Husserlian Phenomenology as a Kind of Introspection

Representationalism and Husserlian Phenomenology

According to contemporary representationalism, phenomenal qualia—of specifically sensory experiences—supervene on representational content. Most arguments for representationalism share a common, phenomenological premise: the so-called ‘‘transparency thesis.’’ According to the transparency thesis, it is difficult—if not impossible—to distinguish the quality or character of experiencing an object...

Suffering the Modernist Legacy of Husserlian Phenomenology

Towards Integrating Husserlian Phenomenology with Cognitive Neuroscience of Consciousness

The paper presents, first, some general remarks about Husserl’s philosophical Phenomenology in view of relating it to the scientific study of consciousness, and recalls some of the basic methodological tenets of a Husserlian phenomenology of consciousness (I). It then introduces some recent work on so-called “mental imagery” in cognitive psychology and neuroscience (II). Next, a detailed exposi...

Introspection and the Phenomenology of Free Will: Problems and Prospects

Inspired and informed by the work of Russ Hurlburt and Eric Schwitzgebel in their ‘Describing Inner Experience’, we do two things in this commentary. First, we discuss the degree of reliability that introspective methods might be expected to deliver across a range of types of experience. Second, we explore the phenomenology of agency as it bears on the topic of free will. We pose a number of po...

How to, and how not to, bridge computational cognitive neuroscience and Husserlian phenomenology of time consciousness

Anumber of recent attempts to bridgeHusserlian phenomenology of time consciousness and contemporary tools and results from cognitive science or computational neuroscience are described and critiqued. An alternate proposal is outlined that lacks the weaknesses of existing accounts.