Bøger af Francisco J. Varela

A unique, sophisticated treatment of the spontaneous and reflective dimension of human experience.

How can science be brought to connect with experience? This book addresses two of the most challenging problems facing contemporary neurobiology and cognitive science. Firstly, understanding how we unconsciously execute habitual actions as a result of neurological and cognitive processes that are not formal actions of conscious judgment but part of a habitual nexus of systematic self-organization. Secondly, attempting to create an ethics adequate to our present awareness that there is no such thing as a transcendental self, a stable subject or soul. The author combines researches in cognitive science and phenomenology with two representatives of what he calls the wisdom traditions: Confucianism and Buddhist epistemology.

, by an observer, already seems to violate the fundamental requirement which Maturana and Varela posit for the characterization of such system- namely, that they are autonomous, self-referring and self-constructing closed systems - in short, autopoietic systems in their terms.

How can science be brought to connect with experience? This book addresses two challenging problems facing contemporary neurobiology and cognitive science: understanding how we unconsciously execute habitual actions and creating an ethics adequate to our present awareness.