Loving & Knowing with Hanne De Jaegher

Episode #68

Do loving and knowing share a core?

Philosopher of cognitive science Hanne De Jaegher discusses the profound relationship between loving and knowing as intertwined processes.

The first in what we hope to be many conversations about this inspirational work. With Andrea, Hanne explores the idea that thinking and feeling emerge from the same fundamental act of sense-making, which is rooted in our basic, biological existence.

De Jaegher shares her personal experiences and how they led to her academic journey studying cognitive science, and then to her work developing the scholarship behind ‘participatory sense-making’. She emphasizes the importance of recognizing both oneness and difference in relationships and the conversation discusses the critical role of noticing and relational awareness. Through various explorations, De Jaegher illustrates how love is an ongoing relational activity that ‘shares a core with knowing’ and that can foster a deeper understanding of ourselves and others

hanne and andrea

Hanne: [00:00:00] Maybe one thing about love that's important I think, is that it's not a scarcity thing. It's not less. The more you love it, it, it's more, it makes more, and it's because you're continually in relation and it, it'll be difficult unavoidably, and that's part of it, but it's not something that there is a scarcity of ever.

They're all one thing. And then from that one thing, we can talk about thinking and we can talk about feeling. But it comes from one thing, which to me is sense making as a living, being it's, you know what you need, what you do in order to keep living. And it's very, very basic and biological. It's like total basic needs and that sense making.

And then later on, once we as humans, once we grow up, then we start to realize, oh, this is thinking and this is feeling, but they're never really actually small bread. But we can talk about them like that and we can then experience them like that and we can do such intricate thinking about [00:01:00] them. And that really actually fascinates me that from this one thing that sense making is, which is what every living being does, even the trees.

We can then have this feeling sophisticated talking about thinking and thinking in sophisticated ways.

And so I was studying cognitive science at CEX and I, so I was interested in social cognition. From cognitive science, we think about the individual and individual brains and individual behavior. And at Sussex individual embodiment, which was really cool to think about that and to be in the center for computational neuroscience and robotics where they were making robots, you know, and like thinking about embodiments through robots and so on.

But it was very individualistic and. I thought we also have to think through sociology to understand interest subjectivity, and sociology was mainly thinking about interaction, but cognitive science and sociology weren't really talking to each other much, and so there needed to be a bridge build there.

And so I did sort of design or, or think of participatory sense making also to make that bridge [00:02:00] between the cognitive sciences and the social sciences because together they can really think about intersubjectivity.

My dad comes from the dialect that people speak. There ostensibly doesn't have a word for love or loving supposedly, but they do say it.

But not, not very much. And I would not say that loving is a feeling. Loving is is a, is relating, loving. Is is a living relating existential means a that from our, from our be the particular being that each of us is you with your particular. Body and situation and, and history and woven ness into where you are, love particular things because of the particular being you are.

Yeah, so someone who loves you can notice something about you by which you get to know yourself better.

Andrea: Hello everyone. Welcome to Love and Philosophy. Do Loving and Knowing, share their Core. [00:03:00] That's the way my guest, the philosopher of Cognitive Science, Hanne de Jager, puts it in her wonderful, Loving and Knowing reflections for an engaged epistemology. Which we begin to talk about here, just barely more through personal experience because it's very rich and there's so much to unpack, and it's only the tip of Hannah's amazing body of work, which you've probably heard me talk about here.

And if you listen to the last podcast with Ezekiel DePalo, you also heard about some of these ideas relative to four E cognition, four with an E, and especially embodied and enactive, which is two of the E's. There also participatory sense making. All of these words have come up in other podcasts, so you're probably starting to.

Recognize them now. Hannah obtained her PhD in the philosophy of cognitive science in 2007. She was supervised by Andy Clark at the University of Sussex. Andy Clark's, one of those philosophers you might have heard of. He's [00:04:00] an interesting person who might be a good path into this.

Four E cognition if you're still wondering what that is. Hannah's dissertation was social interaction rhythm and participatory sense making and embodied interactional approach to social understanding with implications for autism. So a lot of those words in her dissertation have been work that she's expanded on since then.

And of course, the world has changed a lot since 2007, and a lot of the ideas in her thesis and a lot of what she's been thinking of as a kid, as you'll hear her say in this podcast, have become. More and more important, or at least people have started to focus on them more over these years, especially in philosophy.

So ideas of inner subjectivity, for example, and individual and interactional autonomy, but also neurodivergence all these different ways that there are of being in the world. Hannah's work has looked at that for a long time, but she's also been thinking about it in different ways for her whole life.

What does it mean [00:05:00] to. Think differently than those around you. It's something she knows very well as you'll hear her talk about in this podcast, and it's something we explore together here as a way of beginning to open up this very rich world of philosophy that I know a lot of you are just discovering for the first time.

This is a sort of crucial idea that comes up a lot in the comments or the emails that I get around this podcast of people wanting to sort of take this idea, uh, that love is important, that caring matters and deepen it.

Understand how hard it is and how tense it is, and you know that it's not this rom-com notion and that there's a whole philosophy of understanding that can help us. With what it means to be relating in the world. So a lot of people are really interested in that. But then I hear them say, well, okay, but aren't people gonna take advantage of us if we think that feeling and caring and all these things you talk about Andrea are really important.

I have a lot to say about that, [00:06:00] and this is not the place for that, but it is a place to realize that we're not in an either or situation here and what, what all of this is really doing as Hannah's work shows is opening a different capacity for self and for how all those potentials such as being ashamed or being taken advantage of actually co-relate in the constellation of one's life, but also in our societies and in our education and in our families and in our places of work.

We're at a point now where all of that is changing and we can rethink and relive into and reimagine. What's possible, We talk about a lot of subjects around that here, about how important it is to realize that difference is part of the world. As Hannah says here, she tried to talk about that with the Dalai Lama, and as you'll hear, it was not an easy thing to discuss because it's hard to [00:07:00] understand that there we are all part of one process, one ongoing process, and. There are differences. This is the thing we have to hold. Both of these are true, So I guess what we're trying to do here in this conversation is talk about love as exasperating in a way is something that requires persistence. Something that does bring you up against those possibilities of embarrassment or hurt, but that it's actually by learning to sit with that, that this other way of being in the world might open up. And that relates to other conversations we've had here about even just in our work life, how hard it is to live into this space. Even if we understand or we felt that this is a completely different quality of life and of interaction and that it's like a portal that we could move through at the same time, everyday

life just really makes it hard to hold that, That's part of what systems theory is, or systems thinking moving into an understanding that's kaleidoscopic or a constellation instead of this either [00:08:00] or

way of judgment or of comparison that all of us have felt and are still feeling, and that frankly is just really hard to deal with.

If you really think about how much of the world runs on us, trying not to be embarrassed or judged or being afraid of that, it's interesting to, to think of that and think about what might happen if we don't have to.

Work in a system which is powered by that. What would that mean? Because it's definitely possible But just to talk to some of you about why should we do this? Why does it matter? And are we gonna be taken advantage of if we are people who care and love? No, you're not, not if you really dig into it in the way we're trying to open up here, because it's, it's an agency.

It's a, it's an expansion of agency because it's an expansion of how you understand what you are and how you are connected to the world. You're not a lone Being stuck in your head, who has to be compared and judged by and with everything around it. [00:09:00] That's the old way of thinking about it. but this conversation with Hannah, which is gonna get into all that into different way and many of the other conversations, our one way to break out of that.

So. It's not about losing your agency and being passive in all of this. You can be soft and you can be strong, you can be flexible, and you can be persistent.

One thing we talk about here, which I especially want to highlight a little bit, is how just noticing another person, noticing the people around you without sort of judgment, just just noticing who they are. That's an act of loving and it's also knowing at a level that's beyond what many people have felt is possible.

Mostly because of all this judging that goes on and this trying to avoid embarrassment and this trying to look like we're happy and the optics, but there's actually this loving and this knowing. That's just the kind of the beating heart of why it we wanna be alive and what matters. And it comes from just [00:10:00] being able to notice and sit with and appreciate, I guess another, being or to be in the space of someone who's doing that for you.

And that can be a dog or a cat, or a tree, or however you define a being. Nature. It's a good way to start actually, if it's hard for you with humans. even Hanne here talks about walking with the trees. There's really something about it, and it's not silly or woo or anything like that. It's just there's literal life all around you and noticing it actually is.

A step into a different way of being. Sometimes and it is a kind of portal that opens us into other ways of experiencing the world. And that's where this loving and knowing these two words are so close, holding the space of presence, With another being the amazing possibility that we can actually do that.

That we can actually be aware of another person. That's not a sweet, easy thing all the time, but that it's [00:11:00] possible. That's a such a simple thing and such a powerful thing, and such a difficult thing, and that's what I wish for you wherever you are that you are able to sit in that place and notice someone and be noticed by someone

maybe even by yourself. We can also notice ourselves without judgment and that you don't think of that as some sentimental, gooey thing, that you don't try to lock it away or make it into a product, but just that you feel it and in feeling it.

You feel some real power, which will start unlocking some other portals in your life and in what is possible. Alright, that's enough of my rambling on. I hope you enjoy this conversation with Hannah de Jaeger and that you'll. Have a look at some of her work. Be well, have fun.

Andrea: Okay. Hello Hanne. Thank you so much for being here today. It's a real honor to have you on love and philosophy. Thank

Hanne: you, Andrea, for inviting me. I'm really glad to be [00:12:00] here.

Andrea: I wanna start with two words, knowing and loving, which are very important in your work.

But I thought maybe we could let those words just sort of hang in the air a little bit and frame the conversation But I, I wanted to start actually with your memory if you have a memory of the first time you realized that you were thinking, or that there was such thing as thinking.

Do you have any memories about that or.

Hanne: Yeah, I do actually. Yeah. It's funny that you asked me that question because it's, it's kind of significant in my life actually, when I, or some, some, I don't know if it's the first time that I realized about thinking, but, I remember, um, especially driving in the car with my parents when I was maybe five or six and sitting, uh, in the middle between, so leaning in between their seats, you know, it was before we had to wear seat belts, and my mom sometimes still [00:13:00] tells that, that I would always say, you know what?

I think, and then, and then we would start this philosophical conversation or a conversation just about, you know, thinking or phenomena or, I mean, I wouldn't have called it phenomena, but I don't actually remember what the topics were precisely, but probably things we saw and so on, and like, yeah, my mom and dad.

Uh, told me that later on still that they used to call me. Um, I think, I believe because I would open conversations with them. You know what, I think, you know what I believe. And then we would Yeah. Like have philosophical conversations. Yeah. So, yeah. And I think, yeah, I, I think that was kind of formative or, and, and it sort of, it expressed, or, or was something that came from before and still continues now.

Uh, I think in my life, yeah. To do that to, to sort of ponder, I guess

Andrea: ponder, that's a good word. I think. I believe I wonder where those words came from. Did your parents use them a [00:14:00] lot, I mean, five or six years old's pretty young to be so aware of those words. Or is it, I don't know.

Hanne: I don't actually know whether it is young or not. I, I dunno. Um, but my dad was a psychologist and, um, and my mom, uh, she taught people literacy, uh, and also she became a, um, a care worker for autistic people and autistic families, autistic children. Um, and yeah, so I think probably my parents spoke like that.

Um, yeah, I think those words were not in any way absent or, I mean, they, they were very present in our, in our world, I think because of the professions of my parents. And my dad was also studying in the, in the mid eighties or late eighties when I was about eight to 10, he was studying systemic therapy, um, at a place far away from, you know, well recently in, within Belgium, far away from where we lived.

And so it was an event that he went to that place to study those things. And then he came back and talked about it over [00:15:00] dinner. And so, I mean, systems and systemic. Therapy and systemic thinking. Even Barilla's work that was present when I was quite young, just around the dinner table. And, and then there was also, yeah, this was really maybe funny.

There is, um, a kind of story that was rec recorded on a, on a vi vinyl record that we played at home. And it's, it's a story from a Dutch couple of, of, um, um, storytellers and singers. And it was about a story about systems in the systems and they were sort of creatures in the forest. And the, it was, I, I could, I totally remember what the story was precisely, but you know, like a normal children's story.

But some of the creatures were called systems. And I remember when we were driving on holiday long drives that I, I imagined that the pylons that you see next to the highway were the systems. And so, [00:16:00] yeah, I mean, yeah.

Andrea: I wish we could find that song. I wonder if there's any way, because I have never heard about a song that where the systems are, are the creatures.

And I'm trying to imagine being this child in your household, because of course Francisco LLA systems thinking these things that you've mentioned are so important to your work now. And that's amazing that that was already in your life.

And I'm wondering were you in a community where a lot of people were talking and thinking about this, I know it was normal for you as a, as a child, but as you grew older, did you realize that was a special environment that you were in to be learning about those things so young?

Hanne: Yeah, I think, of course because of the profession of my father, he, as a psychologist and I'm learning about these things, he later on specialized in autism and systemic therapy.

And before that he was very politically engaged at university. And but that was before I was in the picture. Um, so. Of course, their friends were [00:17:00] also people, the people that they, the people that he was an activist with and the people that their colleagues and so on. Must have also been people who talked a lot about these things.

And still, you know, my mom is still friends with some of those people and, and, um, my dad died, uh, nine years ago, so that's why he's in the past. My, my mom, my mom's still in the present. Um, so, uh, yeah, I don't experience, I didn't experience so much a community. I, I know you were maybe thinking about something like LIndisfarne or something like that.

Yeah. Maybe you were just Yeah, but it wasn't really like that. It was just my, my, my parents friends and colleagues. But we didn't sort of live together or anything like that. It was, they were in the vicinity and we met them, but we didn't live in a community like that. but yeah, I, later on, of course, when I started to learn that something like philosophy exists in my teens and I, I.

That really opened a whole new world again. And I, you know, that was like, oh gosh, that's my thing. And [00:18:00] or, you know, I felt really attracted to that, of course. Um, and it is very clear that not everybody in my school was, for instance, or every time I made a transition in school, my mom told me, you'll meet more people who are like you now when, so when I went from primary school to secondary school, she was like, now you'll meet more, more of your people, or you'll finally meet your people.

Actually, maybe, and in secondary school, that happened a little bit. And then when I get went to university, that happened again more because I went to study philosophy and then, then that really happened in a way. Yeah. But it was really nice actually, that my mom saw that, you know, that I, that I needed that, that it wasn't there, and that in this transition it would potentially open up more, that there would be more people like me who were interested in, in thinking and in philosophy and in even abstraction or, or.

Yeah. A different kind of connecting to

the

world, maybe.

Andrea: Did you notice that about yourself? The other word was loving and I, it sounds like you had very [00:19:00] loving family, or you loved your family very much. did, do you have a sense of when you started thinking about that word, were you young when you thought of that too?

Hanne: Um, well, the loving thing is a bit, maybe that's kind of stranger in a way. I think, I mean, I've been thinking about it recently because, um, um, in some ways it's, it's really funny. But in my, the place where my dad comes from, I think I actually, no, I've thought about this quite a lot for a long time because my, my.

My dad comes from the dialect that people speak there ostensibly doesn't have a word for love or loving. Um, yeah. Is

Andrea: that Belgium? Is that Flemish or is that

Hanne: Yeah, it's in Flemish. So in Eastern Flanders there is that, that's where my dad comes from. They have, they don't have a word for loving and supposedly, but they do say it, but not, not very much.

And actually people in Belgium in generally don't say it so [00:20:00] much compared to where I live now in Canada where this, you know, when when we phone family, we always end with saying, I love you and my husband and I say that to each other many times a day. And I, I love that now. But when I was young, I had a sort of aesthetic idea that saying that is not done or that you only say that when you really, really deeply mean it.

Um, and I think that comes in part from this place where my dad comes from, where there is no word for loving. When people do say something like it, they say something like, translate, it would be, I like to see you. Which I actually think is a very loving thing to say because liking to see someone is actually very intimate and very, um, so inflammatory would be, and I actually think that's very special.

It's so, it's aesthetic. It's, it's, um, and, and it, there's a kind of reticence in it as [00:21:00] well. Maybe a distance as well as a closeness. Right. Um, and so but, so there was that element.

But then where my mom comes from was the province within Belgium. That was the, where the people were considered, or, you know, it's like a stereotype, but people were considered. The soft ones within the range of, you know, the, the, the provinces in Belgium kind of in, in the Flanders at least are like from the, the soft spoken ones or the, the more soft hearted ones that where my mom comes from and where we ended up living, uh, more towards the west where people are thought to be harder and more, you know, maybe not.

So you dealing with love in the same way or so close to loving or so, I don't know. So those two things sort of came together in me and where I lived and so on. But then there was also when, you know, until my maybe mid twenties or thirties that I, I, I really thought that saying I love you is something that you only do and you really truly, deeply believe [00:22:00] it.

and I actually now think that's a bit strange because yeah, in a way also you can never be sure. I mean that was sort of treating love as something absolute perhaps, which I don't think is is the case anymore. I don't believe anymore that love is something so absolute. It's much more shifting and moving and something that we Yeah, in a way always work on to do and, yeah.

Engaging in and we must keep on engaging in it. And this must keep on engaging in it is at the same time not really a choice, because as living beings, that is what we do. We relate to the world in that way. I think, I think loving is a, relating to the world that living beings do because they are alive, but also must do to have a good relation with the world in a way or two, to keep living.

Yeah.

Andrea: Yeah. This, this is fascinating because in, in your work, loving and knowing you talk about both as a kind of relation, different, [00:23:00] And when I was reading that, I was thinking I come from a place where it's the opposite of what you described of where you say, I love you all the time.

And I grew up being told that sort of where you are now. And I've flipped right now. I'm in, I have a Dutch husband and 'ik hou van jou' and I have, it's, I've thought about it from the other way around than you just described. And also living in Berlin a long time where there's a lot, it's a lot more normal to come at it the way you just expressed it, at least There's something that's happened that's different when I'm an adult and I choose to say it from a different place. But there's something about this movement of knowing and loving where, when you become aware of when you notice, the person or the relationship in a different way, the way that you love and know the way that you relate, does it deepen or does it, I know that's very messy, but I'm trying to get into this distinction we tend to make between feelings and thinking and, and how at [00:24:00] some point these are actually relating relations.

Hanne: Yeah. I think when you said that that feeling and thinking are, are, you know, that they are different. Actually to me that doesn't make sense anymore.

I think they're same. It's, or they're all one thing. And then from that one thing, we can talk about thinking and we can talk about feeling, but it comes from one thing, which to me is sense making as a living, being it's, it's, you know what you need, what you do in order to keep living. And it's very, very basic.

And biological. Biological, it's like total basic needs and that sense making. And then later on, once we as humans, once we grow up or, or then we start to realize, oh, this is thinking and this is feeling, but they're never really actually separate, but we can talk about them like that and we can then experience them like that and we can.

And we can do such intricate thinking about them. And that really actually fascinates me that [00:25:00] from this one thing that sense making is, which is what every living being does, even the trees, uh, we, we can then have this really sophisticated talking about thinking and thinking in sophisticated ways and yeah, I find that true.

Andrea: Yeah. You say loving and knowing share a core or they entail each other. That's actually very profound. What you just said, I think can seem hard to grasp, if we're thinking of what thinking and knowledge is as something in the head, which I think is still an assumption most of us maybe have and loving is in the body and it's feeling.

Mm-hmm. So what you just said is almost like a completely different way of understanding what we are. Not only, I mean, I wanna say it's a different epistemology, but that already fits it into that old way of thinking, doesn't it?

Hanne: Yeah. Yeah. I do think it's an ontology actually. I think it's an ontologically different thing.

yeah, when you were just speaking, I had a thought about it that could help maybe explain it or something, but, or maybe, I don't know [00:26:00] whether it's always a, about explaining it either. Maybe that's also a, I mean, yes, of course as scientists, we want to explain and we do explaining and that's important and it leads to insight and to progress and all that.

Um, but I also think there's maybe some element of it that we don't really understand, but still feel in our body or have in our body. you know, and as, as bodily beings, we live like that. We live that. Um, and that in a way remains maybe mysterious to our thoughts or to our thinking, but that also relates, you know, the thinking and the bodily living.

The going out to what we need for, for a living, like some tea.

Does that help me think now? Maybe. Um, yeah, like, um,

yeah, so it is a different way of thinking about these things in a different way of being, which is also, [00:27:00] in a way that's something I'm learning myself still through thinking this, which is then a funny movement, right. To, to think it's a different ontology. But I come to that through thinking as well as then through recognizing that being is actually like, that is is a relating so loving.

And I would not say that loving is a feeling. Loving is, is a is relating, loving, is is a living relating It's an existential. Relating Well, existential means. That from our, from our be the particular being that each of us is you with your particular body and situation and, and history and woven ness into where you are, love particular things because of the particular being you are.

And everybody loves particular specific things. and that's different for all of us, um, because of the particular beings we are. And that's sort of, that's our existence then [00:28:00] as this particular material being means that we go out to certain things and not, we don't go out and search out other things.

So it makes differentiations in the world this, this loving or this living relating, and that's where distinctions then start to happen in the world. So I want and like this, or I need to avoid that, or a whole bunch of things is actually irrelevant to me and I don't notice it unless something changes.

Me or in the relation, or the world calls to me in a different way. But those distinctions then start to be made, and then we start to see different things and different categories come into being. And, and also the difference between, or a difference between thinking and feeling comes into being. Um, from that, maybe some people call it oneness.

I don't know if that's the right word, that that's has a Buddhist history, which I'm not a Buddhist expert in any way. So, but I do relate to that sense of, of of oneness out of which [00:29:00] we come and where within which then also distinctions and differentiations are made and are present, which we then also have to deal with.

But yeah, I definitely do think it's on ontological, not just, not just epistemological.

Andrea: Well, maybe you'll go into this in a way with me that's messy because I feel like what, what, what you're trying to do, what I think needs to be done. And believe me, I'm okay if you completely disagree and correct all of this, but it's a completely, it's, it's a different way of understanding what it is to be a self, what it is to be alive.

And we have to even throw up in the air all these ways we've been using language and find new ways to use it. So when you say ontology in, in philosophy, that's to do with the beingness, right? And then epistemology is supposed to be about the knowledge and, but what we're saying here I think is that those aren't different.

So, but they are, so there's this tension which runs through a lot of your [00:30:00] work that we have to hold. And we can think of it through ontology or through epistemology and those can't really be reconciled, but they're still part of this way that the body is relating with all that it encounters. Does that make sense?

Hanne: Yeah. Well, yeah. I think that knowing and being and doing are all always intertwined. So it's not just knowing and being, it's also doing. And so as a living being, we cannot not move. Moving is is for a living. Being is living. and so the, the doing it constantly changes the world because we change, we, we, we do in a world.

So we move and when we move things around us inevitably also move. And so we relate to that as living beings because we do, yeah, we, we need things for continuing living that's inevitable. And it's an activity at the same time. And so. That changes the world. And so, but we also relate to that changing the world because we have to sometimes act on [00:31:00] something that we need not being there, and then we have to do something else to get it anyway.

And that's hard. It's, it's an effort. And so through that effort, I think is when sense making becomes a little bit more specific or, or, or, or gen, you know, generates or, or, um, or takes on some more specificity than just, I need this and I don't need that. I need to make an effort to get what I need, and so then I need to do something else.

And, and that extends time. So that's an idea also from Han the, the, from immediacy to immediacy, right? We can have immediate gratification or something like that, or immediate meeting of needs. But as a living being, that isn't always the case. And so there's more and more immediacy between what you need and getting it.

So things aren't immediate anymore. There, there is a, there is an opening relation between what you need and. And how you get it. And in that opening relation, new meanings emerge that you then also again have to deal with to get the thing [00:32:00] that you need. And that I think, open sense making and makes it more and more sophisticated and or, or more variated Um, and so that opens up all these Yeah. Um, new ways of knowing and at the same time that change is how the world is. So it is ontology as well in a way. I, I think like it is, it is the being of the world that it's constantly changing. and we, ourselves, and this is one of the things that we are not used to thinking at all, maybe the thing that we are least used to thinking is that we change as knowers constantly as we know.

I think that's like the most safeguarded element of Western epistemology, that we are these objective observers who are totally static and what an injustice do ourselves. That is. Um, but so the doing, knowing, being and undoing in a paper where they say, we have a triangle of, of course, knowing, being and undoing are the three basic elements of [00:33:00] philosophy for so long.

And they always are interrelated. So, so yeah.

Andrea: Yeah. They, are they only interrelated or are they nested? And do they look different in relation depending on where we look at them from? I mean, can we even separate them except to talk about them? Do you really see them as like separate things? The knower, the doer, and the beer?

I,

Hanne: uh, no. Uh, no, of course. They're all, they're, I think they're both the same and different from each other always. Right. And I think that's true with, with almost all things in the world. and maybe, yeah, there was, so some time ago I was, uh, with the Dalai Lama, we had a dialogue, and one of the things that he keeps saying is that.

We are all one and humanity is one. And that's such an important message, and I completely agree with that. And at the same time, and I couldn't really convey that is because I asked him, isn't different also part of the world? And he totally [00:34:00] struck it off. But I think that it really is also part of the world and we need to acknowledge that in order to, to work better on the idea that we are one or that we need each other as humanity.

But the diff the difference needs to be acknowledged as well. And so there also that's true that, that, um, knowing, being and doing are the same and also different because we live in a material world. Um, and the material world isn't one of all sameness. it's one world in which different things emerge and they change all the time.

So yeah, all and all of that is true at the same time.

Andrea: It sounds, it could sound as if this is easy, but holding that tension and letting both be there without trying to smush them into each other, I think is so urgent right now. And I really feel it in your work.

And so, so hard to even articulate because our language [00:35:00] tries to do the either or thing. Like for example, that's a really interesting story about being with the Dalai Lama. And I think there's been such a push about, oh, we're so different, everybody so different. And then the pushback is, no, we're all one.

We need to focus on what makes us similar. And it, it just, the whole conversation is like an either or of that to where it almost becomes hard to realize what we're doing is zooming out to hold both of those. And that's, that's the. Whatever the oneness or the, the pattern, but it actually holds what you just said.

Do you, do you understand what I mean? I find it very hard to really, really articulate that.

Hanne: Yeah. But I You said it. I I think that's what it is. Yeah. It's holding both oneness and difference at the same time. And, but, and also, you know, I think what is crucial about holding it is that it's, so I said a holding both oneness and difference at the same time.

But this at the same time [00:36:00] is actually an open time. It's not one time. Time or living is, every moment is different. And so that opens so that we can want sometimes feel oneness and sometimes feel difference or sometimes oneness is more to the foreground and everything is one or the, or some things are the same.

Um, so with a lover or a husband or a child or a dog or our pet, we can feel very close. Um, that's the kind of love, but that's only one end of maybe a spectrum of love. And another, um, element of love is that sometimes you feel really distant and really different and, but you're still in a relationship, maybe even exasperated at how different you feel from the other.

And, um, you cannot reach them. But that's not outside of love. I think that's very much in love and that is, that is a form of relating that then, like every element in relation [00:37:00] requires a next moment or several next moments in order for the relationship to move to a different place. And so difference and oneness, both being true is in a world where there is time and space for us to move and moving in time and space is what we do to make sense of the world because we move between.

Being close and being far from each other and needing each other and needing to be alone and Right. Needing to, you know, come back to your own thinking. And so this is also what we are doing while we are talking, I think, and what have often happens when we talk with other people that you, you keep with your own thinking, but you also move to where the other is thinking and you move in between those things.

Mm-hmm.

And that actually is also how we understand each other. That, that we do that movement from closeness to far away to what is going on. I don't understand. And then you make a next [00:38:00] move in your thinking or, or literal move in your walking around in the world and

Andrea: Yeah. This tension, you talk about it sometimes as over determining or under determining, or also just.

Being in a loving relationship and like you were just describing where you're, you, you still wanna maintain your, your autonomy or yourself And at the same time, you're part of this other ongoing being, which is the relationship and what is, what's the role of, of, of noticing that or, or awareness of that that helps with that?

Because we've been talking about like when we were children and then at least in my experience, I feel like I was just so absorbed in the relating that I couldn't notice it. And as, as I grow and as I read and as I have conversations and as I use language, I begin to notice that these things are happening.

And, and something about the awareness helps me at least move towards what we're talking about. Being able to hold, hold the tension. Do you, what, what do you see is the [00:39:00] role of that, of that noticing or awareness or.

Hanne: Yeah, I think that's really important actually. I think beginning to notice it makes, it, makes it possible for us to open space and time more to do different things than we would've done if we hadn't noticed it.

Um, so becoming aware of these patterns or of the tensions or the possibilities means that we can do different things than we, yeah. Than we could do if we hadn't seen something of the dynamics. And we don't have to fully understand it immediately. And I don't think we can ever maybe fully understand it, but beginning to see it means, oh yeah, here there's an opening, and I can do something different now than what I was used to, for instance.

And also, it's, it's not just only that. I think also, you know, what you said earlier that it's like a turning on its head or, or a totally different ontology or understanding that then puts everything in a different light or, or makes things that seemed obvious, uh, now less obvious. [00:40:00] If something becomes less obvious, it means that you can see other things and move to other things and do other things.

Andrea: You said an opening and that I, was thinking of this as almost like a portal to think about. For example, your mom saying to you, you're gonna meet people more like you. There's, there's a way in which the loving and the knowing, like she, she knew you, she loved you, she saw you, and she held the space of that, and kind of that loving opened up this portal for you to maybe notice it.

Maybe you already noticed it, I don't know, but. There's something that we do for each other in relation that is also that, that opening or we help each other hold the tension, by modeling it for each other or something like that. I mean, when you think back to you being that little kid, obviously you're thinking a lot about what knowledge is, what thinking is, and do you, do you see that your mom and your dad noticing that and taking it seriously for you helps you hold it?

Was that a kind of loving that, you know, [00:41:00] this opening that portal or whatever I'm trying to, trying to talk about?

Hanne: Yes. Yeah, so I think there are two levels of that. So one is, um, noticing that explicitly and then being able to think about it. And the other one is noticing, like my mom said, that thing about meeting, meeting more of my people is more like a noticing of, oh yes, I wasn't actually with my people so far.

And it's not just me that was, you know. Or not feeling at home or feeling just like I not at ease in school. It's like, ah, yes, it's not, that's not, it's also because the other people couldn't relate to me very well. It wasn't just me not relating very well to them or not feeling at home. And that is the kind of noticing of, of an actual element that was really important.

I mean like, like, um, how do you say that? Like a, yeah, a crucial thing in my life that really affected me a lot. And then that opened to something new with new, new [00:42:00] possibilities. So that's one noticing that was immediately relevant to me, to how I was living my life and what impinged and in me and how life in school impacted me.

but then there's the noticing of, ah, that, that you can do that kind of noticing and that that then means that you can think differently or that there is, yeah, this, this. Yeah. Different. Yeah. Like advancing way of thinking about what's actually going on.

Andrea: Mm-hmm. It feels like, uh, that place where loving and knowing are the same.

I mean, they're, they're always a relation, but are manifesting. That feels loving to me. That, that your mom, that, I mean, it happens in many ways. I've, I've a lot of people say, some teacher notices something about them and just happens to say it. It's one little comment like, oh, you're so good at drawing or something, and it's just suddenly this whole world opens up like the portal,

Hanne: Yeah.

Andrea: That feels very rich with this loving and knowing as you've expressed it in your work.

Hanne: Yeah. Yeah. I think that's true. So, yes. This is something else I wanted to say about what you were, [00:43:00] how you were saying it earlier. It's, yeah, so someone who loves you can notice something about you by which you get to know yourself better.

That's, that can make a really big shift in your being because it's being recognized then by, by someone who loves you, and then they show you something. The world can look different. You yourself can look different. You understand yourself better. And that again, then opens new ways of moving for you in the world.

And that changes the world effectively. Like I did then meet more people who were closer to me and my being. And, and then I got real deep friends. And that's, you know, the world became different because of that. um, but that's different from noticing the patterns, right? So that, so that's, and that happens.

So that's happens in a loving relationship where you see each other. So actually what the way that there's the seeing Yeah. Yeah. To, yeah. And what my, the way my, the people in my dad's province or the dialect that he spoke where they say, I love you. And they actually, the literal words are, [00:44:00] I like to see you.

Um. That is actually really important in loving relationships that someone truly sees you. And it's not actually, the literal translation is a bit hard to make in English. It's not just only, I like to see you, there's a word in it. It's, it's, it's like, um, I don't know really how to say that there. It's something like, seeing you is good.

It's not so much I like to see you, but seeing you is good for me.

Andrea: Mm-hmm. In a way, yeah. The relation is in there already. Yeah.

Hanne: Yeah. There is more relation in there maybe than it seems.

Andrea: Yeah, and it's, it feels very sensory. I mean, just from the Dutch and the German that I, it feels very sensory. It's not just like, I see you with my eyes.

It's almost, I feel you, but of course that's not the right word either in this context, but my body fills you or, so, I don't know. It's a holding. It's a holding.

Hanne: It's a holding. Yeah. This, or Ghana in the, in German is. Is like your [00:45:00] body goes out to the other person. That's it.

Andrea: Yeah, exactly. Yeah,

Hanne: yeah,

Andrea: yeah. it makes me, you, you said it's not the pattern.

I really want you to help me understand that better, because I feel like this noticing is a loving and a knowing. When, when our teachers do it, even with someone at the store just happens to see maybe you look sad and they, they hold the space for a second, you know, and it changes your day. these are real moments of loving and knowing, which doesn't mean they know everything about you or they like love you in some romantic way, but, but that, and that for me feels like noticing in the sense of just being aware of, of what is, which is not easy.

But you said it's not noticing the patterns. I'd like to hear about that. And, and I also think it moves us. I mean, we're still in our, in your childhood, but you did go to college and find people who were more like you, but you started to notice patterns I think that didn't really fit with the patterns you'd grown up with, with the systems thinking and the way that you'd.

Understood people. And so I wanna talk about that a bit. But, but first, what's, what do [00:46:00] you mean by this? Noticing and patterning is different than what I've been describing so far.

Hanne: Yeah. And I, maybe it's not really the, the, the thing that we're talking about here. So I think as thinkers, as philosophers, we see patterns in the world.

Like we can see the pattern that western thinking has been very objectivist and individualistic and solipsistic and actually divisive. That's a pattern that we can see as philosophers. Um, and we become, I think we become able to do that by this kind of noticing that happens in loving relationships. I think actually, like I said before, like, um, this, uh, we, we grow out of relationship and the, the relationship that we grow out of as we are born is of course, we come out of one person who I.

Met another person. And so there's always oneness in twoness. And then out of that, these two people coming together, then a new person emerges. But it [00:47:00] also, physiologically, I think that's fascinating that there's oneness in twoness and how mm-hmm. All the loving beings who create, or sometimes not loving beings who create new beings.

 so yeah, noticing these patterns that I think does come from sensorially, noticing otherness and encountering otherness, and being drawn to otherness, like just loving in that dialect, that means my body goes out to you, or my seeing or my body, my noticing goes out to you.

And I like it. I enjoy it. I, I, I, Yeah, there's some, there's relatedness between that. I think between noticing these more abstract patterns and noticing the difference it makes when someone sees you and you can move differently. These, the differentiations that come out of that are what we do later on as well, more abstractly.

Um, and actually maybe there's a, maybe it's relevant to mention, like in Spanish, the word GU[00:48:00]

is, I like it and it's super sensorial. It's, it's, it's the, the taste. Uh, oh.

Andrea: Yeah.

Hanne: Yeah. So, yeah. What made

Andrea: you say that exactly?

Hanne: Uh, the, the, this thinking about, um, loving and, and the different expressions for it,

Andrea: Yeah. Bodily holding of some kind.

Hanne: Yeah. And actually Latin S from Homosapien.

Yeah. Is also tasting, smelling, knowing, researching, all of that, right? That whole, yes. That's

Andrea: inness in a very different way than might be in a rom-com. so let's just think about you, you coming into knowing who you are and noticing your patterns.

and that can happen through what we would just described as this loving noticing. But then in a more academic context, for example, I think you started to notice that patterns, for example, such as that we might call the way that social cognition is studied. I guess it's more like [00:49:00] we've represented the patterns then in books and in words and so on, and, and we can notice them in a different way.

But I feel like you started to notice those weren't really, What's the word? Describing or, or, or representing, I don't know, um, accurately this idea of relation or that we've been talking about. I'm trying to think about how you got into understanding this word participation participatory, because that's all this relation and it's a different way of thinking about what happens in a social relationship when we compare it to the patterns of, I think, the way psychology or social cognition was studied when you went to university.

Hanne: Yeah, actually, yes. I can tell a very, like a story about that in a way. So, um, I was, uh, with my mom who was a, a care worker for autistic children in, in, in families with autistic children. and I sometimes were went on summer camps [00:50:00] with her, I mean, day, day camps, where these children were.

And, um, so I had, and, and children sometimes came to our house that they were working with and so on. and then I, I'd been fascinated by autism as a different way of thinking since, since my parents started working with autistic children. And we also talked about it like that. Like what's going on for this child that they are, um, having a meltdown or that life is so difficult for them?

What's going on for them and how can we change it so that they can live better and more, more be more fluently present in the world. Um,

Andrea: you talked about that when you like around the dinner table or something? Just norm.

Hanne: Yeah. Yeah. Like my dad would talk about what was going on at his work and my mom too.

And, and they would think together about what was going on and try to find solutions, right? So that they talked about that over dinner. and then, well, I, I went to university. I knew I didn't want to study psychology because that's studying, thinking over there. I wanted to study philosophy because that's doing the thinking and I wanted to learn, [00:51:00] thinking or study it by doing it right.

So anyway, that's a small thing. But then, I started looking at the theories of autism. so how is autism understood and the patterns that were noticed by psychology about autism and about social cognition? Were these what looked to me, or, or maybe now it looks to me like that, but when I was studying that, I noticed that, what I saw autistic children do wasn't at all represented in the theories I was reading, which were Anglo-Saxon or English, English speaking, uh, English language theories.

They didn't notice some anything about the embodiment of autistic people, how autistic people are bodily present in the world, and what, how they move and the fact that their behaviors were rhythmically different than from non-autistic people. it was all about theories in the head, theory of mind, and so on.

Um, and that seemed to me something that came more from psychology than from the autistic children. So psychology thought of this [00:52:00] theory based on comput computational approach, and then applied that to autistic children without properly seeing them. In my view. And so I wrote like on a little note on and put it behind my computer in, in at Sussex when I was studying for the PhD rhythmic behavior because rhythmic behavior was not at all seen by these theories of, of social cognition and of autism.

Whereas what I know or knew from autistic children is that they engage in rhythmic behavior, and that seemed to be part of how they make sense of the world. And so autism wasn't really seen by psychology. What, what psychology was seeing, I thought, or maybe I see it now clearly, like that they were seeing this pattern that they had made like a grid to put onto the world and that was what remained most meaningful rather than how the children actually were.

And by that grid, that psychological theory put on autistic people. They made it so that [00:53:00] autistic people couldn't respond to them. And so they, they saw autistic people as not communicative and not social, which. In part, there is a a disability in autism that is related to how to, how to relate to the world.

But it's not just that and it's not, it's not fully determined by just that view that psychology put on autistic people and thereby made, it's so that they couldn't communicate or couldn't interact well socially. And that's, I think, yeah, related to this, this, these pattern makings and how pattern making can make sure that we make that, make sure that we overdetermine something or someone and then they cannot respond back to us.

Andrea: So we create representational external, I mean always external. When I say representation, like through language, we write down or we create books, or we create curriculums to try to understand the patterns we have in common. And then.

Somehow those patterns that we have in common become taken [00:54:00] as the way things are or something. And it sounds like you had lived, your lived experience was to put yourself in positions of different rhythms and to understand that depending on, I mean those conversations with your parents, your, it sounds to me like you're putting yourself in swapping with someone other another's position as much as you possibly can.

and, and understanding that those rhythms then will dictate what the patterns mean in the world. And so when we learn, okay, these patterns are right, that doesn't fit with that, what you had learned as a kid. Does that make sense? And so you, you were looking at the academic representation external and it didn't fit with your actual lived experience,

Hanne: Yeah, I think so. And maybe, maybe there's something more to it that it wasn't just the autistic children that I knew. Um, but also having been myself in that, in that kind of situation of not having been understood, which is also, of course something that we all experience, but I think some, you know, [00:55:00] certain people in society don't experience that very much or are kind of socialized to ignore that and to put it on the others as you are, um, you know, like, not right and I need to change you, which mm-hmm.

Um, rather than noticing, oh, actually this is a two-way thing that's going on here, and we both have responsibility in changing things.

Andrea: Yeah. But we, we try to hide what's different about us or we. Learn very early to try to be more like what? Whatever this external representation, it might even just be a movie or something is telling us is somehow normal.

because this is all relation too, in the way you've been describing. So it's all co-creating itself at the same time. And we take it as if it's the way it has to be, not realizing it is this relation. Yeah. But it's, to me, how I see it is you kind of, this is a little grandiose, but that you sort of came in and stood up, you and Ezekiel and others of course.

and there were Varela and Evan [00:56:00] and every, a lot of others were doing it too, but you kind of stood up and said, there's other rhythms, there's other patterns that aren't being externally represented in this literature. is, does that, I know that's a bit of a caricature, but did you kind of feel like, okay, I'm gonna, I find some other way this, this isn't satisfactory, I guess, and did it feel like that?

Hanne: Yeah. Yeah. I did feel like, like some things were needed and I wanted to go there and see what was needed and work on it to make some things better or to, you know, to put something where there wasn't something like, for instance, between, um, so I was studying cognitive science at Sussex, and I thought I was thinking, uh, or interested in social cognition.

And from cognitive science we think about the individual and individual brains and individual behavior. And at Sussex individual embodiment, which was really cool to think about that. And to be in the, in the C-C-C-N-R, the Center for Computational Neuroscience and Robotics, where they were making [00:57:00] robots, you know, and like thinking about embodiment through robots and so on.

But it was very individualistic and I thought we also have to think through sociology to understand intersubjectivity and sociology was Carly mainly thinking about interaction, but cognitive science and sociology weren't really talking to each other much. So there needed to be a bridge build there.

And so I thought, okay, what I actually did sort of design or, or think of participatory science making also to make that bridge between the cognitive sciences and the social sciences, because together they can really think about intersubjectivity and I. So I think the concept was also, yeah, it was, I, I made it explicitly for that to, to build a bridge between those as well, because then we could understand inter subjectivity or think about it more fully than either of them individually could.

And, and I think this applies to the fields of cognitive science as a field or their cognitive sciences as a field [00:58:00] and sociology as a field. But within those fields, of course, thinkers, uh, like Bateson and like Turner and, and lots of different people have taught very. Sophisticatedly about intersubjectivity that bridges these things, but as fields, I think there was, yeah, there needed to be more bridging and I thought participatory sensemaking could be a way to do that.

Yeah.

Andrea: Was it, I know it's hard to say what was motivating you, and I know you weren't using, loving the word love, which is pretty unusual in, in these discourses back then, but it feels like it was motivated by love and the way that we've been describing it. I mean, I don't see you as necess, of course everyone wants to be successful in their academic world, but I, I feel a kind of uniqueness in, in you, and I'm sorry to put you in this position, but I wonder if you really were feeling motivated from that place That I would, [00:59:00] that is love to solve these or things, or to, find a way to understand it better.

Hanne: Yeah, I think that's a strange question in a way because I mean, yeah, I think when you really think about things and you're really interested in them, that's what you do. Like, you, you, you go for the problem and you want to investigate it, but, and you Yeah.

Yeah. I like to think that I'm motivated by that, and I think I have been, and, and that's why the work has come out as it has. And I've, you know, I've, I've taken some risks, but I've in, in my academic work and, you know, and I've had the possibilities to do that, uh, as well because I was in a mainly research position for a long time where I wasn't really beholden too much apart from my own work with my colleagues, which was wonderful.

Um, and so there's a whole different element of life to talk about there. But, but of course it also matters to me that I'm recognized through this [01:00:00] work, right. That also has been motivating me that I, you know, I. Um, ignore that or, yeah, that is, that is a motivator. And actually I regret that. I think I don't like it, but it's, and this is one of the things that I find difficult about academic life, that, that we are made to care about that, and then it becomes something that we care about and that informs our day to day too much.

I, I feel like that puts things on me that I really regret and resent, and yet I sometimes cannot stop from moving in those patterns, like checking your citations and things like that. But I actually really kind of hate it, but I kind stop doing it and, and, and I wish we all didn't have to care about it because it would be so much more free to do our work if we didn't have to do that.

Andrea: Thank you. Yeah. Thank you for saying that. It's part of what I'm trying to get at, which is very hard to speak about, but. Yeah, [01:01:00] I mean that, that's that holding that tension too. Of course. It wasn't just the motivation of the love or whatever, but beautiful. But mm-hmm.

Hanne: That would be beautiful. But no,

Andrea: but I, I feel that tension in the loving and knowing, and I feel that tension in the idea of participatory sense making and in the way that I imagine it has, you've had to defend it, I guess, or I don't know.

I, I think what I'm trying to get at is, when I read Loving and Knowing and a lot of your work, it makes me think of how much we've invested in the external representations and the patterns so much so that we almost forgot.

Why we're doing it or what it all means, or that there is this lit life, you know, this, this is our life. And, in the loving and knowing. you know, when you talk about dementia, for example, you, you give these examples or the digital world, to me those feel like [01:02:00] examples where we've started to mistake our external representations or our technology or whatever, our citations, whatever these things for, all of it, and we've forgot.

It's almost as if we, if we've just left behind 80% of our actual existence or something. Is this making any sense at all?

Hanne: Yeah, I think so. Because of the way we are made to interact or we think we should interact or we participate in the academic kind of world, or even just in a capitalist world. That's what it is basically, I think.

Um. We take it as sustenance, how we are recognized by numbers of citations or by, have I written my book yet? Or, or that person has so many more books and how am I gonna ever catch up? And well, um, we, we somehow take that as sustenance and it's, and, and it feeds us, but it's the food that doesn't feed our soul.

It's, it feeds a kind of survival in the world that we [01:03:00] live in. It's definitely a way of surviving and it's a way of keeping living that is not at all to be discarded or, or, or looked down upon because this is the structure of the world in which we live onward. That we participate in needing more books, more citations, more recognition, more podcasts, more yeah, it's somehow adjacent to what the real work is and yet also not like in, so it's actually in a conversation like this that we can be more free somehow to properly speak or to speak more deeply. and that is in a way also fed by us, both of us having been able to do that we have done within the structures that we work in, um, that allow us now to be here and have seen each other in a way, right?

Or have come across each other's work. And so those things also interplay with each other in complex ways. And it's just the world that we live in. [01:04:00] So, so to pretend like it's not there or to pretend like we could ignore it, like all the, the CV stuff or the, whatever you want to call it. No, we also live in that and we have to deal with it.

I think it's a matter of being a bit judicious with it as much as we can, but also not to be overly worried about that because then it, that becomes another difficulty in a way, like trying to be, oh my God, I can't look at my citations because it's not a good food for my soul. Like, that's then another way of making it more difficult.

Andrea: Yeah.

Hanne: If that makes sense. This

Andrea: tension is so potent. I've heard so many people thinking about academia lately in a way that feels urgent. I mean, from both sides. Of course we, you know, it's under threat in a way, the funding and stuff. And we, we don't, that's, we wanna defend that. And then on the other side, it does feel like a lot of people are sort of miserable because they've just given themselves over to this external representation world, which you can never win.

I [01:05:00] mean, there, there's always gonna be someone with more And, and it's not even only that, it's more that disconnect between. Understanding, loving and knowing as a manifestation of this, what we've we're calling oneness. But as this, this process, that disconnect, is eating a lot of people.

And I mean, just what you said, like being able to hold that, being able to understand, being able to say, oh, you know, I'm looking at my citations as if it matters. Or, you know, being able to hold that space itself is already something that could be helpful just to go back to that theme of noticing or, or awareness or even having one another hold that space for each other.

Hanne: Yeah. I think that's crucial to, to hold it, the space for and with each other, to talk with each other and to be together in this or, you know, to, to, to work together and yeah. Which is also something that is difficult, right? Because working together is, you know, in a competitive, competitive world is it's brought with danger.

Um. [01:06:00] That's part of it.

Andrea: I mean, if, if holding the tension became more normal, new systems would have to be created, right? Because right now we're locked into these ruts that are either or ruts. you either are winning or losing. And actually, that's not the only way that we have to be in the world.

Is it, I mean, aren't you trying to open up a different space, even dealing with all this tension and of course you're, it's not like you're immune from it, but do you see that we could create systems that aren't so alienating in this way?

Hanne: Yeah. Yeah. I'm really curious how, though, I don't really know.

So I don't know if to talk about this, but I'm not, I'm not in an academic position anymore and I was out of work for, for a year and I was also ill and, um. That was really tough. But now I have income again. Um, it's temporary and it's, you know, it's, it's, um, [01:07:00] which before I had, I had a tenured position, right?

So that was nice to be, to be tenured and to have that security, but not wanting to be in the place where I was and, and actually having another place to be, which was totally separate from where I was. A very good place to be. Like namely here in Canada with my husband and my family. Um, you know, and also needing more freedom for my work than I had before, even though I had a lot in the way I came through the academic career.

Um, yeah, I kind of lost the, the,

Andrea: well, if you'd like to talk about that a bit, because I know you're not in academia anymore, but you are, I mean, in a way the world is changing very quickly, such that you are a philosopher of cognitive science and academic, even though you might not be affiliated with the university.

I didn't know you've been sick. I'm sorry. And that sounds like a lot, and it sounds very connected to these themes, so, I guess it [01:08:00] has, it has it, does it connect to any of the other stuff we were talking about in, in the sense of these spaces being held and noticing and tension and,

Hanne: yeah.

Yeah, of course it totally connects. Um, but how to talk about it I don't really know very well because it is, it's vulnerable at the same time as, it's also interesting. Um. Like I, I'm curious how it'll go in the world and in terms of, you know, I, I wish we could all open up more spaces to be following the questions that we want to ask and, um, have, you know, capacity for that in a wide sense of, you know, our livelihood not being threatened by not being in an academic position, for instance.

but yeah, how to do that. I, I think like being independent scholars or interdependent as I think is a better way to put it. Um, [01:09:00] how do we do that? I don't know. There are some people that I see writing newsletters and, and subsisting on, on subscriptions or, or on, on what people give to read the newsletter, for instance.

I wonder, you know, I, I think in for some things that's a good idea, but I also wonder about. How we have to do that in order to sustain that. Because I think a lot of that is, um, writing in a way to market your experience somehow. And that is really something I don't want to go towards. That's, that hurts just thinking about it.

I mean, that's not right. I think that's like a, unless, unless you really want to do that and that's your thing and you enjoy that and you thrive in that and, and people are, are interested in reading it and there is a connection like that, then fine. But I don't think we should have to do something like that in order to, but yeah.

Where, where to, uh, well I think universal basic income [01:10:00] is the way to, to go or is, but although it's so hard to implement because people who are against it just say that it doesn't work and people become lazy even though it's been proven time and time again that that's not the case and not actually.

People will work and do the proper work, the deep work that people want to do as, as living sense, making creatures as interested and motivated and loving knowers. They want to work on the things that fascinate them. And these are so wide, wide, widely different for everyone that How, how is it in your situation? What do you do?

Andrea: You know, I've always resisted, um, traditional ways of being, constraints are good, but I, I've, I've always known I need to spread out into spaces that aren't the spaces that one must fit in order to go a traditional route. If in a way I've come to a place now where I could probably handle it, but, you know, as a young person, I knew I had to just find a [01:11:00] way to do it otherwise, which I did.

But I think where I'm, and I did it through like, for example, working in, issues of transportation, which actually connect very much to my philosophical ideas. But I could, you know, do it in a way that makes money and, and still do the philosophy. So I had to be very creative and, but that was really for survival, to be very honest.

just for my, my health. Yeah. Uh, but I think where I'm connecting here, like precariousness, you broke up. You, you brought up, um, I. Broke up disruption you brought up, uh, Han Jonas and this precarious idea. And I think where I see hope is in, us as humans realizing we're like, I really see it as a understanding ourself differently and what life is differently.

And I think it very much connects to participatory participatory sense making to way making to especially to loving and knowing, to being able [01:12:00] to plug in, reconnect to love and let that motivate us and let that be okay. And I feel like I wanted to ask you, what, what kind of pushback did you get with using this word love?

Because one thing about one thing, you do hold the tension very well, and you do, you do, you have, at least from my perspective, found a way to talk about all these things. That can be still, uh, robust and grounded. but I wonder, when you started talking about love, did you get any pushback on that, or even the participatory sense making and stuff?

Has it, is there something in that tension that's taught you something of how to hold the space in a way that can make sense to more people and not turn them off because it's, you know, the woo factor or something like that?

Hanne: Yeah. Uh, so there are different things to say about that. Um, one thing that did happen early on, uh, when I was working on [01:13:00] participatory sense making was that, um, some people started to give pushback against it and sort of, uh, yeah, I, uh, they sort of started to, to attack me rather than the theory.

Even in writing. And I was asked to review a paper in which somebody was doing that. And then I thought, this is really strange. I mean, how is, how did it get past the editor even? But anyway, so that was one thing, but then I, I what I, one thing I learned from that personal sit, that individual situation of that paper, and also from working in the inactive tradition, which gets a lot of pushback as well, or, um, or people ask to answer for an action, to ask, to answer cognitive questions.

So an activists are a, were asked in the beginning, what do you think about representations and why don't representations exist? And, and then you have to answer that. But it's a, it's a cognitive question. And in [01:14:00] the inactive framework, it actually doesn't, it's not applicable because, or, you know, there's a lot to say, and

Andrea: it's like what you said about the autism, right?

It's a, it's like asking an autistic person to, yeah. Discuss the rhythm of whatever the, the Yeah. Normal is so, so, so-called normal.

Hanne: Yeah, totally. And so I, the way I, I found to work with that is to ignore it and to say, sorry, no, I cannot ask, answer that question. And by the way, there are other people answering this question with analytic argumentation and so on, and go there and look at that and that's good.

But I need to do the work here in the inactive approach and stay here and work there and deepen that because that's where my answers are for what I'm interested in. And so be like, okay, no, sorry, that's not, I don't feel called to necessarily have to respond to that good question or within your framework, but I'm doing work here and stay, stay with that.

And, and [01:15:00] that's hard sometimes, but also sometimes it's, it's nice because I stay with my thing. Um, and there is also an element of course, of doing this work, which is that there is just too much to answer. There's too much coming at us all the time, and we'd have to do that anyway, whether it's something that we're not interested in or even things we are interested in and should be done.

And I feel like, yes, I wish I had time and I could do that, but I can't, sorry, I need to do this other thing. And I, I'm very responsive to people too much so that I do lose track of my own thing. It's not that I'm very doggedly happy to do my own thing. I wish it was more like that because there is a lot always coming in and, and lots of interesting things.

And I, and I do go off track and, or, or do work on different tracks, which is also part of the work and yeah,

Andrea: it's just too overwhelming. You can't take all of it in and know all of it. So everyone has to kind of find their, their path. But I think for you it's a bit different because you were [01:16:00] creating, co-creating a different way of thinking about cognition.

So it's not that you just found a path. Of course you had a lot of people you're walking Yeah. You know, with or, or behind or whatever you wanna say. But you're also kind of trying to create that and to just give your language over to the language of this other thing would've been a waste of time, I think.

Hanne: Yeah. Yeah. And, and that's really important. So the people that I work with, like Ezekiel and Elena, Elena Ferri, and other people, I think that's so the con to have the conversation when we already understand the language and we are working in it and, and you know, so those are like the, the, the people Yeah.

With whom I feel that we do speak the same language as we are inventing it as well, or, or moving it forward from the, from what came before us, from the people who came before us as well. That is really crucial in, in, in maintaining it as well. So there are different dialogue partners that we all have [01:17:00] and different communities that we speak in and that we speak with and.

And all of that. I also find it itself fascinating as how we move around in the world and speak our language here and then we speak another, our language there, uh, with another person and I, yeah,

Andrea: yeah. We're all multiplicities in a way. And I think that actually relates a lot to what we were talking about of trying to hold all these things.

Because even as I'm agreeing with you that I think it's right what you described and that that was what you had to do in that moment is 'cause you're building, you were building participatory sensemaking, which is now something we can all talk about because it has these patterns, right? But that doesn't stop.

So, so now for example, me, I find it very interesting to be inspired by participatory sensemaking and all those texts. And at the same time to kind of look at computational and. Start to understand that those don't have to cancel each other out necessarily. I know a lot of people disagree with that, [01:18:00] but there can be ways to hold these things.

But because you did all the work and it's, the patterns are recognizable, they, they're still in dialogue and alive and changing everything, even, you know, language of thought or something. And so from another perspective, you taking care of that auto poetic system, being it altogether, gave it life and it's now, you know, in life with other systems.

Does that make any sense?

Hanne: Yeah, I think so. Yeah. I think that's well described. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And so, and all of that is developing and yeah, I, I do think that when you develop something more in depth, then it can be in, in, in dialogue again, and that's needed. I, I think that's also one of the things that's needed in the world right now, that we listen more to each other and let each other be.

Ourselves as well. And, and this is something I've learned from, from listening to and reading indigenous scholars here in Canada. I think that's one of the things that they're calling for not to be called upon, to give answers [01:19:00] immediately. Uh, and to maybe they don't want to always respond to that and they stay on their own ground.

Actually, I learned that from, from following some indigenous scholars. Like, I mean, it came a bit later, but like seeing that, that they stay with the work that they are doing and don't always respond, and then doing that work and actually by just doing that and not responding, creating, uh, like a call for others to listen or to stay in conversation while nothing is necessarily being said to you.

There is some work going on. And then later on maybe there is dialogue while each of us works out our thing. And I think that's a principle of participatory sensemaking that we. Each of us individuals or groups or ways of knowing, stay with our way of knowing or our individuality or our sensemaking enough so that it remains a thing in the world that can then, when it's a little more developed, interact with other ways of knowing and then new things [01:20:00] can happen again.

And that might be language of thought, that might be computational approaches, that might be an approach to processing in the brain. And that's important also to understand with participatory sense making and the interactive brain, uh, hypothesis. And all those things then can dialogue with each other.

But this inner work is also needed. Uh, so dialogue can take away from the inner work and it, or the interaction can suck up all the inner work. And then it's not an interaction anymore because the inner work or the self-maintenance or the individual sense making isn't there anymore. And then it's not a social interaction anymore.

So it's a principle of participatory sense making that this is what. What happens and what needs to continue to happen, like work on all these levels.

Andrea: it reminds me, again, of your mom holding the space for your dad holding the space or I think later in life you probably held the space for your dad in different ways, through what you learned with participatory sense making.

But maybe [01:21:00] also we can do that for each other as academics or just as people who are really trying to understand what, what this is, what thinking is, what life is. I mean that these questions matter to us and have mattered since we were kids. And maybe if we can connect through that intention, which is when we aren't worried about our credentials and judging each other, I. I, I do feel like that's connected to what you were talking about with the indigenous holding the space or the silence or the listening, which is actually a very active, alive place. It's not passive at all.

You described that too, with loving, it's not neutral, it's not some kind of neutral passive thing. It's actually even more alive or somehow more potential comes in. then the space opens and actually what looked like a binary of either academia or not can become a multiplicity too, in a similar way, can't it?

Maybe.

Hanne: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I think so. And for me that it was needed to be maybe apart [01:22:00] from it to quite an extent. And even now here, I mean, before our conversation, I walked by the trees that we have here. So I, I go and. Say hello to the trees in the morning. And that's really like a way, a way, it's a kind of inner work in place.

Like, this is what's going on here, here. The trees are living and I'm here and we, you know, and yeah, I think that that work in place with ourselves and our understanding to then dialogue, both, both are equi, equ primordial there and needed. Yeah.

Andrea: Yeah. I'm glad you said that about the trees because I, I was having a bit of a stressful day just in terms of kind of what we talked about, like knowing I need to finish these book projects and kind of being frustrated with myself that And I, I went outside and I, you know, my dog was kind of taking a while and I was like, uh, but then I was so thankful because. I just looked up and, and I was like kind of [01:23:00] overwhelmed by how beautiful it was, you know, just the trees and these kind of crazy wildflowers and it just got me, it was like got my attention and it did kind of that what you were describing of just calming down, opening the space and if we, you know, that's kind of metaphorical to think we can do that in our academic life, but I think we can, and I think we then we do start to understand things aren't so binary actually.

There's all these other possibilities that we just couldn't see when we were stuck in that one mindset. Right? Has that happened for you at all or are you starting to get a little bit of a sense of that almost like you, you know, the world changes like it did for me this morning. Suddenly it was rich and multi-dimensional again, instead of just me stuck in my head, worried about this.

Hanne: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That happens. And so of course, um, but I'm trying, so I'm trying by living here where I am now to make that the starting point. [01:24:00] Uh, and then to live from there into my work or into, you know, the more admin or the more, you know, having to do this and that element of my work. And I'm, I'm lucky to be here where I am, to be able to do that, you know, in the situation that I am in now.

But it took me a long way, you know, it's, it, it wasn't easy to get here, it's still not easy to be here. All of, you know, all of that. That's a whole different thing to talk about, but yeah. And yeah, when we all move through, you know, ease and then difficulty, and then ease again or all of it at the same time, always, you know?

Yeah. But to just be able to, to maybe accept that or move through that, and then indeed open up to the world or the world. Knocks on you and goes like, Hey, look at the flowers. Yeah.

Andrea: And you kind of realize, you know, even what, like the word flower doesn't do justice. It's just this kind of opening of you don't really know what you are or what all of this is.

And that's wonderful. [01:25:00] Again, you know, before we go, I, I wonder about your experience of, of love and if there's anything you would like to share. anything that comes up relative to all these things that you would like to share about?

About love?

Hanne: Yeah. Maybe just that there are very many different ways of relating, um, and that there are many different layers to a relationship and some can keep existing even while others disappear. Um, which is what happened with my father. He, he, uh, had dementia or, or got dementia. And then, um, of course we started losing him in a way before he died and he lost himself in a way.

And, you know, that's difficult. And yeah, that was a whole trajectory. That's, that's really tough. Um. But again, the way dementia is [01:26:00] conceived of in society or, or by medical science as you know, the loss of personality, the loss of emotional skill and so on, actually, when you are with a person that you love and that is losing capacities, there are other things that are maintained, which we may be, aren't always taught to still see biomedical guidelines, like for instance, this person is going to lose their connection because he loses emotional cap capacities.

But actually I noticed that my father remained very emotionally sensitive to the way people were relating with him, especially most strikingly to me, was that he was very sensitive to how people related to him and reacted to that very accurately, even when he has lost, lost his way of speak, his, his speech.

Um, and so that, and this goes for all loving relationships and all knowing relationships, I think as well, since I think they're the same. That we know certain things and we don't [01:27:00] know other things. And this is also itself not something that's fixed that changes, you know, the thing that you didn't know might become something that you are getting to know through relating, through changing and becoming different with each other as you relate and as you each develop.

Um,

Andrea: that's that kaleidoscopic multiplicity thing again.

these multiplicities open up these kaleidoscopic ways and. Your, your father lost the external representations, right. Or the access to, to something like language or in a certain sense. But, and I guess we would assume, oh, that means that, that that somehow means he's lost something about the way he's experiencing the world, but That just shows me how important this work is in a way, because it's a completely different way of understanding any kind of illness if we understand it as a turn of the kaleidoscope that we have to try to figure out rather than a diminishment of a capacity. Full [01:28:00] capacity.

Hanne: Yeah. And maybe even more so. Yeah. Um, what I wanted to say is that it's, so my father lost ways of understanding the world and ways to fit the structure of the world with how he did things like he. Lost the capacity to eat with knife and fork because it seemed somehow that these implements were doing different things for him.

And he used a knife, like a fork and a fork, like a knife, and mm-hmm. The structure of the world fell apart in some way, but it wasn't, I mean, he was still able to eat and to, you know, in a, in a way that didn't polite anymore. And, you know, and he was such an intelligent, sensitive, and person with lots of integrity all the time.

So that's, you know, but all of those things at the same time are going on. And I think also really important in that it's not just to put yourself in the shoes of the other, that's not the, but it's also being the other, from the point of view of the other, like putting, it's, it, you are also different from the other [01:29:00] people.

From everyone else, right? So being the othered, the othered person, having been the othered person in different situations. Or, or, or seeing yourself as, oh, this other person sees me as different and experiences me as different I'm the other. Uh, I think that's an element of it also that's important. Like, um, yeah.

Yeah. So in, in what indigenous, what scholars I think taught me is that I'm the other in that really, you know, I'm coming in with certain preconceptions that are actually different and that, you know, I need to look at that and be like, oh, how am I engaging in, in reading indigenous scholars and so on, not just, oh, this is interesting.

It's, it's a different way of looking at the world that they have. And I find it interesting and look for something there, but also I'm coming here with, with a certain way of looking things. How can I be careful with that as I enter in this situation? [01:30:00] Um.

Andrea: I think that's the real hard thing to figure out how to do and how to let each other do.

Hanne: Yeah. That's important to that.

Andrea: Yeah. Why is that hard? We wanna defend something or, yeah. I think it gets back to that over determining, under determining and the tension of just, you know, in the loving relationship as you describe it, and loving and knowing how we're constantly trying not to lose ourselves and kind of also wanna lose ourselves and How do we do that?

Hanne: Yeah. I think just playing with it, that's a, yeah. Just play with it.

Andrea: Yeah. Feeling safe enough too.

Hanne: Yeah. Yeah. And then help each other be safe or, or you know, and, and if it's not safe, deal with the unsafety or. Recognize, oh, this is unsafe. Why is that? And what can we do to change it? Or is this unsafe teaching us something or leading us somewhere?

Or why is it unsafe? You know? And what would really change that? Or what would only superficially [01:31:00] change the unsafety? Are we able to really build safety for everyone or is that sometimes impossible? Because we really believe opposite things and what do we do then? Do we make it safe or do we go with the opposite ness of things and, and work forward from that?

Because sometimes making things safe is a danger in itself by, because then one side is over determining the other maybe or Right. So making it safe or, or making it good isn't I, I don't think necessarily always the best thing.

Andrea: Yeah. That's again, that how do we hold, hold both at once which would be a place where we actually don't have the same understanding of self that we have now, or of where life begins and ends.

You know, it almost really requires a shift at a level that it's very hard for us to even imagine.

Hanne: yeah. But I think it's called for now in the world.

Andrea: Yeah. I think it's we're all trying to do [01:32:00] it almost desperately. Yeah.

Hanne: Yeah. We're being made to do it or, yeah.

And we should be careful not to focus only on the West and how things are going in the west or in the US when we do that, because there are so much else going on in the world and. In the global south and in in the east, people are doing things differently and that's important to see and to relate to and not only to relate to what comes out of the US and what, right.

I mean yeah. Because that might be, can become too determining of, of our imagination if we're not careful.

Andrea: Yes. But, and then it can also become too overwhelming to try to hold everything at once. So it's again, that understanding there's so much more than we can ever hold and trying to hold as much as we can and helping each other.

And understanding like there's something, there's two things that keep coming up that I just wanna say before we go. And one is that understanding. We don't, we aren't, we have no idea what we're capable of actually. Like there's probably, we were talking about [01:33:00] sensory capacity and.

What love is in terms of like, I'm holding you, you and your body. That's actually, we don't even know the capacities of what that could be, right? Like there's not a cap on that. No,

Hanne: That's an interesting thing to say as well. Like there's not a cap on it. And so yeah. Maybe one thing about love that's important I think is that it's not a scarcity thing.

It's not less, the more you love it, it, it, it's more, it makes more, uh, and it's because you're continually in relation and it, it'll be difficult unavoidably and that's part of it, but it's not something that there is a scarcity of ever.

Andrea: Exactly. I think that that gets missed somehow that people almost think, you know, you're trying to be a good person, but actually this is a really deep opening into a very exciting way of being alive that we haven't explored.

There's something very, very sensory and exciting about it. It's not just like, let's be a good person. [01:34:00] There's a, a portal here, but it's very uncomfortable.

Hanne: It's uncomfortable and it involves risk. It, it is a risk actually. And that is exciting. You know, there's thrill in risk. I think also we, we maybe think that because the world seems dangerous and is actually dangerous in different places for different people, very much so.

But you know, this dangerous part of life also. Right. You know, it's, it's, it's detrimental and destructive, but it's also part of life. And so, and there is a life force that deals with the darkness that is in connection with destruction directly.

Andrea: When I was reading your piece, I was thinking of how hard it is sometimes to love someone you know, who it's actually for me at least, quite painful. And I don't mean it's hard, like I have to work to love them. 'cause love is the, is it is the relation I think. But it's just hard to hold that space and like actually feel how much I love someone because you can't make [01:35:00] things better for them if they're sick or something, or you can't, whatever.

You know, it's just kind of painful. And there's something about that when I was reading your work, just understanding that as a form of knowledge too, or being able to kind of switch the kaleidoscope and understand we're learning how to hold more and that's part of that portal.

Hanne: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's, there is a, a Canadian philosopher Kim McLaren, who talks about ontological intimacy and how we unavoidably always transgress each other ontologically and in real life. Of course. And that speaks to that as well.

Andrea: Is that the letting be too, that's in the paper. Is that the same?

Hanne: Yeah.

Yeah. The problem letting be, and then she has another paper in, um, the, what's the full title of the journal? I don't remember, but it's, it's about ontological intimacy.

Andrea: Mm.

Hanne: Anyway, that speaks to that. Just, yeah.

Andrea: Well thank you so much and thank you for your work and um, you too. I appreciate what you're doing and who you are.

[01:36:00] So

Hanne: same thing right back. Okay, thanks. Alright, well have

Andrea: a beautiful day there.

Hanne: You too.

Andrea: Thank you. Bye. Bye.

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Bringing Forth Worlds with philosopher Ezequiel Di Paolo and Mirko Prokop