Investigating The First-Person Methodologies Of Consciousness Studies

The sense of awareness of consciousness is a reality that human beings are most intimately acquainted with and cannot be questioned,but this reality is a kind of subjectivity.And it is this subjectivity that makes the studies and understandings of consciousness inevitably take a first-person perspective.Compared with the objectified or objective third-person methods which has been fully developed in the history of science and has been highly revered,however,the first-person studies of consciousness has been slowly gaining the legality in the scientific community only in the last 20 to 30 years with the establishment of the consciousness science.Based on the development history of consciousness science for the last 2 to 3 decades,this dissertation tries to systematically investigate the multiple aspects of the first-person methodology of consciousness studies.First of all,this article discusses why the studies about the first-person methodology of consciousness science is necessary?Due to the subjectivity of conscious experience,consciousness science encountered an obstacle right from the start,which is so called"Hard Problem".The "Explanatory Gap" between the first-and third-person perspectives caused by hard problem,makes the consciousness science face a methodological problem,even in spite of ontology of consciousness(that is,the mind-body problem).In fact,we must first give a clear and appropriate description of what the conscious experience is(that is,the type,structure and content of the experience)before consciousness science's trying confirm the relevant observable physical realities(which may either be neuronal or quantum)of conscious experience.Usually,scientific methods require a subjective and intersubjective verifiable repeatability for the experiments,observations,descriptions and analyses of the physical events.However,when it comes to conscious experience,we need to rely on the subjects to self-disclose and report their experiences.If the observations of physical events are considered to be the third-person,by contrast,this self-disclose and report of experience should be the first-person.Psychology,phenomenology and cognitive science all need to rely on a good first-person method in order to better study the states of consciousness.Therefore,one basic part of the consciousness science is to defend and make arguments for the first-person methods systematically.The writings of the remaining chapters are according to the following four aspects:(1)The theoretical basis of first-person methods for consciousness.Since the first-person methods are about self-disclose and report of experience,the problem that how self-disclose and report of experience could be possible or what's the foundation of doing so will need to be answered.?In the second chapter,to response to this problem theoretically,we investigate related theories of consciousness structure,such as"reflection","attention","unconsciousness","self-awareness" and so on.We believe that,as a characteristic of consciousness,the single level "self-awareness" provides a foundation for self-disclose of experience from the view point of consciousness structure.In this regard,the mind theories of Buddhist tradition and its theories of"svasamvedana","svasamvedana-pratyaksa",and "yoga-pratyaksa" also provide us with abundant theory resources.(2)The types of first-person methods and its corresponding problems.What are the kinds of first-person methods?How to carry out the first-person methods?What difficulties exist in the practice of them?In the third chapter,we mainly investigate the introspection of psychology,phenomenological reduction and epoche(suspend),Buddhist meditation practice and second-person interview skills;and try to clarify the specific procedures of these methods,as well as discusses the difficulties in the practical operations.For example,Varela used the model of "Becoming Aware" to describe the operation procedure of "suspend";we also try to clarify the operational model of"Samatha" and "vipasyana" which are the most general paradigms of Buddhist meditation.(3)The problem of the validity of first-person reports.As a scientific method,we need to defend the availability of the first-person reports;and how to evaluate its scientific validity,namely,its validity,stability and accuracy?In the fourth chapter,firstly,we defend the availability of the first-person reports.The phenomenology's "life world" as well as the social and cultural understandings of cognition from the post-modernism approach has broken the "solipsism" taboo of consciousness studies-our mind is essentially a prior of intersubjectivity.Secondly,after Thoms Kuhn,there is no absolute neutral observation,the validity of knowledge has been changed from a "no-subject"objectivity to the "performative consistency".Plus the repeatability and public accessible of a same type of experience and experience reports,the validation of the first-person reports can be established.In addition,we need to provide more means to promote the accuracy of expression,such as researchers need to own a second-person perspective which should be familiar with the operating procedures of methods and their experiences;design a good question list to promote the descriptions;reduce the experimental deviations,as well as implement the "intersubjective-neural-phenomenological" mutual verification of data,etc.(4)The application,present situation and prospect of first-person methods.In the fifth chapter,we show that by using the first-person specialized knowledge,the neuroscience research of meditation and neurophenomenology could be better used to study the neural correlates of experience.In the sixth chapter,we briefly compare and evaluate different kind of first-person methods,and summarize the present situations and future trends of the research in this field.The rising of first-person methodological research of consciousness science was embedded in an interdisciplinary(philosophy and science)and cross-culture(eastern and western)background.In this dissertation,although we try to construct a comprehensive framework,there are still many details need to be added.The future study space of the first-person methodology of consciousness science will be vast.