I agree with you. I'm not sure that everyone experiences fear in the same way, or whether certain nuances of bodily sensation become available only as people become more aware of their own experience.
That was certainly the case for me. I used to experience these emotional states as a general sense of unease, together with a tendency to act in certain ways, while becoming very caught up in the thoughts that accompanied those states. Over time, I began to realize that much of this unease seemed to be bodily in nature.
When I describe these experiences, my goal is not to claim that everyone experiences them identically, but rather to look for possible invariants in experience and see whether they can be validated intersubjectively.
My background probably explains why I'm so interested in these questions. I was trained in philosophy and spent many years practicing Buddhism, but both my master's and PhD are in psychobiology (behavioral neuroscience).
So my main interest lies precisely in the dialogue between phenomenology, neuroscience, and cognitive science. I see them as complementary perspectives.
Phenomenology can reveal aspects of lived experience that neuroscience cannot access directly, while neuroscience can illuminate non-conscious processes that phenomenology alone cannot describe. To me, the most interesting work happens where these approaches begin to inform one another.
Thank you for this exchange! I really hope this can lead to more discussions like this within the community. My goal isn't simply to publish articles, but to encourage meaningful dialogue around these ideas.
I agree with you. I'm not sure that everyone experiences fear in the same way, or whether certain nuances of bodily sensation become available only as people become more aware of their own experience.
That was certainly the case for me. I used to experience these emotional states as a general sense of unease, together with a tendency to act in certain ways, while becoming very caught up in the thoughts that accompanied those states. Over time, I began to realize that much of this unease seemed to be bodily in nature.
When I describe these experiences, my goal is not to claim that everyone experiences them identically, but rather to look for possible invariants in experience and see whether they can be validated intersubjectively.
My background probably explains why I'm so interested in these questions. I was trained in philosophy and spent many years practicing Buddhism, but both my master's and PhD are in psychobiology (behavioral neuroscience).
So my main interest lies precisely in the dialogue between phenomenology, neuroscience, and cognitive science. I see them as complementary perspectives.
Phenomenology can reveal aspects of lived experience that neuroscience cannot access directly, while neuroscience can illuminate non-conscious processes that phenomenology alone cannot describe. To me, the most interesting work happens where these approaches begin to inform one another.
Thank you for this exchange! I really hope this can lead to more discussions like this within the community. My goal isn't simply to publish articles, but to encourage meaningful dialogue around these ideas.
I appreciate your approach and I understand how your training informs it in a way that is rare.