Abstract

In recent years, we have witnessed a renewed interest in phenomenological approaches to the study of the mind. Since neuroscience must still rely on phenomenological reports to tackle the problem of consciousness, the phenomenological approaches are introduced as a methodological remedy in the study of the mind. Two principles underlie such approaches: to exploit the heuristic value of phenomenological descriptions, and the need for mutual constraints between such descriptions and scientific evidence in theory construction. To fulfill this project, a central question is to understand how phenomenology can be naturalized. According to some researchers, the naturalization of phenomenology could only be achieved by means of a mathematization of the phenomenological descriptions. However, in this study it will be shown that mathematization is a form of theory reduction that is unable to adequately account for the two principles underlying the phenomenological approaches. In contrast with mathematization, we put forward an alternative framework for naturalizing phenomenology based on interfield theories: a non-reductionist model of interfield integration.