The majority of contemporary enactivist work is influenced by the philosophical biology of Hans Jonas.
Jonas credits all living organisms with experience that involves particular “existential” structures: nascent forms of
concern for self-preservation and desire for objects and outcomes that promote well-being. We argue that Jonas’s
attitude towards living systems involves a problematic anthropomorphism that threatens to place enactivism at odds
with cognitive science, and undermine its legitimate aims to become a new paradigm for scientific investigation and
understanding of the mind. >Problem • Enactivism needs to address the tension between its Jonasian influences and
its aspirations to become a new paradigm for cognitive science. By relying on Jonasian phenomenology, contemporary
enactivism obscures alternative ways in which phenomenology can be more smoothly integrated with cognitive
science. > Method • We outline the historical relationship between enactivism and phenomenology, and explain
why anthropomorphism is problematic for a research program that aspires to become a new paradigm for cognitive
science. We examine the roots of Jonas’s existential interpretation of biological facts, and describe how and why Jonas
himself understood his project as founded on an anthropomorphic assumption that is incompatible with a crucial
methodological assumption of scientific enquiry: the prohibition of unexplained natural purposes. We describe the
way in which phenomenology can be integrated into Maturana’s autopoietic theory, and use this as an example of
how an alternative, non-anthropomorphic science of the biological roots of cognition might proceed. >Results • Our
analysis reveals a crucial tension between Jonas’s influence on enactivism and enactivism’s paradigmatic aspirations.
This suggests the possibility of, and need to investigate, other ways of integrating phenomenology with cognitive
science that do not succumb to this tension. > Implications • In light of this, enactivists should either eliminate the
Jonasian inference from properties of our human experience to properties of the experience of all living organisms,
or articulate an alternative conception of scientific enquiry that can tolerate the anthropomorphism this inference
entails. The Maturanian view we present in the article’s final section constitutes a possible framework within which
enactivist tools and concepts can be used to understand cognition and phenomenology, and that does not involve a
problematic anthropomorphism. > Constructivist content • Any constructivist approach that aims for integration with
current scientific practice must either avoid the type of anthropomorphic inference on which Jonas bases his work, or
specify a new conception of scientific enquiry that renders anthropomorphism unproblematic. >Key words • Human
experience, living beings, autopoietic theory, enactivism, Hans Jonas, phenomenology.