FIRST- AND THIRD-PERSON APPROACHES:
THE PROBLEM OF INTEGRATION
Olga Markič
Faculty of Arts - University of LjubljanaLjubljana, Slovenia
INDECS 10(3), 213-222, 2012 DOI 10.7906/indecs.10.3.1 Full text available here. |
Received: 21 September 2012 |
ABSTRACT
The author discusses the problem of integration of first- and third-person approaches in studying the human mind. She critically evaluates and compares various methodologies for studying and explaining conscious experience. Common strategies that apply reductive explanation seem to be unsatisfied for explaining experience and its subjective character. There were attempts to explain experience from the first-person point of view (introspectionism, philosophical phenomenology) but the results were not intersubjectively verifiable. Dennett proposed heterophenomenology as a scientifically viable alternative which supposed to bridge the gap between first- and third-person perspectives. The author critically evaluates his proposal and compares it to contemporary attempts to provide first-person methods.
KEY WORDS
cognitive science, heterophenomenology, consciousness, experience, explanation
CLASSIFICATION
APA: 2340, 2380
JEL: D83, D84, Z10