Imagination , narrativity and embodied cognition : Exploring the possibilities of Paul Ricœur ’ s hermeneutical phenomenology for enactivism

This paper aims to show that Paul Ricœur’s hermeneutical phenomenology has significance for philosophy of mind, in particular for recent theories of enactivism, one of the most significant latest developments in cognitive theory. While philosophy of mind often finds its inspiration in hermeneutics and phenomenology, especially in Husserl’s and Merleau-Ponty’s, the later development of hermeneutical phenomenology under the influence of Gadamer and Ricœur, as it evolved into the theory of the interpretation of narratives and lived existence, is often lost sight of in recent debates about embodied cognition. I defend the thesis, however, that combining Ricœur’s phenomenology with enactivism shows that embodied cognition has an intrinsic ethico-political aspect. The central argument is that, if we take that imagination and narrative lie at the heart of basic embodied cognition as interaction with the world (planning, motor skills, coordination), as both recent theories of enactivism and Ricœur hold, then embodied cognition or the way in which we experience and gain knowledge in embodied cognitive relations with the world is ethically and politically significant in that it gets shaped by the ethical and political contexts in which these relations take place (e.g., cultural body images and morals in subcultures). These contexts contain ethical and political narratives and our imaginations are influenced by and work with these narratives in order to gain knowledge. This essay thus attempts to explore some of the possibilities of phenomenological hermeneutics for the philosophy of mind today.

Imagination, narrativity and embodied cognition: Exploring the possibilities of Paul Ricoeur's hermeneutical phenomenology for enactivism Geoffrey Dierckxsens 1   In this essay, I wi l explore how Paul Ricoeur's hermeneutical phenomenology could contribute to understanding embodied cognition, in particular as conceived by ena ivism.It might seem somewhat self-evident, e ecia ly today, to ap roach cognition from the point of view of hermeneutics.Indeed, many contemporary theories have already examined the possi le contributions of hermeneutics, genera ly understood as the theory of the interpretation of lived existence and nar atives, for i luminating a ects of (embodied) cognition (Wratha l and Malpas 2000;Ga lagher, 2004Ga lagher, , 2017)).These theories try to define how understanding humans as interpreting beings helps to explain cognitive states and functions, such as intentionality, a ion or intersubjectivity.Moreover, one of the latest developments in philosophy of mind -ena ivism -finds its roots in hermeneutics and phenomenology and explains cognition, in general terms, as the intera ion between the lived, interpreting body and the sur ounding world of which we are conscious (e.g., O'Regan and Noë, 2001;Hutto and Myin, 2017).Understanding human cognition in line with hermeneutics and phenomenology, as an a ive process in which the body is affected by the sur ounding physical world, which in turn leads to immediate experience and interpretation, is thus nothing new.
Yet, while many contemporary theories of mind find their inspiration in the early movements of phenomenology and hermeneutics, by drawing on the works of Husserl, Heide ger and Merleau-Ponty, philosophers of mind and ena ivists alike rarely discuss Husserl's successors, who put embodiment at center stage (Sartre, Henry, Ricoeur). 2Moreover, hermeneutics, as it evolved to a theory of the interpretation of narrati es in historical and cultural contexts in the second half of the 20 th century, under the influence of Gadamer and Ricoeur, rarely is the inspiration for philosophy of mind or ena ivism.
In my paper, I wi l aim to contribute to fi ling this lacuna in the secondary literature by focusing on Paul Ricoeur's hermeneutics -in particular his nar ative take on hermeneutics -in relation to recent theories of ena ivism.Ricoeur's philosophy, so this paper aims to show, has significance for philosophy of mind and the understanding of embodied/ena ive cognition.
In order to show how this is the case, my paper wi l consist of three parts.In the first part, I wi l sketch, quite genera ly, how Ricoeur offers a conception of the embodied consciousness that fits within a theoretical framework that matches with that of ena ivism.Both Ricoeur and ena ivism, e ecia ly in its original version as conceived by Varela, Thompson and Rosch, draw on phenomenology, on Husserl's and Merleau-Ponty's ideas of embodied consciousness in particular, and understand cognition as an intera ion and a "mixture" between the involuntary (bodily functions, affections and needs) and the voluntary (creative adaption, consent and a ion) (Varela et al., 1991).
In the second part of this paper, I wi l su gest how Ricoeur's conceptions of both imagination and narrati e in particular could be understood in line with ena ivism: as part of the creative embodied adaption to the sur ounding world (e.g., we use imagination to solve pro lems or we te l stories to understand situations).
In the final part of my paper, I wi l ar ue that Ricoeur's ideas of imagination and nar ative also contribute to recent theories of ena ivism and vice versa.While ena ivists offer new insights from the cognitive sciences that can provide empirical knowledge about imagination and nar ative, Ricoeur highlights the crucial role of imagination and nar ative for understanding the ethico-political a ect of embodied cognition (i.e., how a ects of cognition, for example the personal perception of our bodies, gets shaped by the ethical and political nar atives that are part of human culture).These a ects of cognition are not simply ethica ly and politica ly neutral, because they should be understood within the framework of a phenomenological world, that is to say, a world that is not purely instrumental, but also expressive in that it has meaning through diverse a ects of history and culture.

The embodied mind:
A "mixture" between the mental and the body It might seem unusual to take Ricoeur's hermeneutical phenomenology to be a contribution to the philosophy of mind.Indeed, while Ricoeur is perhaps best known for his theory of nar ative and of metaphor, one might ar ue that it makes more sense -at least in order to understand cognition -to look at a pure phenomenology of embodied consciousness, like Husserl's or Merleau-Ponty's, both of whom also explicitly engaged in a dialo ue with the empirical sciences in order to define their ideas of embodied consciousness.Yet, Ricoeur as we l builds his entire hermeneutical phenomenology on a conception of embodied subjectivity.This is especia ly ap arent in his first major work: Freedom and Nature. 3Indeed, his method and scope, as announced in the Introduction, amount to analyzing consciousness, or mind, in relation to a scientific study of the body and empirical knowledge.Ricoeur writes that the "body" is "an empirical object elaborated by the experimental sciences" , and that "the structures of the subject constantly refer to empirical and scientific knowledge" (Ricoeur, 2007a, p. 8, 19).
Furthermore, it is no exa geration to say that Freedom and Nature is essentia ly a book about embodied cognition.In fact, many understand Ricoeur's endeavor in this book as an ap roach that embeds the voluntary in the involuntary, that is to say, an ap roach to human knowledge, motivation and a ion as intertwined with human need, effort and desire (Żarowski, 2012;Kearney, 2016;Sautereau and Marcelo, forthcoming).Moreover, while Ricoeur himself is not an ena ivist by name, his philosophy and ena ivism have several a ects in common.Both are inspired by Husserl's and Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology and emphasize the cor elation between embodiment and the mental.Ricoeur contends, like recent ena ivist theorists, that embodied cognition gets shaped by sociocultural contexts (Hutto and Myin, 2017).He also puts a particular focus on nar ativity, like certain ena ivists do, e ecia ly on how imagination plays a part in the reception of (literary) nar atives and in cognition as a whole (Caracciolo, 2013).
When comparing Ricoeur's program in Freedom and Nature with the ena ivist program as origina ly formulated by Varela, Thompson and Rosch in The Embo ied Mind, the similarities are striking.Indeed, Ricoeur writes that "the method [of Freedom and Nature] […] constantly refers to empirical and scientific knowledge […], while […] the unity of man [should be understood] by reference to […] incarnate existence" (Ricoeur, 2007a, p. 19).And Varela, Thompson and Rosch define their project as fo lows: "This book begins and ends with the conviction that the new sciences of mind need to enlarge their horizon to encompass both li ed human expe ience and the possibilities for transformation inherent in human experience" (Varela et al., 1990, p. xv).
Given the difference in both time and scientific context that separates these two projects (behaviorism in France in the 1950s (for Freedom and Nature) and the "philosophy of mind" debates of the 1990s (for The Embo ied Mind)), they are in fact surprisingly similar.Both announce a descriptive analysis of consciousness and mind, which does not seek to be representational, but is rather based on our concrete lived existence.Both stress that consciousness and mind are embodied and therefore point out the necessity of a dialo ue with the empirical sciences.And both refer explicitly to the influence of phenomenology.In essence, there is a close resem lance between the theoretical framework of Freedom and Nature and that of the original version of ena ivism.
What is more, while the later Ricoeur surely makes a shift toward what might be ca led "a hermeneutics of the nar ative and of the text" , in contrast to the early Ricoeur who focusses in the first place on a phenomenological analysis of the voluntary and the involuntary, his idea of understanding subjectivity as embodied forms a leading thread throughout his writings and is the backbone of his hermeneutics.In From Text to Action -one of Ricoeur' s core texts in that it combines his earlier phenomenological insights with his later nar ative theory and thoughts on ethico-political life -Ricoeur ar ues for a hermeneutical phenomenology of interpretation that breaks with Husserl' s early idealism and with its emphasis on a representational approach to intentionality (Ricoeur, 2007b, p. 29 ff.).Intentionality means, for Ricoeur, the phenomenological "belonging" to the world, which is the "Lebenswelt" , that is, the world of our immediate lived existence which does not imply pre-conditioned representational content, but results from embodied interpretation of what is experienced (Ricoeur, 2007b, p. 30, 32).
Hence, when intera ing with our environment, we understand this environment as a nar ative, as if we are the "reader" of a "text" , to use Ricoeur's phrasing: the world makes sense in our immediate lived experience (Ricoeur, 2007b, p. 32).And nar ative should be understood here in the broad sense of stories, cultural, historical, political or other stories, that influence how we experience the lifeworld.For example, ideas of justice and responsibility are influenced by the political and cultural institutions in which we live.In this re ect, Ricoeur ar ues in Oneself as Anothe , where he elaborates on his theory of the self and his ethics, that the subject, the self, is foremost "body" and "flesh" , which means that it is a physical body that also gets affected by the world, and that the moral decisions and a ions of the self are influenced by the mores of historical and cultural communities (Ricoeur, 1992, p. 319). 4In short, there are not only para lels between the program of Freedom and Nature and that of The Embo ied Mind, but Ricoeur's hermeneutics, in focusing on the embodied aspects of interpretation and consciousness, ap ears to be particularly suita le to be brought into debate with ena ivism.
It is questiona le, however, whether and how Ricoeur's project in Freedom and Nature stands out against more recent theories of ena ivism that stress, more so than Varela et al. (1991), the necessity of a naturalistic ap roach to cognition.For example, how does Ricoeur's hermeneutics stand out against Radical Ena ivism (REC), that defends the importance of understanding cognition without content, i.e., as pure intera ion of the organism with its environment, without any kind of ecific cor ectness condition of the mind that needs to be the case in order to make cognition possi le?Indeed, to what extent does Ricoeur, who criticizes naturalism, that is at least the idea that the mental can be understood purely in terms of behavior without a proper phenomenological description of consciousness, presup ose an idea of consciousness that implies truth conditions?(For his critique of naturalism, see Ricoeur, 2007a, p. 41 ff.).
These questions need to be examined carefu ly, and in the fo lowing sections of this paper I wi l go into a more detailed discussion with several more recent theories of ena ivism.The aim of this section was simply to demonstrate that there does not need to be a "dialo ue of the deaf " between Ricoeur's philosophy and recent work on cognition in the philosophy of mind.Despite the obvious differences with ena ivism, Ricoeur's hermeneutical-phenomenological project and the general ena ivism program thus point in the same direction as far as the general conception of cognition is concerned.They both understand cognition as the result of a process of enactment in which our bodily relation with the world is the basis on which we experience the world and on which we act.The concept of intentionality is key to understand this relation according to Ricoeur.Yet, as several ena ivists and analytical philosophers do, Ricoeur questions the idea that cognition implies a Fregian sense-reference distinction (Ricoeur, 2007b, p. 86). 5 We make sense of the world, for Ricoeur, in an a ive way of understanding the different meanings we experience, without there being a priori representations.This reflects the idea of the hermeneutical circle, i.e., of an understanding that has a historical dimension (the history of how one's own life story has unfolded in relation to other stories), but is also creative and renewa le over and over again.Sense results from interpretation, which amounts to knitting our experiences in the world into nar atives.

Imagination and narrative: Creative adaption to the textual world
In the first part of my paper, I ar ued that the general theoretical outlook of Ricoeur's theory of cognition has significant overlap with ena ivism, at least when very genera ly construed.In order to get a more precise grip on how Ricoeur's insights could be of value for ena ivism, what kind of enactivism this might be, and how this might open some avenues for a hermeneutical-phenomenological ap roach to recent discussions about cognition, it is helpful to focus particularly on two of Ricoeur's concepts: imagination and narrati e.
As has been noted by several scholars, imagination is a key concept in Ricoeur's philosophy and one of the backbones of his entire work (e.g., Taylor, 2006;Amalric, 2013).However, despite the importance of imagination in Ricoeur's thought, imagination is also a "scattered" concept in his writings.It does not ap ear in the titles of his main pu lished writings and is only fu ly a dressed in the unpu lished Lectures on Imagination (forthcoming).For Ricoeur, imagination relates to both embodied experience (Ricoeur, 2007a) and to reading and recounting nar atives (Ricoeur, 1984(Ricoeur, , 1986b(Ricoeur, , 1990)).It is both imagination in a pra ical and in a poetic sense (cf.Amalric, 2012), that is, both as the cognitive capacity to find patterns within or to simulate an experience and as the capacity to understand and to produce poetic meaning.And even though Ricoeur has devoted a large part of his work ecifica ly to nar ative (Ricoeur, 1984(Ricoeur, , 1986b(Ricoeur, , 1990)), the same is true of his idea of nar ative (for a detailed account of Ricoeur's idea of nar ative, see Kearney, 2016), at least insofar as he understands nar ative in several senses throughout the different parts of his writings: as literary and historical nar ative (e.g., Ricoeur, 1990), as ethical and political nar atives (e.g., Ricoeur, 2007b), and as nar ative identity (e.g., Ricoeur, 1992).Furthermore, there are already a number of pu lications on Ricoeur's concepts of imagination and nar ative (e.g., Amalric, 2013;Kearney, 2016).In recent years, Ricoeur scholars have already done much work in order to map the scattered references to imagination and nar ative in Ricoeur's work and have examined the role of imagination and narrative in Ricoeur's ethico-political work, and, in particular, the question how imagination and nar ative a low for a critique and redesign of existing moral and political norms and standards (e.g., Taylor, 2012Taylor, , 2013;;Bou lil, 2015).However, much work sti l has to be done on how Ricoeur's idea of imagination can ap ly to several other philosophical domains, in particular with regard to epistemology.It is therefore interesting to examine more carefu ly, as I wi l do in the fo lowing, how these ideas could contribute to recent cognitive theories.
The cognitive a ect of Ricoeur's notion of imagination is proba ly most evident in his first major work, Freedom and Nature, where he also first introduces this notion (Ricoeur, 2007a, p. 95 ff.).Imagination is a key concept in the book, and it is on the basis of imagination that he builds his entire idea of voluntary a ion and embodied cognition.Furthermore, in "The Metaphorical Process as Cognition, Imagination and Feeling" , an article in which he explicitly relates the ideas of embodied cognition and imagination, he confirms that imagination is non-representational and should be understood in terms of an a ive relation with the world, a depicting that is a creation rather than a representation.He writes: "To imagine, then, is not to have a mental picture of something but to display relations" (Ricoeur, 1978, p. 150).And these relations might include: "qualities, structures, localizations, situations, attitudes, or feelings" (Ricoeur, 1978, p. 150).In other words, rather than on the basis of an inner model of the mind, we act in the physical world (e.g., searching for food, getting around obstacles, etc.) by creatively imagining the particular goal that is needed in a physical situation (e.g., the imagined food, the effort of getting around the obstacle, etc.).
Admitte ly, however, as several scholars have pointed out, Ricoeur's idea of imagination is also "Kantian" , and Ricoeur elaborately refers in his analyses of imagination to Kant's transcendental understanding of imagination as a synthesis of what is experienced and what remains unexperienced to a whole image (Taylor, 2006).This is perhaps e ecia ly the case in Falli le Man, more so than in Freedom and Nature, which remains closer to Husserl.In Falli le Man, Ricoeur writes, that "the transcendental imagination [brings about] the synthesis […] between understanding and sensibility (or in our terminology, between meaning and ap earance, between eaking and looking) […]" (Ricoeur, 1986a, p. 45).Also, one has to admit that even in Freedom and Nature Ricoeur sti l at times eaks, despite his critique of an idealist ap roach to subjectivity (cf.supra), about consciousness in terms of representation, at least when he means consciousness as the explicit representation of an object (e.g., Ricoeur, 2007a, p. 28, 44, 95, 104).
Yet, if we bracket Ricoeur's own analyses of the history of phenomenology and, to some extent, his use of the concept "representation" , which should without doubt also be understood within the context of its time, Ricoeur's idea of imagination is sti l suita le to understand imagination "in the ena ivist fashion" , as a relation with the physical world that re-enacts certain experiences.In order to see this more clearly, consider his analysis of the experience of need in Freedom and Nature.Ricoeur writes that it "tinges the imaginary with [the] corporeal" (Ricoeur, 2007a, p. 98).He defines imagination as a means to go from the bodily affection that results from "needing something" to the desire of the needed object, and eventua ly to an enactment of the perception of the needed -as if the body already obtained the satisfa ion of the needed -that moves the body towards it.Ricoeur writes: The fundamental affective motive presented by the body to willing is need, extended by the imagination of its object, its program, its pleasure, and its satisfaction: what we commonly call the desire for, the wish for...If imagination can play such a role, it is because […] it itself is an intentional design projected into absence, a product of consciousness within actual nothing and not a mental presence (Ricoeur, 2007a, p. 97).
In other words, it is not so much by representing objects in the world that we are motivated to obtain them, but in the first place by being affected by our bodies, by needing objects, by wanting them and by imagining or, one can a d, by "enacting" the pleasure of obtaining them.
In this regard, Ricoeur' s idea of imagination should be understood as the capacity for affective anticipation, rather than as representation.He ca ls it, in a "Sartrian" fashion, the "freedom which 'negates' the real" (Ricoeur, 2007a, p. 259).In other words, imagination is the capacity to anticipate an experience that is not there yet, an "unreal" experience.Yet, there is also an immediate link here with his later idea of imagination as poetic production of new meaning (Ricoeur, 1984(Ricoeur, , 1986b(Ricoeur, , 1990)).Imagination implies fantasy, as in the creation of literary narratives, but thus also in experience itself.At the same time, imagination, for Ricoeur, does not contradict knowledge, but presup oses it.For Ricoeur, "every image is first of a l a form of knowing: I can only imagine what I know […].At this point there intervene muscular attitudes and movements which designate and outline what is absent and feelings which grasp its affective nuances" (Ricoeur, 2007a, p. 258).This is a very ena ivist way of putting things, since it implies the idea that imagination amounts to an embodied relation with the world, "muscular attitudes" , affection and sense, in which we associate different things we know through fantasy (e.g., we can imagine a splash when observing a tree branch fa ling in a river).
Ricoeur's idea of imagination in Freedom and Nature thus not only highlights here how the involuntary lies at the heart of the voluntary.It also offers a view of basic cognition that fits in the ena ivist agenda.In this view, cognition originates in an intentional relation with the world.This relation, however, does not imply pre-given mental representational content (as in a mental state that a lows for the creation of mental images of objects in the world that ena le desire, volition, anticipation, etc.).The intentional relation Ricoeur has in mind rather refers to an openness to the world that makes sense by affecting the body.Sense is immediate experience here, which a lows for interpretation.And this interpretation can rely on the nar ative, in the broad sense of a spoken or written discourse.Embodied cognition amounts to an intera ion between the body and the world that gets meaning through discourse, which extends the mere sense-reference schema (metaphors, stories, texts).This intera ion builds on contentless organic intera ions, but is also creative and non-representational.
Ricoeur's theory of embodied cognition is therefore close to nar ative accounts within the philosophy of mind.It meshes we l, for instance, with George Lakoff 's and Michael Johnson's theory of embodied cognition as based on metaphor (Lakoff andJohnson, 1980, 1999).According to Lakoff and Johnson, basic embodied experience and cognition is mediated by metaphors (Lakoff and Johnson, 1999).We use metaphors, according to Lakoff and Johnson, in everyday lan uage, when we, for example, refer to "ar uing" in terms of war: we want to "win" an ar ument, we "attack" a position, ar uments can be "weak" , his opinion is "spot on target" , etc. (Lakoff and Johnson, 1980, p. 3).Or we use metaphors concerning bodily motion in sentences that have more complex meanings, as is clear in the fo lowing example: "France fe l into a recession and Germany pu led it out" (Lakoff and Johnson, 1999, p. 60).Although developed before Varela's, Thompson's and Rosch's seminal work, Lakoff 's and Johnson's position is interesting in that they provide a theory within the context of discussions of philosophy of mind that explains how images play a part in basic embodied cognition.This sup orts Ricoeur's idea that cognition, even in its basic function, is infused by imagination and nar ative.
Recent "nar ative-based" theories of ena ivism "back up" further Ricoeur's theory of imaginative cognition and we might say that they frame this theory in a more up-to-date scientific context by bringing new empirical evidence and clear-cut conceptual work to the cognitive theory.Hutto and Myin, for example, ar ue that basic imaginings do not necessarily imply having representations of things, but rather imagination (Hutto and Myin, 2017, p. 322).They give the example of hominins of the Mi dle Paleolithic, who were, so empirical research shows, capa le of complex toolmaking, which likely included basic kinds of imaginings, such as mental rehearsal and the use of models.Hutto and Myin ar ue that even given that these hominins would have had some kind of proto-lan uage through which they would compare objects, for instance, in order to sort out the right shape for toolmaking, they would have lacked more complex lin uistic features and the "pu lic representations of modern human society" (Hutto and Myin, 2017, p. 315).
Other theories that contribute to the idea that cognition is imaginative, which was already developed by Ricoeur, are ena ivist theories that explore basic types of imagination and storyte ling in animals.Jennifer Gosetti-Ferencei, for example, ar ues in "The Imagination of Animals" that if we understand imagination not merely as representational consciousness, but as "a conste lation of a ivities rooted in embodied intera ion" -like for example "pretense, play, metaphoric transfer or substitution, creative expression, [and] empathy" -we find these capacities also in certain non-human animals (Gosetti-Ferencei, 2017, p. 130).Gosetti-Ferencei refers to Koko, a gori la that was capa le of complex forms of pretending (she played being the queen of England after seeing a portrait of her).She was also a le to understand 2,000 words in English and to sign 1,000 words herself (Gosetti-Ferencei, 2017, p. 139).
Yet, on the other hand, Ricoeur contributes to these theories as we l by offering a broad phenomenological conception of consciousness, rather than an analysis of the use of metaphoric lan uage or of basic nar ative cognition (only).Fo lowing Ricoeur, we can now pinpoint more exactly the role hermeneutical phenomenology can play for the understanding of embodied cognition.Like ena ivism, hermeneutical phenomenology shows that imagination is an essential part of the embodied consciousness.Imagination helps to make sense of the world that affects us.It influences how we perceive things, how we interact with them or how they have meaning for us in a particular context.
Furthermore, hermeneutical phenomenology highlights that nar ative is a mediator of this imaginative, embodied intera ion with the world."Nar ative" should be understood here in a dou le sense.(i) Nar ative designates our capacity to make a life story out of our experiences (cf.Ricoeur's idea of nar ative identity [Ricoeur 1992, p. 113 ff.]).For example, whether we decide to wear a hat or a baseba l cap depends on the particular image or chara er we want to be.(ii) Nar ative also refers to stories told by others in a broad sense -individual or co lective -that might influence the way we are conscious of our bodies in the world (e.g., fashion images shape our perception of our bodies or political stories influence our behavior in society).In this regard, nar ative " eaks to the imagination" in both a receptive and a productive sense.Existing nar atives influence our bodily intera ion with the world (e.g., the power of political discourse), and we are capa le of creating nar atives in this intera ion (e.g., the capacity to play a chara er).In that regard, hermeneutical phenomenology can be a fruitful method to include in debates on ena ivism in that it not only explains basic cognitive relations or even lin uistic-nar ative relations, as does philosophy of mind, but also helps to understand the ethical and political depth of cognitive relations.
Again, Ricoeur's idea of nar ative only turns up in his later works, while Freedom and Nature and Falli le Man sti l focus on a more "pure" phenomenological analysis.However, Ricoeur's later idea that imagination amounts to the understanding and the creation of meaning through nar atives, possi ly "ethico-political" nar atives as I wi l show in the next section, does not contradict his earlier idea that imagination lies at the heart of embodied cognition, because his later works presup ose the idea of the mind as being imaginative and embodied.Indeed, both in From Text to Action and in Oneself as Anothe Ricoeur returns to his critique of idealism, but builds on it the idea that consciousness is also nar ative, in the sense that we are capa le of te ling our own life stories throughout the different experiences we have in our existences and in the sense that those stories get influenced by the different existing stories availa le in the cultural and historical frameworks in which these existences take place (Ricoeur, 1992, p. 10 ff.;2007b, p. 25 ff.).By bringing together Ricoeur's idea of narrativity and his earlier conception of imagination as part of embodied cognition, it becomes clear, so I have ar ued in this section, that nar atives essentia ly influence embodied and ena ive cognitive relations.
There might of course be intera ions with the surrounding world that occur more impulsively, without the mediation of ethico-political nar atives or even without imagination, like avoiding an obstacle on the street.Yet, the point I am getting at here and that I wi l develop further in the next section is that, at least in a cultura ly signifying world, embodied cognition is infused by imagination as a human capacity and mediated by nar atives in both basic and complex ways.The physical world is also a cultural and ethico-political world, which is a "textual" -or better "discursive" -world.This is what hermeneutical phenomenology can bring to the theory of mind.

Imagination, narrativity and the ethico-political aspects of embodied cognition
If we take Ricoeur's hermeneutical phenomenology and hold it against the backdrop of recent theories of ena ivism, it ena les us to understand certain unexplored a ects of embodied/ena ive cognition, so is the wager of this article.One of these a ects is, so I su ge ed above, the ethico-political side of embodied/ena ive cognition.Indeed, if we agree, with recent theories of ena ivism and with Ricoeur's phenomenology, that embodied cognition is essentia ly nar ative, then this is clearly not only in a purely instrumental way, but also in a more expressive, non-instrumental sense.We gain knowledge by imaginatively intera ing with our bodies in the world not only in order to find solutions to pra ical pro lems (toolmaking, planning, getting around obstacles, etc.), but the knowledge we gain of the world and our bodies gets colored in different ways by our imaginations, which are influenced by diverse nar atives (experimenting with our bodies, playing with objects, creating art, cultural and political ideas about embodiment etc.).
Key here is Ricoeur's idea of metaphoric lan uage as a means for creative imagination: "a metaphor may be seen as a model for changing our way of looking at things, of perceiving the world" (Ricoeur, 1978, p. 152).This is obviously true in the purely lin uistic sense, as Lakoff and Johnson's example of "ar ument is war" attests.Yet it is also true when we move our bodies (the sun is inviting to go and swim in it), when we experience things in a new way (this tree looks like a rock), and when we decide on things (I decide to take a swim because the water seems gentle).And it is moreover also true when designing or simply understanding more complex cultural and ethico-political ideas.For example, the color "red" is not merely a physical color, but has a l kinds of metaphorical connotations that are often ethico-politica ly significant: it might symbolize passion or fire, but it is also linked with socialism.It is also te ling, in this regard, that different cultures perceive colors differently.In Russian culture, for instance, there is no one single concept for the color lue, as English eakers use it, but two different concepts that designate light lue ("goluboy") and dark lue ("siniy").This also implies that Russian-eaking people are genera ly more capa le than English-eaking people of recognizing different shades of lue (Hopkins, 2007).Our embodied relation with the world is thus imaginative and nar ative through and through -creating types of cognition that go from basic to more complex forms -and "imagination" is in that sense "carnal" (Ricoeur, 2007a, p. 110).
Combining ena ivism with Ricoeur's phenomenology shows that the embodied self is sensitive to contexts, which makes it sensi le to complex forms of cognition, including ethical and political forms of cognition.The subject's experiences are influenced by others and vice versa, as we l as by the cultural and historical contexts that we share with these others: these contexts influence how we are motivated and act in the world, as embodied beings.These historical and cultural contexts are loaded with ethical and political meaning, which then shapes our relations to our bodies and the relations between our bodies and the world.We can think for example of the violence inherent to racist nar atives, which stigmatize the embodied relation of others with the world.In the case of racism, certain bodily a ects, and how they interact in a cultural and historical framework, are picked out, stigmatized and woven into violent, often ideological, nar atives.This example of violent nar ative forming highlights that embodied cognition, how we gain knowledge and act in the world, does not occur in an ethico-politica ly neutral way.Our cognitive capacities include the ethical and political responsibility to be aware of the potential violence within embodied cognitive relations.Yet, this idea that embodied knowledge is sensitive to contexts also cha lenges the sup ose ly universal chara er of cognition.A theory of cognition should take into account the awareness of the influence of stories and contexts on the process of gaining knowledge, and not only the cognitive capacities humans have in common.Hermeneutics can aid here insofar it is sensi le to this awareness.
Ricoeur's hermeneutics, in particular his idea of ethical and political life as related to nar atives and imagination, supports the idea that cognition has ethical and political meaning.More exactly, we find implications for cognitive theory in Ricoeur's idea that ethical and political life should be understood not only on the basis of a formal moral theory, but in the first place in relation to the mores of historical communities that contain "a nar ative and symbolic identity" (Ricoeur, 2007b, p. 330).Thus, ethico-political meaning is not only part of an abstract moral theory or even an institutionalized juridical system.It is also rooted in historical communities, in their nar atives, and in that sense influences our imaginations, perceptions of the world and embodied cognitive relations.Therefore, the ethico-political sphere should also be examined by cognitive theory.
The idea that cognitive relations have ethico-political significance is more exactly reflected both in Ricoeur's theory of ideology and utopia as we l as in his theory of the self as moral agent.The ethico-political potential of cognitive relations is first reflected in Ricoeur's notion of ideology.In From Text to Action Ricoeur defines ideology "as the inverted image of reality" (Ricoeur, 2007b, p. 310).Ideologies of certain cultures, communities or institutions are, in other words, "images" in the sense of imaginations of ideas that represent society.The images are connected to the power of the political system that defends the ideology.Further, one of the essential features of ideological images is that they are designed to the social "sentiment" (Ricoeur, 2007b, p. 316).There are many historical examples of ideologies stimulating negative body images, racial discrimination, or even social hatred.It is thus easy to see how ideology influences cognitive relations, potentia ly in a violent fashion, in particular body images and the perception of social classes.Even though Ricoeur himself does not engage explicitly with cognitive theory in his writings on ideology, his idea of consciousness as embodied is implied (e.g., he develops it at the beginning of From Text and Action), and in that sense there is also not a disruption, but rather a continuity between his earlier and later work.From his notion of ideology it fo lows that embodied cognitive relations have ethico-political significance, because they get shaped by ideologies.
At the same time, we are, of course, not merely the victims of ideologies, ethico-political stories and contexts, but are capa le of designing novel ethical and political ideas.In op osition to ruling ideologies, Ricoeur understands the idea of utopia as the possibility of the imagination to design novel ethico-political nar atives that aim to change ruling ideologies.Here also lies the basis of political dissent.Ricoeur thus not only understand utopia in the sense of the literary genre, but also as part of "social imagination" (Ricoeur, 2007b, p. 323).Utopia is "the imaginary project of another kind of society, of another reality, another world" (Ricoeur, 2007b, p. 319).Utopia, in other words, designates for Ricoeur the possibilities of social groups to imagine and defend a novel socio-political order, and, we may a d, a new way of perceiving the world: body images, social relations, embodied cognitive relations.
Yet Ricoeur points to the ethico-political significance of embodied cognitive relations not only on the social-institutional level, but also on the intersubjective level.In Oneself as Anothe , Ricoeur connects the idea of nar ative and imagination, on the one hand, to his conception of ethical and political life, on the other.He defines nar ative as "the great laboratory of the imaginary" , as the "explorations in the realm of good and evil" (Ricoeur, 1992, p. 164).For Ricoeur, ethical and political a ion implies having a nar ative identity, te ling one's own life story, which is also based on already existing stories from which we can learn and with which we can experiment.Ricoeur moreover connects his idea of the moral subject to that of the "flesh" (Ricoeur, 1992, p. 319).Ethical and political significance is not only influenced by nar atives, but also by a direct affective relation with the world.We are affected by others and nar atives that influence ethical decisions, how we perceive the world, right and wrong, and body images.This sup orts the idea that embodied and ena ive cognitive relations, resulting from a bodily intera ion with the world, are deeply influenced by nar atives and the imagination, which gives these relations the essential potential for containing ethico-political meaning.
We "write" the stories of how our bodies interact with the world.For example, social customs influence how we imagine ourselves, but at the same time we are not merely the product of those customs.We can create to a certain extent a personal image that we would like others to see by a ing according to this image -ena ing this image -in the world.Furthermore, not only on the personal level, but also in a collective sense, we are capa le of creating nar atives that reflect our embodied relation with the world.We can think of subcultures which express their ideas in their bodily intera ions with the world: hair style, tattoos, piercings, but also gestures, slang, and body lan uage.Not seldom subcultures incorporate a moral ideal, which reflects embodiment.The awareness of how various forms of cognition relate to embodiment within a cultural-historical framework is therefore of importance for ethical and political theory and for the policies of societies regarding its various subcultures (cf. the relations with diverse indigenous communities in Brazil and in other parts of Latin America).One important question then is how to incorporate such embodied moral ideals into a larger, formal, moral and political framework, or, to put it in another way, to define intercultural ethical and political meaning on an institutional level.Obviously, ethical and political body images are not without danger.Defining the conditions of a formal ethical and political framework, however, would extend the task of cognitive theory.
Ricoeur's hermeneutical phenomenology combined with ena ivism grants access to a non-representational ap-proach to cognition that takes into account the fact that the ethical-political potential is often overlooked by cognitive theories, which tend to focus on the basic functioning of the embodied mind in its natural environment.Yet my point is not that Ricoeur shows something that ena ivism would be una le to show.My point is rather that, if we take an enactivist point of view as the starting point of the understanding of cognition (and thus understand cognition as embodied intera ion influenced by imagination and nar atives), then Ricoeur's phenomenology can offer some useful insights that would enrich this understanding by highlighting the ethico-political a ect of cognition.
Rather than refer ing to pu lic representational lanuage systems in order to explain complex ethical and political meaning or refer ing to ethical and political life in terms of a formal set of rules only, I am ar uing that embodiment, cognition and ethical-political life should be understood together.The ecific contribution of Ricoeur's hermeneutical phenomenology to cognitive theory is not to reinstate a phenomenological conception of consciousness (with an emphasis on ethical and political life) instea of ena ivist theories of cognition.Its contribution consists of simply highlighting that understanding how cognition works benefits from the interpretation of how nar atives work and that the interpretation of different nar atives can reveal different types of cognition.
The possi le contribution of Ricoeur's hermeneutic phenomenology to ena ivism might become clear from a different per ective as we l, when taking into account his idea of world.According to Ricoeur, the lived world is intertwined with what he ca ls "the world of the text" (Ricoeur, 2007b, p. 86).This means that our experiences, which are influenced by different nar atives, ethical and political nar atives included, not only result from an embodied intera ion with the physical world, but also imply a "fictional" world that shapes how we make sense of things within the context of a cultura ly mediated world.Ricoeur's hermeneutical phenomenology proposes to see intentionality in relation to the idea of a life-world, i.e., consciousness as a broader nar ative process of belonging to a world with stories, rather than as a dynamic relation between an organism and its sur oundings only.Rather than a naturalized world, this is a hermeneutical and a phenomenological world.Ricoeur demonstrates what Varela, Thompson and Rosch origina ly intended, namely that enactivism can and does find much inspiration in phenomenology.Yet, it might be time to reconsider the role hermeneutics and phenomenology can play in relation to ena ivism, not so much in order to replace it, but rather in order to deepen the understanding of the complexity of cognition.Holding Ricoeur's account of cognition against the contemporary scene of ena ivism provides an example of how hermeneutical phenomenology could contribute to philosophical pro lems today.Differently from the naturalistic approach to cognitive theory, hermeneutics provides an analysis and interpretation of lived existence, imagination, and nar ative, which might help fleshing out the ena ivist framework.