A Phenomenological Framework for Neuroscience?

Abstract

I try to sketch what a phenomenological constraint for the Neuroscience would be consisting of. I maintain that an adequate phenomenology is a condition for the Neurosciences to account for our every-day experience of the world in its broadest sense. As a guideline for it, I assume the phenomenological description of our actual experience of things, others, meanings and values provided by the Gestaltpsychology tradition. In order to prove its usefulness, I discuss the explanatory gap Cognitive Sciences are actually facing to. Then I propose some arguments drawn by Köhler's dynamical theory, to show what a solution of the explanatory gap might look like, and how the phenomenological and neurobiological correlation might be though of. I also suggest that this theory needs to be further integrated and somewhat modified by light of recent neurobiological findings, which in turn appear to sustain some of its claims. In fact, I propose the isomorphism hypothesis and the epistemological dualism as a framework for current research, while the studies about the contextual effects and interactive facilitation, at various range and levels of the brain functionality, will be used to try to specify a new functional meaning of the vector field analysis proposed by Köhler.