ABSTRACT
The chapter addresses a dimension of epistemological responsibility that emerges if one adds an embodied self-reflective dimension to observing experience. We extend the core enactivist idea – that the cognitive system and the world mutually co-determine each other – to the realm of experience. A close examination of lived experience reveals that we are active agents in forming our experiential landscapes. What we experience depends significantly on the characteristics inherent to how we turn towards our experience – that is our horizon of observation. The focus of the discussion (aided with suggestions for practical self-examination) is on the experience as it emerges within our everyday lives, although the presented considerations are equally relevant for first-person research (e.g. understanding the participant as co-researcher; developing methodologies for studying horizons of observing experience) as well as interdisciplinary collaboration. The aim is to show that since our observational acts are always carried out from within a certain perspective or horizon of observation (e.g. the particular attentional gestures we perform to become aware), we are at least partly responsible for our experience. Creatively contributing to the what and how of our experience thus broadens our responsibility towards ourselves and others.
