Why Cognitive Science Needs Phenomenology: Rethinking the Epistemology of Consciousness Through Intuitive Dualism

Summary

This essay argues that intuitive dualism — the natural tendency to treat mind and body as distinct — is an empirical feature of human cognition that must be taken seriously by both philosophers and scientists. Rather than settle metaphysical disputes, the authors show that dualist intuitions emerge early in development, persist into adulthood (even among scientists), and create an epistemic gap between third‑person explanations and first‑person experience. They recommend a methodological shift: prioritise phenomenology and first‑person methods to study consciousness precisely because intuition itself is part of the phenomenon under investigation.

Key Points

Intuitive dualism is widespread: developmental studies show it appears early in infancy and persists across cultures and professions.
Adults, including neuroscientists, often hold a practical epistemological divide between scientific explanations and felt experience.
The ‘hard problem’ reflects an explanatory and conceptual gap: objective accounts of brain activity leave the first‑person ‘what it is like’ unresolved.
Qualia and the sense of self are epistemically necessary first‑person phenomena that shape how we construct the concept of the self.
Fighting or dismissing dualist intuition by argument alone is unlikely to succeed because it is an evolved cognitive tendency.
Phenomenology and first‑person methods (introspection, IPA, descriptive experience sampling, structured interviews) offer concrete tools to study lived experience scientifically.
Integrating phenomenology does not reject neuroscience; it complements third‑person methods by treating subjective experience as legitimate data.

Content Summary

The paper opens by reframing the mind–body debate: rather than ask what is metaphysically true, ask what humans intuitively believe and why that matters for epistemology. Drawing on Paul Bloom’s work and subsequent developmental, survey and qualitative interview studies, the authors document how dualist thinking emerges in infancy and remains robust among adults, including trained scientists. Interviews reveal an epistemological coping strategy where people hold scientific physicalism in theory while retaining felt dualist frameworks in practice.

Philosophically, the authors connect intuitive dualism to the construction of the self and the persistence of qualia: subjective experience is both primary and epistemically necessary. Scientifically, they argue that consciousness differs from other physical properties because understanding it requires an intuitive, first‑person grasp. Consequently, they propose a methodological pivot toward phenomenology — a tradition and set of methods that place lived experience at the centre of inquiry — and list practical approaches for integrating first‑person data with neuroscientific work.

Context and Relevance

This essay is important because it reframes a long‑standing philosophical problem as an empirical and methodological one. In an era of accelerating neuroscience and AI research, recognising that humans have entrenched first‑person intuitions about mind and self changes how we should design experiments, interpret data and communicate findings. For cognitive scientists, philosophers, clinicians and AI researchers, the paper argues that ignoring the phenomenology of experience risks missing what is epistemically central to consciousness research.

It connects to ongoing trends: the renewed interest in embodied/4E cognition, interdisciplinary consciousness studies, and calls for richer qualitative and mixed‑methods approaches in cognitive science. The recommendations are practical — not merely rhetorical — urging the use of established phenomenological techniques alongside brain‑based research.

Author

Punchy: the authors are blunt but constructive — intuitive dualism is real, influential and unavoidable. They don’t propose mysticism; they propose method. This is a clear call to broaden the toolkit of consciousness science rather than to abandon rigorous neuroscience.

Why should I read this?

Short answer: because if you work on mind, brain, AI, therapy or anything that touches human experience, this paper explains why your standard lab measures miss a chunk of the puzzle. It’s not preaching woo — it shows why intuition is a scientific datum and gives usable routes (phenomenological methods) to include first‑person data alongside brains and behaviour. Saves you time: read this to stop treating subjective experience as an annoyance and start treating it as valid evidence.