On the nature and role of Consciousness: is it time to move towards a metaphilosophical and metascientific approach?

Abstract

The main aim of this paper is to support a metaphilosophical and metascientific approach to the study of Consciousness.After a brief historical resume of the debate between the mind-brain-body relationship, we discuss how the apparently irreducible contention between a physicalist and an anti-physicalist interpretation of Consciousness can be overcome by a metaphilosophic and metascientific approach in the attempt to overcome ethnocentric cultural filters and constraints yielded by the Weltanschauung and the Zeitgeist one belongs to. IN fact, a metaphilosophical perspective can help to recognize key concepts and meanings common to different philosophies beyond their formal differences and different modes of theorization, where the common field of reflection is aimed to find the problem’s unity in the multiplicity of forms. Likewise, the metascientific approach, such as the anthropic principle adopted in astrophysics, helps overcoming the problems of indecidability of single axiomatic disciplines.A metaphilosophical and metascientific approach seems appropriate in the study of consciousness and subjective phenomena, since the first-person perspective and the meaning of the experience are the condition sine qua non for their proper understanding.