I’m copying here extracts from Francisco Varela’s last paper in the hope that those in doubt or confusion about the hard problem will read it in its entirety. Varela clarifies, either directly or by obvious implication, every issue circulated in this thread over these last several hundred pages. I think I linked it long ago, but that it was never engaged in discussion. Varela thought and wrote very clearly, and his reading in and knowledge of philosophy of mind, cognitive neuroscience, and consciousness studies was thorough. Even so, his clarity here might not be enough to produce a full recognition/understanding of the hard problem in human experience, but I think this paper if anything will be helpful at this point. The best option to take beyond this is to read Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy, as Maturana, Varela, Thompson and their colleagues themselves did.
“NEUROPHENOMENOLOGY A Methodological Remedy for the Hard Problem”
Abstract:
This paper starts with one of Chalmers’ basic points: first-hand experience is an irreducible field of phenomena. I claim there is no ‘theoretical fix’ or ‘extra ingredient’ in nature that can possibly bridge this gap. Instead, the field of conscious phenomena requires a rigorous method and an explicit pragmatics for its exploration and analysis. My proposed approach, inspired by the style of inquiry of phenomenology, I have called neurophenomenology. It seeks articulations by mutual constraints between phenomena present in experience and the correlative field of phenomena established by the cognitive sciences. It needs to expand into a widening research community in which the method is cultivated further.
This paper responds to the issues raised by D.J. Chalmers (1995) by offering a research direction which is quite radical in the way in which some basic methodological principles are linked to the scientific studies of consciousness. Neuro-phenomenology is the name I am using here to designate a quest to marry modern cognitive science and a disciplined approach to human experience, thus placing myself in the lineage of the continental tradition of phenomenology.1 My claim is that the so-called hard problem that animates these Special Issues of the Journal of Consciousness Studies can only be addressed productively by gathering a research community armed with new pragmatic tools enabling them to develop a science of consciousness. I will claim that no piecemeal empirical correlates, nor purely theoretical principles, will really help us at this stage. We need to turn to a systematic exploration of the only link between mind and consciousness that seems both obvious and natural: the structure of human experience itself. In what follows I open my proposal by briefly examining the current debate about consciousness in the light of Chalmers’ hard problem. Next, I outline the (neuro)phenomenological strategy. I conclude by discussing some of the main difficulties and consequences of this strategy. . . . .
. . . One day the intellectual history of the peculiar twists and turns of this problem space will be reviewed thoroughly. But it has a deja-vu aura to it, reminding us of many swings of the pendulum, between rejecting and total fascination with the scientific discussions of conscious experience. This can hardly be otherwise, since any science of cognition and mind must, sooner or later, come to grips with the basic condition that we have no idea what the mental or the cognitive could possibly be apart from our own experience of it. . . . .
. . . Now we may move to the heart of the matter, the nature of the circulation between a first person and an external account of human experience, which describes the phenomenological position in fertile dialogue with cognitive science.
. . . Method: moving ahead
We need to examine, beyond the spook of subjectivity, the concrete possibilities of a disciplined examination of experience that is at the very core of the phenomenological inspiration. To repeat: it is the re-discovery of the primacy of human experience and its direct, lived quality that is phenomenology’s foundational project. This is the sense in which Edmund Husserl inaugurated this thinking in the West, and established a long tradition that is well and alive today not only in Europe but world-wide. In fact, between 1910 and 1912, while Husserl was at the peak of his creative formulation of phenomenology, in the United States William James was following very parallel lines in his pragmatic approach to cognitive life. And to complete the planetary ‘synchronicity’ of this turn, a very innovative philosophical renewal appeared in Japan, the so-called Kyoto School, initiated by Nishida Kitaro and then followed by Nishitani Keiji and others. Husserl and James knew and read each other, and the members of the Kyoto school read widely in western phenomenology and spent extensive periods of training in Germany. Thus I believe we should consider these
anni mirabiles for phenomenology, akin to the years 1848-52 for the birth of modern evolutionary biology.
It is fair to say that phenomenology is, more than anything else, a style of thinking, which Husserl started in the West, but it is not exhausted by his personal options and style (Lyotard, 1954). I do not want to engage in an account of the diversity and complexity of western phenomenology (see e.g. Spiegelberg, 1962). The contributions of individuals such as Eugen Fink, Edith Stein, Roman Ingarden, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty to cite only a few have attested to a continuing development of phenomenology. More recently various links with modern cognitive science have been explored (see for instance Dreyfus, 1982; Varela et al., 1991; Klein and Wescott, 1994; Petitot, 1995; Petitot et al., 1996; Thompson and Varela, 1996). I mention this explicitly because it has been my observation that most people not familiar with the phenomenological movement automatically assume that phenomenology is some sort of Husserlian scholasticism, a trade better left to dusty continental philosophers who can read German. At best cognitive scientists might have read the collection edited by Dreyfus (1982), which presents Husserl as some form of proto-computationalist, and they assume that this bit of history is all there is to know about phenomenology. This has become an oft-quoted interpretation, but critics have made clear that Dreyfus’ cognitive reading of Husserl is seriously flawed. This is not the occasion to expand on this issue, but it is essential to flag a caveat here lest the reader with a scientific background thinks it has been settled once and for all.3
My position cannot be ascribed to any particular school or sub-lineage but represents my own synthesis of phenomenology in the light of modern cognitive science and other traditions focusing on human experience. Phenomenology can also be described as a special type of reflection or attitude about our capacity for being conscious. All reflection reveals a variety of mental contents (mental acts) and their correlated orientation or
[3 For a critique of Dreyfusí take on Husserl see Langsdorf (1985) and also the objections of R. McIntyre (1986). For a recent account of this controversy through a contrast between Fodor and Husserl see J.M. Roy (1995).]
intended contents. Natural or naive attitude assumes a number of received claims about both the nature of the experiencer and its intended objects. The Archimedean point of phenomenology is to suspend such habitual claims and to catalyse a fresh examination. Whence Husserlís famous dictum: ‘Back to the things themselves!’,4 which for him meant -- the opposite of a third-person objectification -- a return to the world as it is experienced in its felt immediacy. It was Husserl’s hope, and still the basic inspiration behind phenomenological research, that a true science of experience would be gradually established which could not only stand on equal footing to the natural sciences, but in fact would give them a needed ground, for all knowledge necessarily emerges from our lived experience.
On the one hand experience is suffused with spontaneous pre-understanding, so that it might seem that all ‘theory’ about it is quite superfluous. But on the other hand this pre-understanding must itself be examined since it is not clear what kind of a knowledge it stands for. Experience demands a specific examination in order to free it from its status as habitual belief. As Merleau-Ponty puts it:
“To return to the things themselves is to return to that world which precedes knowledge, of which knowledge always speaks and in relation to which every scientific schematization is an abstract and derivative sign language, as the discipline of geography would be in relation to a forest, a prairie, a river in the countryside we knew beforehand (M. Merleau-Ponty, 1945, p. ix)."
I insist on bringing to the fore this basic principle of the phenomenological approach since it is often quickly translated into an empirical quest for mental correlates. We need to return repeatedly to this issue since it is only by appreciating its depth that phenomenological bridges can claim to keep a meaningful link to lived experience and to be a remedy for the hard problem. Phenomenology grounds its movement towards a fresh look at experience in a specific gesture of reflection or phenomenological reduction (PhR).5 I need now to unfold the bare bones of this attitude or gesture through which is the habitual way we have to relate to our lived-world changes. This does not require us to consider a different world but rather to consider this present one otherwise. As we said before this gesture changes a naive or unexamined experience into a reflexive or second-order one. Phenomenology correctly insists in this shift from the natural to the phenomenological attitude, since only then the world and my experience appears as open and in need of exploration. The meaning and pragmatics of PhR have taken several variants from this common trunk. It is not my intention to recapitulate them here.6
[5 The reader should resist the temptation to assimilate this usage of the word 'reduction' to that of ‘theoretical reduction’ as it appears for instance in the neuroreductionist framework and well articulated in the writings of P.S. Churchland. The two meanings run completely counter to one another; it is therefore convenient to append a qualifier.
6 For a recent discussion about the varieties of reduction see: R. Bernet (1994), pp. 5ñ36. Husserl’s own first articulation can be found in his breakthrough lectures of 1907 (Husserl, 1962).]
The conscious gesture that is at the base of PhR can be analysed into four intertwined moments or aspects:
(1
) Attitude: reduction The attitude of reduction is the necessary starting point. It can also be defined by its similarities to doubt: a sudden, transient suspension of beliefs about what is being examined, a putting in abeyance our habitual discourse about something, a bracketing of the pre-set structuring that constitutes the ubiquitous background of everyday life. Reduction is self-induced (it is an active gesture), and it does seek to be resolved (dissipating our doubts) since it is here as a source of experience. It is a common mistake to assume that suspending our habitual thinking means stopping the stream of thoughts, which is not possible. The point is to turn the direction of the movement of thinking from its habitual content-oriented direction backwards towards the arising of thoughts themselves. This is no more nor less than the very human capacity for reflexivity, and the life-blood of reduction. To engage in reduction is to cultivate a systematic capacity for reflection on the spot thus opening new possibilities within our habitual mind stream. For instance, right now the reader is very likely making some internal remarks concerning what reduction is, what it reminds her of, and so on. To mobilize an attitude of reduction would begin by noticing those automatic thought-patterns, let them flow away, and turn reflection towards their source.
(2)
Intimacy: intuition The result of reduction is that a field of experience appears both less encumbered and more vividly present as if without the habitual fog separating experiencer and world. As William James saw, the immediacy of experience thus appears surrounded by a diversity of horizons to which we can turn our interest. This gain in intimacy with the phenomenon is crucial, for it is the basis of the criteria of truth in phenomenological analysis, the nature of its evidence. If intimacy or immediacy is the beginning of this process, it continues by a cultivation of imaginary variations, considering in the virtual space of mind multiple possibilities of the phenomenon as it appears. These ideal variations are familiar to us from mathematics, but here they are put into the service of whatever becomes the focus of our analysis: perception of three-dimensional form, the structure of ‘nowness’, the manifestations of empathy, and so on. It is through these multiple variations that a new stage of understanding arises, an ‘Aha!’ experience which adds new evidence that carries a force of conviction. This moving intimacy with our experience corresponds well to what is traditionally referred to as intuition, and represents, along with reflection, the two main human capacities that are mobilized and cultivated in PhR.
(3)
Description: invariants To stop at reduction followed by imaginary variations would be to condemn this method to private ascertainment. The next component is as crucial as the preceding ones: the gain in intuitive evidence must be inscribed or translated into communicable items, usually through language or other symbolic inscriptions (think of sketches or formulae). The materialities of these descriptions however are also a constitutive part of the PhR and shape our experience as much as the intuition that forms them. In other words we are not merely talking about an ‘encoding’ into a public record, but rather of an ‘embodiment’ that incarnates and shapes what we experience. I like to refer to these public descriptions as invariants, since it is through ‘variations that one finds broad conditions under which an observation can be communicable. This is not so different from what mathematicians have done for centuries: the novelty is to apply it to the contents of consciousness.
(4)
Training: stability As with any discipline, sustained training and steady learning are key. A casual inspection of consciousness is a far cry from the disciplined cultivation of PhR. This point is particularly relevant here, for the attitude of reduction is notoriously fragile. If one does not cultivate the skill to stabilize and deepen one’s capacity for attentive bracketing and intuition, as well as the skill for illuminating descriptions, no systematic study can mature. This last aspect of the PhR is perhaps the greatest obstacle for the constitution of a research programme since it implies a disciplined commitment from a community of researchers (more on this below). . . . .
. . . IV: In Conclusion: Consciousness: hard problem or time bomb?
Practically since its inception cognitive science has been committed to a very explicit set of key ideas and metaphors which can be called representationalism, for which the inside-outside distinction is the centre piece: an outside (a feature-full world) represented
[
9 Incidentally, Chalmersí own theoretical fix (or extra ingredient) is his notion of ‘double information’ derived from the old Shannonian theory of signs, incorrectly known as a ‘theory of information’ . In a book which displays such clear intellectual acuity, I was dumbfounded to see that in the end Chalmers argues that the best choice is to revive a cybernetic tradition, largely transformed after its inception into truly informational tools by the work done in computationalist, connectionist or embodiment approaches to cognition, not once discussed by Chalmers in this context. Even assuming the position that an ‘extra ingredient’ is needed, I simply do not see what could possibly be derived from this move, and neither do some of the scientists that have commented on it. See for instance Kochís otherwise rather positive review (Koch, 1996).]
inside through the action of complex perceptual devices. In recent years there has been a slow but sure change towards an alternative orientation, one that I have contributed to and defended for many years (see Varela, 1979; Varela et al., 1991). This orientation differs from representationalism by treating mind and world as mutually overlapping, hence the qualifying terms embodied, situated, or enactive cognitive science.
I cannot elaborate here the current state of embodied cognitive science, but my present proposal concerning the study of consciousness aligns itself with those larger concerns. It seems inescapable to take the trend towards embodiment one step further in the direction of a principled consideration of embodiment as lived experience. In our book (
The Embodied Mind, Varela et al., 1991) we first highlighted the intrinsic circularity in cognitive science wherein the study of mental phenomena is always that of an experiencing person. We claimed that cognitive science cannot escape this circulation, and must cultivate it instead. We explicitly draw from Asian traditions, Buddhism in particular, as living manifestations of an active, disciplined phenomenology. It was not the intention of that book to dwell on Asian traditions per se but to use them as a distant mirror of what we needed to cultivate in our science and the western tradition.
The present proposal takes what was started in that book one step further by concentrating on the key issue of methodology. I hope I have seduced the reader into considering that we have in front of us the possibility of an open-ended quest for resonant passages between human experience and cognitive science. The price however is to take first person accounts seriously as valid domain of phenomena. And beyond that, to build a sustained tradition of phenomenological examination that is almost entirely nonexistent today in our western science and culture at large.
One must take seriously the double challenge my proposal represents. First, it demands a re-learning and a mastery of the skill of phenomenological description. There is no reason why this should be any different from the acquisition of any know-how, like learning to play an instrument or to speak a new language. Anyone who engages in learning, be it in music, language, or thinking, will be bringing forth a change of everyday life. This is what is listed as the fourth item in PhR: sustained, disciplined learning does entail transformation, and so does anything else we do in a sustained mode. This is fine if we reject the assumption (as I do) that there is some kind of well-defined standard for what should count as real or normal experience: experience appears to be inherently open-ended and pliable, and hence there is no contradiction in saying that sustained training in a method can make available aspects of experience that were not available before. The point of PhR is to overcome the habit of automatic introspection among others, and we need not carry with us a mourning for what may be lost, but an interest in what can be learned.10
The second challenge that my proposal represents is that of a call for transforming the style and values of the research community itself. Unless we accept that at this point in intellectual and scientific history some radical re-learning is necessary, we cannot hope to move forward and break the historic cycle rejection-fascination with consciousness in philosophy of mind and cognitive science. My proposal implies that every good student
[
10 H. Dreyfus (1993) in a critical review of our book chided us for emphasizing the transformation that accompanies the learning of phenomenological observation since this itself interferes with ‘everyday experience’. This would be a mistake if one believes that one exposes a ‘deeper layer’ by acquiring some skill such as stable reduction or engaging in a practice such as mindfulness/awareness, which was not at all our claim. Even Dreyfus would have to conclude that there is no privileged vantage point to tell us what counts as ërealí experience. He has plainly misunderstood the main point: phenomenological reduction does not ëuncoverí some objective ground, but it does bring forth new phenomena within the experiential realm, in an unfolding of multiple possibilities.]
of cognitive science who is also interested in issues at the level of mental experience, must inescapably attain a level of mastery in phenomenological examination in order to work seriously with first-person accounts. But this can only happen when the entire community adjusts itself -- with a corresponding change of attitude in relation to acceptable forms of argument, refereeing standards and editorial policies in major scientific journals -- so that this added competence becomes an important dimension for a young researcher. To the long-standing tradition of objectivist science this sounds anathema, and it is. But this is not a betrayal of science: it is a necessary extension and complement. Science and experience constrain and modify each other as in a dance. This is where the potential for transformation lies. It is also the key for the difficulties this position has found within the scientific community. It requires us to leave behind a certain image of how science is done, and to question a style of training in science which is part of the very fabric of our cultural identity. . . . .”
The paper as a whole is available at
https://unstable.nl/andreas/ai/langcog/part3/varela_npmrhp.pdf
.