
example, persons living with CP, where the
thematic focus is on pre-reflective dimen-
sions of experiencing bodily control. How-
ever, to address Køster’s worries in §17, the
aim of the interview is not to find a “hid-
den” pre-reflective and invariant dimension.
This is one of the areas where our approach
differs from the microphenomenological
interview endorsed by Claire Petitmengin,
Vermersch and Michel Bitbol. Rather, the
aim is to get clear and detailed descriptions
of first-person particular experiences, which
is done through a second-person method of
co-generation.
« 27 »  Ravn highlights that such an ap-
proach would not be able to give an under-
standing of what it means to live with CP,
since it is not a paradigmatic case of the
phenomenon of living with CP, but just one
case among other cases of CP (§3). I would
agree with that if we only looked at the case
from a second-person position of qualitative
science. However, if we look at it from the
interplay of first-, second- and third-person
positions within phenomenology, qualita-
tive science, and neuroscience, it is possible
to generalize more broadly about living with
CP. This takes us to tier two of the phenom-
enological interview, which is where Høffd-
ing and I consider invariant structures to be
relevant.
« 28 »  The reason for using phenomeno-
logical conceptualization relates to an impor-
tant point made by Maurice Merleau-Ponty,
namely that we will never understand what
the experiential difference is between living
with and without a pathology (e.g., CP), if we
do not have an experiential frame of refer-
ence (see Martiny 2015b for a discussion). If
we look at the problem from a third-person
position, we need a “baseline” or a “clinical
diagnosis.” Yet, when it comes to experience,
this frame of reference cannot be a differen-
tial and biomedical method where we look
at normal/abnormal differences, functions
and deficiencies in the experiences. Being
phenomenologically grounded, we do not
operate with such “objectivist” terminology.
In contrast, we use the idea of “invariant
structures” as a “frame of reference” for ex-
periences. This is, for example, also how the
“examination of anomalous self-experience”
(EASE) framework operates within clinical
work on schizophrenia (Parnas et al. 2005).
« 29 »  This means that, in tier two, we
code and analyze first-person descriptions
in relation to phenomenological “invariant
structures.” In contrast to using the method
of transcendental eidetic variation, the aim
is still to be able to keep particularities when
looking at the research from a first-person
position. To do so, we use the empirically in-
formed phenomenological method of “fac-
tual variation” (Froese & Gallagher 2010:
86) with the ambition of being able to look
at the descriptions from both first-, second-
and third-person positions (see Høffding &
Martiny 2016, and Ravn & Høffding 2017
for a discussion of the two variation meth-
ods). This means that we can talk about dif-
ferent degrees of variations, and the ambi-
tion is not to go “completely transcendental,”
but to use conceptualizations of invariant
structures at the transcendental level to un-
derstand invariant structures at the factual
level of living with CP.

« 30 »  So, my answer to Strle’s final ques-
tion (§15), of whether the aim of cognitive
science is not to work with a variant, fluid
and unstable mind, is that it is not a ques-
tion of either or. The method I am propos-
ing is radical also in its complexity, which
means that we should be able to work with
Combined References
Alsmith A. J. T. & de Vignemont F. (2012)
Embodying the mind and representing the
body. Review of Philosophy and Psychology
3(1): 1–13.
Bamberger J. & Schön D. A. (1983) Learning as
reflective conversation with materials: Notes
from work in progress. Art Education 36:
68–73.
Barker R. G. (1968) Ecological psychology: Con-
cepts and methods for studying the environ-
ment of human behavior. Stanford University
Press, Stanford.
Becchio C., Sartori L. & Castiello U. (2010) To-
ward you: The social side of actions. Current
Directions in Psychological Science 19(3):
183–188.
Berkovich-Ohana A. (2017) Radical neuro-
phenomenology: We cannot solve the
problems using the same kind of thinking
we used when we created them. Con-
structivist Foundations 12(2): 156–159.
▶︎ http://constructivist.info/12/2/156
Bernet R. (2013) The body as a “legitimate natu-
ralization of consciousness”. Royal Institute of
Philosophy Supplement 72: 43–65.
Bitbol M. (2008) Is consciousness pri-
mary? NeuroQuantology 6(1): 53–71.
▶︎ http://cepa.info/2261
Bitbol M. (2012) Neurophenomenology, an
ongoing practice of/in consciousness.
Constructivist Foundations 7(3): 165–73.
▶︎ http://constructivist.info/7/3/165
Bitbol M. (2017) Phenoneurology. Con-
structivist Foundations 12(2): 150–153.
▶︎ http://constructivist.info/12/2/150
Bitbol M. & Antonova E. (2016) On the too often
overlooked radicality of neurophenomenol-
ogy. Constructivist Foundations 11(2): 354–
356. ▶︎ http://constructivist.info/11/2/354
Bouter L. M. (2015) Commentary: Perverse
incentives or rotten apples? Accountability
in Research 22(3): 148–161.
Enaction
Combined References Kristian Moltke Martiny
both the mind as conditioned by invariant
“closed” structures and with variant “open-
ness” and particularity flourishing within
these structures. This is not to conduct sci-
ence in a third-person way, as Strle questions
(§14), but, as I see it, precisely to work with
the mind through the interplay of the first-,
Brinkmann S. (2005) Human kinds and looping
effects in psychology. Theory & Psychology
15(6): 769–791.
Brinkmann S. & Kvale S. (2014) Interviews:
Learning the craft of qualitative research
interviewing. Third edition. SAGE, Los
Angeles.
Bruner J. (1990) Acts of meaning. Harvard Uni-
versity Press, Cambridge.
Camerer C. & Mobbs D. (2017) Differences in
behavior and brain activity during hypotheti-
cal and real choices. Trends in Cognitive Sci-
ences 21(1): 46–56.
Chalmers D. J. (1995) Facing up to the problem
of consciousness. Journal of Consciousness
Studies 2(3): 200–219.
Chambers C. D. (2013) Registered reports: A
new publishing initiative at Cortex. Cortex
49(3): 609–610.
Chemero A. (2009) Radical embodied cognitive
science. MIT Press, Cambridge MA.
Cisek P. & Pastor-Bernier A. (2014) On the
challenges and mechanisms of embodied
decisions. Philosophical Transactions of the
Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological
Sciences 369(1655): 20130479.
Clancey W. J. (2011) A transactional perspective
on the practice-based science of teaching and
learning. In: Koschmann T. (ed.) Theories of
learning and studies of instructional practice.
Springer, New York: 247–278.
Clancey W. J. (2012) Working on Mars: Voyages
of scientific discovery with the Mars Explora-
tion Rovers. MIT Press, Cambridge MA.
Clancey W. J., Lowry M., Nado R. & Sierhuis
M. (2011) Software productivity of field
experiments using the mobile agents open
architecture with workflow interoperability.
Proceedings of IEEE Fourth International
Conference on Space Mission Challenges
for Information Technology, IEEE, Palo Alto
CA: 85–92.
Clancey W. J., Sierhuis M., Seah C., Buckley
C., Reynolds F., Hall T. & Scott M. (2008)
second-, and third-person positions. My ar-
gument is that Varela’s radical proposal is a
framework for doing so.
Received: 3 November 2017
Accepted: 7 November 2017
Multi-agent simulation to implementation:
A practical engineering methodology for
designing space flight operations. In: Artikis
A., O’Hare G., Stathis K. & Vouros G. (eds.)
Engineering societies in the agents’ world
VIII. Springer, Berlin: 108–123.
Costall A. (2017) 1966 and all that: James
Gibson and bottom-down theory. Ecological
Psychology 29(3): 221–230.
Danziger K. (1994) Constructing the subject:
Historical origins of psychological research.
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
de Bruin L., Van Elk M. & Newen A. (2012) Re-
conceptualizing second-person interaction.
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 6: 151.
de Jaegher H., Di Paolo E. & Gallagher S. (2010)
Can social interaction constitute social cog-
nition? Trends in Cognitive Sciences 14(10):
441–447.
Depraz N., Varela F. J. & Vermersch P. (eds.)
(2003) On becoming aware. John Benjamins,
Amsterdam.
Desbordes G. & Negi L. (2013) A new era for
mind studies: Training investigators in both
scientific and contemplative methods of
inquiry. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 87
7: 741.
Dewey J. (1922) Human nature and conduct: An
introduction to social psychology. G. Allen
& Unwin, London.
Dorjee D. (2016) Defining contemplative sci-
ence: The metacognitive self-regulatory
capacity of the mind, context of meditation
practice and modes of existential awareness.
Frontiers in Psychology 7: 1788.
Dourish P. & Button G. (1998) On “Techno-
methodology”: Foundational relationships
between ethnomethodology and system
design. Human–Computer Interaction 13:
395–432.
Fiedler K. (1991) Heuristics and biases in theory
formation: On the cognitive processes of
those concerned with cognitive processes.
Theory & Psychology 1(4): 407–430.
http://constructivist.info/13/1/059.martiny
 Filimon F., Philiastides M. G., Nelson J. D.,
Kloosterman N. A. & Heekeren H. R.
(2013) How embodied is perceptual decision
making? Evidence for separate processing of
perceptual and motor decisions. The Journal
of Neuroscience 33(5): 2121–2136.
Fischer K. W., Bullock D. H., Rotenberg E. J. &
Raya P. (1993) The dynamics of competence:
How context contributes directly to skill. In:
Wozniak R. H. & Fischer K. (eds.) Develop-
ment in context: Acting and thinking in
specific environments. Lawrence Erlbaum
Associates, Hillsdale NJ: 93–117.
Flyvbjerg B. (2011) Case study. In: Denzin N. K.
& Lincoln Y. S. (eds.) The Sage handbook of
qualitative research. Fourth edition. Sage,
Thousand Oaks: 301–316.
Froese T. & Gallagher S. (2010) Phenomenol-
Cognitive science Concepts in Enaction
ogy and artificial life: Toward a technologi-
cal supplementation of phenomenological
methodology. Husserl Studies 26(2): 83–106.
▶︎ http://cepa.info/4375
Fultot M., Nie L. & Carello C. (2016) Perception-
action mutuality obviates mental construc-
tion. Constructivist Foundations 11(2): 298–
307. ▶︎ http://constructivist.info/11/2/298
Gallagher S. (2017) Enactivist interventions.
Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Gallagher S. & Francesconi D. (2012) Teaching
phenomenology to qualitative researchers,
cognitive scientists and phenomenologists.
The Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology
12: 1–10.
Gallagher S. & Marcel A. (1999) The self in con-
textualized action. Journal of Consciousness
Studies 6(4): 4–30.
88 Gallagher S. & Sørensen J. B. (2006) Experiment-
ing with phenomenology. Consciousness and
Cognition 15(1): 119–134.
Gallagher S. & Zahavi D. (2012) The phe-
nomenological mind. Routledge, London.
▶︎ http://cepa.info/4356
Gibson J. J. (1960) The concept of the stimulus in
psychology. American Psychologist 15(11):
694–703.
Gibson J. J. (1966) The senses considered as per-
ceptual systems. George Allen and Unwin,
London.
Gibson J. J. (1967) Autobiography. In: Boring E.
G. & Linzey G. (eds.) A history of psychol-
ogy in autobiography. Volume 5. Appleton-
Century Crofts, New York: 410–411.
Gibson J. J. (1986) The ecological approach to
visual perception. Reprint. Psychology Press,
New York. Originally published in 1979.
Constructivist Foundations vol. 13, N°1
Gigerenzer G. (1998) Surrogates for theories.
Theory and Psychology 8: 195–204.
Gigerenzer G. (2010) Personal reflections on
theory and psychology. Theory & Psychol-
ogy 20(6): 733–743.
Goffman E. (1986) Stigma: Notes on the man-
agement of spoiled identity. Touchstone,
New York. Originally published in 1963.
Goldman A. & de Vignemont F. (2009) Is social
cognition embodied? Trends in Cognitive
Sciences 13(4): 154–159.
Haslam S. A. & McGarty C. (2003) Research
methods and statistics in psychology. Second
edition. SAGE, London.
He J. & Ravn S. (2017) Sharing the dance – on
the reciprocity of movement in the case of
elite sports dancers. Phenomenology and the
Cognitive Sciences, Online first.
Heidegger M. (1992) History of the concept of
time: Prolegomena. Indiana University Press,
Bloomington. German original published
in 1979.
Husserl E. (1970) The crisis of European sci-
ences and transcendental phenomenology.
Translated by David Carr. Northwestern
University Press, Evanston IL. German
original published in 1936.
Husserl E. (1973) Husserliana XIII: Zur Phän-
omenologie der Intersubjektivität. Texte aus
dem Nachlass. Erster Teil: 1905–1920. Edited
by I. Kern. Martinus Nijhoff, Den Haag.
Husserl E. (1989) Ideas pertaining to a pure
phenomenology and to a phenomenologi-
cal philosophy. Second book: Studies in the
phenomenology of constitution. Kluwer
Academic Publishers, Dordrecht. German
original published in 1952.
Høffding S. & Martiny K. (2016) Framing
a phenomenological interview: What,
why and how. Phenomenology and
the Cognitive Sciences 15(4): 539–564.
▶︎ http://cepa.info/4346
Kendall M. B. (1987) Review of The unspeak-
able: Discourse, dialogue, and rhetoric in
the post-modern world, by Stephen A. Tyler.
Anthropological Linguistics 29(3): 322–325.
Klimecki O. M., Leiberg S., Ricard M. & Singer
T. (2014) Differential pattern of functional
brain plasticity after compassion and empa-
thy training. Social Cognitive and Affective
Neuroscience 9(6):873–879.
Kordeš U. (2016) Going beyond theory: Con-
structivism and empirical phenomenology.
Constructivist Foundations 11(2): 375–385.
▶︎ http://constructivist.info/11/2/375
Kraker P., Leony D., Reinhardt W. & Beham
G. (2011) The case for an open science in
technology enhanced learning. International
Journal of Technology Enhanced Learning
3(6): 643–654.
Kuhn T. S. (1970) The structure of scientific
revolutions. Second edition. University of
Chicago Press, Chicago.
Køster A. (2016) Narrative and embodiment – a
scalar approach. Phenomenology and the
Cognitive Sciences 16(5): 893–908.
Køster A. (2017) Narrative self-appropriation:
Embodiment, alienness, and personal
responsibility in the context of borderline
personality disorder. Theoretical Medicine
and Bioethics, Online first.
Lachaux J.-P. (2011) If no control, then what?
Making sense of “neural noise” in human
brain mapping experiments using first
person reports. Journal of Consciousness
Studies 18: 162–166.
Le Van Quyen M. & Petitmengin C. (2002)
Neuronal dynamics and conscious experi-
ence: An example of reciprocal causation
before epileptic seizures. Phenomenology
and the Cognitive Sciences 1: 169–180.
Leiter K. (1980) A primer on ethnomethodol-
ogy. Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Lepora N. F. & Pezzulo G. (2015) Embodied
choice: How action influences per-
ceptual decision making. PLoS Com-
putational Biology 11(4): E1004110.
▶︎ http://cepa.info/4037
Levenson R. W., Ekman P. & Ricard M. (2012)
Meditation and the startle response: A case
study. Emotion 12: 650–658.
Lutz A. (2002) Toward a neurophenomenology
as an account of generative passages: A first
empirical case study. Phenomenology and
the Cognitive Sciences 1(2): 133–167.
Lutz A., Brefczynski-Lewis J., Johnstone T. &
Davidson R. J. (2008) Regulation of the
neural circuitry of emotion by compassion
meditation: Effects of meditative expertise.
PLoS ONE 3: E1897.
Lutz A., Greischar L. L., Rawlings N. B., Ricard
M. & Davidson R. J. (2004) Long-term
meditators self-induce high-amplitude
gamma synchrony during mental practice.
Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences 101: 16369–16373.
Lutz A., Lachaux J.-P., Martinerie J. & Varela F.
J. (2002) Guiding the study of brain dynam-
ics by using first-person data: Synchrony
patterns correlate with ongoing conscious

states during a simple visual task. Proceed-
ings of the National Academy of Sciences
99(3): 1586–1591. ▶︎ http://cepa.info/2092
Martiny K. M. (2015a) Embodying investiga-
tions of cerebral palsy: A case of open
cognitive science. Doctoral dissertation,
Department of Media, Cognition and Com-
munication, University of Copenhagen,
Denmark.
Martiny K. M. (2015b) How to develop a phe-
nomenological model of disability. Medicine,
Health Care and Philosophy 18(4): 553–565.
Martiny K. M. & Aggerholm K. (2016) Embody-
ing cognition: Working with self-control
in cerebral palsy. The Cognitive Behaviour
Therapist 9: E33.
Martiny K. M., Pedersen D. B. & Birkegaard A.
(2016) Open media science. Journal of sci-
ence communication 15(6): A02–2.
Meehl P. E. (1978) Theoretical risks and tabular
asterisks: Sir Karl, Sir Ronald, and the slow
progress of soft psychology. Journal of
Consulting and Clinical Psychology 46(4):
806–834.
Merleau-Ponty M. (1945) Phénoménologie de la
perception. Librairie Gallimard, Paris.
Merleau-Ponty M. (2012) Phenomenology of
perception. Translated by Donald A. Landes.
Routledge, New York. Originally published in
French as: Merleau-Ponty M. (1945) Phéno-
ménologie de la perception. Gallimard, Paris.
Metzinger T. K. & Windt J. M. (2015) What
does it mean to have an Open MIND? In:
Metzinger T. K. & Windt J. M. (eds.) Open
MIND. MIND Group, Frankfurt am Main:
0(C)
Mischel W. & Shoda Y. (2010) The situated
person. In: Mesquita B., Barrett L. F. & Smith
E. R. (eds.) The mind in context. Guilford
Press, London.
Molenaar P. C. M. (2004) A manifesto on psy-
chology as idiographic science: Bringing the
person back into scientific psychology, this
time forever. Measurement 2(4): 201–218.
Molenaar P. C. M. (2008) On the implications
of the classical ergodic theorems: Analysis
of developmental processes has to focus on
intra-individual variation. Developmental
Psychobiology 50(1): 60–69.
Nancy J.-L. (2008) Corpus. Translated by Rich-
ard A. Rand. Fordham University Press, New
York. French original published in 2006.
Neisser U. (1980) On social knowing. Personal-
ity and Social Psychology Bulletin 6(4):
601–605.
Enaction
Combined References Kristian Moltke Martiny
Neisser U. (1982) Memory observed: Remem-
bering in natural contexts. W. H. Freeman,
San Francisco.
Nietzsche F. W. (1976) Thus spoke Zarathus-
tra, First Part. In: The portable Nietzsche.
Selected and translated by Walter Kaufmann.
Penguin Books, Harmondsworth: 115–190.
German original published in 1883.
Nisbett R. E. & Wilson T. D. (1977) Telling more
than we can know: Verbal reports on mental
processes. Psychological Review 84(3):
231–259.
Nosek B. A. & Bar-Anan Y. (2012) Scientific
utopia: I. Opening scientific communication.
Psychological Inquiry 23(3): 217–243.
Nosek B. A. & Lakens D. (2014) Registered
reports. Social Psychology 45: 137–141.
Nosek B. A., Spies J. R. & Motyl M. (2012)
Scientific utopia: II. Restructuring incentives
and practices to promote truth over publish-
ability. Perspectives on Psychological Science
7(6): 615–631.
Open Science Collaboration (2012) An open,
large-scale, collaborative effort to estimate
the reproducibility of psychological science.
Perspectives on Psychological Science 7(6):
657–660.
Open Science Collaboration (2015) Estimating
the reproducibility of psychological. Science
349(6251): Aac4716.
Oullier O. & Basso F. (2010) Embodied econom-
ics: How bodily information shapes the
social coordination dynamics of decision-
making. Philosophical Transactions of the
Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological
Sciences 365(1538): 291–301.
Pace Giannotta A. (2016) Experience and
becoming: A path through enactivism and
genetic phenomenology. Doctoral Dis-
sertation, Department of Philosophy at the
University of Florence, Italy.
Parnas J., Møller P., Kircher T., Thalbitzer J.,
Jansson L., Handest P. & Zahavi D. (2005)
EASE: Examination of anomalous self-expe-
rience. Psychopathology 38(5): 236–258.
Petitmengin C. (2006) Describing one’s subjec-
tive experience in the second person:
An interview method for the science
of consciousness. Phenomenology and
the Cognitive Sciences 5(3): 229–269.
▶︎ http://cepa.info/2376
Petitmengin C. (2017) Enaction as a lived expe-
rience: Towards a radical neurophenomenol-
ogy. Constructivist Foundations 12(2): 139–
147. ▶︎ http://constructivist.info/12/2/139
Petitmengin C. & Bitbol M. (2009) Listen-
ing from within. Journal of Conscious-
ness Studies 16(10–12): 363–404.
▶︎ http://cepa.info/2373
Petitmengin C., Navarro V. & Baulac M.
(2006) Seizure anticipation: Are neuro-
phenomenological approaches able to detect
preictal symptoms? Epilepsy and Behavior 9:
298–306.
Petitmengin C., Navarro V. & Le Van Quyen M.
(2007) Anticipating seizure: Pre-reflective
experience at the center of neuro-phenom-
enology. Consciousness and Cognition 16:
746–764.
Petitmengin C., Remillieux A., Cahour B.,
Carter-Thomas S. (2013) A gap in Nisbett
and Wilson’s findings? A first-person
access to our cognitive processes. Con-
sciousness and Cognition 22(2): 654–669.
▶︎ http://cepa.info/931
Petitmengin C., Van Beek M, Bitbol M., Nissou
J-M. & Roepstorff A. (2017) What is it like
to meditate? Methods and issues for a micro-
phenomenological description of meditative
experience. Journal of Consciousness Studies
24(5–6): 170–198.
Ravn S. & Hansen H. P. (2013) How to explore
dancers’ sense experiences? A study of how
multi-sited fieldwork and phenomenology
can be combined. Qualitative Research in
Sport, Exercise and Health 5: 196–213.
Ravn S. & Høffding S. (2017) The promise of
“sporting bodies” in phenomenological
thinking – how exceptional cases of practice
can contribute to develop foundational
phenomenological concepts. Qualitative
Research in Sport, Exercise and Health 9(1): 89
56–68.
Reinerman-Jones L., Sollins B., Gallagher S. &
Janz B. (2013) Neurophenomenology: An
integrated approach to exploring awe and
wonder. South African Journal of Philosophy
32(4): 295–309.
Remillieux A., Petitmengin C., Ermine J-L.,
Blatter C. (2010) Knowledge sharing in
change management: A case study in the
French railways company. Journal of Knowl-
edge Management Practice 11(2)
Rosch E. (2016) Introduction to the revised edi-
tion. In: Varela F. J., Thompson E. & Rosch E.
(eds.) The embodied mind: Cognitive science
and human experience. Revised edition. MIT
Press, Cambridge MA: xxxv–lvi.
Roschelle J. (1998) Choosing and using video
equipment for data collection. In: Kelly A. &
http://constructivist.info/13/1/059.martiny
 Lesh R. (eds.) Handbook of research design
in mathematics and science education. Law-
rence Erlbaum, London: 709–729.
Rose T. (2016) The end of average: How to suc-
ceed in a world that values sameness. Harper
Collins, London.
Rose L. T., Rouhani P. & Fischer K. W. (2013)
The science of the individual. Mind, Brain,
and Education 7(3): 152–158.
Rowlands M. (2010) The new science of the
mind: From extended mind to embodied
phenomenology. MIT Press, Cambridge MA.
Satne G. & Roepstorff A. (2015) Introduction:
From interacting agents to engaging persons.
Journal of Consciousness Studies 22(1–2):
9–23.
Schilbach L., Timmermans B., Reddy V., Costall
A., Bente G., Schlicht T. & Vogeley K.
Cognitive science Concepts in Enaction
(2013) Toward a second-person neurosci-
ence. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 36(4):
393–414.
Schön D. A. (1987) Educating the reflective prac-
titioner: Toward a new design for teaching
and learning in the professions. Jossey-Bass,
San Francisco. Republished in 2002.
Spradley J. P. (1980) Participant observation.
Harcourt Brace, Fort Worth TX.
Squyres S. W., Knoll A. H., Arvidson R. E.,
Ashley J. W., Bell J. F., Calvin W. M.,
Christensen P. R., Clark B. C., Cohen B. A.,
De Souza P. A. et al. (2009) Exploration of
Victoria crater by the Mars rover Opportu-
nity. Science 324: 1058–1061.
Stewart J., Gapenne O. & Di Paolo E. A. (2010)
Enaction: Toward a new paradigm for cogni-
tive science. MIT Press, Cambridge.
90 Strle T. (2013) Why should we study experience
more systematically: Neurophenomenology
and modern cognitive science. Interdisciplin-
ary Description of Complex Systems 11(4):
376–390. ▶︎ http://cepa.info/1067
Strle T. (2016a) Embodied, enacted and experi-
enced decision-making. Phainomena XXV
(98–99): 83–107. ▶︎ http://cepa.info/4038
Strle T. (2016b) On the necessity of founda-
tions, intersubjectivity and cognitive science.
Constructivist Foundations 11(2): 387–389.
▶︎ http://constructivist.info/11/2/387
Suchman L. A. & Trigg R. H. (1995) Understand-
ing practice: Video as a medium for reflec-
tion and design (excerpt) In: Baecker R. M.,
Grudin J., Buxton W. A. S. & Greenberg S.
(eds.) Human-computer interaction: Toward
the year 2000. Morgan Kaufmann, San Fran-
cisco: 233–240.
Constructivist Foundations vol. 13, N°1
View publication stats
Thompson E. (ed.) (2001) Between ourselves:
Second-person issues in the study of con-
sciousness. Journal of Consciousness Studies
8(5–7)
Thompson E. (2007) Mind in life: Biology,
phenomenology and the sciences of mind.
Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA.
Thompson E. (2016) Introduction to the revised
edition. In: Varela F. J., Thompson E. &
Rosch E. (eds.) The embodied mind: Cogni-
tive science and human experience. Revised
edition. MIT Press, Cambridge MA: xvii–
xxiii. ▶︎ http://cepa.info/4379
Thompson E. & Varela F. J. (2001) Radical em-
bodiment: Neural dynamics and conscious-
ness. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 5(10):
418–25. ▶︎ http://cepa.info/2085
Tyler S. (1978) The said and the unsaid: Mind,
meaning, and culture. Academic Press, New
York NY.
Tyler S. (1987) The unspeakable: Discourse,
dialogue, and rhetoric in the post-modern
world. The University of Wisconsin Press,
Madison.
Valenzuela-Moguillansky C., O’Regan J. K. &
Petitmengin C. (2013) Exploring the subjec-
tive experience of the “rubber hand” illusion.
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 7:659.
van Manen M. A. (2014) On ethical (in) deci-
sions experienced by parents of infants in
neonatal intensive care. Qualitative Health
Research 24(2): 279–287.
Varela F. J. (1984) The creative circle: Sketches on
the natural history of circularity. In: Watzla-
wick P. (ed.) The invented reality: Contribu-
tions to constructivism. W. W. Norton, New
York: 309–325. ▶︎ http://cepa.info/2089
Varela F. J. (1996) Neurophenomenology: A
methodological remedy for the hard prob-
lem. Journal of Consciousness Studies 3(4):
330–349. ▶︎ http://cepa.info/1893
Varela F. J. (1999) Ethical know-how: Action,
wisdom, and cognition. Stanford University
Press, Stanford CA. ▶︎ http://cepa.info/2119
Varela F. J. & Shear J. (1999) First-person
methodologies: What, why and how? Journal
of Consciousness Studies 6(2–3): 1–14.
▶︎ http://cepa.info/2080
Varela F. J., Thompson E. & Rosch E. (1991) The
embodied mind: Cognitive science and hu-
man experience. MIT Press, Cambridge MA.
Varela F. J., Thompson E. & Rosch E. (2016) The
embodied mind: Cognitive science and hu-
man experience. Revised edition. MIT Press,
Cambridge MA.
Vermersch P. (1994) L’entretien d’explicitation.
ESF Éditeur, Paris.
Vermersch P. (1999) Introspection as practice.
Journal of Consciousness Studies 6(2–3):
17–42. ▶︎ http://cepa.info/2513
Vermersch P. (2009) Describing the prac-
tice of introspection. Journal of Con-
sciousness Studies 16(10–12): 20–57.
▶︎ http://cepa.info/2416
Vertesi J. (2008) “Seeing like a rover”: Embodied
experience on the Mars Exploration Rover
mission. CHI ’08 Proceedings. ACM, Flor-
ence: 2523–2532.
Vörös S. (2014) The uroboros of consciousness:
Between the naturalisation of phenomenol-
ogy and the phenomenologisation of nature.
Constructivist Foundations 10(1): 96–104.
▶︎ http://constructivist.info/10/1/096
Vörös S. (2017) Enacting enaction: Concep-
tual nest or existential mutation? Con-
structivist Foundations 12(2): 148–150.
▶︎ http://constructivist.info/12/2/148
Vörös S., Froese T. & Riegler A. (2016)
Epistemological odyssey: Introduction to
special issue on the diversity of enactiv-
ism and neurophenomenology. Con-
structivist Foundations 11(2): 189–203.
▶︎ http://constructivist.info/11/2/189
Vörös S. & Gaitsch P. (2016) The horizons of
embodiment: Introduction to the spe-
cial issue. Phainomena 25(98–99): 5–32.
▶︎ http://cepa.info/4154
Waldenfels B. (2000) Das leibliche Selbst. Vor-
lesungen zur Phänomenologie des Leibes.
Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main.
Ward D. & Stapleton M. (2012) Es are good:
Cognition as enacted, embodied, embed-
ded, affective and extended. In: Paglieri F.
(ed.) Consciousness in interaction: The role
of the natural and social context in shaping
consciousness. John Benjamins, Amsterdam:
89–104. ▶︎ http://cepa.info/2292
Watkins M. J. (1984) Models as toothbrushes.
Behavioral and Brain Sciences 7(1): 86–86.
Watson M. (2015) When will “open science”
become simply “science”? Genome Biology
16: 101.
Zahavi D. (1999) Self-awareness and alterity: A
phenomenological investigation. Northwest-
ern University Press, Evanston IL.
Zahavi D. (2005) Subjectivity and selfhood: In-
vestigating the first-person perspective. MIT
Press, Cambridge MA.
Zahavi D. (2011) Varieties of reflection. Journal
of Consciousness Studies 18(2): 9–19.