Bem Bahia: BembaTrio - Melô do vatapá

The official clip for Melô do Vatapá by BembaTrio from Salvador, Bahia, Brazil (via Ley).

Paul Auster on Affordances and Horizons

Stories happen only to those who are able to tell them, someone once said. In the same way, perhaps, experiences present themselves only to those who are able to have them.

Paul Auster in The Locked Room, the third part of his New York Trilogy.

Djavan - "Serrado" (1979)

More (Neuro-)Phenomenology Resources

The International Association for Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences has a vast collection of web-based resources and references around the topics of (neuro-)phenomenology and cognitive science.

Furthermore, scientist Leslie Marsh runs a blog named manwithoutqualities, where he also treats neurophenomenology-related topics like the extended mind, with a series of posts about Francisco Varela, including the following video with excerpts from Franz Reichle's 2005 documentary "Monte Grande" about Varela's life.

A Cartoon Epistemology for Neuroscientists (via Merlin)

"A Cartoon Epistemology" for neuroscientists in three parts (by ophtalmological cognitive scientist Steve Lehar, 2003), including a selection of follow-up discussions (e.g., a summary of the one with David Chalmers)

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Addendum: Lehan's ideas overlap with Thomas Metzinger's phenomenal self-model and the phenomenal model of the intentionality relation (succinctly described in this 2004 paper The Subjectivity of Subjective Experience: A Representationalist Analysis of the First-Person Perspective) and the seminal approach of sensorimotor contingencies as put forward in 2000 by Alva Noë and Kevin O'Regan (who also prefers hand-drawn manikins to illustrate his theories).

Phenomenology and Neurophenomenology Resources Online

For the eleventh anniversary of Francisco Varela's untimely death, I compiled a couple of online resources about phenomenology and neurophenomenology (to be continued).

Audio and Video:

• Youtube playlist of the videos of the 2011 conference "Embodiment of Life" - mainly on the legacy of Francisco Varela (see also the upcoming 2012 version)
• Youtube playlist of ~70 videos on Phenomenology: mainly about or with Heidegger but also including Husserl, Jaspers, Dreyfus as well as Nietzsche
• Audio files of Hubert Dreyfus' 2011 lecture on Heidegger's Being and Time (Phil 185) at Berkeley
• Video of the panel discussion "The Reflective Self" at Columbia in 2008 with Dan Zahavi, Evan Thompson and others
• Audio and video files (plus transcripts) of the 2006 symposium "Mind and Reality" at Columbia

Blogs:

• "Neurophenomenology" maintained by Owen McNally, PhD - includes a nice historic overview(part 1, part 2, part 3)
• "Learning Philosophy of Change" by Giorgio Bertini, particularly the posts tagged "Varela"

Texts:

• 2004 special issue of Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences on "Naturalizing Phenomenology" (edited by Antoine Lutz)
• Thomas Nagel (1974) What is it like to be a bat? (pdf)
• David Chalmers' collection of online texts on Phenomenology and Consciousness and the same topics at PhilPapers

Kandel's Reconciliation? "Age of Insight" to appear

I have to admit that 650 pages about "The Quest to Understand the Unconscious in Art, Mind, and Brain, from Vienna 1900 to the Present" is quite a good excuse for the constantly postponed publication of "Principles of Neural Science - Ed. 5".
Eric Kandel's "Age of Insight" to appear soon.