Our Blind Narcissism

Western thought is steeped in the theoretical alienation of cognitive self from the rest of the world. We are soften represented as closed chambers of reflection, capable of cognitive evaluation of the world; contemplating and producing a theoretical picture of it through solitary reflection. Our bodies themselves are often considered largely inconsequential.

This abstraction of the self from its surroundings is problematic — it results in a two-pronged schism, from the agentive ‘other’ on the one hand, and from the (non-animate) world on the other. Why is this solipsism, as Merleau-Ponty claims, such an “incomparable monster’? In what ways is the narcissism with which we interpret our world so blind?

On autonomy in social interactions

A view found throughout much social cognitive science, treats of experience as involving two disjointed realms; the inner and the environmental or outside world. In this view, the social situations we encounter in our lives involve something like guess-work, or figuring out the ‘minds’ of others without direct or coupled access to them.  We, as cognitive agents, are recipients of experience; obedient, compliant, even detatched — entaction recognises the deficiencies of this framing of the problem.

Drawing away sharply from the problematic subject-object divide, enactive theories instead provide a more robust alternative understanding of social interaction, with a variety of surprising implications. As I will outline, the fact that our relationships, especially our deepest ones, are autonomous, connected and may even constrain individual autonomy, may cause us to rethink our understanding of what it is to participate in interaction in social settings. Here, I trace through some of these issues.

How is colour experience explained in the sensorimotor contingency approach?

Nothing fits:

When it comes to the so called ‘hard problem’, the subjective impression or ‘feel’ of conscious perception remains at the heart of the issue still. Theories abound, but to put it simply, nothing really fits. Representational theories of perception have a troubled history marked with uncomfortable problems of infinite regression. How could an inner representation of the exterior world account for consciousness of that representation? The theories which posit correlates of consciousness, such as the coherent oscillations proposed by Crick and Koch (1990; 1995) or the quantum processes conjectured by Penrose (1994) , fall short of fully outlining the mechanism by which such physical effects could give rise to the rich and varied qualia of consciousness.

The role of action and the place of the subject: Umwelt theory.

The structure of the phenomenal or self-world of the experiencing subject is still an illusive subject in cognitive science and philosophy of mind. An explanatory account of the character of first-person experience — how the world is disclosed through the senses and what it consists in — is a rabbit-hole of constant inquiry. Von Uexküll (1934) added colourful and still-relevant insight to the problem, when he invited a ‘stroll into the unfamiliar worlds’ of other embodied experiencers. His Umwelt theory equips us with a clever insight into the variety, complexity and nuance of the experiential worlds of organisms embedded within the same environment. How far however can this theory really cast its reach?