Social Sciences in China (Chinese Edition)

No.6, 2014

How Contemporary Philosophy Confronts the Problem of Consciousness in Cognitive Science

(Abstract)

Liu Xiaoli

In the course of the development of cognitive science, philosophy has played an indispensable role in laying a foundation for the establishment and revision of the cognitive science research program and in scrutinizing and criticizing it. In this way it has advanced the progress of the first and second generations of cognitive science. At the same time, empirical research in cognitive science has given rise to extensive and profound debates between philosophy of mind and cognitive science, debates that have spawned not only a number of new philosophical forms, including physicalism and neo-dualism, but also such directions as naturalist philosophy, naturalized phenomenology, neuroethics and experimental philosophy. It has had a significant impact on the discipline’s basic conceptual structure, problem domain and research methods. The many complex conflicts encountered by contemporary philosophy in solving “the problem of consciousness” and the “explanatory gap” highlight the great challenge cognitive science presents to philosophical formation.