Mind Embodied, Mind Bodified:

Merleau-Ponty and the Enactive Turn

in Mind Sciences1

Abstract – Mind sciences have undergone a decidedly “embodied” or “enac-

tive” turn in the past two decades. In its original conception, put forward by
Varela et al., this radical shift of perspective was depicted as a continuation of
a research program founded by Merleau-Ponty, and was said to encompass two
levels. On a theoretical level it consisted of a move away from the cerebrocen-
tric, information-processing, and representational models of mind and cogni-
tion towards the corporeal, enactive, and world-involving models. On a (meta)
epistemological and (meta)methodological level it argued for the need to expand
the methodological array of mind sciences to include the disciplined study of
lived experience, and it laid the foundations for a fruitful exchange between
scientific and phenomenological investigations. However, the progressive pop-
ularization of the enactive-embodied narrative has made us witness the narrow-
ing of its far-reaching scope, whereby changes on the theoretical level are being
extricated from their broader philosophical framework and wedded to more
traditional epistemologies and methodologies. In this paper I try to shed some
critical light on some of these developments, focusing particularly on two
neglected themes of Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology that are highly relevant
for contemporary enactive/embodied approaches: the unsurpassability of lived
experience (cf. ‘behaviorist fork’) and the need to radically rethink the nature
and dynamics of our reflective inquiries (cf. ‘radical reflection’).
Keywords: enactive cognitive science, (meta)epistemology, (meta)methodol-
ogy, naturalism, transcendentalism

1. Introduction: mind made flesh

In light of some of the recent developments in mind sciences one may
easily get the impression that, after standing in the shadows of his pre-
decessors and/or contemporaries for a considerable length of time,
­Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy has finally gained its well-deserved
acclaim. One of the reasons for the current upsurge of interest in

1
The author acknowledges the financial support from the Slovenian Research Agency
(research core funding Project No. P6-0252).

Études phénoménologiques – Phenomenological Studies 4 (2020) 91-117.

© 2020 by Peeters Publishers. All rights reserved. doi : 10.2143/EPH.4.0.3286913
92 SEBASTJAN VÖRÖS

Merleau-Ponty, particularly outside of phenomenological circles, is that

the founding figures of so-called “enactive” and “embodied turn” have
proclaimed him as the central source of inspiration for their alternative
account of mind and cognition (Varela et al. 1991; Thompson 2007).
In fact, the two pivotal notions commonly used to designate this new
line of thought, embodiment and enaction, harken back to Merleau-­
Ponty’s ideas about lived corporeality and the interpenetration of action
and perception, as propounded in The Structure of Behavior (1963;
henceforth SB) and, especially, Phenomenology of Perception (2002;
henceforth PP). And if we take into account that, what started out in
the early 1990s as a relatively marginal countermovement, has managed
to flourish into a sturdy research program eclipsing many of its theoret-
ical predecessors over the past two decades, it could be said that Mer-
leau-Ponty inadvertently (yet far from undeservedly) played a pivotal role
in instigating what some believe to be nothing less than a wholesale
paradigm shift in mind sciences (Vörös et al. 2016).
But looks can be deceiving. It is definitely the case that, after the
emergence of “enactive cognitive science” (Varela et al. 1991), philo-
sophical and scientific communities started paying more heed to the
corporeal, behavioral, and environmental dimensions of cognition.
However, as the field started to proliferate there emerged a growing
tendency to wed these dimensions to the old styles of thought, thus
disregarding the broader philosophical framework in which they were
originally begotten. Put differently, while some of the (meta)methodo-
logical and (meta)epistemological issues2 that Merleau-Ponty identified
as central to his overarching project were still taken seriously and even
elaborated upon by the early proponents of the embodied-cum-enactive
turn, they have been subsequently relegated to the fringes of discussion,
if not completely ignored. In a manner reminiscent of how perception
(PP, 67–8) or language (PP, 466) tend to lose themselves in their objects,
all the while forgetting their rootedness in the dynamic interplay between
corporeal subjectivity and its life-world, the notions of ‘embodiment’

2
I use the perhaps somewhat cumbersome terms ‘(meta)epistemological’ and ‘(meta)
methodological’ to refer to both epistemology and/or methodology, and ‘meta-reflection’
on epistemology and/or methodology, or what traditionally might fall under the rubric
‘transcendental reflection,’ i.e., reflection on their conditions of possibility (broadly con-
strued). The reason why I refrain from using the term ‘transcendental’ will become
clearer as we progress, but has mainly to do with the fact that, for many, it has an overtly
Kantian ring, and might therefore be potentially misleading.
 MIND EMBODIED, MIND BODIFIED 93

and ‘enaction’ tend to be extracted from the broader philosophical

milieu in which they originally took root, all the while forgetting that
it is precisely from the latter that they draw their philosophical
sustenance.
In this article I try to reopen some of these (half-)forgotten Merleau-­
Pontyan themes and show why they are highly relevant for contempo-
rary sciences of the mind. First, I briefly delineate a tension surrounding
the notion of ‘experience,’ a tension between the more phenomenolog-
ically and analytically minded approaches in the embodiment-enactivist
community. Next, by drawing on Merleau-Ponty’s analysis of behavior
I try to show that, even if we start from the scientific perspective, the
idea of cognition as embodied action (enaction) ultimately leads us back
to the phenomenological domain. Finally, I delineate two main (meta)
epistemological and (meta)methodological implications of Merleau-­
Ponty’s analysis for contemporary mind sciences, namely the unsurpass-
ability of lived experience (cf. ‘behaviorist fork’), and the need to radi-
cally rethink the nature and dynamics of reflection (cf. ‘radical
reflection’).

2. 
E nactive turn: disenchanting the abstract, reenchanting the
concrete
The grounds of embodied-enactive mind sciences were laid at the
beginning of the 1990s by Francisco Varela, Evan Thompson, and
­Eleanor Rosch (1991). From its very inception, their renegade proposal
harbored strong revolutionary sentiments, calling for nothing less than
a radical break with the prevailing (and strangely disembodied) bodies
of thought in mind sciences (Stewart et al. 2010). This radical break had
two facets (Varela 1992). On the one hand, it called for the “disenchant-
ment of the abstract,” i.e., for a move away from “the rarefied atmos-
phere of the general and the formal, the logical and the well-defined, the
represented and the foreseen” (Varela 1999, 6), which characterized
the predominant approach to the study of mind and cognition, not to
mention science in general. On the other hand, it was a plea for the
“re-enchantment of the concrete,” i.e., for a “radical paradigm shift”
based on a stronger recognition that “the proper units of knowledge are
primarily concrete, embodied, incorporated, lived” (7).
The nature of this twofold break can be gleaned from the differences
in how the two approaches – classical computational-representational and
94 SEBASTJAN VÖRÖS

novel embodied-enactive – conceptualize mind and cognition.3 Up until

the 1980s and 1990s, the predominant metaphor in mind sciences was
that of a digital computer: the mind was said to be like software running
on hardware, which primarily consisted of the brain, and only deriva-
tively of the rest of the body. Correspondingly, cognition was construed
as a process couched between perception and action, and consisting of
computation and representation. The basic outline of the computation-
al-representational model bears a striking resemblance to the one criti-
cized by Merleau-Ponty. In this model, a “receiver” (a given sense organ)
registers information from the preexisting “objective world” and passes
it on to a “transmitter” (a given neural pathway), which then relegates
it to the “recording station” (a given [set of] brain structure[s]), where
the received information is “deciphered in such a way as to reproduce in
us the original text,” and which, after carrying out appropriate calcula-
tions on the basis of the acquired representations, instigates
a series of motor actions, collectively known as behavior (PP, 8; cf. SB,
Ch. I and II).
The metaphors of embodiment and enaction were meant to under-
mine this cerebrocentric and formalistic view of the mind, and underline
its active, corporeal, and world-involving aspects. Thus, the mind was
no longer seen as a ‘coordinator’ and ‘translator’ between the incoming
information and outgoing action, but rather it was seen as a dynamic
global unity emerging from the recurrent sensorimotor patterns estab-
lished between the organism and its (natural and social) environment.
Correspondingly, cognition was reconceptualized in terms of embodi-
ment and enaction: instead of calculations performed on brain-instanti-
ated representations of the pre-existing world, it was now linked to the
sensorimotor activities of organisms conceived as self-producing and
self-sustaining wholes that bring forth, or en-act, their unique domains
of sense or significance, i.e. their environing worlds (Umwelten) (Varela
et al. 1991, 172–9).
However, this is only the first part of the story. As it turns out, the
revolutionary zeal on a theoretical level – on a level pertaining to how
mind and cognition are conceptualized – was reciprocated by an equally,
if not an even more radical fervor on a (meta)epistemological and (meta)

3
What follows is a rudimentary sketch of the two approaches; also, for reasons of
brevity, I omit the connectionist models. For a more detailed account see Thompson
2007, 3–15.
 MIND EMBODIED, MIND BODIFIED 95

methodological level – on a level pertaining to questions about the epis-

temological status of various scientific theories of mind and cognition
(embodied-enactive theories included), and about the array of methods
that could be legitimately employed in their investigation. That is to say,
not only did the new approach argue for a radically different way of
conceiving the object of reflective inquiry (mind, cognition, etc.), but it
also envisioned a radically different epistemological and methodological
framework for the reflective inquiry itself.
Varela et al. felt that contemporary mind sciences had lost touch with
(one of) the central dimension(s) of mind and cognition, namely their
experiential, lived-through aspect. Since mind and cognition were con-
ceived in terms of (neuro)cognitive mechanisms (i.e., as third-person
processes), experience was viewed as either an illusion, something on par
with phlogiston and ultimately non-existent (eliminativism); a chame-
leon, something pretending to be what it is not and ultimately identical
with neural processes (reductionism); or a nomological dangler4, some-
thing that is private, ineffable, irreducibly subjective (so-called qualia)
and ultimately unaccountable in neurophysiological terms (epiphenom-
enalism). Despite their differences, the three outlined positions accord
in their conception of experience as some-thing, as an object, be it of
a non-existent, capricious, or metaphysically extravagant type, but one
that must ultimately be couched in naturalist terms, i.e., incorporated
into the objectivist framework of natural sciences.
However, Varela et al. emphasize that, before becoming an object of
(scientific) cognition, lived experience is its cradle, the field in which it
emerges and unfolds. Echoing Merleau-Ponty’s assertion that experience
is not a thing, but rather it is that which “opens a window on to things”
(PP, 62), Varela, in one of his later papers, proclaims: “Lived experience
is where we start from and where all must link back to, like a guiding
thread” (Varela 1996, 334). We first come “in touch” with minds and
cognitive acts – be it our own or those of others – in-and-through our
everyday, lived experience (i.e., from a first-person perspective), so that any
approach that chooses to disregard this central aspect of the mental risks
completely misses its epistemic mark. Hence, if we want not only to
understand why classical computational-representational approaches failed,

4
A term coined by Herbert J. Feigl (1958) to designate phenomenal aspects of
mental phenomena that supposedly cannot be accounted for in terms of physical causal
laws, and are therefore said to dangle from the causal structure of reality.
96 SEBASTJAN VÖRÖS

but also make sure that their embodied-enactive successors carry more
epistemic (and existential) weight, it is imperative that a systematic study
of lived experience be incorporated into the very fabric of mind studies:
This books begins and ends with the conviction that the new sciences of
mind need to enlarge their horizon to encompass […] lived human experi-
ence [...]. Ordinary, everyday experience, on the other hand, must enlarge
its horizon to benefit from the insights and analyses that are distinctly
wrought by the sciences of mind. (Varela et al. 1991, xv; my emphasis)

To this end Varela et al. argue that, in addition to rigorous scientific

methods, embodied-enactive approaches must develop and implement
equally rigorous methods for investigating lived experience. And they go
on to suggest, to the dismay of many in the primarily analytically ori-
ented mind sciences of the day, that a promising candidate for filling
this methodological lacuna would be a combination of phenomenolog-
ical reflection and Buddhist contemplative practice (Varela et al. 1991,
32–3). In this way, they believe, it would be possible to establish a cre-
ative circulation between lived experience and scientific knowledge,
a continual back-and-forth exchange between phenomenological and neu-
robiological approaches to mind and cognition (Varela et al. 1991,
9–14; cf. Thompson 2007, 265).
When explaining how they came to this unique methodological amal-
gam, the authors make it clear that, although drawing on various sources,
they see their work primarily as “a modern continuation of a program
of research founded over a generation ago by the French philosopher,
Maurice Merleau-Ponty” (Varela et al. 1991, xv). More specifically, they
emphasize that, in devising what is ultimately an alternative scientific
theory, they were strongly influenced by Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenolog-
ical analyses, particularly by the idea that our bodies are not merely
objects of reflection (‘physical body,’ or Körper), but are also, and fun-
damentally, experiential means for accessing objectivity in general (‘lived
body,’ or Leib), “the fabric into which all objects are woven” (PP, 273).
Meaning, that it is not only that our scientific models should be informed
by phenomenological reflections on embodiment as the enabling condi-
tion for lived experience, but also that we need to consider the accom-
panying (meta)epistemological and (meta)methodological implications
of such reflections on the nature and practice of science in general.
In its original conception, then, the embodied-enactive movement
strived to be decidedly Merleau-Pontyan, and this holds true on both the
 MIND EMBODIED, MIND BODIFIED 97

theoretical and (meta)epistemological-(meta)methodological level. By

saying this, I am not claiming that Varela et al. necessarily adhered to
Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology to the letter.5 In fact, there are good
reasons to believe that Merleau-Ponty might take issue with some of
their interpretations (cf. Pollard 2016). Nonetheless, they were, or at
least they genuinely tried to be, loyal to the spirit of his work. Further,
their program was generally met with considerable success. Not only was
it used as a springboard in developing new pragmatic strategies for inves-
tigating experience (Depraz et al. 2003; Petitmengin 2006; Varela and
Shear 1999) and implementing them into scientific practice (Varela
1996), but it also triggered debates trying to expand on these preliminary
(meta)methodological and (meta)epistemological reflections and bring
them closer to transcendental-phenomenological and existential-contem-
plative traditions (Bitbol 2012; Thompson 2007; Vörös and Bitbol
2017).
However, as the embodiment-enaction movement started gaining
more traction, it seems to have been overcome by a certain ‘reflective
malaise’ – a certain reluctance to engage with what, for many, appeared
as the philosophically more eccentric facets of the original proposal.6
Generally, this malaise has taken on two forms. In its weaker version, the
Merleau-Pontyan influence (and the same holds for phenomenology in
general; unfortunately, contemplative traditions have not fared so well)
is still reflected in how mind and cognition are conceptualized, but it is
almost completely absent from the broader philosophical picture. While
phenomenology is still invoked, the term is, for the most part, used
loosely, if not equivocally. Stripped of its (meta)methodological and

5
Nor was this their intention, as they explicitly state that by calling their approach
a continuation of Merleau-Ponty’s approach they “do not mean a scholarly consideration
of Merleau-Ponty’s thought in the context of contemporary cognitive science,” but rather
that his writings have both “inspired and guided” their orientation (Varela et al. 1991,
xv).
6
Note that this does not hold true for all adherents of the ‘enactivist turn’. Contem-
porary enactive-embodied approaches are extremely diverse, and their advocates differ in
the extent to which they subscribe to the original proposal. Some (John Stewart, Evan
Thompson, etc.) are almost completely aligned with it; others (David Hutto, Eric Myin,
etc.) have departed from it; others still (Richard Menary, Alva Noë, etc.) seem to lie
somewhere in the middle. Because of the complexity of the topic in question, an in-
depth account of individual approaches would take us too far afield, but see Vörös,
Froese & Riegler 2016 for a good overview of the main (dis)similarities of the main
currents in embodied-enactive cognitive science.
98 SEBASTJAN VÖRÖS

(meta)epistemological potency, it often represents its distant and more

docile relatives, which sprang into being in the more naturalist-friendly
atmosphere of analytic philosophy.
For instance, in developing his sensorimotor theory of perceptual con-
sciousness (Noë 2004, 2009), Alva Noë draws heavily on ideas pro-
pounded by Varela et al. and Merleau-Ponty. When it comes to phe-
nomenology, however, he argues against “pure phenomenology,”
maintaining that its subject matter, experience, belongs squarely to the
natural world, by which he means that it “belongs to the causal nexus”
(Noë 2007, 234–5). And, when reminded by Dan Zahavi that one of
the main tenets of phenomenology – a rare point on which almost all
phenomenologists agree (a no small feat for a motley group of post-­
Husserlian ‘heretics’!) – is that experience “does not belong to the causal
nexus because [it] is something that we must presuppose in any attempt
to investigate causal relations themselves,” Noë, a fervent advocate of
naturalism, merely states that he is “somewhat skeptical of this idea,” but
does not venture to elaborate on it further (235, n. 2).
In the stronger version, things take an even more radical turn (pun
intended; see below). Here, everything phenomenological, at least in the
Husserlian and/or Merleau-Pontyan sense, is brusquely swept aside, so
that all that is left of enaction is its theoretical hull, devoid of all (meta)
methodological and (meta)epistemological substance. The best example
of this highly deflationary approach would be the so-called “radical enac-
tivism” expounded by Hutto and Myin (2013, 2017). Not only do
Hutto and Myin deem it unnecessary to accept the Merleau-Ponty-­
inspired revitalization of lived experience brought to the table by
Varela et al., they are absolutely unwilling to cede it any philosophical
credence:
It is certainly true that the widespread acceptance of embodied and enactive
approach in the cognitive sciences has anteceded a clear articulation and
philosophical defense of such approaches – one that would motivate
rational acceptance of their framework of commitments. A convincing jus-
tification for believing in such approaches has lagged behind their general
endorsement by the cognitive science community. This raises the worry
that the whole enactive and embodied turn in cognitive science is backed
by little or nothing more than an unreasoned attachment to certain attrac-
tive but ultimately empty pictures and slogans. (Hutto and Myin 2013, xii)

But just what do Hutto and Myin have in mind when they speak of
“philosophical clarifications and strong support that have been sorely
 MIND EMBODIED, MIND BODIFIED 99

missing” (Hutto and Myin 2013, xii) in the embodied-enactive accounts

of mind and cognition? It would seem that nothing less than their full-
blown transplantation into the argumentative and discursive corpus of
contemporary analytic philosophy of mind, coupled with a hefty dose
of naturalism and aversion to anything even remotely reminiscent of the
Continent. According to Hutto and Myin, if enaction is to survive in
today’s intellectual climate, it must be purified in the fire of rigorous
argumentation and cast off its obscurantist-cum-reactionary phenome-
nological heritage, which in turn means that experience must be (re)
integrated into the naturalist-objectivist framework.
Note that this is not a polemical exaggeration; Hutto and Myin make
it clear that their goal in advancing radical enactivism is “in a sense,
political,” and they underscore this claim with a telling announcement:
“This book is really an enactivist manifesto – an argumentative one in the
service of science (Hutto and Myin 2013, xx; my emphases).” Instead of
grand-scale questions pertaining to (meta)epistemology and (meta)meth-
odology, “enactivists” should focus on topics that are manageable within
the confines of the more well-trodden epistemic paths – say, how to
defend a radically anti-representationalist conception of mind in a field
traditionally dominated by representationalist models (this is what their
‘radicalization’ ultimately boils down to) – while disregarding the fact
that one of the central motivations behind Varela et al.’s embodied/
enactive turn was precisely to radically question the presupposed self-­
evidence of these well-entrenched frameworks. If Varela et al. aimed at
a mutually illuminating dialogue between (phenomenological) philosophy
and science, Hutto and Myin seem to settle with an asymmetric mono-
logue, where science is the ‘measure of all things’ and philosophy its
faithful servant, ardently cleaning its messy conceptual Augean stables.
In what follows, I intend to unravel some threads in Merleau-Ponty’s
thought that indicate why the (re)construal of mind in terms of embod-
iment and enaction invites us to go back to lived experience and to take
seriously the far-reaching philosophical issues that are associated with
such a (re)construal. In doing so, I hope to bring to light some impor-
tant topics that are relevant to contemporary debates and that will show
that a much more suitable historico-political analogy for current devel-
opments in mind sciences would be the following:

[T]he majority of contemporary ‘radical’ approaches to [embodiment and

enaction] are ‘radical’ in the same sense that this applied to the liberal
100 SEBASTJAN VÖRÖS

parties of the 18th and 19th century. That is to say, just as the latter were
willing to fight for the more equal redistribution of political power, but
not for the modification of the background (social, economic, etc.) condi-
tions that gave rise to inequalities in the first place, so the former are
willing to experiment with novel conceptual approaches to the mind and
cognition, but do not seem to be genuinely interested in reflecting upon,
and possibly altering, their metaphysical and epistemological presupposi-
tions. (Vörös et al. 2016, 96–7)

3. Observing enaction – enacting observation

If we oversimplify a bit, we might say that, in the study of mind and
cognition, one can arrive at lived experience in two different, yet inter-
related, ways. The more common route – the one famously paved by the
founder of phenomenology, Edmund Husserl (e.g., 1964, 1983, 2002)
– is a direct route. The main idea behind this approach is that experience
as the field of phenomena, of “things” as they disclose themselves to us,
is not only the unavoidable starting point, but also the epistemic bedrock
of all our inquiries. Experience is not an object, but rather that in-and-
through which objects are given to us, which is why any approach that
tries to objectify experience – explain it in terms of causal relationships
between objects – is bound to miss the point from the very start. Thus,
transcendental-phenomenological inquiries – inquiries trying to understand
conditions of possibility for a given phenomenon to appear as it appears
(devoid of all theoretical presuppositions, etc.) – take precedence over
naturalist-objectivist inquiries – inquiries trying to explain phenomena in
terms of objective causal relationships.
However, taking what I have called the ‘direct route’ to lived experi-
ence can evoke the impression, exacerbated by Husserl’s staunch anti-
naturalism, that one is, from the very outset, forced to choose between
two contrasting perspectives, namely transcendentalist-phenomenologi-
cal and naturalist-objectivist. Someone coming from a naturalist back-
ground and therefore endorsing, even if implicitly, a different set of
epistemological presuppositions, as is true for most analytic philosophers
of mind, might feel disinclined to undergo such a radical philosophical
conversion – a sort of ‘epistemic leap of faith’ – for seemingly strictly
philosophical reasons. Given that transcendentalist arguments (of any
sort) carry little weight with many contemporary advocates of embodi-
ment and enaction, the direct route to lived experience faces the danger
of preaching to the already converted – to those who already harbor
 MIND EMBODIED, MIND BODIFIED 101

doubts about the possibility of naturalizing experience (and conse-

quently: mind, cognition, etc.).
It could be claimed that, in the Phenomenology of Perception, Merleau-­
Ponty opts for a similar route, and thus preemptively makes a sizeable
chunk of his reflections – especially those pertaining to the more
wide-ranging philosophical matters – unpalatable to anyone inimical to
the transcendentalist heritage. This interpretation can find some support
in Merleau-Ponty’s relentless criticism of naturalism and objectivism; his
continual emphasis on the primacy of (perceptual) experience; and his
explicit, if critical, endorsement of the phenomenological method as
a method of choice. However, such a conclusion must be tempered with
at least three interrelated qualifications. First, it underscores Mer-
leau-Ponty’s unique understanding of phenomenology, which recasts its
central methodological postulates – return to phenomena, phenomeno-
logical reduction, eidetic reduction, and description (cf. PP, vii – xxiv)
– in such a way as to open up a ‘middle ground’ between naturalism
(empiricism) and classical transcendentalism (intellectualism). Secondly,
it sits uneasily with the fact that Merleau-Ponty pursues many of his
analyses not by direct phenomenological investigation but by critically
reflecting upon neurological, psychological, and psychiatric studies of
various phenomena (e.g., figure/ground structure of perception, anom-
alous experiences in patients with phantom limbs, anosognosia, schizo-
phrenia, etc.). Thirdly, and relatedly, it neglects the fact that his explo-
rations of perception (in PP) follow where his previous explorations of
behavior (in SB) left off. In contrast with the more straightforwardly
phenomenological orientation of the former, Merleau-Ponty carries out
the bulk of the latter from a different perspective – from what he calls
“the point of view of the ‘outside spectator’” (SB, 184) – trying to show
that recent developments in natural sciences land us squarely in (a suit-
ably modified version of) phenomenology.
Thus, unlike his pater spiritualis, Edmund Husserl, who claimed that
the best or even – as in his early works – the only way to pursue phe-
nomenological inquiries is by ‘bracketing’ (‘suspending’) all theoretical
presuppositions and practices of natural sciences from the very outset,
Merleau-Ponty opts for a more indirect route, arguing that a critical
investigation of scientific findings is important not only because it
undermines naturalism and objectivism ‘from within,’ but also because
it functions as a corrective to any residual naturalist-objectivitst presup-
positions that might have inadvertently crept into our phenomenological
102 SEBASTJAN VÖRÖS

analyses. This is one of the main reasons why Merleau-Ponty is so well-

suited for contemporary debates, for he starts not with phenomenology
(in the narrow sense of the term) but with scientific models of life and
mind developed in his time, and contends that, if pursued to their log-
ical ends, these models call for a suspension of naturalist-objectivist sup-
positions, revitalization of lived experience, and reflection on wide-­
ranging (meta)epistemological and (meta)methodological questions.7 To
see how this shift from the theoretical-critical to the phenomenologi-
cal-philosophical manifests itself, we must first have a brief look at Merleau-­
Ponty’s account of behavior as propounded in the Structure of Behavior.

3.1. Observing enaction: form and behavior

Merleau-Ponty’s main goal in the Structure of Behavior is to show that
the naturalist-objectivist framework ultimately fails to produce a plausi-
ble account of physical, vital, and mental processes. More specifically, he
insists that in light of recent findings in biology, psychology, and neu-
rology it is becoming progressively evident that “matter, life and mind”
cannot be reduced to “a multiplicity of events external to each other and
bound together by relations of causality” (SB, 3), but instead participate
“in the nature of form” (SB, 133). Form (also: structure, Gestalt) is a term
that Merleau-Ponty borrowed from Gestalt psychology to denote a struc-
tured whole that (i) has “original properties with regard to those of the
parts” (SB, 47) and therefore cannot be decomposed into a sum of inde-
pendent and causally interrelated elements (SB, 50); yet, at the same
time, (ii) it is not an ontologically distinct ‘principle’ (on a par with
Cartesian soul), as it is nothing over and above the network of its
interdependent and dynamically co-constitutive parts. In short, form is
a dynamic emergent unity in which whole and parts dialectically co-­
determine each other.
As already mentioned, matter, life, and mind are all said to partake in
the nature of form. However, they partake in it unequally, representing
“different degrees of integration” and constituting “a hierarchy in which

7
This is why unqualified (i.e., unilateral) references to Merleau-Ponty in recent
attempts to ‘naturalize phenomenology’ are tenuous at best. An approach that is much
more Merleau-Pontyan in spirit is the bilateral approach implicit in Varela et al. 1991,
according to which the naturalization of phenomenology needs to be reciprocated by the
phenomenologization of nature (for a more in-depth account of the issues involved in
naturalization of consciousness and phenomenology, see Vörös 2014).
 MIND EMBODIED, MIND BODIFIED 103

individuality is progressively achieved” (SB, 133; my emphases). This is

why Merleau-Ponty speaks of three orders: the physical, the vital, and the
human (SB,Ch. III). Although forms can be found already at the level
of the physical (SB,137–45), I will focus solely on the vital and human
orders, as these have exerted most influence on Varela et al.’s embod-
ied-enactive conception of mind and cognition, and thus indirectly on
the embodiment-enactivist community at large.
On the vital level, the main target of Merleau-Ponty’s critique is the
naturalist-objectivist models of behavior (and, correlatively, perception),
whose basic structure is similar to the computationalist-representation-
alist models discussed above. These models try to account for perception,
cognition, and action in terms of unidirectional causal series consisting
of stimulus detection-information processing-behavior. However, draw-
ing on the work of Buytendijk, Goldstein, Köhler, von Weizsäcker, and
others, Merleau-Ponty argues that such an image of behavior is funda-
mentally misguided.
Namely, organismal responses elicited by a given stimulus do not
depend on “local conditions” – the physico-chemical characteristics of
the stimulus or the anatomico-physiological structure of the sensory
apparatus – but “on the total activity of the organism,” its global senso-
ri-motor engagements with its environment (SB, 147). In other words,
stimuli do not act on the organism as “causes,” but rather as “occasions”
(SB, 161); they open up a landscape of possible global responses whose
contours are carved out by the organism’s sensori-motor proclivities, its
unique “sensori-motor a priori” (SB, 100). It is, of course, true that “the
movements of the organism are always conditioned by external influ-
ences,” but it is no less true that these stimulations have “been made
possible only by its preceding movements which have culminated in
exposing the receptor organ to the external influences” (SB, 13), and that
these movements have been carried out “according to the internal norms
of its activity” (SB, 148). Thus, equilibrium between the organism and
its environment is not obtained with respect to “real and present condi-
tions,” as naturalist-objectivist models would have us believe, but rather
with respect to “conditions which are only virtual” and which the organ-
ism itself brings into existence in light of its vital norms (SB, 145; my
emphasis).
The relations between the organism as “a being capable of certain types
of action” (SB, 147) and its milieu as that “in which the stimuli intervene
according to what they signify [for the organism]” (SB, 130) are
104 SEBASTJAN VÖRÖS

therefore not mechanistic but dialectical: they mutually co-determine

each other and together constitute a novel form/structure – behavior.
Behavior, then, is not a uni-lateral relation between two separate entities,
nor simply “an adaptation to [pre]given conditions” (SB, 150), but
rather a form consisting of two dialectically related aspects, the organic
individual and its milieu (SB, 151).
The emergence of the human order is linked to the emergence of
a new behavioral form with a corresponding new dialectic. If life (vital
order) emerges from the dialectical pair “vital situation-aptitude,” mind
(human order) emerges from the dialectical pair “perceived situation-­
work” (SB, 162). Unlike animal organisms that construct a relatively
stable biological milieu corresponding to the “monotonous aprioris” of
their instinctual aptitutes (SB, 162), human beings construct a relatively
dynamic cultural milieu corresponding to their capacity to engage in
prospective and creative activities, which Merleau-Ponty, following
Hegel, calls work (SB, 162). That is to say, in contrast to an animal’s
sensori-motor proclivities, which are relatively stable across time, work
rests on the “power of choosing and varying points of view,” on the
“capacity of going beyond created structures in order to create others”
(SB, 175).
For example, an animal (say, a chimpanzee) may, in certain contexts,
use a tree branch as a tool to get its food, but in so doing the branch
becomes a new item in its milieu. That is to say, its aspectual character
– its momentary nucleus of significance – exhausts its reality and never
acquires the status of an object retaining its identity across perspectival
alterations.
Animal activity reveals its limits in two cases: it loses itself in the real
transformations which it accomplishes and cannot reiterate them. For man,
on the contrary, the tree branch which has become a stick will remain
precisely a tree-branch-which-has-become-a-stick, the same thing in two
different functions and visible for him under the plurality of aspects. (SB,
175)

For this reason, the perceived situation, which is the dialectical correl-
ative of work, is said to be principally ambiguous. It is permeated by
a bilateral process consisting of sedimentation (acquisition of embodied
cultural meanings) and spontaneity (ongoing transcendence of these
acquired significations) (PP, 150). On the one hand, perception ‘lives’
among culturally acquired meanings. Its “original” objects are not
 MIND EMBODIED, MIND BODIFIED 105

geometrized natural objects with determinate qualities, but rather

“actions of other human subjects” (SB, 166), “use-objects” (computers,
parks, etc.), and “cultural objects” (books, paintings, etc.) (SB, 162). In
nascent perception the meaning of these cultural sedimentations is given
to us directly and pragmatically: they are “lived as [experiential] realities”
rather than “known as true objects” (SB, 168). On the other hand, this
culturally acquired meaning is not fixed but opens onto indeterminate
horizons of possible further sensori-motor explorations and manipula-
tions. A pen is not only something-to-write-with, but also, potentially,
something-to-scratch-with or something-to-fight-with, and ultimately,
something-to-be-reflected-on: a thing with qualities accessible through
the variations of possible practical engagements.
Thus, unlike an animal, which, as soon as it carves out its virtual
milieu, becomes “captivated” in it, human beings have the capacity to
orient themselves in relation to the virtual, to explore various modalities
of “the possible,” and thus enter into a “world of things, visible [...] under
plurality of aspects” (SB: 175; my emphasis). Human beings do not have
to blindly adhere to their cultural milieu but can take possession of it
“mentally by means of knowledge properly so-called” (SB, 174), they can
move from lived perception and “universe of use-objects” (SB, 245, n. 95)
to intellectual representation and “knowledge of a universe” (SB, 176).
Just as life, although not reducible to physico-chemical processes, is
not a manifestation of an immaterial élan vital, mind, although irreduc-
ible to neurobiological processes, is not a manifestation of an immaterial
res cogitans. ‘Life’ and ‘mind’ designate two cycles of behavior, which
means that, despite being irreducibly emergent, they are “not conceiva-
ble outside of the concrete situations in which they are embodied” (SB,
181; my emphasis). Hence, they constitute two forms (Gestalten), whose
irreducibility does not require us to postulate new metaphysical princi-
ples, but rather demonstrates the inability of naturalist-objectivist models
to account for the dynamic-systemic (‘dialectical’) nature of natural phe-
nomena. Put differently, to adopt a dialectical-holist view of life and
mind is not to revert to super-naturalism, which posits nature-transcend-
ing entities, but rather to move towards supra-naturalism, an epistemo-
logically more sophisticated view of (the interrelationship between) life,
mind, and nature.8

8
I borrow the term ‘supra-naturalism’ from Michel Bitbol (personal correspon-
dence).
106 SEBASTJAN VÖRÖS

3.2. Enacting observation: in the mind of the scientist

What bearing does all this have on the main topic of our discussion?
It must be emphasized that the wholesale adoption Merleau-Ponty’s con-
strual of the three orders is not necessary in order for its (meta)episte-
mological and (meta)methodological points to strike home. That is to
say, even if some of his claims proved to be wanting,9 there are certain
aspects that, in my opinion, cannot be ignored by any self-proclaimed
proponent of embodied-enactive view of mind and cognition.
The first thing to note is that, if we accept that mind and cognition
are fundamentally embodied and enacted, it follows that theoretical
modes of cognizing are, in one way or another, grounded in the more
primordial practical modes of cognizing. In Merleau-Ponty’s terms,
although human beings have the ability to stop adhering blindly to their
milieu and, by elevating it to the “status of spectacle,” engage in various
types of representational and reflective knowledge (SB, 174), the latter
ultimately stems from, and is pre-figured in, “lived perception” and “the
primitive life of consciousness” (SB, 166, 176), that is, in various types
of pre-representational and pre-reflective knowledge. Put differently, the
ability to ‘step back’ from one’s ongoing bodily engagements and take
on the role of the epistemic subject is one of the possible attitudes that are
available to the practical subject (SB; 172; PP, 178). And this practi-
cal-embodied knowledge, this praktognosia,10 not only has a different
structure than representational-propositional knowledge but has to be
recognized as “original,” perhaps even “primary” (PP, 162). To a certain
extent, this point seems to be accepted by most, if not all, proponents
of embodied-enactive cognition.
However, what tends to be overlooked is that this has far wider con-
sequences than is commonly assumed, as it involves ineradicable reflexivity
(Stewart et al. 2010, xv). Namely, since cognition is not primarily a mat-
ter of representation but of embodied action, and since cognitive scien-
tists reflecting on mind and cognition are themselves embodied minds
engaged in acts of cognizing, their investigative pursuits must be

9
However, Thompson (2007, esp. 66–87) makes a convincing case about how many
of Merleau-Ponty’s claims find support in contemporary work on dynamic and autono-
mous systems. See also Ellis (2013) and Newton (1996) for similar claims from the
perspective of cognitive neuroscience.
10
A term Merleau-Ponty adopted from the language theorist Abraham Grünbaum
(PP, 162).
 MIND EMBODIED, MIND BODIFIED 107

embedded in, and understood against, the selfsame background of

embodied-enactive cognition. In other words, since every (theoretical)
viewpoint presupposes a specific (pragmatic) standpoint, and since every
scientific theory – theory of embodied-enactive cognition included – is
ultimately rooted in a panoply of embodied practices (practical, linguistic,
etc.), the cognitive scientist cannot extricate himself from the implications
of his theory and attain an epistemic ‘Archimedean point’ over and above
the phenomena he investigates (Vörös 2014; Vörös and Bitbol 2017).
The point that Merleau-Ponty makes about a “classical” psychologist
– a psychologist who endorses the naturalist-objectivist view of the
mind – accordingly rings all the truer for the proponent of embodied-­
enactive conception:
Now, the psychologist could imitate the scientist and, for a moment at
least, see [...] everything from the point of universal thought which abol-
ished equally his experience of others and his experience of himself. But as
a psychologist he was engaged in a task which by nature pulled him back
into himself, and he could not allow himself to remain unaware to this
extent. For whereas neither physicist nor the chemist are the objects of
their investigation, the psychologist was himself, in the nature of the case,
the fact which exercised him. (PP, 109)

The cognitive scientist does not only theorize about the embodied
mind but enacts it – he lives it while he thinks about it (PP, 109). In
fact, it is this pre-objective relationship that the scientist enjoys with his
mind that foreshadows, and gives significance to, the objective rep-
resentations he deploys in his scientific theories. In other words, his
(lived) experience of the mind pre-figures his (scientific) representation of
the mind:
Hence the psyche is not an object like others; it had done everything that
one was about to say of it before it could be said; the psychologist’s being
knew more about itself than he did; nothing that had happened or was
happening according to science was completely alien to it. (PP, 110)

The same holds true not just for the mind, but for all objects of knowl-
edge discussed above. As Merleau-Ponty points out, “form” is “not
a physical reality,” but “an object of perception,” “[it] cannot be defined in
terms of reality but in terms of knowledge, not as a thing of the physical
world but as a perceived whole” (SB, 143; my emphasis). This is why,
towards the end of his analysis of the vital order – still talking from the
perspective of the “outside spectator” – he starts referring to the living
108 SEBASTJAN VÖRÖS

body as a phenomenal body. In his view, it is a fundamental mistake of

naturalist-objectivist currents in biology to construe the living organism
as a “real product of an external nature,” when in fact it is “a unity of
signification, a phenomenon” (SB, 159). So, before I can take it up on
the representational level, its signification must already be given to me
on the praktognosic level: “I cannot understand the function of the living
body except by enacting it myself, and except in so far as I am a body
which rises towards the world” (PP, 87).
Once we take the idea of embodied action as a form of cognition – as
a way of (pragmatic) knowing – seriously, by which I mean reflexively,
then it simply will no longer do to try and accommodate scientific find-
ings, both those referred to by Merleau-Ponty and those featuring in
contemporary embodiment-enactive literature, by expanding the natu-
ralist-objectivist framework with irreducible wholes and argue, say, for
some sort of unidirectional emergentism. For not only is it dubious
whether this is actually feasible – it would seem that, within the natu-
ralist-objectivist framework, reductionism scores higher in terms of inter-
nal consistency than its non-reductionist alternatives – but even more
importantly, “[t]he reintroduction of the most unexpected perceptual
structures into modern science [...] testifies to the fact that the universe
of naturalism has not been able to become self-enclosed, and that per-
ception is not an event of nature [in the narrow naturalist-objectivist
sense]” (SB, 145). This means that the naturalist-objectivist ideal,
according to which the “perceptual given” is merely a “point of depar-
ture,” a “provisional intermediary” between us and the structure of
the preexisting reality (SB, 145) – a position still held by many in the
embodied-enactivist community – has not only proved inadequate but
has actually led us back to the realm of nascent perception, to the world
of lived experience:
All my experience of the world, even my scientific knowledge, is gained
from my particular point of view, or from some experience of the world
without which the symbols of science would be meaningless. The whole
universe of science is built upon the world as directly experienced, and if
we want to subject science itself to rigorous scrutiny and arrive at a precise
assessment of its meaning and scope, we must begin by reawakening the
basic experience of the world of which science is the second-order expres-
sion. (PP, ix)

Any proponent of embodiment/enaction unwilling to shoulder the

“phenomenological baggage” can thus be said to share with his
 MIND EMBODIED, MIND BODIFIED 109

computationalist-representationalist foes the proclivity to indulge in

what Merleau-Ponty terms “hybrid thinking” (PP, 19). That is, he tries
to account for experience, mind, and cognition by drawing on natural-
ist-objectivist notions – notions belonging to the “second-order world of
science” (causality, for example) – without paying heed, or even actively
ignoring, that lived-through domain from which these conceptual rep-
resentations draw their primordial significative sustenance. Another way
of putting this is by saying that naturalist-objectivist approaches in gen-
eral, but those sympathetic to embodiment and enaction in particular,
are guilty of so-called “experience error”:
We make perception out of things perceived. And since perceived things
themselves are obviously accessible only through perception, we end up by
understanding neither. We are caught up in the world and we do not
succeed in extricating ourselves from it in order to achieve consciousness
of the world. (PP, 5)

This is why, in transitioning from the Structure of Behavior to the

Phenomenology of Perception, Merleau-Ponty moves from the point of
view of the outside spectator to that of the “inside participant” (Thomp-
son 2007, 81), from taking forms, behavior, mind, etc., as things in
themselves to taking them as phenomena. For if we seek to understand
how these experientially given wholes become invested with their pri-
mordial meaning, we must find our way back from “things” to the “cra-
dle of things,” from scientific representations to the “phenomenal field”
as that “layer of living experience through which other people and things
are first given to us” (PP, 66–7). The specifics of Merleau-Ponty’s phe-
nomenological inquires need not concern us here; instead, what I would
like to focus on in the next section are two points that have direct
bearing on discussions in the contemporary embodied-enactive
­
community.

4. Reflexive reflectivity: an excursion in (meta)epistemology and

(meta)methodology
The first point – the point we have been developing thus far – is
a (meta)epistemological one. It refers to the ultimate ‘unsurpassability’ or
‘ungobehindability’ (Unhintergehbarkeit) of lived experience (Thompson
2004, 394), and is perhaps best expressed in terms of what I would like
to call a ‘behaviorist fork’:
110 SEBASTJAN VÖRÖS

We must choose between the behaviorist course of refusing all meaning to

the word ‘experience,’ and trying to build up perception as a product of
the world and of science, or else we must concede that experience, too,
gives us access to being, in which case it cannot be treated as a by-product
of being. Either experience is nothing or it must be total. (PP, 301)
Some enactivist-embodied approaches have been recently accused of
resurrecting behaviorism (Hutto and Myin 2012, 17, 19). From a Merleau-­
Pontyan perspective this hits the nail on its head. If lived experience is
merely ‘phenomenal fluff’ – something to be discarded or forcibly inte-
grated into a self-subsistent naturalist-objectivist framework – enactivism
ultimately does boil down to behaviorism, and an epistemologically
sketchy one at that. Experience cannot be simply added ‘on the cheap,’
for it is either that in which being actualizes itself, or it is an illusion at
worst or a nomological dangler at best.
This might be a hard pill to swallow for any naturalistically inclined
thinker, and it brings Merleau-Ponty closer to classical transcendental-
ism. The latter, it will be recalled, emphasizes that experience is not just
an object in the world but that in-and-through which objects are given
to us. Merleau-Ponty did, in fact, believe that, from a (meta)epistemo-
logical perspective, classical transcendentalism (“intellectualism” in PP)
was a significant improvement with respect to naturalism (“empiricism”
in PP), claiming that its analyses are less false than “abstract” (PP, 143).
However, he also argued that, if naturalism fell short of its desired goal,
classical transcendentalism – precisely because of its inclination towards
abstraction – went too far. Thus, in contrast to the (neo)Kantian and
Husserlian forms of transcendental philosophy, Merleau-Ponty refuses
to make a move from the concrete realm of (constituted) lived experi-
ence to the (assumed) abstract realm of (constituting) transcendental
subjectivity. He views such a move as betraying a residual commitment
to the objectivist ideal, the “ideal of a universe perfectly explicit in itself”
(PP, 48), which is grounded on the assumption that it is ultimately
possible to reach the transcendental domain where implicit and ambig-
uous significations of lived experience attain their explicit and determi-
nate completion.
In fact, and as mentioned above, Merleau-Ponty would argue that
tying one’s investigations to the latest scientific findings is a better way
to proceed, as it enables one to observe how the naturalist-objectivist
ideal outruns itself “from within” without having to enforce any contrar-
ian epistemological principles “from without.” At the same time, these
 MIND EMBODIED, MIND BODIFIED 111

findings can serve as useful correctives to any unintended naturalist-­

objectivist slips in subsequent transcendentalist-phenomenological coun-
termoves. A good case in point is the Gestaltist account of perception,
which reveals, in line with some of Husserl’s later analyses conducted
under the aegis of genetic and/or generative phenomenology (PP, 58–9,
n. 54), that the phenomenal field consists not only of thematized
(explicit) and determinable regions (“figure”) but also of unthematized
(implicit) and in-principle indeterminable regions (“ground”) (PP, 108–
9). According to Merleau-Ponty, once the unreflected naturalist-objec-
tivist presuppositions of Gestalt psychology – its imprisonment “within
‘self-evident truths’ of science and of the world” which sit uneasily with
the philosophical implications of its descriptions (PP, 55–6) – are brack-
eted (PP, 69), its analyses provide for a more grounded entryway into
the proper phenomenological study of lived experience.
This brings us to the next point – a point that is (meta)methodological
in nature and inquires into how we should properly construe, and ulti-
mately perform, our reflections on the pre-reflective. In other words, we
are interested in what it means for a scientist to be an embodied agent
who, in-and-through his pre-reflective (practical) engagements with the
world, is able to adopt a reflective (theoretical) stance towards these
pre-reflective engagements. To tackle this thorny question we must first
take a look at Merleau-Ponty’s tripartite classification of reflection.
The first type of reflection could be called ‘naïve’ reflection. ‘Naïve’
reflection is characteristic of naturalist philosophies and boils down to
causal explanation. Naturalism starts with the idea of a preexisting world
(world-in-itself), consisting of causally interrelated discrete objects with
discrete properties, and tries to account for phenomena by embedding
them into a causal nexus (PP, 132). The second type is analytical or
intellectualist reflection. This type is characteristic of classical transcen-
dentalist philosophies and construes reflection as an analytic account of
transcendental constitution (PP, 280). Classical transcendentalism
accepts the naturalist description of the world, but opposes its metaphys-
ical status, arguing that objects are always given to someone – they are
objects of experience, i.e., phenomena. Experience, subjectivity, cogni-
tion, etc., cannot be simply elements of the world, but are that which
enables the world to manifest itself. Thus, the role of philosophical
reflection is to help us understand how the world – now considered as
a world-for-ourselves – is constituted by the cognitive acts of the (tran-
scendental) subject.
112 SEBASTJAN VÖRÖS

In elucidating so-called critical or authentic reflection (PP, xvi, 27, 48,

64, 247), Merleau-Ponty builds on the transcendentalist critique of nat-
uralism while trying to steer clear of what he believes are its residual
commitments to objectivism. On the one hand, “naïve” reflection is so
caught up with the world that it remains oblivious of itself and thus loses
the reflective subject; on the other hand, analytical reflection, although
embarking on the journey of self-discovery, invests the subject with con-
stitutive omnipotence and thus loses the world. Naturalism leaves us
with a subjectless world, transcendentalism with the wordless subject. How-
ever, what the two approaches have in common is that they both start
from the same predefined notion of objectivity and subjectivity, with the
former denoting a fully determinate world and the latter an impartial
epistemological subject (PP, 30, 44–6, 65). Radical reflection, in con-
trast, is
what takes hold of me as I am in the act of forming and formulating the
ideas of subject and object, and brings to light the source of these two
ideas; it is reflection, not only in operation, but conscious of itself in oper-
ation. [...] We must rediscover, as anterior to the ideas of subject and
object, the fact of my subjectivity and the nascent object, that primordial layer
at which both things and ideas come into being. (PP, 254–255; my
emphases)
Merleau-Ponty agrees with transcendentalism that reflection must
become aware of itself and break with the illusory self-enclosedness of
the world; however, this does not mean that it should – nor, for that
matter, that it could – sever all ties with the world. Instead, it must
recapture, within itself, that existential-cum-experiential anchorage in
which the two theoretical notions – ‘subject’ and ‘world’ – are rooted.
Put differently, the domain that radical reflection surges up from, and
dives back into, is not the domain of pure consciousness, but the domain
of embodied subjectivity engaged in a dynamic back-and-forth exchange
with its world. Reflection lands us in the densely interwoven texture of
phenomenal field not in the abstract realm of transcendental subjectivity
(PP, 280–1).
This opens an important question about the relationship between
(theoretical) reflection and (pre-theoretical) lived experience. For Mer-
leau-Ponty, this relationship is not unilateral. On the one hand, it is not
as if lived experience simply grounds reflection, and that, once we
unearth the former, we can simply dispense with the latter. It is only
in-and-through reflection that the pre-reflective is discovered. Since
 MIND EMBODIED, MIND BODIFIED 113

“existence is too tightly caught up in the world to know itself,” there is

“the need of ideality in order to come and know and prevail over its
facticity” (PP, xiv–xv). On the other hand, theoretical reflection is not
self-sufficient, as it draws its sustenance from the labor of the pre-theo-
retical layer: it can only transcend the pre-theoretical “opening to the
world” by “making use of the powers it owes to the opening itself” (PP,
164). What is needed, then, is a type of reflection that never loses track
of its corporeal origins and is able to thematize this ongoing dialectical
relationship between ideation and existence, which Husserl called Fund-
ierung (PP, 458).
This is a crucial point, and it clearly shows why critical reflection is
not a fetishization of ‘the given’: although it grounds reflection, the
pre-reflective is brought to light and given expression precisely in-and-
through reflection. That is why, from a Merleau-Pontyan perspective, it
is possible to claim that there is truth to both naturalism and classical
transcendentalism: they are both “fields of idealities” issuing forth from,
and reflecting upon, the concrete sphere of lived experience, and as such,
their respective modes of inquiry – induction and eidetic analysis, respec-
tively – can be seen as structurally similar and mutually enriching
(­Merleau-Ponty, 1964, 69–70).
However, that is also why Merleau-Ponty held classical transcenden-
talism as constituting a significant step forward in relation to naturalism,
for it is under its aegis that reflection first becomes aware of itself and
awakens to the phenomenal field. The reason why classical transcenden-
talism falls short is that it excludes itself from its self-scrutiny: it fails to
thematize how the uncovered phenomenal field reflects back upon its
own modi operandi, thus forgetting the ‘corporeal opening’ from which
its reflective activities issue forth. It is because I, as an inquiring scientist
or philosopher, am a living body that both my personality (subjectivity)
and my world are given to me; and it is from this givenness that I can
reflect on their pre-reflective (corporeal, temporal, etc.) conditions of
possibility (see Vörös and Prosen 2018 for a more in-depth discussion
on some of these points).
However, it is evident that this new type of reflective inquiry cannot
be pursued as an exclusively intellectual endeavor: analytical reflection is
a “subset” of critical reflection, and not vice versa. And although
Merleau-­Ponty himself never provided any concrete methodological
guidelines as to how to actually perform critical reflection, one can find
interesting suggestions of that nature in Varela et al. (1991) and in
114 SEBASTJAN VÖRÖS

subsequent works trying to extend and/or implement these suggestions

into concrete settings (Depraz et al. 2000, 2003; Petitmengin 2006;
Varela 1996; Varela and Shear 1999). The core idea behind all such
approaches is that we need to broaden the field of accepted epistemic
practices with concrete contemplative and somatic techniques that would
“change the nature of reflection from an abstract, disembodied activity
to an embodied (mindful), open-ended reflection,” a reflection that is
“not just on experience,” but “is a form of experience itself,” one that
“can be performed with mindfulness/awareness” (Varela et al. 1991, 27).
That is to say, the advocates of such approaches contend that
“a renewed, contemporary phenomenology” should be based on meth-
odology characterized not so much by “its internal theoretical structure
or an a priori justification of knowledge,” but primarily by its praxis or
modes of enaction (Depraz et al. 2000, 122). As such, it could help us
develop means to not only think and/or talk about, but systematically enact
a return to lived experience, and only then engage in theoretical reflection
(be it of a naturalist or classical-transcendentalist variety) on what has
been un- and dis-covered.

5. Conclusion: domestication of ‘wild thought’?

In a recent paper Christopher Pollard (2014) talks about a pernicious
tendency in contemporary mind sciences to “quarantine” the transcen-
dental aspects of Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy. Although sympathetic to
the general sentiment of Pollard’s critique, I think it would be more
appropriate to describe the current developments as a progressive domes-
tication of Merleau-Ponty’s “wild thought” (Merleau-Ponty 1968, 13):
a process whereby a radical proposal which calls for a revitalization of
engagement with lived experience (cf. ‘behaviorist fork’) and, concomi-
tantly, a modification of the prevalent epistemic standards and practices
(cf. ‘radical reflection’) gets channeled into the philosophically and s­cien-
tifically ‘more respectable’ avenues of thought.
The instigators of the embodiment/enactive turn were well aware of
the radicality of their suggestions and did not shy away from proclaiming
how important it is “to leave behind a certain image of how science is
done,” “to question a style of training in science which is part of the very
fabric of our cultural identity,” and ultimately “transform the styles and
values of the research community itself” (Varela 1996, 338, 347). In
their view, it is not enough to simply “talk the talk” (theorize about
 MIND EMBODIED, MIND BODIFIED 115

enaction); one must also learn to “walk the walk” (en-act enaction) (cf.
Vörös and Bitbol 2017), or to realize that the “disenchantment of the
abstract” and “reenchantment of the concrete” must manifest themselves
not only on a theoretical but also on an experiential and practical level:
It’s one thing to have a scientific representation of the mind as ‘enactive’
– as embodied, emergent, dynamic, and relational. But it’s another thing
to have a corresponding direct experience in one’s own first-person case.
In more phenomenological terms, it’s one thing to have a scientific rep-
resentation of the mind as participating in the ‘constitution’ of its inten-
tional objects; it’s another thing to see such constitution at work in one’s
own lived experience. (Thompson 2004, 382)
However, the progressive popularization of the enactive-embodied
narrative has now made us witness to a steady shift away from embodi-
ment (as envisioned by Varela et al.) towards what we might call bodifi-
cation (as propounded by, say, Hutto and Myin). Ignoring the original
Merleau-Pontyan themes that have given birth to the idea of an ongoing
circulation between scientific investigations of Körper and phenomeno-
logical investigations of Leib, such approaches focus solely on the first
part of the equation. Thus, instead of looking for ways that would enable
us to implement a radically different attitude towards (the study of)
mind and cognition, so that we may begin to unearth the flesh-and-blood
texture of lived experience, such accounts settle for more anemic concep-
tualizations, in which paying attention to the body means more or less
extending the abstract explanatory substratum that has been at work in
classical mind sciences. The embodied mind thus gives way to its pale
cousin, the bodified mind. In this light it can be said that there is (pace
Hutto and Myin) no need to further radicalize enactive-embodied
cognition; instead, what is needed is to take a step back, put down our
theoretical blinders, and regain the true radicality of the Merleau-­
Pontyan heritage.
Aškerčeva 2 Sebastjan Vörös
1000 Ljubljana
Slovenia
sebastjan.voros@ff.uni-lj.si

Works Cited
Abbreviations of Merleau-Ponty’s works
PP: The Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Colin Smith. London: Routledge,
1962.
116 SEBASTJAN VÖRÖS

SB: The Structure of Behavior, trans. Alden L. Fisher. Pittsburgh: Duquesne

University Press, 1963.
Other works
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—. 2003. On Becoming Aware. Amsterdam: John Benjamin.
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 MIND EMBODIED, MIND BODIFIED 117

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