Embodied Consciousness and Naturalized Phenomenology

The paper investigates a movement in contemporary phenomenology and cognitive science seeking to strengthen interdisciplinary cooperation between the two. By carefully studying constitutive role of the living body (Leib) for consciousness and cognition, authors like Varela, Thompson, Gallagher and Zahavi are developing a new research paradigm to overcome, in an original way, the traditional mind-body dualism. First I will present the 4E turn in cognitive science with respect to the problem of mind-body dualism. Next, I will present Husserl's dualistic argument about the essential distinction between the mode of being of consciousness, and the mode of being of world: the core of Husserl's transcendental method. In the third part I will explain how contemporary enactivist and phenomenological conception of the living body represents the way to overcome ontological dualism between consciousness and world, as well as between the former and the body, and replace dualism with the idea of co-constitution of embodied consciousness and world. Finally, I explore to what extent this idea requires naturalization of phenomenology and defend Husserl's epistemological dualism.