Mind, Body and Consciousness: A Perspective on Husserlian Phenomenology

Abstract

Husserl's motivation for philosophising stems from his concern with the incompleteness of knowledge claims made by the "positive sciences". By positive sciences, he means the empirical sciences that construe the world of reality exclusively in terms of facts without considering how they are constituted. He thus wishes to supplement our understanding of the world derived from the positive sciences with the "rigorous science" of phenomenology, thereby grounding facts themselves in our experience of them. The paper attempts to portray Husserl's conception of mind, body, and consciousness as Husserlian Phenomenology finds the understanding offered by the positive sciences, such as Psychology and Physiology, inadequate to grasp the phenomenon of Consciousness and its manifestation in human beings through mind and body. Husserl's discussion of the ego and consciousness in Ideas I emphasises the notion of "pure consciousness" that has been given to certain misgivings about phenomenology as endorsing absolute idealism. Ideas II focuses on the constitution of "material nature" and the "psychic reality" through the body. Lastly, the Crisis text brings the realm of the "life-world" in relation to the positive sciences and argues for retaining the first-person intersubjective experiences for an adequate understanding of the phenomena of mind and conscious-ness.