Husserlian Meditations and Anthropological Reflections: Toward a Cultural Neurophenomenology of Experience and Reality

Summary

The article argues that the gap between subjective experience and objective reality, a longstanding puzzle in Western philosophy, can be addressed through a new approach called cultural neurophenomenology. This method combines phenomenology that accounts for cultural differences in perception with neuroscience findings about brain structure. The authors contend that virtually all human societies recognize a distinction between everyday events and hidden forces, and their proposed framework offers a generative path to understanding this relationship from an anthropological perspective.

Study at a glance

Abstract

ABSTRACTMost of us would agree that the world of our experience is different than the extramental reality of which we are a part. Indeed, the evidence pertaining to cultural cosmologies around the globe suggests that virtually all peoples recognize this distinction—hence the focus upon the “hidden” forces behind everyday events. That said, the struggle to comprehend the relationship between our consciousness and reality, even the reality of ourselves, has led to controversy and debate for centuries in Western philosophy. In this article, we address this problem from an anthropological perspective and argue that the generative route to a solution of the experience–reality “gap” is by way of an anthropologically informedcultural neurophenomenology. By this we mean a perspective and methodology that applies a phenomenology that controls for cultural variation in perception and interpretation, coupled with the latest information from the neurosciences about how the organ of experience—the brain—is structured.