THE PROBLEM OF TIME FROM TWO PERSPECTIVES:

THE OUTLINES OF EDMUND HUSSERL’S PHENOMENOLOGY AND FRANCISCO VARELA’S NEUROPHENOMENOLOGY

Abstract

Since ancient times the problem of time has concentrated efforts of the most diverse philosophical traditions and has been formulated and approached in multiple ways. Among these formulations and approaches is the famous phenomenology of time inaugurated by Husserl in the dawn of the twentieth century. From the turn of the twenty-first century, this phenomenology was included in a broad and growing approach to the cognitive sciences. In this context, this inclusion is justified by two internally articulated reasons: on the one hand, according to Shaun Gallagher and Dan Zahavi, Husserl has adequately formulated and also provided an appropriate response line to the time problem, avoiding a number of difficulties. in which other formulations and approaches incur, and, on the other hand, his descriptions of the dynamics of the tripartite structure of internal time consciousness are consistent with the dynamics of neurophysiological processes that underlie time experience, as identified by Francisco Varela's neurophenomenology. The general objective of this paper is to reconstruct the two lines of justification for the inclusion of Husserl's phenomenology in the cognitive sciences. More specifically, this reconstruction consists in initially presenting the difficulties that orbit the problem of time according to other formulations and approaches, and which are confronted by Husserl with the recognition of the tripartite structure of the internal consciousness of time, and then presenting it from a neurophenomenological perspective. The interpretative hypothesis defended in this paper is that the neurophenomenological approach to the time problem implies the opening of a set of questions and potential ontologically important consequences.