Toward a neurophenomenology as an account of generative passages

a first empirical case study

Antoine Lutz

pp. 133-167

in: Phenomenology and the cognitive sciences 1 (2), 2002.

Abstract

This paper analyzes an explicit instantiation of the program of "neurophenomenology" in a neuroscientific protocol. Neurophenomenology takes seriously the importance of linking the scientific study of consciousness to the careful examination of experience with a specific first-person methodology. My first claim is that such strategy is a fruitful heuristic because it produces new data and illuminates their relation to subjective experience. My second claim is that the approach could open the door to a natural account of the structure of human experience as it is mobilized in itself in such methodology. In this view, generative passages define the type of circulation which explicitly roots the active and disciplined insight the subject has about his/her experience in a biological emergent process.