The Locus of Affection. Intersubjective Life from Enaction to Epigenesis

Abstract

How is it possible for me to engage in an intersubjective world? In enactivism, cognition is defined as the living system’s interaction with the meaningful world. What is missing, here, is the conceptualization of intersubjectivity. In this paper, I try to reconstruct the enactivist view of interrelationships between intersubjectivity, teleology, and enaction within the living system’s life cycle. I draw on the enactivist intuitions on teleology and foundations of autonomy with the appeal to the intersubjective view of science as practice. Next, I proceed to the idea of epigenetic development of mind as the instantiation of the bio-phenomenological intertwinement of two living systems. I show that it is the affective interaction of two epigenetically developing systems, involved in an “originary relationality,” which is the true subject of transformation.

Keywords

• enactivism
• intersubjectivity
• epigenesis
• auto-hetero-affection
• originary relationality