Phenomenology of Life from the Animal Soul to the Human Mind

Abstract

Transcendental phenomenology presumed to have overcome the classic mind-body dichotomy in terms of consciousness, yet, according to progress in scientific studies, the biological functions of the brain seem to appropriate significant functions attributed traditionally to consciousness. Should we indeed dissolve the specificity of human consciousness by explaining human experience in its multiple sense-giving modalities through the physiological functions of the brain? The present collection of studies addresses this crucial question challenging such "naturalizing" reductionism from multiple angles. In search for the roots of "The Specifically Human Experience" (Bombala), moving along the line of "Animality and Intellection"(Gosetti-Ferencei), "Naturalistic Attitude and Personalistic Attitude"(Villela-Petit), and numerous other perspectives, we arrive at a novel proposal to explain the scholar functional differentiation of conscious modalities. We reach their source in the ontopoietic thread conducting the Logos of Life in its stepwise "Evolutive Unfolding"(Carmen Cozma), and in "sentience" as its quintessential core of further irreducible continuity (Tymieniecka) dispelling dichotomies and reductionisms.Papers by: Grahame Lock, Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, Daniela Verducci, Ted Toadvine, Mary Trachsel, Martin Holt, Mary Jeanne Larrabee, Leszek Pyra, Bronislaw Bombala, Konrad Rokstad, Ilja Maso, Nancy Mardas, Jennifer Anna Gosetti-Ferencei, Maria Villela-Petit, Mara Stafecka, Carmen Cozma, Francesco Totaro, Andreas Brenner, Sinan Kadir Celik, Osvaldo Rossi, Maria Manuela Brinto Martins, Elga Freiberga, Klymet Selvi, J.C. Couciero-Bueno, Patricia Trutty-Coohill, Walter Lammi, Ljudmila Molodkina, Martin Nkafu Nkemnkia.