A Non-Reductive Account Of Cognitive Phenomenology

Cognitive phenomenology is a frontier topic of modern western philosophy of mind,which takes cognitive experience as its subject.Under the background of deep exploration of the nature of consciousness and the trend of the fusion of philosophy of mind and phenomenology,it seems fair to say that we need have respectable grip on how to fully explain conscious experience.In contrast with the amount of attention that has been devoted to perceptual experience,cognitive experience has been ignored during the analysis of conscious experience.While cognitive phenomenology emphasizes the nature and phenomenal aspect of cognitive experience,especially paying special attention to its phenomenal character.Specifically,there are three central questions at issue in debates about cognitive phenomenology.The existence question is about whether cognition has its own distinctive phenomenology.The reduction question refers to the explanation of relationship between perceptual phenomenology and cognitive phenomenology.The intentionality question focuses on how to connect phenomenal character with intentional character.It is often assumed that these questions are related to reduction question,therefore it have a respectable grip on cognitive phenomenology.According to different notion of phenomenal character,restrictivism endows that phenomenal character has been exhausted by perception,it means that only perceptive states have phenomenal character and constitutes a primitive phenomenology of perception.Expansionism extends the phenomenal character from perception to cognition and supports phenomenal character of cognitive states.This divergence are mainly reflected on question of reduction from cognitive phenomenology to perceptual phenomenology.Within this debate,the non-reductive explanation allege a distinctive,proprietary,and individuate kind of cognitive phenomenology by considering the relationship between conscious thinking and phenomenal characters,phenomenal character and intentional character,and focusing on the three domains of phenomenological consciousness,phenomenal character and phenomenal intentionality.The non-reductive explanation firstly introduces the most straightforward argumentof cognitive experience involves a direct appeal to introspection.But the unreliability of introspective reports weakens its own persuasion.Secondly,the phenomenal contrast argument take phenomenal difference from the actual mental state as their starting point.There are three forms of situation which can be illustrated by pure phenomenal contrast,hypothetical phenomenal contrast and glossed phenomenal contrast.Since perceptual phenomenology cannot clarify the phenomenal difference of the same perceptual experience,it infers to a logical space for of cognitive phenomenology.Thirdly,phenomenal intentionality is a kind of intentionality combining phenomenal character and intentional character,and it entails that the intentional content ground cognitive experience by virtue of phenomenal character.Finally,it may be a possible approach to construct cognitive phenomenology which is based on the concepts and methods of traditional phenomenology,the phenomenological body in embodied cognition,and the methodological integration towards the life world.As unity of consciousness,Cognitive phenomenology emphasis the importance of cognitive experience,and meanwhile it shows a multiple implications.On the one hand,it can be a new theoretical framework to enlightening the hard problem of consciousness,symbol grounding problem of artificial intelligence,body consciousness and self-consciousness.On the other hand,it can be a new mode of understanding to promote further application in phenomenology of attention and emotion.