Bounded in a nutshell and a king of infinite space: the embodied self and its intentional world

Abstract

This paper explores the implications of developments in phenomenological biology for a reconsideration of synchronicity and the self. The enactive approach of Maturana and Varela aims to reformulate the relation between biological organisms and the world in a non-Cartesian way, breaking down the conceptual division between mind and world so that meaning can be seen as a function of the species-specific way in which an organism engages with its environment. This leads to a view of the self as inherently embodied and engaged with the particularities of its material, cultural and social worlds, while being infinitely extended through the power of imagination; this enables humans to adapt to many different social and material environments. In order to understand these differences, we need to 'enter into the world of the other'. Where understanding of other animals requires immersion in their environmental milieux, understanding other humans requires us also to recognize that differences in socio-cultural milieux create significantly different worlds of meaning and experience.

Research on synchronicity

“…Finally, there have been many discussions of meaning in synchronicity. Among the issues discussed have been the relationship between meaning and order (von Franz 1992: 267-92), the complementarity between causality and meaning (Atmanspacher 2014b), whether the meaning in synchronicities is found or created (Bright 1997;Colman 2015), and what kinds or levels of meaning might be involved in synchronicities (Aziz 1990: 64-66, 75-84;Colman 2011Colman , 2012Giegerich 2012;Main 2004Main : 56-58, 112-13, 2014cAtmanspacher 2014a: 192-93). Advancing these discussions is particularly important because it is the involvement of meaning that ties synchronicity to the rest of Jung's psychological model and constitutes the real challenge of synchronicity to prevailing philosophy of science.…”

“…The relation of synchronicity to emergence has been explored especially by Cambray (2004Cambray ( , 2009, George Hogenson (2005Hogenson ( , 2009, Warren Colman (2011Colman ( , 2015, and Robert Sacco (2016). Among the features that make this approach promising are that emergence is consistent with, even if challenging to, current mainstream science; applies at different scales and hence, like synchronicity, draws on and could potentially be relevant to a wide range of disparate disciplines; and provides scope for treating synchronicity both as an object of study (through exploring its phenomenological and theoretical connections to complexity theory) and as a method of study (through applying it in ways analogous to how complexity theory is applied).…”

A revolution of the mind: some implications of George Hogenson's ‘The Baldwin Effect: a neglected influence on C.G. Jung's evolutionary thinking’ (2001)

“…Here I am touching on the much larger theme of the phenomenological critique of a Cartesian mind that is located 'in the head'. In my forthcoming book on symbolic imagination, I have devoted an entire chapter to discussing several approaches to the idea that the mind is not separable from the world in which it is situated (Colman 2015b). It is not merely archetypes but the mind itself that is not located anywhere.…”

“…Now the situated context for most animals is their environment of adaptation, their Umwelt as the biologist Jacob von Uexküll called it – a concept that is similar to the phenomenologists idea of a life‐world or a milieu . I have given a moving example of this in my paper on the embodied self where I described a study of wild turkeys conducted by naturalist Joe Hutto (Hutto ; Colman ). Hutto imprinted a clutch of turkey chicks to follow him as their ‘mother’ and lived with them in the Flatwoods of Florida until they grew up.…”