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University of Warsaw Faculty of Philosophy and Sociology

Institute of Philosophy

Leon Ciechanowski Students book no.: 251658

Neurophenomenological aspects of sense of agency

Second cycle degree thesis major, Philosophy

speciality, Philosophy of Being, Cognition and Value

The thesis written under the supervision of: Dr Marcin Mikowski

Institute of Philosophy and Sociology PAN

Warsaw, 06.2012

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I hereby certify that the thesis submitted was prepared under my supervision and I declare that it

satisfies the requirements of submission in the proceedings for the award of a degree.

Date Signature of the Supervisor:

Statement of the Author(s) on Submission of the Thesis

Aware of legal liability I certify that the thesis submitted was prepared by myself and does not

include information gathered contrary to the law.

I also declare that the thesis submitted has not been a subject of proceedings resulting in the award

of a university degree.

Furthermore I certify that the submitted version of the thesis is identical with its attached

electronic version.

Date Signature of the Author(s) of the thesis

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Summary

Autor opisuje podmiotowe poczucie sprawstwa, ktre jest badane w ramach neurofenomenologii, nowej, dopiero rozwijajcej si dziedziny, czcej tradycj fenomenologiczn z kognitywistyk. Tematem rozprawy jest rozwj i podstawy neurofenomenologii, z uwzgldnieniem jej powiza z neurobiologi. Przedstawia si te ostatnie osignicia tej dziedziny. W pracy rozpatrzono zarwno zarzuty stawiane neurofenomenologii, jak i konkurencyjne teorie poczucia sprawstwa. Na koniec zarysowano

moliwe drogi jej dalszego rozwoju.

Keywords

Neurofenomenologia, pozuie spasta, pozuie asoi, feoeologia, kogitistka, Francisco Varela

Area of study (codes according to Erasmus Subject Area Codes List)

8.1 Philosophy

The title of the thesis in Polish

Neurofenomenologiczne Aspekty Poczucia Sprawstwa

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Summary

The author describes the sense of agency as examined in the neurophenomenological system,

which is a recently developed methodology that draws extensively from the tradition of

phenomenology and cognitive studies. The thesis investigates the phenomenological roots of

the system, traces its stages of development, touches upon the neurobiological correlates of it

and discusses the latest achievements. Finally, some critique of neurophenomenology together

with a brief survey of rivalry approaches to the problem of sense of agency is presented and

the future possible ways of development is reflected upon.

Keywords

Neurophenomenology, sense of agency, sense of ownership, phenomenology, cognitive studies,

Francisco Varela

Area of study (codes according to Erasmus Subject Area Codes List)

8.1 Philosophy

The title of the thesis in English

Neurophenomenological Aspects of Sense of Agency

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Table of Contents

1. Introduction ....................................................................................................................................7

2. Husserl and the rise of the modern notion of phenomenology - a short history of the idea, its basis and main elements ..............................................................................................................................9

3. Further development of the idea: Merleau-Ponty and phenomenology naturalized ......................... 16

3.1. Merleau-Ponty and the posthusserlian development of phenomenology .................................. 16

3.2. The bone of contention the hard problem .......................................................................... 20 3.3. Reductionist approaches ......................................................................................................... 21

3.4. Problem of naturalizing phenomenology ................................................................................. 24

3.5. Heterophenomenology of Dennett .......................................................................................... 27

3.6. Criticism of heterophenomenology by Chalmers and Gallagher. Why subjective experience is so crucial? ..................................................................................................................................... 29

4. Varelas Neurophenomenology ..................................................................................................... 31 4.1. From autopoiesis, through enactivism and embodiment to neurophenomenology .................... 31

4.2. Neurophenomenology ............................................................................................................ 35

4.2.1. Methods of phenomenology ............................................................................................. 37

4.2.2. The neurophenomenological experiment .......................................................................... 41

4.2.3. Problems of neurophenomenology ................................................................................... 46

4.3. Summary ................................................................................................................................ 48

5. Neurophenomenology and sense of agency ................................................................................... 50

5.1. Preliminary remarks on phenomenology of action .................................................................. 50

5.2. Kinds of actions and movements ............................................................................................ 51

5.3. Neurophenomenology and sense of agency ............................................................................. 53

6. Neurophenomenology and sense of agency case studies ............................................................. 58 6.1. Preliminary remarks ............................................................................................................... 58

6.2. Theories of agency put in practice .......................................................................................... 63

6.3. Comparator Model ................................................................................................................. 64

6.4. Other models of agency and the main idea of studies on sense of agency ................................ 66

6.5. Neurophenomenological improvement of the comparator model ............................................. 67

6.6. Feinberg-Friths model of sense of agency .............................................................................. 68 6.7. A neurophenomenological evaluation of comparator model .................................................... 72

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6.7.1. A neurophenomenological improvement of the comparator model ................................... 75

6.7.2. Response from Frith ........................................................................................................ 78

7. Conclusion .................................................................................................................................... 81

8. Acknowledgements ....................................................................................................................... 85

9. Bibliography ................................................................................................................................. 86

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1. Introduction In the study of consciousness and agency, there is a plethora of stances possible. Many

philosophers and scientists often claim that the differences are in the point of reference,

passing over the strongly naturalized positions of Francis Crick, Christof Koch and Paul

Churchland. The others, like Shaun Gallagher, Francisco Varela, Antonio Damasio etc., state

that in order to study consciousness and experience of agency successfully, we need to

combine methodologies of such sciences like neurobiology, psychology and cognitive

sciences, but also phenomenology and alike subjectivistic stances. The upshot of such approach is neurophenomenology, which I will discuss in this thesis.

Phenomenology is contemporarily connected with cognitive sciences, and is combined into

such chimeras as neurophenomenology (with such proponents as Varela and Gallagher),

cognophenomenology (Tim van Gelder) and embodied mind or cognition (Lawrence Shapiro,

Colin Wilson), among others. In some of them the threat of naturalizing phenomenology is

present, but some try to deal with this drawback. Many of these combinatory approaches are

characterized by the aversion to mechanistic and computational theories, all of them stress the

huge role of subjective and bodily experience in the study of consciousness. The traditional

cognitive sciences assumed that thinking is a symbol-processing process, which

metaphorically can be put as saying that body is the hardware and mind or consciousness is

the software. This approach was criticized by Hubert Dreyfus in his famous book (Dreyfus

1979). There were, of course, some advantages in the traditional cognitive sciences methods of research they had a clarity of algorithmic description of symbols, which represented our thoughts and believes in the process of cognition. But there were also drawbacks in this

approach, according to Dreyfus cognitive sciences assumed that if cognition ends with input

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data and output data then there is no point in studying the subjective and intimate relation

between the subject and the external world. Besides, even though the algorithmic description

of the symbols clarify a lot, it is hard to interpret them in comparison with their independent

meaning (if there is any). There were trials also as for the application of algorithmic

systematization in a phenomenological standpoint, undertaken by Marbach (Marbach 1993).

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2. Husserl and the rise of the modern notion of phenomenology - a short history of the idea, its basis and main elements Neurophenomenology is based on the phenomenological tradition and draws extensively on

its insights and methodology. Therefore, in order to introduce the reader into this subject

matter, I will briefly describe the phenomenological model of analysis of consciousness and

its experiential aspects, like sense of agency.

The founder of phenomenology was Edmund Husserl (born in April 8, 1859 in Pronitz, Moravia, Austrian Empire, died in April 27, 1938 in Freiburg, Germany). Husserl published

comparatively little throughout his life, and his publications were mostly cycles of

introductions to phenomenology of mainly methodological and programmatic nature and were

altogether merely a minuscule fraction of his colossal prolificacy. At the same time he had the

practice of noting down his thoughts every day, therefore at the moment of his death these so-

called research manuscripts (jointly with his lectures manuscripts and unpublished volumes)

were equal to more than 45000 pages of unedited manuscripts taken down in shorthand. Soon

after Husserl's passing away, a young Franciscan Hermann Van Breda smuggled all of

Husserl's manuscripts and notes successfully out of Germany to a monastery in Belgium. As a

result of this deed, the Husserl Archives were established at the Institute of Philosophy in

Leuven, just before the commencement of the Second World War; the original manuscripts

remain there to date. At the same time Husserliana, the critical edition of Husserl's works,

started to be published. The critical edition involves never published works, lectures, articles

and research manuscripts, and not only the new editions of the papers and books published

throughout Husserl's life (Zahavi 2003: 1-2).

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The motivations for phenomenology were, salient among other things, the threat of naturalism

and psychologism in the study of human consciousness. Naturalism, the naive inclusion

truths borrowed from other sciences into philosophy, is a view against which phenomenology is opposed in particular. Husserl noted the problem of naturalism already in

the Logical Investigations (Husserl 1970a). Naturalism and psychologism were the two

eternal culprits appointed as the ones misrepresenting the factual nature of consciousness and

the domain of cognition. Consequently, in Ideas (Husserl 1983) Husserl laments over the

philosophical poverty of the worldview brought into being by natural sciences, and calls

attention to the fact that we will not perform an exploration of nature by transcendental

research into consciousness. This kind of anti-naturalism drew him closer to Neo-Kantianism,

according to Dermot Moran (Malpas 2003: 53).

A kind of naturalism regarding the nature of mental acts posed a constant threat for Husserl,

even when he had overcome psychologism.1 Even if one sustained the view that cognitive

mental processes are purely factual processes taking place in nature he noticed that it was not

possible to comprehend the fundamental epistemological character of cognition.

Consciousness is in a different mode of existence dissimilar to beings in nature, an absolute

existence. Without consciousness there would be no world whatsoever, as he states in Ideas.2

However, it does not mean that the world is not created in any ontological sense by

1 He suaised it thus: I a shapl ephasize fo the stat that pue pheoeolog, aess to hih e

shall prepare in the following essay the same phenomenology that made a first break-through in the Logische Untersuchungen, and the sense of which has opened itself up to me more deeply and richly in the

continuing work of the last decade is not psychology and that neither accidental delimitations of its field nor its terminologies, but most radical essential grounds, peet its ilusio i psholog. (Husserl 1983: xviii). 2 Oer agaist the positig of the orld, hih is a otiget positig, there stads the the positig of

pure Ego and Ego-life hih is a eessar, absolutely indubitable positing. Anything physical which is given i perso a e o-eistet; o etal proess hih is gie i perso a e o-existent. This is the eideti la defiig this eessit ad that otige. (Husserl 1983: 102).

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consciousness. In this case, he would fall under a title of subjective idealism that is an

outcome of a particular naturalising tendency consciousness being the cause, the world the effect. Conversely, Husserl believes that the world is, through consciousness opened up, made meaningful, or unveiled. It cannot be conceived of without consciousness. If we reify

consciousness, treat it as part of the world, and then we pay no attention to its disclosive role.

According to Husserl, that is why all natural science is naive about its origin. The appropriate

attitude to consciousness must be a transcendental one because it is presupposed in all

knowledge and science.

Phenomenology is a discipline studying the ideal essences of the objective correlates of

conscious acts and the essences of consciousness. The purpose of the phenomenological tools

on this path of studying consciousness epoch (the so-called bracketing) and the eidetic and phenomenological reductions is to reach these essences without interpreting them psychologistically. By the exercise of the epoch beliefs in the world-horizon is pushed out of consideration altogether with all explanatory theories that depend on it. As a result, the

inclination to regard the domain of intentional correlation as an entity in the world (which we

could rate e.g., under the class of psychology) and to presuppose that its laws will be

discovered and described in a daily and scientific examination, being part of the natural

attitude, undergoes a deactivation, or neutralisation.

So as to reveal the deeper levels of consciousness the fundamentally negative epoch must be enhanced with a transcendental/phenomenological reduction, where intentional correlation is

made thematic. Husserl describes it as a reduction to pure consciousness,3 to be precise, to

3 the sphee of pue osiousess ith hatee is isepaale fo it (iludig the pue Ego) remains

as the pheoeologial esiduu, as a region of being which is essentially quite unique, a region which can

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intentionality filtered of all psychological, all naive and prejudiced construal and illustrated

just as it appears. The entities that appear in the natural attitude as clearly there for us, the

table we sit at or the dice with which we play, appear in our sight as a unity of meaning, a

pure phenomenon, that is what it is exactly because it occupies a specific place in the chain of

intentional acts and experiences in which it comes to givenness. In consequence, the

transcendental reduction lets phenomenology to examine the intentional structure of things.

That is to say, to examine the conditions that make possible the sense as existing of entities and in fact their givenness as anything whatsoever, and not the conditions of their existence in

the world, since the question has been bracketed (Dreyfus & Wrathall, 2006: 19-22).

The first of the three Husserls reductions is the eidetic reduction. Its name is such because takes us to the eidos (the essences) of things. I have mentioned it briefly when discussed the

epoch above. Now I shall scrutinize it more thoroughly. When someone is in front of the dice (Husserls favourite example, quoted frequently in the philosophical literature), his consciousness can focus on several various things or aspects: the dice itself or something

looking like a dice from his perspective (it could be a corner made of three square pieces),

etc., but the noema of the act must be aimed at objects being intact with the hyletic experiences he has. Yet the person in front of the dice can focus on just one feature of the dice

as well, e.g. its cubic form. Thus, he will have predictions concerning what he will perceive in

different conditions (either affecting the perceiver or the object). For instance, he presumes

that counting the number of corners will give him eight and of edges twelve. Several of these anticipations are alike those we possess when the object of our act is this actual dice.

Nevertheless, we have no anticipations concerning this specific dice. We may remove it and

become the field of a science of consciousness with a correspondingly novel an essentially novel sense: pheoeolog. (Husserl 1983: 65, footnote #17).

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replace with another dice, and none of our anticipations will be disturbed. Thus, our

anticipations consist of only a subset of the anticipations we have when the object of our act is

the concrete particular dice, when the object of our act is of the cubic form. Therefore, the

label reduction is granted for the transition from the experience of an actual specific object to the experience of an eidos. An essence can be traced by looking for similarities between

things; for instance, shape, form, cubeness, doghood etc. Husserl thought of many eidetic disciplines, besides mathematical ones, that would examine an essence or an interrelated

group of essences. One of the techniques they may use would be eidetic variation: one would

focus on an essence and proceed through several examples that instantiate this essence. We do

not need physical objects as illustration; it is faster to imagine new instances and investigate

what qualities this essence possesses and the relation with other ones. It is not important

whether objects exist, since when we are examining eidos, what is significant is essence, and

not exemplification of the essence. By altering the examples of things that exemplify the

essence, we may provide evidence for existence results: we may find an example that

instantiates a particular combination of features. However, other kind of reflection is needed

for negative results, stating that there are no objects fulfilling the defined combination of

features (Dreyfus and Wrathall 2006: 109-111).

At this point we can move to transcendental reduction. It is based on the reflection on the act,

not on its object. This fixation on the object bears three, already mentioned, elements linked

in a certain way: the structuring experiences in the act noeses, the correlated structure given in the act the noema, and the filling and restricting experiences hyle. According to Husserl, these elements can be studied systematically after some training. Such person will

ignore the common object of act. He will not think about its existence, nor investigate the

object further to check his expectations. This alteration of attitude Husserl calls epoch (i.e. to

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refrain from judgement), as well as bracketing of an object. Thanks to this, we will focus on

the arrangement of the act in which we perceive something, and not on the object as such.

That is, we examine noema, noesis, and hyle of the act. That shift of attention is exactly the

transcendental reduction, the shift from the object-directed position to an act-directed one. So

from the things that are of interest to us in the eidetic (or natural) manner we are led to the

transcendental objects (i.e. noesis, noema, and hyle), as well as to the transcendental ego (i.e.

the feature of the ego that we are not conscious of when we are bearing in mind ourselves as

physical beings in the material world, but that we become conscious of when we find out the

structuring activity of our own consciousness). Because this reflective turn abandons the

objects in the world and the eide, which we were interested in before the process of reduction

began, this is called a reduction (Fllesdal 1969).

The phenomenological reduction is the eidetic and the transcendental reduction taken

together. With it, we are taken from the natural attitude to an eidetic transcendental one; we

no more aim at particular, physical objects but we investigate the noeses, noemata, and hyle

of acts directed toward essential features of acts directed toward essences. Objects of acts are

divided by the reductions into four realms. In the first realm we find physical objects (that is

the subject of the natural sciences). The eidetic reduction gets us to the eidos (i.e. the common

characteristics of objects), studied in eidetic sciences as, e.g. mathematics. Carrying out the

transcendental reduction on acts aimed at physical objects causes us to examine noeses,

noemata, and hyle of such acts (and thereby we get to the third realm). Husserl does not spend

much time discussing this realm; instead he suggests it be called metaphysics. He also

specifies that this realm embraces the analysis of the transcendental systematisation of what is

usually individual, like death in its uniqueness for an individual, as differentiated from death

as a universal feature of people and animals. In the fourth realm, there is noeses, noemata, and

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hyle of acts aimed at essences, the study of which Husserl calls phenomenology. The term

reduction is added because it directs us from the natural attitude to the things studied in phenomenology: the phenomenological reduction (Fllesdal 1990).

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3. Further development of the idea: Merleau-Ponty and phenomenology naturalized

3.1. Merleau-Ponty and the posthusserlian development of phenomenology Phenomenology has perhaps as much proponents as adversaries in its possible connection

with cognitive studies. This is why some assess it as low as Thomas Metzinger:

Neurophenomenology is possible; phenomenology is impossible (Metzinger 2004: 83); or as positively as by Gallagher:

phenomenology might offer correctives to various cognitive analyses, but also phenomenology might benefit from some of the more sophisticated cognitive

approaches (Gallagher and Varela 2001: 26).

These are merely a miniscule dose of examples in that area. It is worthy to note that Gallagher

stresses that phenomenology does not explain how the brain generates consciousness but it

has produced a description of features of consciousness, which we try to explain phenomenology limits the reductionist inclinations of neurological sciences, which

supposedly try to rule out the specific nature of conscious experience from the

neurobiological description of consciousness development, according to Gallagher.

Many thinkers have presented an internal critique of phenomenology; these were for instance

Gadamer, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty. There has also been an external critique

challenging phenomenology, which was presented by the Vienna Circle and positivism.

Heidegger developed the most significant internal critique he rejected three main aspects of Husserls phenomenology. In the essay entitled Philosophy as a Rigorous Science (1911), Husserl argued against the life philosophy and philosophy of world views. Heidegger, on the

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other hand, in spite of his reproach to these philosophical streams, assumed that

phenomenology has to be focused on historicity (or temporality), the facticity of human living

in time. Moreover, it should not describe only the internal consciousness of time. What is

more, Heidegger, following Friedrich Schleiermacher and hermeneutics, stated that every

description entails interpretation description being only a derivation of interpretation. The project of pure description devised by Husserl becomes unmanageable in the context of

description being placed outside a radically historicised hermeneutics. Finally, Heidegger did

not accept the first philosophy as an egology and Husserlian notion of transcendental idealism. Against these theories, Heidegger proposed that phenomenology raises the question

of Being. For this reason, he claimed that ontology is possible solely as phenomenology. In

the period after publication of Being and Time, Heidegger did not reject the core of

phenomenological approach (even though he changed his way of philosophizing), i.e. the

phenomenological focus on things themselves. Hence in 1962, he wrote to William

Richardson that he switched to thinking (Denken) through phenomenology, under the

condition that phenomenology means the process of letting things manifest themselves (als das Sichzeigenlassen der Sache selbst) (Moran, 2002: 20-21).

As for the possibility of applying the already discussed phenomenological methods in

scientific examination of consciousness, it should be mentioned, for instance, that many

succeeding phenomenologists regarded epoch as redundant or impracticable whereas Husserl claimed it to be utterly vital to phenomenology. Heidegger, for example, believed it to be

redundant; phenomenology was ordained by him to be ontology, and as a bracketing of existence the reduction is in principle inappropriate for supplying a positive description of being (Heidegger 1985: 109; quote after: Dreyfus and Wrathall 2006: 21). Merleau-Ponty

claimed that the epoch is a break with our familiar acceptance of the world with the aim of

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thematising it. But he claimed that a complete reduction was impracticable: the endeavour of bracketing the world exposes only its unmotivated upsurge (Merleau-Ponty 1962: xiv; quote after: ibidem). Both objections seem to challenge the thought that phenomenology can

be ontologically neutral. But these objections are tough to evaluate. They frequently link

aspects of reductions that Husserl separated. It seems adequate to say that the question of

ontological commitment is an open one in phenomenological philosophy.

Merleau-Ponty was similar to Heidegger in that he focused his phenomenology on action.

However, phenomenology of the former is different in that it is not only granting the status of

social agent as embodied (as did Heidegger); Merleau-Ponty is indeed situating this

embodiment as the main point of his theory.

Merleau-Ponty was strongly inspired by Husserl. In his project of phenomenology, he tried to

overcome, as he called it, the twin tendencies of Western philosophy. These were connected with the problems of idealism (in his terms intellectualism) and empiricism. He wanted to reformulate the relation between numerous dualistic pairs (e.g. subject and object, self and

world). In his early works, such as Phenomenology of Perception (M. Merleau-Ponty 2005)

from the 1945, he achieved that goal by an account of the lived and existential body. His point

was that the importance of body (occasionally called by him body-subject) is not sufficiently

appreciated in the philosophical systems that treat the body as an object fully controlled by a

transcendent mind. Hence, his project takes a lot from accounts of perception, inclining

towards the underlining of the embodied inherence in the world which is more basic than our

mental capacities. Still, Merleau-Ponty asserts that perception is itself intrinsically cognitive.

Even though Merleau-Ponty did not try to reject scientific and analytic ways of investigating

the world, there is a tendency to make a connection between his theory and the concept of

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primacy of perception. What was his aim was to show that this kind of knowledge is always a consequence of more practical exigencies of the bodys exposure to the world (Dreyfus & Wrathall, 2006: 133-134).

Merleau-Ponty had a role in developing arguments against behaviorism in psychology and

investigating Husserlian depiction of the nature of the living body, as well as in criticizing the

scientism of the manuscript of Ideas II (Husserl 1990) and the Crisis (Husserl 1970b) which

he had accessed in Husserl Archives in Leuven. Merleau-Ponty, inspired by Aron Gurwitsch,

used Gestalt psychology when dealing with Husserlian phenomenology. He tried to cope with

positivism, nave empiricism, and behaviorism. Merleau-Ponty strongly criticized the mechanistic stimulus-response mode of explanation concerning human beings in his first

work The Structure of Behavior (M. Merleau-Ponty 1965). In Phenomenology of Perception

he made a thorough phenomenological study of perception. In this book, he makes a point that

the body possesses some simple form of intentionality and it is impossible to describe or

explicate this intentionality in purely mechanistic terms. Merleau-Ponty presented

dialectically the symbiotic (as it appeared) relation between the act of perception and the

surroundings of the perceiver. He was the first one to show how to examine relations between

consciousness and embodiment that recently have been widely discussed. The late works of

Merleau-Ponty concern language; he focused on merging his understanding of structuralism

and semiotics with Heideggerian theories of language (Moran, 2002: 20).

Certainly, Merleau-Ponty is the most important thinker of embodiment. However, there were

many other phenomenologists working on the concept of the lived body. There are other

French phenomenologists (for example Jean-Paul Sartre and Michel Henry) that also

discussed the subject of the body. However, these two branches of philosophy should not be

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equated. French phenomenology and phenomenology of embodiment are two distinct

traditions.

Furthermore, we can encounter phenomenological examination of the sensing and moving

body as early as 1907 in Husserls Thing and Space: Lectures of 1907. Merleau-Ponty was inspired while writing Phenomenology of Perception by the second volume of Husserlian

Ideas in which he analyzed the body. Merleau-Ponty had a chance to see the manuscript in the

Husserl archives just before the Second World War, as the manuscript had not been published

before 1952. There are theories that Husserl is in fact not the first one. According to Michel

Henry, the real beginnings of theorizing about the lived body can be found already in the

theory of the father of dualists Descartes. Later, we can find traces of this philosophical project in the theory of a different French philosopher Maine de Biran (1766-1824). Henry suggests that this thinker presents a superior description of the body in phenomenological

tradition in comparison with what we can read in Husserls, Sartres and Merleau-Pontys works (Gallagher & Zahavi, 2008: 134-135).

3.2. The bone of contention the hard problem I believe that what is most preliminary in the discussion is the terminological and definitional

quarrel, was defined in Chalmers essay The Hard Problem of Consciousness. The way in which many philosophers understand the idea of hard problems seems to make it almost impossible to study consciousness without committing oneself to some sort of vicious

subjectivism or even solipsism. But is it so?

First, let us begin with a concise restatement of Chalmers concept. He divided the problems associated with consciousness into easy and hard. The easy problems are quite successfully

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dealt with by cognitive and neurobiological sciences. These issues concern objective

mechanisms of cognitive apparatus functions, like perception of the external and internal reality, attention and wakefulness, control of behaviour etc. They are reducible to the

biological or, ultimately, physical level. But the hard problem is irreducible and asks what is

consciousness and why the brain produces it (Jakowski 2009: 165).

Chalmers general point might be illustrated by quite imaginative arguments for the irreducibility of consciousness presented by Thomas Nagel and Frank Jackson. Nagel claimed

that we will never know how is it to be a bat unless we become one the bats consciousness is something inherent only to it (Nagel 1974). Jackson, in turn, told us a story about Mary, the

neurobiologist, who perceives the world in grey scale of colours only. Nonetheless, her

knowledge, as a scientist, about the neurological level of brain processing perception of

colours is complete. Yet, according to Jackson, she does not know what it takes to distinguish

the experience of redness from the experience of greenness on a phenomenological level. A

brute knowledge about brain processing is insufficient for actual experiencing colours

(Jackson 1982).

3.3. Reductionist approaches One of the breakthroughs in the history of empirical (but naturalised!) research of

consciousness is due to Francis Crick and Christof Koch. They proposed to leave theoretical

disputes behind and deal with that, which can be scrutinised. For instance, in order to study

the visual consciousness, they suggested finding neuronal correlates of visual awareness. It

came down to establishing which brain processes allow particular perceptions to become the

content of consciousness, which neuronal processes accompany conscious sight experiences.

Thus, they did not simply wish to establish what happens in the brain when we observe

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something or focus our attention. This research brought extremely interesting outcomes, like

experiences of visual perception devoid of visual awareness, like in the case of blindsight, but

here in non-pathological subjects.4

But how is Crick and Kochs theory important for our deliberations about consciousness? At this point we can point to the neurobiological theory of consciousness that is proposed by them. Some specific 35-75 Hz neural oscillations in the cerebral cortex are the most important

in this theory. According to the initial version of the theory (which was soon abandoned) the

scientists assumed that these can be the core of consciousness. To some extent it was

supposed to be so because awareness is correlated with the oscillations in many different

modalities within sensual systems; it is also to some extent caused by the mechanism that binds the information contents being able to achieve. The process of binding consists in

individually represented fragments of information concerning some entity, combined to be

used by later processing; similarly, data about shape and colour of an object is integrated from

various visual pathways. In the more recent version of the theory, Crick and Koch pose also a

hypothesis that one can achieve binding through synchronized oscillations of relevant

contents represented by neuronal groups. The neural groups in question will oscillate with the

same phase and frequency when two pieces of information are connected (Crick and Koch

2007).

The specifics describing how this binding can be attained are not yet well understood, but if

we suppose that they can be accounted for, then a resulting theory could clarify the binding of

4 Crick and Koch analyzed the process of visual awareness in a series of interesting experiments. These include

binocular rivalry a phenomenon taking place when each eye receives different impulses, and the subject is aware of one perceptual input at a time, and not two inputs superimposed, as intuitively we might think. See

more in (Crick and Koch 1992).

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information contents. Probably it would also produce a wider interpretation of the integration

of information in the brain. Crick and Koch believe that the oscillations trigger the

mechanisms of working memory that enables us to produce a description of the working, and

other forms of, memory. The ultimate effect of such a theory can be a general account of how

the data acquired through senses is kept in memory. However, as Chalmers claims, these

attempts still do not meet the requirements of a proper answer to the explanatory question:

why consciousness is produced at all by the integration of information on the neurological

level? We learn only that the integrations are merely the correlates of experience and not the

causes, to say nothing about them being the consciousness itself (Chalmers 2007: 229).

The described approach is reductionist and according to Chalmers leave out the core of our

problem the subjective experience as studied by phenomenology. Generally, sciences inspect only such elements and events that are to some extent universal, repeatable and

objective. On the other hand, our phenomenal mind5 is by definition based on subjective experience.

The problem with Chalmers approach is that he seems to reject any explanation of the hard problem of consciousness and experience that would be of non-experiential or

phenomenological character. He says that no set of facts about physical structure and

dynamics can amount to facts about phenomenology. Only non-reductive theories are

supposed to explain consciousness and experience (Chalmers 1996). This attitude seems hard

to support it scientifically, since sciences in general take a naturalistic standpoint towards the

phenomena they study and they treat consciousness as one of the objects to be examined. 5 This is a ae oig fo Chales division of mind or mental properties into phenomenal and

psychological, which can be found in his book (D. J. Chalmers 1996: 21-23).

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Besides, Chalmers radical point does not exclude the possibility of finding objective neurological basis of consciousness, at least in the future.

3.4. Problem of naturalizing phenomenology How can we redefine cognitive sciences in order to include phenomenology in their domain?

The minimum is to accept a part of phenomenology that can be presented to reach the

theoretical boundaries that divide phenomenology from science. One method of achieving it

would be accepting the naturalizing phenomenology. However, for many phenomenologists it

would appear as self-contradictory; phenomenology is after all non-naturalistic a priori.

Others would question the way of achieving it, retaining at the same time the specificity of

phenomenology. All this is based on the meaning of the term naturalization. There are quite a few programs of understanding this key term; I will focus on two of them, following the

systematization proposed by Gallagher and Varela (Gallagher and Varela 2001: 19).

The first project interprets data worked on in phenomenology as to be transferred from being

subjective to objective. It would be then open for scientific study. This is the notion of

objective phenomenology that permits abstraction to some extent from the particularism of personal reports. Other project in a similar mode is Daniel Dennetts heterophenomenology that grants the status of phenomenological reports to be in the objective realm of science.

However, it should be remembered that Dennett sets himself far from any phenomenological

models, and moreover claims that phenomenology as an analysis of first-person, subjective

data is impossible and therefore all allegedly phenomenological methods are

heterophenomenological, gathering only third-person data, i.e. objective and comparable

reports from subjects of studies/experiments.

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The second project understands naturalization as not being committed to a dualistic kind of ontology (Roy et al. 1999: 19; quoted after Chalmers 1996). It means that phenomenology must not be just descriptive but it should be explanatory. The explanatory gap6 would be dealt with using phenomenology. The latter would also add to the description of how non-

physical properties, which are phenomenological properties, are constituted by brain and

processes in the body.

Even though phenomenology is presented by Husserl as a non-naturalistic project, it is not

void to try to look for the possibility of influence of natural sciences by phenomenology. For

Husserl said straight forwardly: every analysis or theory of transcendental phenomenologyincluding the theory of transcendental constitution of an Objective worldcan be produced in the natural realm, when we give up the transcendental attitude (Husserl 1960: 20; quoted after Chalmers 1996). Moreover, phenomenology in order to be able to add something to the

sciences needs to be at least weakly naturalized, for several reasons. First, it is not yet a fully objective and rigorous science, it suffers from some methodological problems that I

describe later (in the section devoted to the problems of neurophenomenology, which even

though is a naturalized phenomenology, uses purely phenomenological methods in some of its

proceedings). Second, transcendental phenomenology is a useful analytic tool for studying

experience, sciences may gain profits from using it (that I show in the section The neurophenomenological experiment). Third, phenomenology, even in its classical formulation, is supposed to be mutually assessed and validated intersubjectively. So we can

expect a mutual enlightenment of phenomenology and empirical data from the sciences. In this understanding of naturalization, phenomenology will retain its transcendental character

6 It amounts to a problem that physicalist and reductionist theories have with providing an account of how

physical structure causes first-person or phenomenological experience.

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but at the same time will engage into a reciprocally profitable dialogue with the other

sciences. In this sense phenomenology would not become just a reducible extension of natural

sciences.

If we wish to examine sense of agency along the lines of naturalized phenomenology, then at

the beginning of our study of consciousness we should bracket all theories in a particular

science concerning action and motor control, and turn our attention to our experience. It

would depend on our understanding of the sense of agency and the sense of ownership. If we take the former to mean that I am a cause or generator of the action, and the latter that I

am the one going through experience, then both of these expressions mean the same in the

phenomenology of voluntary or willed action. There is accordance between agency and

ownership. These phenomena may be exactly what makes observers to present the owning of

action as agency. This means that usually the one that has a sense of ownership of her action

is causally connected to its production. When we consider the involuntary action, on the other

hand, is still possible to phenomenologically differentiate the sense of agency and ownership,

at least in some cases. I can feel that I am moving or I am being moved, and this enables me

to recognize who is the owner of the movement. It is possible to self-ascribe it as a personal

movement (my or someone elses). Yet it is possible that I would not have a feeling of being the originator or controller of the movement, so have no sense of agency. The agent may be

some other person someone who manipulates me, e.g. a physician during a medical inspection. The two states are completely consistent feeling ownership, so a deep feeling that

I am having that experience, but having no feeling of agency (Chalmers 1996).

Proofs for this phenomenological division on sense of agency and sense of ownership can be

found in experimental data. Gallagher and Varela present some pathological cases where there

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is a lack of a sense of agency in the patient under study. For instance, a patient with

schizophrenia with delusions of control may declare that his hand is moving (having a sense

of ownership the movement), yet it is not him that is moving it (there is no sense of agency).

These persons in experiments can influence their movement via sensory-feedback, yet not

through the quicker forward mechanism. The connection between the phenomenological

division (sense of ownership for movement and sense of agency) and neurological distinction

(forward control mechanism and sensory-feedback mechanism) should be analyzed more

deeply, say Gallagher and Varela. If this correlation is valid, it will supply us with

scientifically proven differentiation that would make clear many philosophical debates that

strongly call for it as well as provide a neurological foundation for the two phases of bodily

self-consciousness (Gallagher and Varela 2001).

3.5. Heterophenomenology of Dennett Let us turn to the account presented by Dennett to his project of heterophenomenology. He proposed the scientific way of coming from objective exact science combined with the third-

person point of view to the method of phenomenological description that deals with the

subjective experiences, bearing in the background the methods of science (Dennet 1991: 72).

Dennett admits himself that he does not invent anything new he has only organized data, it is not an explanation, but a catalogue of what must be explained (Dennett 2005: 40).

There are certain issues with cognitive sciences, relaxing its boundaries in order to allow for

phenomenological reports, which make them impossible to remain scientific, as Dennett

claims. Dennett presents a number of worries that can help with the place of introspective

methods in cognitive sciences, which slightly formalizes the debate concerning the two.

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As Dennett believes, it is impossible to retain a proper scientific attitude in our research

concerning the mind if the basis of the science is the pure, not verbalized subjective

experience. To keep the covenant between scientists, the methods of description, analysis and explanation that were universally accepted are required. It was sometimes complained

about phenomenology that the descriptions are construed with the use of expressions used in

different, often idiosyncratic, ways. In phenomenology, there has always been used something

what Dennett calls the first-person plural presumption. It remains in the power of the intersubjective communication to decide the meaning of a word. Nevertheless, this

assumption leads us to grant that people are similar to a great extent, and in the end it leads to

a generalization about the nature of every human being. Dennett criticized phenomenology for

the assumption that our introspection is never wrong and that our reflection is always right in

a phenomenological sense. Lastly, Dennett sees here an inclination to exchange theory for

mere description, and such predisposition is supposed to remain hidden in phenomenology.

With all these setbacks to phenomenology, Dennett puts forward a new method named by him

heterophenomenology. Science requires a third-person attitude that involves detachment of subject and scientist. Phenomenology, in contrast, is based on the first-person approach, so on

the equality between scientist and her/his subject. In heterophenomenology, we encounter an

intentional approach to the subjects actions in the prearranged experimental conditions. Thus, only analysis of how others describe their personal states gives the scientist insight to

phenomenological realm. In such circumstances, what the subject is declaring does not have

to be taken as truth concerning the theory that explains the data. It would be only treated as a

neutral statement, as some sort of data which is to be connected with other data, e.g., acquired

in a different way or from a different source, in such a way as to give a full and combined

picture of the researched subject.

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Yet it is not clear whether there is any improvement of heterophenomenology in contrast to

phenomenology concerning the case of meaning. According to Gallagher, the problem

concerning understanding between two phenomenologists is just moved to the problem of

understanding between the scientist and the subject. Gallagher states that since

heterophenomenology consists in dependence on isolated interpretation, not communication,

it could be suggested that the possibility to clarify the meaning of acquired data is reduced

(Gallagher 1997: 198-199). However, some theorists, together with Dennett, would say that

Gallagher misunderstood Dennetts point, who does not reject any subjective experience but believes that we have access only to the third-person reports of subjects. Therefore every

(neuro)phenomenological methodology involving the analysis of reports on experience would

be heterophenomenology (Mikowski 2003).

3.6. Criticism of heterophenomenology by Chalmers and Gallagher. Why subjective experience is so crucial? David Chalmers made of the subjective experience the core of his philosophy. It is expressed

in his idea of a philosophical zombie, which can possibly exist, he believes. According to Chalmers zombies have internal states with contents, which the zombie can report sincerely.

Internal states have pseudo-conscious contents (not conscious ones). Chalmers is sure that he

described a real problem the Zombic Hunch, as Dennett calls it. Chalmers presents a problematic aspect that may appear of how to explain the difference between him and his

zombie twin. My cognitive mechanisms and my direct evidence justify my belief that I am

conscious. Zombies do not have that evidence, so their mistake does not threaten the grounds

for our beliefs. (It is also evident that we do not share beliefs with zombies; this is caused by

the role that experience plays in constituting the contents of those beliefs.) This speech act is

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peculiar, when we try to interpret it, we have to find and appropriate, benevolent

interpretation. In his direct evidence, Chalmers says that zombie does not have the evidence, yet zombie thinks he has it, just like Chalmers himself. They both are

heterophenomenological twins: the same heterophenomenological worlds are attributed to all

data we have. Chalmers and his zombie twin each believe they are not zombies. Each of them

believes also that their justification is acquired from direct evidence of their consciousness. However, Chalmers has to keep that the zombies belief is false. The zombie does not have the same beliefs as we do because of the role that experience plays in constituting the contents of those beliefs. Experience (in the sense Chalmers used this term) has no role in establishing contents of those beliefs, for ex hypothesi, if experience were eliminated (that

would mean that he was zombified), it would be not possible to find out he would behave just as he behaves. Nothing would change even if his phenomenological beliefs disappeared. He would not notice that these beliefs ceased to be phenomenological (Dennet

2001).

However, zombies are not physically possible, so this argument is not useful for natural

sciences. Besides, there is no methodology that would prove there is a difference between the

zombie twins, Chalmers theory included. Therefore, even if there were zombies, we would not be able to know that.

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4. Varelas Neurophenomenology 4.1. From autopoiesis, through enactivism and embodiment to neurophenomenology We can notice an entirely different approach to the problem of marriage of Phenomenology

with Cognitive Sciences in Francisco Varelas thought. In contrast to Chalmers (with whom Varela placed himself in the same place of his well-known Varela Four-Axes Diagram. (Varela 1996)), he does not postulate any extra ingredient in the explanation, in order to account for consciousness. Even though such an extra ingredient could be played by popular

quantum physics, Varela strived rather to reformulate the problem of consciousness. But let us

start from the beginning.

The theory of neurophenomenology was formulated and introduced by Francisco Varela, a

biologist interested in the creation of consciousness in the human mind and the relation

between mind, body and environment. His idea underwent a process of slow development

beginning with his biological and mechanistic conception of autopoiesis and ultimately

supposedly filling the explanatory gap between subjective experience and neural events, or finding a methodological solution to the hard problem, in the form of neurophenomenology, which I will now briefly sketch.

Originally, Varela could be labelled as an Emergentist (Maturana and Varela 1980), and even,

as Daniel Hillis remarked of a mystical sort (Varela 1995: 7). Nevertheless, Varela is far from being an advocate of Mysterianism as he called Nagel and Colin McGinn in his Four-Axes Diagram.

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Varela starts his mature theory from a statement that phenomenological reduction is a basis

for phenomenological approach, even though it is often used as a category of empirical

questions about mental correlates (as Dreyfus did according to Varela). In Varelas opinion, phenomenological description of experience and their counterparts from Cognitive Sciences

are strictly bound together via mutual conditioning. This statement constitutes the

neurophenomenological hypothesis (Varela 1996). And it is important to understand that

phenomenological reduction does not reveal any objective or ontological foundations but

enables us to reveal modalities of experience in phenomena just what was the original Husserls project.

Now, the neurophenomenological project proposed by Varela lies on a few fundamental

points. Varela agrees with Chalmers, and the adherents to the phenomenological and first-

person approach in studying consciousness, that consciousness is irreducible, but he claims

that there are no any extra ingredients in the reality that could account for it. Varelas research project comes down to a formulation of mutual or reciprocal conditioning between

phenomena given in experience, cognitive phenomena, and functioning of the neurobiological

structures correlated with it.

Varela identified an individual with an autonomous, living system, which manifests itself as a

whole, a total and closed self-contained system (Varela 1976). Due to these features, the

system undergoes constant structural changes but preserves its organizational invariance,

behaving as a dynamical system7. The systems identity is defined by this very

7 The dynamical approach to cognition is a confederation of research efforts bound together by the idea that

natural cognition is a dynamical phenomenon and best understood in dynamical terms. This contrasts with the

la of ualitative stutue goeig othodo o lassial ogitie siee, which holds that cognition is a fo of digital COMPUTATION (van Gelder 1999: 244-246).

33

organizationally invariant process (Varela 1984). The system does not lose its identity unless

the amount of deformations it is subjected to exceeds its limits. The identity of the system is

therefore formulated as the smallest organizational unity, which can preserve this unity while

undergoing certain amount of transformations (Varela 1979).

This autopoietic system is mechanistic, dynamical and defined by its organization. There is no

fundamental essence that the system is built on (this view is later transferred to his idea of the

self, which he names, after some Eastern philosophical systems selfless self). The major defining trait of the autonomy of living machines is, according to Varela, self-production. An autopoietic system is organized (defined as a unity) as a network of processes of production (transformation and destruction) of components that produces the components

that: 1) through their interactions and transformations continuously regenerate and realize the

network of processes (relations) that produce them; and 2) constitute it (the machine) as a

concrete unity in the space in which they exist by specifying the topological domain of its

realization as such a network (Varela 1979). These networks, or wholenesses, are submitted to organizational and functional closure. And the wholeness of a system is precisely

defined by the organizational closure. Varela talked about embodied and lived description of the processes, and defied purely computational (and later purely connectionist) views of the

mind. It should be mentioned here that by closure he did not mean a system closed from the

entire environment, it may be closed organizationally but at the same time opened to the

surroundings. A closed system is always in a struggle between preserving its identity and

exchanging information/energy/matter with the environment (Varela usually gave an instance

of a cell, which he treated as an exemplary autopoietic system). This goes along his enactive

approach to cognitive sciences that organisms actively generate and maintain their identities being autonomous systems (Varela, Thompson, and Rosch 1991).

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Now, turning to more complex and abstract systems like the mind, Varela was still applying

his previously worked out methodology of autopoiesis and enactivism. However, at this point

we can also observe his strong adherence to emergentism. Treating the nervous system as an

enactive, autonomous system, we can observe an emergence of cognitive structures springing

up from the operation of organizationally closed sensorimotor network of interacting neurons.

But mere observation of brain structures is not enough to account for the appearance of mind,

even though the structures imply its functioning, and some substructures of the nervous

system are essential for the presence of consciousness. The mind is not in the head (Varela 1999) famously states Varela and claims that the substructures are significant only for the

functioning of the mind and they are not identical with the mind per se. Mind is an embodied

system and therefore should be studied in relation to the whole body and environment, and

not pure neural events.

Varela went as far as to assert that we are bound to our embodied environments, and they are

a sort of a prison for us, no brain in a vat is possible. Our cognitive systems define us and our possibilities of perception, their beginning, end and operation. Again along the enactive

approach Varela defines the systems operation as working in continuous sensory-motor loops and due to the continual endogenous pattern of its brain activity, which delineates the possible

connection of the system with its environment (Varela, Thompson, and Rosch 1991).

As the result of the above-mentioned reasoning, Varela together with Evan Thompson

suggested an idea of cycles of operation, which describe the coupling of situated conscious higher primates with their neural dynamics. There are three kinds of them:

(1) cycles of organismic regulation of the entire body;

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(2) cycles of sensorimotor coupling between organism and environment;

(3) cycles of intersubjective interaction, involving the recognition of the intentional meaning

of actions and linguistic communication (in humans). (Varela and Thompson 2001: 424) The cycles are supposed to show the phenomenology of individual action in the sense that

consciousness and brain dynamics, due to their enactive and radically-embodied character, remains in a mutually conditioning relationship. The claim is therefore that consciousness is a

significant and causal element in the cycles of operation constituting individuals lives. However, this suggestion demands further analysis and empirical studies.

4.2. Neurophenomenology The enactive approach makes the surroundings of a particular embodied system a significant

factor, as was stated above. The system is carved out from the environment due to its organizational closure and gains a new feature, absent until now creates a new meaningful microworld. The microworld becomes a subject and experiences the reality from the first-

person perspective. The system, now an individual, is a bundle of cognitive and mental events

connected with lived experience. At this level we can see the emergence of the

neurophenomenological reflection.

Neurophenomenological methods include experience of the subjects as one of the scientific

parameters under examination. The subject is treated by the observer as a situated and

embodied individual with a certain point of view. In this sense Varela rejects eliminativism

and, as he claims, adopts a non-reductionist stance towards subjective experience; he is

interested in the relation between the neural correlates of consciousness (NCCs) and

phenomenological data rather than just NCCs alone, since this approach would adopt the

stance of mysterianism simple listing neurobiological processes and their supposed

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phenomenological correlates would leave out the most interesting thing: their probable causal

association, unexamined (Varela 1997). Therefore Varela advocated attentive analysis of

phenomenological data in empirical experiments.

Before scrutinizing more painstakingly the methods used in neurophenomenology I will

mention two traditions that influenced Varela in his research on this topic. First, we can see

direct inspiration drawn from Husserlian phenomenology, modified by Heidegger and

Merleau-Ponty, in their effort to formulate a methodology that would allow for a precise

account of subjective experience and its nature (Spiegelberg 1994). From among these

methods Varela focused most extensively on the phenomenological reduction, which Husserl

treated as a tool for attentive examination of consciousness. Due to the similarity of their

programs Varela used to call Husserlian research program a Husserlian neurophenomenology, while his own he used to name experiential neuroscience(Rudrauf, Lutz, Cosmelli, & Lachaux, 2003: 42).

The other influential traditions for Varela were Eastern contemplative traditions, like

Buddhism (Wallace 1999). Varela praised these traditions for developing disciplined and

accurate methods of observation of subjective experiences, especially the one of mindful

meditation (Rudrauf, Lutz, Cosmelli, & Lachaux, 2003: 43).8

8 As Varela himself stated: We believe that the Buddhist doctrines of no-self and of nondualism that grew out

of this method have a significant contribution to make in a dialogue with cognitive science: (1) The no-self

doctrine contributes to understanding the fragmentation of self portrayed in cognitivism and connectionism.

(2) Buddhist nondualism, particularly as it is presented in the Madhyamika (which literally means "middle way")

philosophy of Nagarjuna, may be juxtaposed with the entre-deux of Merleau-Ponty and with the more recent

ideas of cognition as enaction. (Varela, Thompson, and Rosch 1991: 21-22).

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4.2.1. Methods of phenomenology As I mentioned above, (neuro)phenomenology focuses on practice/experience than on theory.

Now I will consider the methodology of neurophenomenology and how can it be applied in

scientific experimentation. There are three components that this approach combines: 1)

analysis of experience carried out along phenomenological lines, 2) dynamical systems

theory, and 3) biological systems under the scrutiny of empirical experimentation. In order to

succeed in neurophenomenological examination, it is held that the scientist and the

experimental subject cooperate and achieve some skillfulness in phenomenological methods.

These include the already mentioned phenomenological reduction and the practice of epoch (bracketing or refraining from judgment), where beliefs in the world-horizon are erased of consideration altogether with all explanatory theories that depend on it and that consider the

experience or consciousness of the subject. The subject ceases to pay attention to the observed

object, and gradually turns to the structure of the act in which he experiences the object, to the

acts noesis (the mental act that intends the object), noema (the object as experienced) and hyle (which underdetermines the experienced object) (Fllesdal 2006). Next, after gathering the first-person data from the phenomenologically trained subject, the data is combined with

the description of quantified physiological processes that are supposed to correlate with

consciousness.

Thus, neurophenomenology is focused on gathering enriched first-person data from subjects

trained in phenomenological method of attentive examination of their own experience, and

after collating it with correlative physiological processes it is supposed to find some new

third-person data. So neurophenomenology supplements experimental procedures of

neurosciences with improved, disciplined phenomenological descriptions of experience.

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In a more technical jargon, we may say that the phenomenological method provides

neurophenomenology with a disciplined characterization of the phenomenal invariants of lived experience in all of its multifarious forms. By lived experience we mean experiences as they are lived and verbally articulated in the first-person, whether it be lived experiences of

perception, action, memory, mental imagery, emotion, attention, empathy, self-consciousness,

contemplative states, dreaming, and so forth. By phenomenal invariants we mean categorical features of experience that are phenomenologically describable both across and

within the various forms of lived experience. By disciplined characterization we mean a phenomenological mapping of experience grounded on the use of first-person methods for increasing ones sensitivity to ones own lived experience (Lutz and Thompson 2003: 32).

One of the main presuppositions in neurophenomenology is that there is a diversification

among humans considering the ability to examine ones own experience and provide a report on it, but these abilities can be highly improved by employment of diverse methods.

Neurophenomenology developed various disciplined first-person methods, like organized

training of reflective attention and self-regulation of emotions, that allow the subjects to be

more observant of and sensitive to their experience at various time-scales. By applying these

methods and a gradual and careful examination of noema and noesis the subjects attain such a

level of expertise that they are able to notice and provide verbal report on these aspects of

experience that were previously transcendental in a phenomenological sense, or cognitively

unnoticeable. Among these aspects we can count quality of reflective attention and transient

affective state. As for the experimentalist, she gains access to these parameters of

neurobiological experiments that are usually omitted and erased from the outcomes whenever

possible, parameters and physiological processes like variability in brain response as recorded

in neuroimaging experiments (Thompson et al. 2005: 8).

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The so called working hypothesis of neurophenomenology is the supposition that there is a mutual or reciprocal constrain between the analysis of physiological processes that are the

framework to consciousness and the first- and second-person methods producing the

phenomenological or first-person data. So these dynamic reciprocal constraints motivate the

experimentalist to use the first-person data as guidelines in her analysis and interpretation of

physiological data. Additionally, they make the subject a trained and active participant of

experiments, who produces his phenomenal invariants of experience in a controlled manner

(so that the third-person data constrains first-person data). In this process, the subject becomes

mindful of formerly unanalyzable or phenomenally unobtainable aspects of her mental life

and this enhances phenomenologically the neurobiological examination, which in turn allows

for reconsideration and improvement of the phenomenological accounts.

Summing up what I have mentioned so far, neurophenomenology is in consequence grounded

in the analysis of three elements:

1. (NPh1 [Neurophenomenology 1]) First-person data from the careful examination of experience with specific first-person methods.

2. (NPh2) Formal models and analytic tools from dynamic systems theory, grounded on an

enactive approach to cognition.

3. (NPh3) Neurophysiological data from measurements of large-scale, integrative processes in

the brain (Thompson et al. 2005: 9).

Now I will show in more detail how and what methods of phenomenology are applied in

neurophenomenology. It is often said in phenomenological analysis that we are caught up in the world, that is we have a lot of beliefs, judgments and fixed considerations and theories on

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the reality around us (and in us). This is a feature of our unreflective attitude towards the

world, called the natural attitude (Husserl 1983: 7, 51). Phenomenologists developed the already mentioned epoch in order to bracket or abstain from these belief-constructs and through the phenomenological attitude turn ones attention towards the aspects of direct experience, or towards the things themselves (Husserl 1965). And in order to examine constitutive structures and categories of experience one needs to implement this disciplined

phenomenological attitude.

The specific characterization of first-person methods may depend on the tradition in which it

is employed (contemplative, psychological or phenomenological). However, as (Thompson et

al. 2005: 37) report, there are some general steps common to all types of first-person methods.

In experimental conditions, epoch has usually four stages, leading to reflective self-awareness and description of experience. These include suspension, redirection, receptivity

and verbalization. During the suspension phase we may observe the already discussed

bracketing or temporary suspension of habitual beliefs and theories concerning the actual experience and adopting a phenomenological attitude, i.e. unprejudiced and descriptive one.

This allows the access to prereflective lived experience. During the redirection stage the aim

is to redirect ones attention from the engagement in the noema (object of experience) to noesis (the lived aspects of the process of experience it also involves signals coming from the lived body). The third stage, receptivity, is responsible for acquiring new categories or

invariants of experience. Speaking in phenomenological terms, receptivity requires opening to

new horizons of experience and thus increases the possible area of examination. However, it

calls for a certain amount of training, the new fields of study do not arise in consciousness

immediately, the searchlight of attention needs to swipe over the accessible areas of the

horizon. Therefore, repetition is actually one more tacit method that requires here its

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application. Only then new contrasts will possibly arise in consciousness and will be able to

stabilize themselves in attention. The last stage in a neurophenomenological experiment is

verbalization, when the subject shares intersubjectively his observations of phenomenal

invariants and allows the experimenter to confront these first-person data with the objective

third-person data (Lutz and Thompson 2003: 37-38).

4.2.2. The neurophenomenological experiment In order to present the neurophenomenological theory applied in practice, I will discuss an

experiment which is a flagship one in this tradition. Lutz with his colleagues (Lutz et al. 2002)

has trained subjects in phenomenological method, and thereby successfully combined the

three before-mentioned methodologies: phenomenology, dynamical systems theory, and

experimental brain science.

There is a problem with variability of brain activity recorded by brain imagining equipment in

neurobiological experiments. It occurs in experimental conditions when subjects perform

certain cognitive activities and the scientist reads the corresponding responses of their

cerebral cortex to the same and repetitive stimulations. It is assumed that this variability

comes from the unstable nature of human attention even being focused on a cognitive task we are liable to distraction, tiredness, spontaneous and uncontrolled thoughts, series of

decision and plans concerning a concrete steps in the task and so on. These subjective

parameters influence the outcomes of an experiment and it is impossible to rule them out

entirely, most often they are treated as unintelligible noise and e.g., are erased from the EEG

recording or counterbalanced by a method of averaging results. The idea of

neurophenomenological methodology is not to eliminate them but to control them, even

though it is very problematic, since we do not know yet the full specification of human mind

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and its all correlations with brain. This was the strategy of Lutz et al., they developed an

experiment where subjects were presented with 3D objects emerging from a 2D environment.

Then the scientists linked the first-person data and the dynamical examination of neural

processes. However, the first-person data was not used merely as an analysis datum but was

an important factor for formulation of the experimental paradigm.

As a sort of phenomenological preparation the subjects were asked to observe a certain visual

stimuli and describe some features of it. Additionally, they were trained to be reflective of

specific subjective parameters like distractions occurring during the task. The novel language

that the subjects developed was formalized and employed in the main experiment, where it

was used to report on subjective parameters and then correlated with reaction times to stimuli

and EEG record of brain activity.

Lutz and his colleagues applied the three step phenomenological method, as developed by

Varela (Varela 1996):

(1) suspending beliefs or theories about experience (the epoch) (2) gaining intimacy with the domain of investigation (focused description)

(3) offering descriptions and using intersubjective validations (intersubjective corroboration). (Gallagher and Zahavi 2008: 34)

The epoch may be employed in two different ways, it can be evoked by the experimenter through a series of open questions concerning experience, or can be self-induced by the

subject. The experimenter may directly ask about the subjects experience and request to describe it in her/his own terms, without using any predefined thought constructs. The

purpose of these open questions is to guide subjects to find their experiential invariants in

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order to provide them with analytic tools allowing for descriptions concerning particular

aspects of experience., that are employed in the main experiment.9 Therefore, experimenter

puts the questions directly after the end of a cognitive task, so that the subject can redirect her

attention from her performance to the implicit aspects of her consciousness appearing during

the task, aspects like the level of attention she experienced (Gallagher and Zahavi 2008: 34).

In Lutz et al. experiment, series of experiments were clustered with respect to first-person

reports regarding the experience of subjective parameters, and distinct dynamical analyses of

brain activity visualized by EEG accompanied each of these clusters. The outcomes of this

methodological procedure were significantly different than a simple method of averaging

results across a series of trials and across subjects. In the phenomenological part of the

experiment subjects, due to cycles of training trials using depth perception task, developed

their own refined verbal reports of the subjective parameters (Lutz et al. 2002: 1586).

The preliminary training process came down to showing random-dot static images on a digital

monitor to the subjects, who had to fixate their eyes on the center of the screen, on the dot-

pattern with no binocular disparity. After hearing an auditory signal, the subjects were fusing

two squares at the bottom of the screen and then remained in this eye position for seven

seconds. Next, random-dot pattern was then reformed to a different random-dot pattern with

binocular disparities (an autostereogram), which allowed the subjects for seeing a 3D illusory

geometric shape. When the shape emerged they were asked to press a button with their right

9 An example of such open question session: Experimenter, What did you feel before and after the image

appeared? ujet 1, I had a growing sense of expectation but not for a specific object; however, when the figure appeared, I had a feeling of confirmation, no surprise at all; or subject S4, It was as if the image appeared in the periphery of my attention, but then my attention was suddenly swallowed up by the shape. Citation after (Lutz et al. 2002: 1587).

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hand. Finally, the verbalization stage of the experiment would come, where the subjects

provided a verbal report of their experiences in an open question session (Figure 1).

Fig. 1. (I) Protocol. Tasks: (A) Fixation of the center of the screen; (B) fusion of the two dots and refixation of the center of the screen; (C) motor response; and (D) phenomenological report. Events: (1) Presentation of an

image without binocular disparities; (2) auditory warning at the beginning of B; (3) presentation of the

autostereogram. (II) Reaction times. Mean reaction times between (3) and the motor response (D) with two

standard errors. PhCs [Phenomenological Clusters]: SR [Steady Readiness] and SR, FR [fragmented readiness], SU [spontaneous unreadiness] and SIU [self-induced unreadiness]. (III) Evoked oscillatory responses. For each

subject and each PhC, time-frequency power of evoked potential was normalized compared with baseline B1 and

average across electrodes, time intervals [50, 150 ms], and frequencies (2064 Hz). Source: (Lutz et al. 2002: 1587).

This procedure provided subjects with descriptive tools for categorizing their subjective

parameters like presence or absence or degree of distractions, inattentiveness etc. Thus, they

are more aware of and informed about their own experiences. Thereby, experimenters divided

so defined categories of experience into phenomenologically-based clusters, like the degrees of subjects experienced readiness for a stimulus (Figure 2): 1) Steady readiness (SR): subjects reported that they were ready, present, here, or well-prepared when the image appeared on the screen and that they responded immediately and decidedly.

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2) Fragmented readiness (FR): subjects reported that they had made a voluntary effort to be

ready, but were prepared either less sharply (due to a momentary tiredness) or less focally (due to small distractions, inner speech, or discursive thoughts). 3) Unreadiness (SU): subjects reported that they were unprepared and that they saw the 3D

image only because their eyes were correctly positioned. They were surprised by it and

reported that they were interrupted by the image in the middle of an unrelated thought. (Gallagher and Zahavi 2008: 36)

Fig. 2. DNS for S1 [Subject S1] during readiness with immediate perception SR (154 trials) and SU with surprise during stimulation (38 trials). Color coding indicates scalp distribution of time-frequency gamma power

around 35 Hz normalized compared with distant baseline B0 average for trials and for time windows indicated

by an arrow. In prepared trials, gamma power in frontal electrodes (FP1-FT8) during B1 increased significantly

(P0.01) compared with distant baseline B0 and was significantly higher (P0.005) than in the unprepared trials. Black and white lines correspond to significant increase and decrease in synchrony, respectively. For each pair

of electrodes, the density of long-distance synchrony above a surrogate threshold was calculated. This measure

was normalized compared with the distribution for trials in baseline B0. A significant threshold was estimated

with white-noise surrogates. Source: (Lutz et al. 2002: 1588).

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These categories were later used by subjects in the main trials in their reports of their

experiences. After recording the EEG signal and collecting first-person data, experimenters

linked these with reaction times and dynamic descriptions of the transient patterns of local and long-distance synchrony occurring between oscillating neural populations, specified as a

dynamic neural signature (DNS) (Lutz et al. 2002: 1586). The occurrence and variability of the subjective parameters turned out to be a cause for changes in the subjects experience. These oscillations and variability are supposed to be captured by the idea of DNS, which

indicates the amount of transient patterns of synchronous oscillations between functionally

separate and widely distributed brain areas. Neurophenomenology is occupied with

examination of dynamic links and emergent and changing patterns among these integrated

areas using mathematical and dynamical system models. So the assumption of dynamical

systems approach, taken up by neurophenomenology and proven experimentally, is that the

neural activation that underlies our experience employs fast and transient integration of

functionally dissimilar and widely distributed brain areas, and is not restricted to some

determined brain areas (Varela et al. 2001).

The outcomes of the experiment has shown that patterns of synchrony recorded by EEG

preceding the stimulus was determined by the degree of readiness as reported by subjects.

Thus, we may observe a correlation and mutual dependence between dynamic neural

signatures and distinct subjective parameters, described in reports of phenomenologically

trained subjects (Gallagher and Zahavi 2008: 35-38).

4.2.3. Problems of neurophenomenology In the end, I will briefly present a few problems that still beset neurophenomenology. First of

all, it links quantitative measurements of brain activity and a dynamical system interpretation

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of the data with qualitative phenomenological methods. However, such methodological type

of proceeding is not always successful. Sometimes it is even impossible, especially in case of

experiments concerning the sense of agency, where many processes can be intentional but

unconscious or unnoticeable, moreover it is still unclear how different aspects of

phenomenology of agency are connected (Pacherie 2007: 2). For instance in experiments

involving priming, studying blindsight, or methods devoted to examine the effect of

unconscious processing, phenomenological aspects are extremely difficult to trace down.

Most often the only data available in such studies are third-person, neurobiological data,

regardless of how precisely we define and employ phenomenological procedures. There are

also experimental cases where the subjects are patients with severe cognitive and mental

disabilities and cannot be trained phenomenologically. In such circumstances, the best

experimental tools may be front-loaded phenomenology, but for lack of space I will not discuss it here. For more information see (Gallagher and Sasma 2003; Gallagher and Brsted Srensen 2006; Gallagher and Schmicking 2010).

Other