In the context of emergence and self-organization, the book finds scientific evidence for the emergent formation of direct experience without the need to posit the existence of a self. The mind is selfless. The self as the homunculus inside our head is an illusion. Organisms do not adapt to a pregiven world. Organisms and environment mutually specify each other.
Organisms drift naturally in the environment.
Environmental regularities arise from the interaction between a living organism and its environment. The world of an organism is enacted by the history of its structural coupling with the environment. Cognitive structures emerge from the recurrent sensorimotor activity that enables such a process. The organization of a system is the set of relations that define it as a unity. The structure of a system the set of relations among its components.