Epistemic Categories (Poster)
Researcher: Ulisses Scholsser
INTRODUCTION
How would it be possible to constitute appropriate epistemological foundations for the research of the phenomena of consciousness? This perspective would need a basis capable of including a rather broad phenomenological spectrum. Somehow, this spectrum should include cognitive phenomena in general, altered states of consciousness, extra-sensory perception, and many others. Most likely, the epistemological basis of the science of consciousness is related to the roots of the primary construction of knowledge that enables the emergence of the very phenomenon
of consciousness.
“EPISTEMIC CATEGORY” is proposed here as a noetic concept encompassing hypothetical and functional elements in an attempt to identify the most elementary, indispensable and generating categories of knowledge of the phenomenon of consciousness.
Most categories initially identified are already known in philosophy and science. The challenge is to re-examine the relevance of the already-known categories and verify if there are more categories in the same condition.
OBJECTIVE
This investigation proposes the identification of categories of phenomena indispensable for the constitution of primary types of knowledge, supposedly part of what is thought to be the consciousness.
The relevance is the possibility of establishing a common research base for the phenomena that are currently treated in different areas such as extra-sensory perception, cognitive sciences, and phenomenology itself, among others.
CRITERIA FOR EPISTEMIC STRUCTURING
1. The identification of epistemic units (e.g., the mental image).
2. Criteria for forming the epistemic category.
THE PERSPECTIVE OF RESEARCH INTEGRATION THROUGH THE “EPISTEMIC ANALYTICAL”
The possibility of investigating epistemic categories leads to the search for the epistemic taxon, the element of concrete existence in the structure of consciousness. In this way, the epistemological investigation can create an ontological and taxological matrix. Such scientific guidance through an integrated analysis seems to have the potential to signal priority problems in the research of consciousness’s manifestation and knowledge.
This work was presented at The Science of Consciousness 2018, in Tuscon, Arizona, USA.
