Phenomenological Approaches to Phenomenal Consciousness and Their Integration

The mind is a conscious mind.Before conducting a physical reduction of the conscious mind,a proper analysis of the explanandum,phenomenal consciousness,is in place.There have been two approaches to explain phenomenal consciousness in the phenomenological tradition.The first approach uses pre-reflective self-awareness to explain phenomenal consciousness and takes Husserl’s analysis of inner time-consciousness as a further disclosure of the internal structure of the phenomenality of consciousness.The second approach uses hyle to explain phenomenal consciousness and takes the analysis of embodiment to supplement the theory of hyle,expanding the kinds of hyletic data.It is,however,showed that phenomenal consciousness consists of two components.The subjective moment and the qualitative moment.The above two approaches can only explain one of the two moments,respectively.Thus,if these two approaches could be integrated into one,then the result would be a complete phenomenological theory of phenomenal consciousness.Compared to other current representational theories,whether it is first-order representationalism,higher-order representationalism,or self-representationalism,the phenomenological theory is superior in that it could avoid the problem of infinite regress,and that it could give an account for the phenomenality of non-representational conscious states.Yet the integration faces two obstacles.First,it is unclear whether all phenomenal consciousness states contain both subjective moment and qualitative moment.Second,the embodiedness of consciousness seems to enjoy a kind of subjectivity by itself already.