Action, Embodied Mind, and Life World

Combines phenomenology with the "e;enactivist"e; approach to consciousness theory and recent emotion research to explore the way self-motivated action plans shape selective attention, exploration, and ultimately the mind's interpretation of reality - in philosophy, psychology, cultural awareness, and our personal lives.Action, Embodied Mind, and Life World combines embodied consciousness research, existential phenomenology, Gendlin's "e;focusing"e; concept, and recent self-organizational work on basic emotions (e.g., Panksepp, Frijda), to explore the way patterns of motivated action shape our interpretations of reality-personally, biologically, and within a sociopolitical community. Like a bat projecting sonar, we understand our world by sensing patterns of resistance against our own self-initiated actions. If hammering is the action, we find "e;nails"e; and "e;non-nails."e; Actions in turn express a self-organizing process rooted in motivational structures that presuppose values. These patterns of motivation therefore prefigure the shape of what we think or perceive. But the emotions, feelings, "e;sensings"e; through which we discern motivation are never just about what they seem, especially given ample incentives to distortion and self-deception. The "e;trigger"e; is the tip of an iceberg. This book works toward a coherent method for getting at the basement level of the action trajectories that motivate exploration, selective attention, and thus interpretations of reality-a crucial question in an age of motivated disinformation.