AHT. Section 4.14, p.82

What does it mean to say that the mind and the world “stand in relation to each other through mutual specification or dependent co-origination” (Varela, Thompson, and Rosch 1991, p.150)? Varela states in Steps to a Science of Inter-being that: “the mind is not in the head” (Varela 1999a, p.72). Mind arises from the completely embodied process of actively coping with the world. It is the organism’s active handling of the objects of the world that forms the basis of the subject. Equally, the arising of the objects of the world is dependent on the subject actively engaging with them. In other words, you “cannot see the object as independently being ‘out-there’. The object arises because of your activity, so, in fact, you and the object are co-emerging, co-arising” (Varela 1999a, p.73).