Beyond the strategy of ignorance

How and what can benefit cognitive linguistics from phenomenology?

Abstract

The aim of this paper is twofold: on the one hand I aim to demonstrate the benefits that cognitive linguistics can have from a phenomenological contemplation; on the other I would like to demonstrate that in spite of the anti-philosophical attitude of the naturalizing cognitive sciences, a phenomenological reflection on the subject and the methods of cognitive linguistic research can provide numerous considerations which can help us to avoid both the problematic theoretical presuppositions (e.g. reductionism or the problem of isolated minds) and the conflation of the research field of cognitive linguistics with other fields in cognitive science. To make the case for choosing phenomeonology as one of the metatheories of cognitive linguistics I investigate the problem of representation and metaphor in standard cognitive science and in cognitive linguistics. The phenomenological discussion of the process of cognition has several theoretical insights about the status of the experience and the subject, the meaningfulness of perception, the situatedness of experiencing the phenomenal world, the central significance of meaning as a constitutional pattern, and the implicit horizon of intersubjectivity. The paper dwells on the methodological consequences of these insights too.