Horizons for the Enactive Mind: Values, Social Interaction, and Play

Paolo, Ezequiel A. Di; Rohde, Marieke; Jaegher, Hanne De

doi:10.7551/mitpress/9780262014601.003.0003

Cited by 279 publications

(299 citation statements)

References 82 publications

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“…Secondly, questions regarding the degree to which we actually avail ourselves of our metacognitive abilities in decision-making, which goals and life aspirations we perceive as "worthy" of our attention, and when we deem decision situations to be "important enough" to prompt us to reflect on our past and think about our future, are very much dependent on what sense and meaning our lives, world, and minds have for us, from our first-person and individual perspective(s) [35,42,[44][45][46]. I this regard, it is essential that we -as researchers and individual human beings -attempt to understand decision-making, metacognition, and their relation also in and from this perspective.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Feeling and Thinking about the Future: Offline Metacognition in Decision-Making

Strle¹

2016

: Interdiscip. Descr. Complex Syst.

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In the article, I will argue that metacognition plays an important role in decision-making not only as direct online monitoring and control of decision-making processes but also by enabling us to influence our decisions and actions -and mental states and processes, related to them -in an offline manner. That is, offline metacognition allows us to observe, refer to and, to a certain degree, exert influence on mental states and processes related to our decisions and actions in the way of being removed, decoupled from the task/decision at hand and present time demands. As such, it enables us to observe, form thoughts and have feelings about mental states and processes directly related to our future decisions, to plan our future decisions, to reflect on our past choices, and to think and have feelings about our broader goals, desires, and personal values that are indirectly related to our decisions.To illustrate the importance of offline metacognition in decision-making, I will firstly review and discuss some experimental findings on implementation intentions ("decisions about the future") and anticipated emotions (beliefs about future emotional states related to outcomes of our decisions). Secondly, I will argue that our ability to reflect (think and feel) on our broader goals, desires and personal values -that represent a kind of structure into which our specific decisions are embeddedreveals how offline metacognition can exert influence on our decisions also in an indirect way. All in all, I will try to show that our ability to refer to our own minds in an offline way -be it to mental states and processes directly or indirectly related to specific decisions -is essential for us to decide, as we decide, and act, as we act.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Feeling and Thinking about the Future: Offline Metacognition in Decision-Making

Strle¹

2016

: Interdiscip. Descr. Complex Syst.

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“…In the years since it also has been transformed into a general research program for the cognitive sciences (Thompson/Varela 2001;Thompson 2007;Stewart et al 2010;Di Paolo et al 2010). Despite also referring to the multifaceted role of the body and highlighting the different domains it enacts -their is nevertheless a focus on the integral concept of the living and needful body in enactivism as the main explanandum of sentience and presence in an organism.…”

Section: Two Theories and Two Worriesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Body and the Experience of Presence

Fingerhut¹

2012

Feelings of Being Alive

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We experience our encounters with the world and others in different degrees of intensity -the presence of things and others is gradual. I introduce this kind of presence as a ubiquitous feature of every phenomenally conscious experience, as well as a key ingredient of our 'feeling of being alive', and distinguish explanatory agendas that might be relevant with regard to this phenomenon (1 -3). My focus will be the role of the body-brain nexus in realizing these experiences and its treatment in recent accounts of the bodily constitution of experience. Specifically, I compare a sensorimotor approach to perceptual presence that focuses on properties of the moving body (O'Regan 2011; Noë 2012) with a more general enactivism that focuses on properties of the living body (Thompson 2007). First, I develop and discuss a theory of access derived from sensorimotor theory that might be suited to explain the phenomenon of gradual presence. This is a theory that sees the mastery of sensorimotor, bodily engagements with the world as key elements in setting up a phenomenal experience space. I object that in current versions of sensorimotor theory the correlation posited between presence and changes in the subject's physical relation to the environment is too rigid. Nevertheless I defend the claim that gradual presence is constituted by our temporally extended engagement with the environment (4 -7). Second, I consider some objections stemming from enactivism with regard to self-regulatory properties of the living body and the phenomenological claim that the organism's value-laden relations with its environment have to be included in the theory. I will show that the latter is a necessary amendment to sensorimotor theory and its concept of gradual presence (8-10).

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“…at the electro-chemical level or the level of sub-atomic particles 7 . As is nicely shown by Varela [3], it is hard to imagine how one could study experience on electro-chemical or functional level of the brain and by that explain experiential, first-person perspective of the mind.…”

Section: What Kind Of Irreducibility Are We Talking About: Did Varelamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…[5][6][7]. But looking more closely at mainstream neuroscientific or cognitive 1 psychology's theories and experiments one hardly finds systematic consideration of 1 experience.…”

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confidence: 99%

“…6 It is not completely clear to which degree the difference between objective and subjective is 6 eliminated in the phenomenological tradition -completely or just partly? 7 One could of course argue that the lowest possible level for studying experience is actually the 7 level of subjective experience but in fact in cognitive science it is many times implicitly implied 7 that the appropriate level (and methodological tools that go with it) is some level of 7 the brain.…”

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Why Should We Study Experience More Systematically: Neurophenomenology and Modern Cognitive Science

Strle

2013

: Interdiscip. Descr. Complex Syst.

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In the article I will defend the view that cognitive science needs to use first-and second-person methods more systematically, as part of everyday research practice, if it wants to understand the human mind in its full scope. Neurophenomenological programme proposed by Varela as a remedy for the hard problem of consciousness (i.e. the problem of experience) does not solve it on the ontological level. Nevertheless, it represents a good starting point of how to tackle the phenomenon of experience in a more systematic, methodologically sound way. On the other hand, Varela's criterion of phenomenological reduction as a necessary condition for systematic investigation of experience is too strong. Regardless of that and some other problems that research of experience faces (e.g. the problem of training, the question of what kind of participants we want to study), it is becoming clear that investigating experience seriously -from first-and second-person perspective -is a necessary step cognitive science must take. This holds especially when researching phenomena that involve consciousness and/or where differentiation between conscious and unconscious processing is crucial. Furthermore, gathering experiential data is essential for interpreting experimental results gained purely by quantitative methods -especially when we are implicitly or explicitly referring to experience in our conclusions and interpretations. To support these claims some examples from the broader area of decision making will be given (the effect of deliberation-without-attention, cognitive reflection test).

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Horizons for the Enactive Mind: Values, Social Interaction, and Play

Cited by 279 publications

References 82 publications

Feeling and Thinking about the Future: Offline Metacognition in Decision-Making

Feeling and Thinking about the Future: Offline Metacognition in Decision-Making

The Body and the Experience of Presence

Why Should We Study Experience More Systematically: Neurophenomenology and Modern Cognitive Science

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