Kazimierz Rynkiewicz What can philosophy tell us today? A phenomenological consideration of achievements in cognitive science

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In the real world, there are various ontological spaces with different epistemic approaches. Natural sciences cannot answer every conceivable question unconditionally.

Even if the scientific results have a strong influence on the field of science through their empirically shaped evidence, they cannot hermeneutically go beyond the logical and the ontic. Rather, natural sciences require a methodological framework that can be traced back to the achievements of the humanities.

Philosophy as a universal science plays a special role in this. In this way, philosophy, especially, in the guise of phenomenology, can methodically verify the achievements of cognitive science. The author deploys the term “retroactive phenomenology” to mark the shift from “Husserlian phenomenology” to a “new phenomenology” based on the assumption that the scientific process allows us to relate creatively and retrospectively from the phenomenological entities (such as transcendental reduction) to the real world. In this way, the neutrality of the real world required by Husserl is abolished in the context of the so-called lifeworld.

The targeted use of “retroactive phenomenology” ensures an epistemic and a cognitive science balance. That would be determined in the sense of Wittgenstein´s assertation that the whole of reality is only the world. This includes all experiences of consciousness. Otherwise, the whole of reality would not exist. Ultimately, the focus is on the question of the epistemic way of dealing with being, which fundamentally underpins every gender debate.