Abstract
In this paper, we examine Shaun Gallagher’s project of “naturalizing” phenomenology with the cognitive sciences: front-loaded phenomenology (FLP). While we think it is a productive proposal, we argue that Gallagher does not employ genetic phenomenological methods in his execution of FLP. We show that without such methods, FLP’s attempt to locate neurological correlates of conscious experience is not yet adequate. We demonstrate this by analyzing Gallagher’s critique of cognitive neuropsychologist Christopher Frith’s functional explanation of schizophrenic symptoms. In “constraining” Gallagher’s FLP program, we discuss what genetic phenomenological method is and why FLP ought to embrace it. We also indicate what types of structures a genetically modified FLP will consider, and how such an approach would affect the manner in which potential neurological correlates of conscious experience are conceptually understood and experimentally investigated.
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Notes
Merleau-Ponty (2002, p. 145).
Gallagher (2005). Hereafter cited parenthetically as HB.
Frith (1992).
Husserl (1999a).
It is important to point out the host of terminology used in the phenomenological literature to indicate the “lower-level,” precognitive structures of intentional experience. Husserl, in his later work, described this dimension of experience with the terms “passive synthesis,” “operative intentionality” [fungierende Intentionalität], and “drive-intentionality” [Triebintentionalität]. Heidegger speaks of “understanding” [Verstehen] and “circumspection” [Umsicht]. Merleau-Ponty builds on and departs from these accounts in his descriptions of the “pre-predicative” or “pre-objective” realm of experience, using expressions such as “operative intentionality,” “intentional arc,” “motor intentionality,” “body schema,” and “original intentionality.” Steinbock speaks of the background of precognitive motivation as an affectively “saturated intentionality.” Gallagher draws from this tradition when he describes what he calls the “prenoetic,” “prereflective” structure of experience. There are, of course, important differences between these respective analyses, but each attempts to describe the precognitive intentional background out of which cognitive, reflective, object-directed intentional experience emerges. It is this background to which we refer with the expression “pre-reflective.” See Heidegger (1962), Husserl (1967, 2001), Merleau-Ponty (2002), and Steinbock (1999).
Gallagher and Varela (2001, p. 21).
Petitot et al. (1999, p. 7).
Gallagher (2003).
Frith’s approach differs from prior approaches to mental disorder insofar as he shifts the focus of study away from particular diagnostic categories (e.g., schizophrenia, posttraumatic stress disorder, depression) and moves it toward the study of specific pathological symptoms (e.g., delusions of control, hypervigilance, hypoarousal), which may manifest themselves across diagnostic categories.
Frith (1992, pp. 9–13).
Ibid., p. 116.
Ibid.
Our account of the comparator model is informed by the discussion in Synofzik et al. (2007).
“Agency” is meant here in a minimal phenomenological, not sociological, sense. With regard to thought, it consists simply in an awareness of what I am thinking, and an awareness of who is doing the thinking. Cf. Overgaard and Grünbaum (2007).
If, in the case of the schizophrenic, one of these comparator mechanisms goes wrong or is put out of operation, why do not all thoughts seem alien? […] Why is it that a subject can have a sense of agency for one thought, but not for the other? Quite obviously the phenomenology here needs to constrain the cognitive explanation (HB, p. 185).
Husserl sometimes refers to these “immanent contents” as “primal sensations” to distinguish them from transcendent objects. Cf. Husserl (1999a, Sects. 7–9, 40–45).
Husserl (1999a, Sect. 39)
Husserl’s early works on time focus on retention and give very little attention to the temporal aspect of protention, relegating the latter the status of a symmetrical adjunct of retention. His later works develop a more elaborate account of protention, as in, for example, Analyses Concerning Passive and Active Synthesis. For a discussion of protention in the development of Husserl’s theory of time-consciousness, see Rodemeyer (2003).
[M]y anticipatory sense of the next note of the melody, or of where the sentence is heading, or that I will continue to think, is also, implicitly, an anticipatory sense that these will be experiences for me, or that I will be the one listening, speaking, or thinking. In effect, protention also has what Husserl calls a longitudinal aspect—it involves a projective sense, not only for what is about to happen, but of what I am about to do or experience (HB, p. 193).
Varela and Depraz (2005, pp. 63–64).
Steinbock (1995, p. 40).
In bringing the resources of genetic phenomenology to bear on our understanding of neurophysiological systems, as Evan Thompson argues, “the very idea of nature is transformed. The physicalist conception of nature as an objective reduction base for the phenomenal no longer holds sway, and instead nature is reexamined from a phenomenological angle” (Thompson, 2007, p. 359).
Husserl (2001, p. 479).
Husserl (2001).
Steinbock (1995, pp. 40–41).
See our forthcoming article, “Exploring Allostasis and Pre-reflective Sociality.”
See, for example, Sterling and Eyer (1988), Sterling (2004), and Sapolsky (1998). In our forthcoming article, “Exploring Allostasis and Pre-reflective Sociality,” we interface genetic phenomenological insights about the social aspects of embodiment, drawn from such figures as Frantz Fanon and Iris Marion Young, with “allostatic” explanatory models in neurophysiology.
The work of French philosopher of science Georges Canguilhem on the historicity of conceptions of normality and pathology is important in this regard. The following passage from his book The Normal and the Pathological exhibits an attunement to just the sort of genetic structures we have been discussing.
In general, any one act of a normal subject must not be related to an analogous act of a sick person without understanding the sense and value of the pathological act for the possibilities of existence of the modified organism. […] It seems very artificial to break up disease into symptoms or to consider its complications in the abstract. What is a symptom without context or background? What is a complication separated from what it complicates? When an isolated symptom or a functional mechanism is termed pathological, one forgets that what makes them so is their inner relation in the indivisible totality of individual behavior. (Canguilhem 1991, pp. 86–88, our emphasis)
See Sterling (2004).
We explore these possible correlations further in our forthcoming article, “Exploring Allostasis and Pre-reflective Sociality.”
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Heiner, B.T., Whyte, K.P. A proposal for genetically modifying the project of “naturalizing” phenomenology. Cont Philos Rev 41, 179–193 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11007-008-9081-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11007-008-9081-x