The Problems of Consciousness and its Relationship with the World: An Investigation between Philosophy and Neuroscience

The main subject of this dissertation is the relationship of consciousness with the world. Consciousness is extremely familiar and mysterious at the same time, and it is considered one of the most complex phenomena to describe and explain. Recently, cognitive science and neuroscience have assumed a significant role in the search for the fundamental structures of consciousness, investigating the neuronal basis that allows the emergence of our experience. For this reason, the present work is not only aimed at philosophical and phenomenological analysis but also at the latest results of neuroscience on the relationship between consciousness and brain. The first chapter outlines the main topics of contemporary consciousness studies (first-, second-, third-person perspective, the nature of qualia, phenomenal contents, the hard problem and the meta-problem of consciousness, etc.). After presenting a provisional model for the phenomenological (Sartre) and logical (Kripke) structure of consciousness, represented by intentionality, phenomenality and self-awareness (Chapter 2), I will critically discuss reductive approaches that are influential both in neuroscience and in philosophy of mind. Some of them support the possibility to conceptually and ontologically reduce experience to brain activity (neuro-centrism; Chapter 3), while others perform the hypostatization of numerous mental states within the mind/brain (mento-centrism; Chapter 4). In this regard, it is possible to identify a common paradigm, that is, the distinction between reality and appearance that occurred especially during modern philosophy (in particular Descartes) and after the modern scientific revolution (in particular Galilei). This has led to the reduction of experience to a mind- or brain-related quality/property, as we can see nowadays (Chapter 4). Given the perspectival, multifaceted structure of experience and following the analysis of several non-reductive approaches, I will argue for an ontologically and epistemologically pluralist account of consciousness, that it can be developed only through an interdisciplinary approach, by philosophy, phenomenology and neuroscience together (Chapter 5). This will allow me to address the issue of consciousness from the so-called non-reductive neurophilosophical approach, through which I will analyse the way we experience the world from both a phenomenological and a neuroscientific perspective. Supported by Sartre's phenomenological analyses of consciousness in relation to world and body, I argue that experience is not given without the embodied-being-in-the-world condition, a condition that will then be connected to the neuroscientific concept of environment-body-brain alignment (adapted from Northoff’s world-brain relation), that is, a necessary predisposition for the maintenance of consciousness (Chapter 6). In conclusion, the concept of consciousness-in-the-world will be tested through neurophilosophical experiments regarding the Locked-in syndrome and the dreaming state, suggesting the need to reconsider consciousness not merely in terms of brain- or mind-relation, but intrinsically as world-related.