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4E cognition (embodied, embedded, extended, and enactive) is a growing, open and pluralistic research tradition that offers new philosophical and scientific avenues to study the mind. Both its origins and current expansive movement are theoretically and geographically diverse. Chile, the mother country of the influential biologists Francisco Varela and Humberto Maturana, represents one of its roots, but also, as the variety of contributions in this special issue shows it, one of its fields of new blossoms. In this editorial introduction, regarding the roots, we focus on the enactive approach developed by Francisco Varela and its relationship with Maturana’s autopoietic theory. We discuss the way in which the particular theoretical and historical horizons of these two research programs conditioned, to a large extent, their philosophical stances regarding cognition. Regarding the new blossoms, we introduce the seven articles composing the present special issue and briefly comment on their contributions in terms of methodology, practical applications, theoretical extensions, and conceptual reflection.

All life on earth is intrinsically linked. At the very foundation of every evolutionary interaction are microorganisms, integral components in the composition of both organisms and ecosystems. The available data and this perspective on the order of life challenge the traditional conception of monogenetic biological individuals, suggesting living beings are actually composite multi-species complexes: holobionts. In the present article, we introduce our perspective on the concept of the holobiont mind, a biogenic conception of cognition compatible with the 4E approach and the holobiont theory. We furthermore expand on the idea of the mind as the emerging product of multi-genomic morphology of a composite animal-agent, in ever-changing interaction with its ecological niche. We thus briefly review recent evidence on the brain–gut–microbiome axis and the Microbiome of the Built Environmentin order to provide a bridge between the Holobiont Mindand the 4E approach to Cognition, two complementary lines of evidence that have not been linked before, opening novel venues for research with direct impact on health and disease.

Immersive learning environments in education provide a set of rich and diverse learning affordances (possibilities). Cognition in such environments can be considered as embodied, enacted, embedded, and extended (the 4Es of cognition). During such cognitive happenings, we assume and live as valid everything we experience. Yet in this enactive structural coupling between individuals and their experiential world, another phenomenon occurs. We become a behaviorally inseparable entity with the virtual/immersive world. We become entangled with that virtual/immersive world. Here we propose that, within the framework of the 4Es of cognition, a recognizable lived experience phenomena occurs when learners engage with virtual or immersive learning environments. That is, cognition becomes entangled in immersive environments with alternative realities. Coming from the Santiago school of cognition, and building from ideas from immersive learning, 4E cognition, and quantum entanglement inspired in quantum cognition, we attempt to describe the process of entangled cognition happening in immersive learning environments. We recognize at least two levels of entanglement from the same recursive phenomenology: one we call a local entanglement, related to perception and sense-making; and a second we call a global entanglement, connected to the process and phenomena of human consciousness and meaning-making, accessible when conceived as a whole. We see the benefits for such a theoretical framework to ultimately guide, justify, and encourage the emergence of an epistemology shift in educational technology towards design principles that account for entangled cognition in immersive learning (and beyond), and the associated possibilities offered by new immersive technologies in education.

More than 20 years ago, Humberto Maturana and Ximena Dávila initiated a research program on the nature of human coexistence within the framework of molecular-autopoietic systems and the understanding of the organism-niche ecological dynamic unit (UDEON). In this article, we focus on the potential of conversation and reflection of living beings as transformative and liberating practices in the configuration of intimate feelings that define at every moment their emotional-relational operation as a totality in the understanding of the worlds they generate. We refer to the main contributions of cultural-biology which invite us to a journey through the nature of knowing, of human pain and suffering, of languaging, conversation, and reflection as cultural-biology beings.

In recent decades, empirical study of experience has been installed as a relevant and necessary element in researching cognitive phenomena. However, its incorporation into cognitive science has been largely done by following an objectivist frame of reference, without reconsidering the practices and standards involved in the process of research and the interpretation and validation of the results. This has given rise to a number of issues that reveal inconsistencies in the understanding and treatment of some crucial aspects of first-person research. In this article, we will outline a research direction aiming at contributing to the establishment of a framework for the study of experience that addresses these inconsistencies. Specifically, we will identify some challenges facing the study of experience—in particular those linked to the understanding of memory, expression and description, and intersubjectivity in exploring experience—and propose to reframe them under the epistemological framework of the enactive approach. Moreover, we will explore the prospect of gaining insight into theoretical and methodological strategies for dealing with these issues by extending our vision beyond the field of cognitive science to its neighboring fields, focusing in particular on the field of somatic practices.

The tension between reflection and experience has been highlighted by Buddhism as the origin of human suffering, described as an undercurrent and constant feelings of restlessness, grasping, anxiety, and dissatisfaction or disease. This universal suffering experience called Dukkha refers to the failure to find a Self in reflection or the frustrated desire or craving to haveor to besomething. For Buddhism, not only the desired object is illusory, but so is the desiring self. Further, Varela et al. (1993) integrate these ideas into the development of cognitive sciences and the understanding of human experience from an embodied and selfless mind perspective. The present article attempts to apply the Buddhist notion of suffering or Dukkha along with Varela, Thompson, and Rosch’s contributions to the understanding of the embodied sense of Self that characterizes symptoms of Depression. The expression of the self-grasping suffering experiences and the tension between reflection and experience for depressive patients will be discussed from an enacted and embodied perspective. Further, new research ideas along with possible new psychotherapeutic approaches are discussed.

Cognitive dynamics are multimodal, and they need to integrate real-time feedback to be adaptive and appropriate. However, cognition research still relies on mostly unimodal paradigms using simple motor tasks in laboratory-based static situations. This paper addresses this limitation by presenting the Mobile Brain/Body Imaging approach based on the Embodied, Embedded, Extended, and Enactive perspective, which complements traditional laboratory work while also facilitating ecologically valid applications. First, we briefly review Mobile Brain/Body Imaging technologies used to obtain functional and structural images of the Brain/Body System during natural cognition. Specifically: mobile cognitive electrophysiology, mobile functional neurovascular dynamics, and mobile behavioral measurements. Second, we review the development of Mobile Brain/Body Imaging/4E in Chile. Finally, we discuss challenges and opportunities. We conclude that although this new epistemic/methodological approach is promising, there is a need for greater portability, robust equipment, and data-analysis tools that can integrate signals from the brain/body-in-the-world system. Future experimental designs need to re-consider their underlying logic and increase their ecological validity by-perhaps-modifying the physical spaces in which experiments are conducted.

The contents of consciousness are complex and dynamic and are embedded in perception and cognition. The study of consciousness and subjective experience has been central to philosophy for centuries. However, despite its relevance for understanding cognition and behaviour, the empirical study of consciousness is relatively new, embroiled by the seemingly opposing subjective and objective sources of data. Francisco Varela (1946–2001) pioneered the empirical study of consciousness by developing novel, naturalised and rich approaches in a non-reductive and comprehensive manner. In this article, we review the main conceptual distinctions and philosophical challenges of consciousness research and highlight the main contributions of Varela and his associates: the development of neurophenomenology as a methodological framework that builds a bridge between subjective and objective sources of data and the discovery of gamma-band phase synchronisation as a neural marker of perceptual awareness. Finally, we describe the work of Varela on time consciousness, his philosophical approach and the implementation of his neurophenomenological framework for its study by integrating subjective reports with neural measures.