Bence Peter Marosan

In this article, we endeavour to lay the theoretical fundaments of a phenomenologically based project regarding the origins of conscious experience in the natural world. We assume that a phenomenological analysis (based upon Edmund Husserl’s philosophy) of first-person experience could substantially contribute to related empirical research. In this regard, two phenomenological conceptions provided by Husserl are of fundamental importance. The first relates to the essential and necessary embodiment of every subjective experience; the second concerns the intrinsically holistic and concrete character of consciousness. These considerations have two crucial implications. First, every mental content and capability ultimately refers to a bodily basis as its carrier and realizer (‘embodied manifestation thesis’). Second, there is a minimal set of bodily structures that carries and realizes the minimal mind (‘minimal context thesis’). Based upon these assumptions, we can use phenomenology to select from the empirical theories of consciousness. We argue that currently, Bjorn Merker’s subcortical theory of consciousness appears to be the best candidate for a phenomenological approach. In phenomenological regard, however, it is highly challenging to test a subcortical theory; therefore, we suggest that certain experiments based upon emergence from general anaesthesia might help test such a theory in a phenomenologically legitimate way.

Michel Henry is quite a unique figure in the phenomenological movement, as well as in philosophy more generally. In his work, apparently contradictory and heterogeneous motifs were integrated - in my opinion - into a harmonious, organic and synthetic unity. We can find in his philosophy firstly four leading and orientating traditions that articulated the main framework of his thought: phenomenology, Catholicism, philosophy of life (Lebensphilosophie), and the philosophy of Marx, the latter of which he sharply juxtaposed to the entire tradition of Marxism. In this regard, perhaps the two most important philosophical authors for him were Edmund Husserl and Karl Marx, the latter of which was considered by Henry to be the most crucial philosopher in the entire history of Western philosophy, and the most original and authentic phenomenologist (even in comparison to the founding father of the phenomenological movement, namely Husserl). Michel Henry believed that modern global society was in such a crisis from which only Marx's philosophy could provide a way out, in a theoretical regard as well as in a normative, practical respect. Henry was of the opinion that without drastically overcoming capitalism, Western civilization - as well as humankind globally - would collapse in intellectual, spiritual and also physical regard. Barbarism, which was vigorously criticized by Henry as a fundamental and intrinsic feature of capitalism, reifies everything and renders things under the viewpoints of utility and profitability, including phenomena like subjectivity and consciousness. We must emancipate human and non-human, conscious and non-conscious, life by radically surpassing capitalism. With this gesture, we can reach a genuinely authentic society, which also relies on an emancipated form of consciousness and spirituality. In this paper, we attempt to show how Henry reformulates the Marxian idea of emancipation, based on the aforementioned four traditions.

We endorse policymakers’ efforts to address the negative consequences of the attention economy’s technology but add that these approaches are often limited in their criticism of the systemic context of human attention. Starting from Buddhist philosophy, we advocate a broader approach: an ‘ecology of attending’ that centers on conceptualizing, designing, and using attention (1) in an embedded way and (2) focused on the alleviating of suffering. With ‘embedded’ we mean that attention is not a neutral, isolated mechanism but a meaning-engendering part of an ‘ecology’ of bodily, sociotechnical and moral frameworks. With ‘focused on the alleviation of suffering’ we mean that we explicitly move away from the (often implicit) conception of attention as a tool for gratifying desires. We analyze existing inquiries in these directions and urge them to be intensified and integrated. As to the design and function of our technological environment, we propose three questions for further research: How can technology help to acknowledge us as ‘ecological’ beings, rather than as self-sufficient individuals? How can technology help to raise awareness of our moral framework? And how can technology increase the conditions for ‘attending’ to the alleviation of suffering, by substituting our covert self-driven moral framework with an ecologically attending one? We believe in the urgency of transforming the inhumane attention economy sociotechnical system into a humane ecology of attending, and in our ability to contribute to it.

We endorse policymakers’ efforts to address the negative consequences of the attention economy’s technology but add that these approaches are often limited in their criticism of the systemic context of human attention. Starting from Buddhist philosophy, we advocate a broader approach: an ‘ecology of attending’ that centers on conceptualizing, designing, and using attention (1) in an embedded way and (2) focused on the alleviating of suffering. With ‘embedded’ we mean that attention is not a neutral, isolated mechanism but a meaning-engendering part of an ‘ecology’ of bodily, sociotechnical and moral frameworks. With ‘focused on the alleviation of suffering’ we mean that we explicitly move away from the (often implicit) conception of attention as a tool for gratifying desires. We analyze existing inquiries in these directions and urge them to be intensified and integrated. As to the design and function of our technological environment, we propose three questions for further research: How can technology help to acknowledge us as ‘ecological’ beings, rather than as self-sufficient individuals? How can technology help to raise awareness of our moral framework? And how can technology increase the conditions for ‘attending’ to the alleviation of suffering, by substituting our covert self-driven moral framework with an ecologically attending one? We believe in the urgency of transforming the inhumane attention economy sociotechnical system into a humane ecology of attending, and in our ability to contribute to it.

The main aim of this article is to shed light on the origins of consciousness in the natural world by presenting elements of empirically related interdisciplinary research based on the phenomenological philosophy of Edmund Husserl and his followers. The main thesis of this paper is that affections and emotions have a central and foundational role in organising conscious mental life such that consciousness cannot be concrete without emotions. In the first part (Sects. “The Phenomenology of Concrete Consciousness” and “The Affective Sphere as the Organising Centre of Concrete Life and Consciousness”), we treat certain elements of the phenomenology of emotions; in the second part (Sects. “Some Conceptions regarding the Neurological Bases of Affections and Emotions ” and “The Presumable Functional Basis of Concrete Consciousness”), we clarify certain features of the neurophysiological foundations of consciousness and emotions in particular, arguing for subcortical theories of emotions and consciousness that enable us to extend the capability of consciousness at least to all vertebrates.

The distinct and rich traditions of (eco-)phenomenology, (eco-)Marxism, eco-ethics, and Husserlian and Marxist scholarship inform this study’s effort to articulate a synthetic theoretical foundation for a “biocentric ecosocialism” model, primarily based upon Husserlian and eco-Marxist consid­erations. A Husserlian view might interpret the Marxist project as a phenome­nology of phenomena such as alienation, reification, exploitation, and the logic of capital. Systematically reinterpreting Marxism, particularly eco-Marxism, through a Husserlian phenomenological lens could strengthen its foundation, ultimately yielding a perspective that might be termed “biocentric ecoso­cialism.” This perspective suggests that a proper phenomenological analysis of the phenomenon of life entails normative and ethical imperatives, rejecting the exclusively instrumental treatment of living beings and the non-human natural environment. I aim to demonstrate the legitimacy of these claims from an essentially phenomenological viewpoint.

In this paper, we provide an overview of the main stages in the development of Edmund Husserl’s conception of metaphysics, highlighting its most significant characteristics. We propose that Husserl’s views on metaphysics traversed three main stages: (1) from the early 1890s until his so-called “transcendental turn” around 1906/07; (2) from his transcendental turn until the late 1920s, and (3) the metaphysical conceptualization during the 1930s, aptly characterized as—following the interpretation of László Tengelyi—a “metaphysics of primal facts” (Urfakta, Urtatsache). We further demonstrate that Husserl’s considerations concerning metaphysics—throughout his entire opus—span three essential levels: (1) the epistemological level, in particular, phenomenological preparations to establish a foundation for metaphysics; (2) a level concerning metaphysics as the universal and ultimate science of reality, and (3) a level addressing metaphysics as a proper field of phenomenological investigations into the highest and ultimate questions (such as God and immortality). We argue in detail that Husserl attempted to render this field—which radically transcends the domain of possible intuitions (Anschauungen) and direct experience—accessible to a legitimate phenomenological treatment via the method of phenomenological constructions, prior to the efforts of Eugen Fink.

The explanatory gap—the apparently ineliminable chasm between physical, bodily processes and states on the one hand, and subjective, lived experience on the other—belongs among the greatest problems of contemporary philosophy of mind and empirical research concerning consciousness. According to some scholars—such as eliminativist philosophers like Paul and Patricia Churchland—it is a pseudo-question. However, in our interpretation, an accurate phenomenological reflection on one’s own consciousness convinces the attentive and careful philosopher that it is very much a real question—and in fact a crucial one. The present paper endeavours to show how Husserl’s theory of the bodily self-constitution of the ego could help us, not to close the explanatory gap in a reductionist manner, but rather to bridge this gap by rendering apparent the necessary connection between the subjective, phenomenal side of experience and its bodily basis. In this interpretation, Husserl’s conception of embodiment could even provide a more rigorous and firmer theoretical foundation than any which currently undergirds empirically related research regarding the origins of consciousness in the natural world. In the first half of the study, I outline Todd Feinberg and Jon Mallatt’s attempt to bridge and, in a further step, to eliminate the explanatory gap, in which they proceed from the external world to the interiority of mind. The second part of the paper presents a phenomenological analysis that aims to demonstrate that a Husserlian attempt would follow the opposite direction: from the inside proceeding outwards towards the external, physical reality.

In this article, we endeavour to lay the theoretical fundaments of a phenomenologically based project regarding the origins of conscious experience in the natural world. We assume that a phenomenological analysis (based upon Edmund Husserl’s philosophy) of first-person experience could substantially contribute to related empirical research. In this regard, two phenomenological conceptions provided by Husserl are of fundamental importance. The first relates to the essential and necessary embodiment of every subjective experience; the second concerns the intrinsically holistic and concrete character of consciousness. These considerations have two crucial implications. First, every mental content and capability ultimately refers to a bodily basis as its carrier and realizer (‘embodied manifestation thesis’). Second, there is a minimal set of bodily structures that carries and realizes the minimal mind (‘minimal context thesis’). Based upon these assumptions, we can use phenomenology to select from the empirical theories of consciousness. We argue that currently, Bjorn Merker’s subcortical theory of consciousness appears to be the best candidate for a phenomenological approach. In phenomenological regard, however, it is highly challenging to test a subcortical theory; therefore, we suggest that certain experiments based upon emergence from general anaesthesia might help test such a theory in a phenomenologically legitimate way.