Neurophenomenology and Contemplative Experience

Introduction Scientific investigation of the mind, known since the nineteen-seventies as 'cognitive science', is an interdisciplinary field of research comprising psychology, neuroscience, linguistics, computer science, artificial intelligence, and philosophy of mind. The presence of philosophy in this list is telling. Cognitive science, although institutionally well established, is not a theoretically settled field, unlike molecular biology or high-energy physics. Rather, it includes a variety of competing research programmes-the computational theory of mind (also known as classical cognitive science), connectionism, and dynamical and embodied approaches-whose underlying conceptions of mentality and its relation to biology, on the one hand, and to culture, on the other, are often strikingly different (see Clark, 2001, for a useful overview). It is important to keep this situation in mind in any discussion of the relation between cognitive science and religion, for different theoretical perspectives in cognitive science can combine with different scientific approaches to religion. Rather than review these possibilities here, however, I shall describe one recent approach, known as neurophenomenology (Lutz and Thompson, 2003; Varela, 1996). Although neurophenomenology is not directly concerned with the cognitive science of religion, it is highly relevant to this field, especially the psychology and biology of religious experience. Neurophenomenology is an offshoot of the embodied approach in cognitive science (Varela, Thompson, and Rosch, 1991). The central idea of the embodied approach is that cognition is the exercise of skillful know-how in situated action. The most important feature of this approach is that experience is not seen as an epiphenomenon, but is considered central to any adequate understanding of the mind, and accordingly needs to be investigated in a careful phenomenological manner. Phenomenology and experimental cognitive science are thus seen as complementary and mutually informing modes of investigation. Neurophenomenology builds on this view with the specific aim of understanding the nature of consciousness and subjectivity, and their relation to the brain and body. The working hypothesis of neurophenomenology is that phenomenological accounts of the structure of human experience and scientific accounts of cognitive processes can be mutually The term 'phenomenology' in this context refers to disciplined, first-person ways of investigating and analyzing experience, as exemplified by the Western philosophical tradition of Phenomenology (Moran, 2000) and Asian contemplative philosophies, especially (though not exclusively) Buddhism. The reason the Buddhist tradition is particularly relevant in this context is that its cornerstone is contemplative mental training and critical phenomenological and philosophical analysis of the mind based …