Recent work in Naturalized Phenomenology

Jeffrey Yoshimi (University of California, Merced)

Abstract: Phenomenology is the study of the world as it appears to consciousness, the world as it is "given".  Phenomenology emerged as an explicit field of study in the early 1900s (though it has ancient roots). About 30 years ago phenomenologists started collaborating with cognitive scientists. This has come to be known as naturalized phenomenology or neurophenomenology. In the talk I'll survey some of my own work in naturalized phenomenology. I'll begin with an account of the relationship between the structure of consciousness and the parallel structure of the neural activity that supports it. Second, I'll describe how the dynamics of consciousness can be linked with the dynamics of neural activity using computer simulations and visualizations. I'll end by discussing how recent work in deep learning and hierarchical reinforcement learning could inform naturalized phenomenology.