A defense of neurophenomenology against the hard problem of consciousness

The hard problem of consciousness is one of the most fundamental problems of the philosophy of mind. The problem, introduced by David Chalmers reformulates René Descartes' mind-body problem from within a physicalist paradigm and addresses the epistemological and ontological challenges faced by the physicalist paradigm, which attempts to reduce conscious experience to a physical and functional structure. While there are different theoretical and methodological approaches addressing this problem, from a broad perspective, monist theories usually attempt to give an eliminative and reductionist explanation of consciousness, while dualist theories accepting the reality and irreducibility of consciousness, are mostly silent about the methodological implications of this irreducibility. The enactive approach, which has emerged as a new paradigm in cognitive sciences, offers a conception of embodied consciousness as an alternative to the "brain-centered" approaches in cognitive sciences, while simultaneously problematizing the presuppositions that give rise to the hard problem of consciousness and endeavoring to undermine this problem. The enactive approach, which establishes the possession of an embodied autonomous organization as a criterion for being a living being, affirms the indispensability of experiential structures for the emergence and sustenance of this organization. These structures cannot be regarded independently from it; rather, they can only be elucidated through a phenomenological comprehension. The hard problem of consciousness is reformulated as the body-body problem, in which there is no ontological gap, as a result of this conception called by Evan Thompson called "the life-mind contunuity". Francisco Varela implicitly indicates a continuity between neurophenomenology and the alternative conception of embodied consciousness proposed by the enactive approach through the notion of "remedy" he emphasizes in his proposal of the methodological remedy that neurophenomenology offers for the hard problem of consciousness, which constitutes the research topic of this dissertation. The preceding analysis indicates that the integration of neuroscience and phenomenology, as exemplified by the reciprocal constraints posited by neurophenomenology in response to the hard problem of consciousness, is not designed to bridge between the two fields with the aim of closing the ontological gap between conscious experience and its physical grounding as proposed by Chalmers. Rather, it is a methodologically inevitable consequence of the enactive approach's conception of embodied consciousness. While the conception of embodied consciousness situated at the center of neurophenomenology does not elevate it to the status of an unproblematic methodology, it does allow it to preserve and maintain its structure within the context of its initial objectives.