Phenomenology (philosophy) and psychobiology (science) in the current study of the mind

The current study of the mind integrates areas of knowledge that are different in terms of, for example, origin and content, namely, philosophy, medicine, biology, and psychology, as well as their contemporary specialties. This fact contributes to the lack of clarity and precision regarding the meaning of the concepts, which delays progress on this issue. Thus, for example, certain works take the concepts of self-subject-soul-spirit as historical synonyms for the current concept of mind, giving rise to a kind of semantic magma, without rigorous internal limits of meaning, and nourished, moreover, with the qualities immaterial and even immortal. In addition to this, we also found analogies, teleological-evolutionary explanations, experiments in psychology whose conclusions are ambiguous, and biological simplifications. In this study, we argue that all of this leads to a confrontation, unnecessary for the intended objectives, between philosophical tradition and innovation. Our thesis is that a statement about the mind is equally possible without needing to delve into the problem of its reality, whether material or not, immanent or transcendent. Husserl's phenomenological perspective offers a solution to this problem: the possibility of studying the mind not so much as a positive entity, but as the result of an eidetic reduction. And a second possibility is to take a concept of mind that comes to us from biology and psychology: the mind is a product of complex brain physiology and not something separate from it (without excluding that it may be something more than just that). Our conclusions are that, currently, research on what we call the mind has opened up to many disciplines, the consequence of which has been a lack of delimitation of the classic concepts involved. A phenomenological approach from philosophy and/or considering the mind from a scientific perspective as the result of brain activity, could shed light on this matter. This, in turn, raises new questions: what is this product of the brain that makes it, at least apparently, so different from other physiological products such as digested food or sweat? How does one go from the brain to its product, the mind? (And we think that emergentist materialism offers an interesting solution). And, is it possible to refer to the mind as our authentic self?