ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the hypothesis that phenomenology can provide functional constraints on explanatory mechanistic models in cognitive science. The argument is based on a new functionalist reading of Husserlian phenomenology. A functional-computational interpretation of Husserlian phenomenology was coined in the discussion between Hubert Dreyfus and Ronald McIntyre. This interpretation, it is argued, has several shortcomings, including not addressing the notion of function in Husserl. That notion evolved in Husserl’s works from a mathematical-procedural to a phenomenological-constitutive conception of function, introduced together with the idea of “functional phenomenology” in the first book of Ideas. The new functionalist interpretation of phenomenology relies on the similarities between phenomenological analyses of constitutive functions and the functional explanatory strategy called functional analysis. In particular, both approaches employ the explanatory strategy of decomposition. This reading opens a new way toward naturalization, that is, integrating phenomenology with cognitive science, in particular with the mechanistic explanatory framework.
