March 2025
Freedom to make sense: Becoming more real in thinking
Lecture by Prof. Donata Schoeller at the Institute of Philosophy, Thursday March 27, in Árnagarður 311 at 15-16.30 GMT
Freedom to Make Sense: Thinking from the Felt Sense
Presentation at the University of Iceland, March 7th
Participants in the excellence project „Freedom to Make Sense: Embodied, Experiential Research“ presented the theoretical foundations and methods of embodied critical thinking in learning and research. These methods aim to activate students’ and researchers’ own thinking by systematically utilizing their experiential knowledge. In other words, critical thinking is enhanced by engaging with subjects through one’s own felt sense of issues and fostering cognitive empathy in thought processes.
The seminar demonstrated how these methods are applied in teaching across various disciplines and with diverse groups. Finally, attendees had the opportunity to engage in felt-sensing exercises.
Photos are done by Chae Won Oh
Guðbjörg R. Jóhannesdóttir, Gunndís Finnbogadóttir og Kristín Valsdóttir│Embodied Critical Thinking and Artistic Research
Donata Schoeller, Elsa Haraldsdóttir, Sigríður Þorgeirsdóttir and Ghada Radwan│Creating a Space for Embodied Philosophical Thinking in the University Classroom
We shared insights into how to create conditions for listening—both inner listening and felt sensing—along with trust and cognitive empathy in the classroom. This is based on our experiences in introductory courses as well as in research seminars. We discussed this in relation to the methodologies of Focusing and Thinking at the Edge.
November 2024
Exploring ECT and Freedom to Make Sense
Prof. Schoeller’s workshops at University of Virginia
In November 2024, Donata Schoeller introduced the Embodied Critical Thinking and Freedom to Make Sense approaches in several workshops attended by an interdisciplinary group of graduate students and faculty members from the University of Virginia, as well as one introductory lecture at the the University of Toronto. She was invited by Professor Dorothe Bach, the Associate Director of the Center for Teaching Excellence at the University of Virginia, by Professor Michael Sheehey,Director of Research at the Contemplative Sciences Center at the University of Virginia, and Jeanne Watson, the former Associate Dean of Applied Psychology and Human Development at the University of Toronto.
„Embodied Critical Thinking and Understanding“ (ECTU)is an approach, research, and training initiative developed by a team of researchers at the University of Iceland. Over the years, it has evolved into a European Erasmus program and won an excellence grant for an international research project calles Freedom to Make Sense: Embodied, Experiential and Mindful research. The presentation will focus on some fundamental philosophical considerations underlying this approach.
ECTU acknowledges the complexity of lived and situated experience as the basis of human thinking, which always again needs processes of clarification and in-depth- understanding. This experiential characteristic of thinking calls for methods and practices that carefully open up a binding complexity, the intricacy of a point, of a crux, of a problem. Such understanding is not downloadable. Clarification and in-depth understanding often enough are the results of an unpredictable process. Acknowledging that human thinking always requires processes of clarification and realization harmonizes well with Kant’s three core questions of the Enlightenment: What can I know? What should I do? What may I hope? In a time of polarization, turmoil, and inflammable discourses, practices of embodied thinking and understanding strive to offer teachable and practicable methods to enhance listening skills and the capacity to handle complexity and vulnerability.
What participants say
Faculty members
„I deeply appreciated this workshop. It gave us permission to see “simple” things more completely and in ways that can guide understanding and shared reality. It gave us a process to think openly and listen carefully (with attention and care). It gave us time and space to be curious and creative. Thank you!“
„Today’s experience provided a long sought-for reminder for the things that matter in one’s interaction with the world, with one’s immediate surroundings and with oneself. It restored modes of listening that nowadays are almost extinct, and gave slowness and reflection a legitimate space within our daily experiences.“
“The process and experience today was very meaningful. It challenged me (in the most positive way) to apply it with my MBA students and be attentive to the individual pacing that the process requires. Thank you.”
„As someone that works with students this workshop was a great experience in listening without talking, and finding the root of felt self. Dropping the concept of my word and communicating what I was feeling with others with clarity was awesome. I felt more connected with the people I was talking to while also learning about myself.“
“What I found most productive (in an extremely thought-provoking workshop) was writing/thinking and the “background at my understanding of the concepts” I kind of can’t believe I haven’t yet done that with the key word of my book before! My concept was invention, and when I thought about it a flood of memories/ images made me realize how my personal relationship with this concept has really informed what I’m thinking about/ reacting to in my current research.
I would love to try this in my teaching because people are so rarely asked about their personal histories/experiences with concepts.They just go tot the academic information rather than the “felt-knowing”. The arguments, logic discourses. But felt-knowing can yield thinking that is so much richer and can deepen our understanding.Thank you! This was fantastic and so valuable to me.“
“Blocks and dead ideas arise in a culture of knowledge and thought that demands that every idea becomes a product. This is a tonic, a counterbalance, another way into and back to the reel of creativity.”
“This workshop and my conversation with my partner helped me see connections between concepts that didn’t seem related at first and made me realize (or remember) how playfully deep thought can be… what time given to process can make possible.”
“Hearing my thoughts reflected back to me was very moving. It was hard to listen without interfering. The cornerstone of this process appears to be the power of reflection, which I think translates to engineering well.
As an educator, I can use my alternate words to design lessons around the facets of this concept ( what I want to convey).”
„I appreciated being able to slow down and be in closer conversation with others. I also appreciated being able to share “unformed” thoughts in an academic environment. I would have loved to take a moment and feel into my body more. I was also inspired how I coils use this in my classroom- its; a little scary but useful! Thank you!“
„This was great! I leave a lot of workshops frustrated or disappointed because they don’t “give” me what I’m looking for. And while this workshop was not at all what I expected for something on critical thinking, it reminded me to slow down. It reminded me to be transparent with students. It reminded me to listen and give them space to listen to each other. And it taught me that not everything we do has to enact change. Conversations can inspire change, but change can be gradual, immediate or absent. And ultimately I think everything comes back to driving! Thanks for your time!“
Graduate students
“Embodiment in graduate research is critical. Empathy cannot coexist with guilt in design practice – architects and planners must cultivate a strong sense of self identity before going out to make change in the world.
Workshops like [this] are urgently relevant and invaluable spaces to slow down, intempt habits, and expand thinking. Please invite me to future workshops so I can continue to cultivate these skills! Thank you”
“It was a really rewarding experience. The aspects of self reflection and questioning the ideas and motivations behind concepts/research was really interesting. The openness of the space fostered thoughtful conversation and reflection.“
“Making your layers clear” really resonated as well. I saw how I could improve in how I articulate. The session made me aware of how to be a better listener and mindfully interact with logic and understanding. I would be interested in more sessions!“
“Yes! I was mentioning that the U.S. is a hassle and holding such events/space to just sit, think, understand, eat, is reviewed (culturally) unproductive. We’re all on a run, stressed, anxious, all the time because of it.
Thank you for the space, the food, the prompts, and maybe next time it can be together with a writing session (there goes my capitalistic impulse again) :,) “
“One main take-away from this event for me, as a physicist, is that even though we oftentimes feel overwhelmed with tasks to do or ideas to come up with in our pads, it’s important to think about the process itself of coming up with ideas and communicating them. Especially in physics, where these activities are strongly discouraged.“
„I believe this thought process stretches far beyond college campuses and higher education institutions I think the lack of listening and the concept that not every voice or thought should be considered valuable goes all the way up to our government and has seeped its way into our everyday society and is deeply embedded in our social norms and values ( even though we like to believe we are immune to implicit biases and are more “progressive” than ever before)“
“This workshop was really helpful in a conceptual way, but also in an affective, personal way. I not only see my concept differently, but I see my role in understanding this concept differently.”
June 2018
Embodied Critical Thinking (ECT)
Research Group since 2018
The Institute of Philosophy at the University of Iceland
The ECT research group was established in 2018 by Prof. Sigríður Þorgeirsdóttir, Prof. Björn Þorsteinsson, Dr. Donata Schoeller and Dr. Guðbjörg R. Jóhannesdóttir. Ole Martin Sandberg, Steinunn Hreinsdóttir, Gústav Adolf Bergmann Sigurbjörnsson and Monika Lindner were also involved. It runs a monthly research lab and has offered numerous lectures, workshops and training sessions. Since then, further projects have developed from it, such as „Teaching Embodied Critical Thinking and Understanding“ (TECTU) and Freedom to Make Sense.
Its purpose is to rethink critical thinking in embodied form.
Critical thinking is the core ability to be trained in philosophy. Enlightenment, according to Immanuel Kant, implies the courage to think-for-oneself. How does philosophy teach that? Philosophy conveys rich contents, but does it convey rich methods to encourage students to face their very own questions/ideas evolving from their actual experience of a highly complex world ?
ECT researches how the embodied and entangled being-in-the-world is the ground from where we think critically.
ECT researchers explore (interact with) an embodied space of meaning, in which the fresh precision of experiential processes is as important and relevant for the philosophical discourse as arguments are.
ECT explores what this means in terms of what we think and how we think, in terms of academic practices as well as in terms of educational practices.
The aim of ECT is to undertake a systematic, thoroughgoing and practical reconsideration of the concept and practice of critical thinking by engaging recent theories and discussions of embodiment in terms of integrating the complexity of feeling and experiential backgrounds in thinking.
The theories and pedagogics of ECT were put to practice in teaching, tested and qualitatively assessed in seminars for students, and in workshops for teachers and researchers. International universities participate in the project, as well as two transdisciplinary research institutes in Århus and Chicago. Internationally leading researchers and transdisciplinary research centers in the field of embodiment are involved in contributing to the theoretical and practical components of the project. The project takes its inspiration from Eugene Gendlin’s “pioneering work” (Depraz, Varela and Vermersch 2002: 2) on how to deliberately engage embodied experiential and felt backgrounds in reflective, creative and research processes.
Contemporary philosophers have described various functions of tacit and implicit forms of knowing that expand our understanding of rationality, yet until recently there has been a truly inconvenient shortage of means to methodologically draw upon these more-than-conceptual forms of thinking. Research in the cognitive sciences confirms how engaging an intricacy implicit in feeling and lived experience expands the scope of frameworks which one has at hand, fostering the ability to think within complexity (Damasio 1994, 1999, Depraz, Varela and Vermersch 2002, Ratcliffe 2008, Petitmengin 2007, 2016, Petitmengin and Bitbol 2009).
Gendlin’s methodology of “Focusing” and the philosophical technique of “Thinking at the Edge” that he developed at the intersection of phenomenology, pragmatism and humanistic psychology, have been applied in teaching philosophy and in developing research projects in universities worldwide, but have not yet been systematically explored in relation to critical, problem-based transdisciplinary thinking abilities of students and researchers. The ECT research project is a first-time inquiry into the effects of these methodologies in view of an enhancement of critical thinking abilities on the basis of an evidence-based assessment.
ECT manifests the “experiential turn” in philosophical education, responding to the insight that cultivating thinking is not only about cognitive development and good grades, and critical discourse is not exclusively restricted to debating positions. The conception of the intellect as an analytical modality of detachment is complemented by an understanding of intellect as a modality of openness to the world in experience, which holds “only insofar as we know how to make contact with it” (Noe, 2012: 3) and thus emphasizes perceptual faculties no less than cognitive abilities. To foster creative and communal, but also independent and problemoriented thinking requires connecting with an experiential basis. Encouraging students to draw on and develop their ability to experience and feel complex situations in addition to their cognitive capacities (Dewey 1984, Gilligan 1993, Gendlin 2017, Ratcliffe 2008) enhances transparency in argumentation and leads to independent, yet engaged and problem-based thinking. ECT is an integrative methodology that teaches how to combine different kinds of logical precision with felt situational experience. This helps students tackle the real-life challenges of issues that matter in today’s paradoxical and complex world.
