Description
Experience of Absence
Book Summary
This work offers a profound critique of the limitations of scientific thought in addressing the totality of human experience. The author explores the pre-reflective dimension of consciousness, that stratum of lived experience that escapes conceptual representation and the normative typifications of science. Through a rigorous analysis, it is demonstrated how disciplines such as neuroscience fail in their attempt to exclusively capture the richness of experience, proposing instead a necessary interdisciplinary dialogue as the only way to understand the original horizon of meaning.
What is it about?
The book delves into the insufficiency of the contemporary scientific paradigm for studying human experience in its totality. The author maintains that there exists a fundamental stratum of lived experience, a pre-reflective horizon, that resists being captured by the experimental methods and laws that govern current science. It is argued that neuroscience, by arrogating to itself the exclusive right to study experience, fails repeatedly in its attempt. The proposed solution is not to abandon science, but to foster an interdisciplinary dialogue that allows access to that horizon of original meaning, integrating perspectives from philosophy, art theory, and epistemology.
Main Topics
- Critique of scientific reductionism in the study of consciousness.
- The pre-reflective dimension of human experience.
- The limits of neuroscience in explaining subjectivity.
- The need for an interdisciplinary dialogue between science, philosophy, and art.
- The metaphysics and ontology of experience.
Who is it recommended for?
It is aimed at readers interested in the philosophy of mind, epistemology, and the critique of scientism. It is especially relevant for students and professionals of philosophy, the human sciences, critical neuroscience, and art theory. It will also be of great interest to those seeking a rigorous reflection on the limits of scientific knowledge and the nature of subjective experience.
What this book offers
- A well-founded critique of the exclusivist pretensions of neuroscience regarding the study of the mind.
- A philosophical exploration of the pre-reflective dimension of experience, often ignored by science.
- A proposal for interdisciplinary dialogue as a tool for understanding the complexity of consciousness.
- An analysis that connects philosophy, art theory, and epistemology with current debates on the mind.
Data Sheet
- Author: Alonso Cano, Oriol
- Publisher: Anthropos Editorial
- Language: Spanish
- Topic: Art theory, literary essays, philosophy, metaphysics and ontology, epistemology and theory of knowledge, clinical neurology and neurophysiology
- Collection: Philosophy
- Binding: Paperback
- Publication Date: August 2015
- Number of pages: 320
- Weight: 384 g
Editorial Review
This is a work of great intellectual solidity that addresses a fundamental debate in contemporary philosophy of mind. Its value lies in the clarity with which it exposes the paradoxes of scientific reductionism and in the defense of a pluralistic approach to understanding experience. It is an indispensable read for those seeking rigorous arguments against neurocentrism and an opening to other forms of knowledge, such as the philosophical and the artistic.