Central and East European
Society for Phenomenology

Conference | Paper

Phenomenology and neuroscience. An attempt to overcome the divide through a spatiotemporal approach

Federico Zilio

Tuesday 13 September 2022

14:45 - 15:30

Palazzo del Capitanio-Aula 5

Neurophenomenology is a well-known attempt to connect neuroscience with phenomenology. However, despite the several cases of neurophenomenological analysis already applied, the experiential datum and the neural activity seem separated by unbridgeable explanatory, methodological, and ontological gaps, supported also by the idea that there are two series of objects in the world, the apparent-mental ones and the real-physical ones. To reach true instances of “mutual enlightenment and constraints” between phenomenology and neuroscience, the following argument is made:

 

1)  The ontological and epistemological appearance-reality divide should be overcome by assuming a phenomenological realist stance, against a mathematical-physical idea of the world.

 

2)  Temporality and spatiality could then be considered as the common ground/currency between phenomenology (experience as temporalization and spatialization) and neuroscience (the spatiotemporal processes of the environment-body-brain interaction). Some empirically driven examples will be presented. Thus, the neurophenomenological enterprise on the spatiotemporal structure of consciousness (not just its neural correlates) may concretely connect the lived experience with the dynamics of the brain and body within the environment.