Reading phenomenology mechanistically: The way through constraints

ABSTRACT

Marek Pokropski’s “Mechanisms and Consciousness Integrating Phenomenology with Cognitive Science” reopens the question about the possibility of naturalization of phenomenology. The author adopts the position of nonreductive mechanistic integration, which, he claims, has offered new methodological perspectives for studying complex mental phenomena such as consciousness. In this paper, I outline the context of the discussions on the relationship between phenomenology and cognitive sciences, and (§2) discuss the approach proposed by Pokropski, pointing out the main arguments and the most important research achievements. Then I focus on some difficulties of this position. The first of these I associate with a procedure which I call a dismemberment of phenomenology (§3). The second (§4) concerns the concept of constraint, which is key to Pokropski’s analyzes, and some consequences of its application and alternative reading. Finally, in §5 I draw attention to two difficulties. The first is whether it is possible to read phenomenology in terms of functional analysis; the second is related to the doubt whether psychological or phenomenological functional explanations can be treated as mechanistic (which is a strong premise of Pokropski’s argument). In Conclusion I make an overall assessment of the presented approach.

KEYWORDS:

• Phenomenology
• cognitive science
• integration
• mechanisms
• constraints
• dynamical modeling

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. My entire body is not for me an assemblage of organs juxtaposed in space. I hold my body as an indivisible possession and I know the position of each of my limbs through a body-schema that envelops them all (Merleau-Ponty, 2013, p. 100).

1. Dan Zahavi (2004) and Alan Murray (2002) strongly oppose this interpretation, claiming that Husserl’s attack on naturalism is based on transcendental philosophical arguments and not historically conditioned views on the state of contemporary science. A similar view was expressed many years earlier by Roman Ingarden (1971).

2. It is worth emphasizing that the perspective proposed by Pokropski (presented in the article preceding the publication of the book (Pokropski, 2020)) was discussed by researchers with a more conservative approach toward phenomenology (Płotka, 2021).

3. As an example of this kind of “mutual constraining” Pokropski points to the model of vision proposed by Madary (2017) and Neisser’s (2015) evolutionary-developmental account of the first-person perspective.

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Michał Piekarski

Michał Piekarski, Ph.D. (with habilitation), he is an assistant professor at the Institute of Philosophy of the Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University in Warsaw. He is working in the field of philosophy of cognitive science and epistemology.