Analysis and Critique of Different Approaches to the Problem of Consciousness in the Cartesian-European Tradition and Phenomenology

The approach of Descartes and his subsequent philosophical tradition to consciousness did have epistemological consequences. The distinction between subject and object, and the question of how the mind and body relate, the entanglement of the mind in its ideas that led to the problem of “egocentric predicament,” the problem of the identity of the perceptual object, skepticism, and the issue of valuation regarding the gap between the mind and the object are some consequences of this approach. Consequently, alternative approaches have been proposed by philosophers to avoid such consequences. Among these approaches is phenomenology with the narratives of Husserl, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty. Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology with its intentionality, Heidegger’s doctrine of “being-in-the-world” and Merleau-Ponty’s idea of conscious bodies tried to explain the mechanism and characteristics of consciousness. The present article seeks to examine the problems of the Cartesian-European epistemological system, to show how to deal with these problems, and finally to analyze and critique the characteristics of each approach to see whether these alternative approaches could have managed to solve these problems or not.