Open AccessReductions of Consciousness. From Husserl to Churchland
Author(s) -
Małgorzata Kowalska
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
studies in logic, grammar and rhetoric/studies in logic, grammar and rhetoric
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.121
H-Index - 12
eISSN - 2199-6059
pISSN - 0860-150X
DOI - 10.2478/slgr-2020-0018
Subject(s) - consciousness , naturalism , philosophy , conscience , epistemology , ambivalence , phenomenology (philosophy) , psychology , psychoanalysis
The author juxtaposes two extreme approaches to the relationship between consciousness and the physical world: phenomenological-idealistic (represented by Edmund Husserl) and radically naturalistic (represented by Paul Churchland). These two positions are interpreted in terms of opposite if symmetrical types of reduction (on the one hand, the reduction of the world to a sense for consciousness, and on the other hand, the reduction of consciousness to an element of the physical world). They emerge as two ways of abstracting from the ambivalence of ordinary experience, in which consciousness and the physical world are both mutually entangled and non-identical with each other. In conclusion, the author argues that contemporary philosophy, which follows both the idealistic and the naturalistic path, fails to solve the problem of this relationship.