2min chapter

Brain Science with Ginger Campbell, MD: Neuroscience for Everyone cover image

BS 198 Embodied Cognition with Evan Thompson

Brain Science with Ginger Campbell, MD: Neuroscience for Everyone

CHAPTER

The Job of Phenomenology Is Critically Important

In your book, you argue that we can't ignore subjectivity. So is this where phenomenology comes in? One of the jobs of phenomenology is to get some precision and clarity about the description of subjective perience from within. As cognitive neuro scientists, we're interested in understanding the neural systems or processes that are critically important for our having a sense of self. But it means that phenomenology is critically important. Could say, method, logically, for getting a handle on the very phenomenon that we're trying to understand and investigate.

00:00
Speaker 2
I want to ask you just briefly about the question of subjectivity. Obviously, you argue in your book that subjectivity, if we're trying to understand consciousness, is something that we can't ignore. So is this where, you like, phenomenology comes in. Yes, when we want to understand
Speaker 1
subjectivity, or what philosophers sometimes call phenomenal consciousness, that is, consciousness in the sense of felt or lived experience, then i think phenomenology becomes unavoidable, because the phenomenon that we're trying to understand is one that has to be described from a subjective point of view in order even to have a sense of what the phenomenon is. And the job of phenomenology, or one of the jobs of phenomenology, is to get some precision and clarity about the description of subjective perience from within. If we want to be more concrete about it, suppose, as cognitive neuro scientists, we're interested in understanding the neural systems or processes that are critically important for our having a sense of self. By sense of self, i mean a lived experience or feeling of self. Well, in order to know what forms that lived experience or feeling of self can take, we need to have a phenomenalogical account of our self experience to guide the neuro scientist in even knowing what to look for. So this is a way in which neuro science and phenomenology can work together. But it means that phenomenology is critically important. Could say, method, logically, for getting a handle on the very phenomenon that we're trying to understand and investigate.

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