Page 130 - Contribution To Phenomenology

CONNECTIONISMAND PHENOMENOLOGY 123

given to us with some specific import and significance to each of us as
the subject of that state. Indeed, this immediate and complete givenness
of the thought to me as the bearer of this thought is what makes it
mine, and the positing of the "me" as the bearer of the thought implies
in itself nothing other than the fact that there is some consciousness for
whom this intention is the intention that it is (and that I am this
consciousness).
Thus when we talk about the mental (das Psychische), the mind
(Husserl often uses the traditional term "5ee/e"), or consciousness, we are
talking about a realm that is accessible to us through a completely
different means than those through which we study the brain, not to
mention the processing systems for humanly constructed expert systems.
As such, it is a completely independent realm, the argument goes, and
thus must be studied in a completely different manner, which is not
subject to confirmation or verification by any empirical means regarding
external objects, including the behavior of human beings as existing
objects in the world. So or along similar lines might an argument be
advanced that could be modelled on Husserl's refutation of psychologism
in the "Prolegomena" to the Logical Investigations and his critique of
naturalism in "Philosophy as a Rigorous Science." In fact, one might
argue that the whole point of phenomenology is to establish an approach
that would be immune to the vagaries of empirical science—so what
could cognitive science have to offer to Phenomenology?
My first response would be that Connectionism is above all a way of
thinking about things. The extent to which it should be accepted as a
model for what happens in the life of the mind will depend upon what
one thinks about mental life itself. Interest in Connectionism need not
imply the beUef that neurological research or the success in constructing
network-based expert systems automatically tells us something about
human cognition. Instead, for a Phenomenology of mental Ufe, Connec-
tionism offers a number of interesting questions and new approaches that
cannot overturn or substitute for phenomenological evidence, but present
us with interesting and new questions and ways of interpreting phenomen-
ological Befunde. Since at least some of what we think of as mental life
is famihar to us most directly and indubitably in our phenomenological
apprehension of it (even before any systematic development of a
phenomenological method as such), the Phenomenology of mental life