1. Conversations with the sub-physical: Exploring human constructions of existential meaning in interactions with designed objects

2. What is real? Embodied experience proprioceptive somato-sensory neuro-motor interoceptive Cognitive experience conscious experience neuro-chemical processes autonomic systems cognition Phenomenal experience Perception of reality truth

3. Authentic visible m eta-physical Inauthentic (everyday) Invisible (hidden) sub-physical phenomenal meaning

4. Meta-physical experience Sub-physical experience Temporality (time) Relationality (Relationship to others) Cognition (thinking & doing) Spatiality (lived space) Corporeality (body) physicality Sensorial (five senses) Affect (emotions, feelings) Perception

6. How the methods interact SEEing – a questioning process A ToE stores the information about an experience ? Sub-physical aspects of the experience – existential approach Meta-physical aspects of the experience - hermeneutic approach

8. SEEing … .the meta-physical essence of an experience Steps 1,2,3 ToE 1. Collect data 2. Write descriptions 3. Sort Data processing What do I know about this on the surface? Step 4 All the meanings Plural meanings Cause and Effect What else does it mean? Step 5 The most important or essential Essential meanings Is the experience the same if it is not here? How important is it to the nature of the experience? Step 6 Beyond form and functional aspects Metaphysical meanings What is special, unknown, novel or unexpected Step 7 Weighting Ranking Intensity Sorting by intensity Step 8 Resorting most intense? Most intense, metaphysical, essential Step 9 Describe the most intense – the essence Metaphysical?

9. Steps 1,2,3 ToE 1. Collect data 2. Write descriptions 3. Sort Data processing What do I know about this on the surface? Asks: What do I know about this on the surface? Steps 1,2,3 - ‘Doing a ToE ’ 1. Collect information 2. Write descriptions 3. Sort into data

10. Steps 1,2,3 ToE 1. Collect data 2. Write descriptions 3. Sort Data processing What do I know about this on the surface? Step 4 All the meanings Plural meanings Cause and Effect What else d o es it mean? Cause and Effect Asks: What else does it mean? Step 4 Teasing out the full plurality of meanings

11. Steps 1,2,3 ToE 1. Collect data 2. Write descriptions 3. Sort Data processing What do I know about this on the surface? Step 4 All the meanings Plural meanings Cause and Effect What else does it mean? Step 5 The most important or essential Essential meanings Is the experience the same if it is not here? How important is it to the nature of the experience? Asks: Is the experience the same if this meaning is not here? How important is this meaning to the nature of the experience? Step 5 Determining the most important or essential meanings

12. Steps 1,2,3 ToE 1. Collect data 2. Write descriptions 3. Sort Data processing What do I know about this on the surface? Step 4 All the meanings Plural meanings Cause and Effect What else does it mean? Step 5 The most important or essential Elements of embodied experience … but what about the existential part … embodied experience

13. Philosophy - phenomenology Psychology - behavioral Neuropsychology Neurophysiology Neuroscience Cognitive science Perception

14. Existential analytic of ‘essential’ meanings Stage 1: Inauthentic (everyday level) experience Asks: What is the phenomenal embodiment of this experience; the ordinary, everyday, pre-ontological, preneotic, 'existential‘, physically related aspects of the experience which help to make the experience what it is. This layer of ordinary-ness shows itself in explicit somato-sensory interactions with implicit layers of embodied meaning or perception These meaning structures might be considered in terms of; Physical (body) Proprioception Body image & Body schema (conscious and autonomic / prenoetic) Actions, movement and motor schemas Object (form and function) interactive ecological experience Contextual factors (spatial) Perception – a blurry inter-modal, phenomenal space between mental and the physical experience

15. Phenomenal analytic of ‘essential’ meanings Stage 2: Explicating the ‘essence’ of the experience Asks: What is the phenomenal ‘essence’ of this experience? What is indicated as its substantive, intrinsic sub-physical soul? What does the embodied experience point to that is immediately hidden ? … really, really really Sub-physical (mind) Perceptions - simulations noetic – self reflection – consciousness Intention – beliefs - desires inter-subjectivity (relationship to other) Agency & Ownership

16. Re Hidden -ness There are “aspects of the structure of consciousness that are more hidden , those that may be more difficult to get at because they happen before we know it. They do not normally enter into the phenomenal content of experience in an explicit way, and are often inaccessible to reflective consciousness ” Gallagher, 2005, p.2

17. NVivo Qualitative Data Analysis

18. Applying this theory to empirical data using NVivo

19. ESSENCES OF EMBODIED NMV EXPERIENCE Essence: Feeling empowered or important (41 passages / 15%) Node description: I feel special or empowered by association with the activity, the event gives me a heightened sense of self worth Experiential fragments: It is a lifestyle association that conveys ‘coolness’ to these vehicles, the elemental feeling of being part of the environment but still being protected from it Driving in crisp, cold, sometimes wild weather and being well clothed, You are really in it and can see more of it, The feeling is less that you are IN a vehicle but more traveling on one thru the world, desirable, unique, wantable, covetable, feeling a surge of power, being aware of other road users and pedestrians, other road users, standing out, etc.

21. Hermeneutical analysis - SEEing m eta-physical meaning in authentic experience A meta-physical insight might be reconstituted in the context of a new existential experience which generates a new …. perception …and so on Stage5 ‘ Essential’ meanings Existential analysis - SEEing sub-physical meaning in inauthentic experience

22. ...thank you I would welcome your comments, suggestions and valuable critique