Selfbound and STRANGE: Introduction and Précis

In vain we force the living into this or that one of our moulds.All the moulds crack.They are too narrow, above all too rigid, for what we try to put into them.- Henri-Louis Bergson, 1998 (1911), p. x Binding ForceConsciousness is the inalienable force that binds mind with matter.It can be defined in many ways and expressed in vari ous forms. 1 This book focuses on the form of consciousness that constitutes the foundation of human cognitive life: self-consciousness or awareness of self-that is, awareness of experiencing and of being the experiencer.Self-consciousness is an inseparable part of what is to be human.Yet, the emergence and making of this capacitythat is, self-becoming-pre sents a remarkable oddity that raises the hardest of puzzles along the evolutionary continuum of sentient matter (from the Latin sententia for "feeling").To explain what is odd or so remarkable about that is, in essence, what this book is about.The short answer is: all and nothing.In the basic sense of experience or responsiveness, consciousness is potentially a feature of all living things. 2 All organisms, as the biologist and philosopher Francisco Varela reminds us, "are fundamentally a process of constitution of an identity."3 Such basic forms of distinction and identity formation can be found at multiple scales, expressed through energetic exchanges and interactions between systems or between organisms and their environment.We can take the immune system as a representative example.The function of the immune system is based on its ability to identify itself, distinguishing between the biochemistry of one's own tissues and those of Selfbound and STRANGE: Introduction and Précis