From Meaningful Instructions to Learned Illness: Philosophical Perspectives on Psychopathology and the Dynamics of Information

Embodied cognition and enactivism, as a philosophy and position in the cognitive sciences, represent the idea that the human experience is the kind of experience of a fundamentally embodied entity, and this embodiment manifests itself into consciousness through “common-sense” or “ready-at-hand” knowledge; It is in the way we interact and engage with the environment that this embodiment is experienced. But, It is only through psychopathology, or disturbances in typical engagement with the world, that this embodiment is brought into explicit awareness. Phenomenology, with famous examples like Heidegger’s “Carpenter and his Hammer (Heidegger, 1967, p. 69),” or Merleau-Ponty’s “The Hand touching Itself (Merleau-Ponty, 2012, p. 106).”, illustrate that embodiment is our primary mode of being. This can be understood as embodied engagement, where cognition relies on experiences derived from having a body equipped with various sensorimotor capacities. These sensorimotor capacities exist within a broader ecological, historical, social, cultural, biological, and psychological context, known as the phenomenological life world, or being-in-the-world. Consequently, engagement implies that sensory and motor processes, perception, and action are fundamentally inseparable in lived cognition. Contrasting with the old Cartesian view, where perception is viewed as an information processing task aimed at recovering the pre-given properties of the world, the perspective here is that perception is about how the perceiver can navigate and act within their immediate environment. These local situations are in a state of constant flux due to the perceiver's activities. Therefore, the reference point for understanding perception shifts from a pre-given, perceiver-independent world to the sensorimotor structure of the perceiver. This structure, defined by how the perceiver is embodied, rather than an independent world, determines how the perceiver can act and be influenced by environmental events. A problem arises when we realize the fact, that we come into being within a world that precedes us, as Heidegger says: we are “thrown” into the world, gradually becoming aware of its presence (Heidegger, 1967, p. 135.). As we age and experience life, we start contemplating its nature. The world isn't a product of our making, but rather a revelation awaiting our discovery. However, it's this very world that enables us to engage in reflection. Thus, a cycle ensues: the world precedes our contemplation, yet it intertwines inseparably with our experience.