Phenomenological Claims and the Myth of the Given

Over the past twenty years, Husserlian phenomenology has increasingly drawn the attention of the cognitive community, thereby leading to the emergence of what might be called a phenomenological trend within contemporary cognitive studies. What this phenomenological trend really amounts to is however a matter of debate. The reason is that it embodies, in fact, a multifaceted reflection about the relevance of Husserlian phenomenology to the current efforts towards a scientific theory of cognition, and, to a lesser degree, about the reciprocal relevance of these efforts to the fate of the Husserlian tradition. Indeed, it covers a wide array of perspectives on these questions, ranging from tentative demonstrations of the cognitively misleading character of Husserl's ideas, inasmuch as they would incarnate the same foundational errors as cognitivism (Hall and Dreyfus 1982), to diametrically opposed views arguing that the naturalist bent of contemporary cognitive science is ill-conceived, and that only the brand of transcendentalism defended by Husserl can provide it with adequate foundations (cf., for instance, Villela-Petit 1999).