The surprise of non-sense
pp. 125-152
in: Massimiliano Cappuccio, Tom Froese (eds), Enactive cognition at the edge of sense-making, Berlin, Springer, 2014Abstract
This chapter weaves together surprise and non-sense in order to reveal how they reciprocally enlighten and extend each other anew. It is shown first that they share a core minimal structural common point, namely a broken time-dynamics, that is, the experience of a rupture in the time- embedded flowing continuity. Building such a common ground then allows us to situate the peculiar emotional component in both surprise and non-sense, guided by the hypothesis that emotion does not cover the same scope and intensity in each case, being more radical and nega- tively polarized in non-sense, more daily and irreducible to valence in surprise. As a third and final step, the cognitive aspect inherent in both phenomena is explored, both its commonality as opened indeterminacy, and also their contrasted cognitive dynamics, which will finally lead us to offer some insights about the crossed relationship between enaction and phenomenology.