Intenzionalità fenomenologica e neuroscienze

The materialistic outlook on man, which nowadays manifests itself especially as an identification of mind and brain on the ground of neurosciences, supposes a complete ignorance of the phenomenological notion of intentionality, with a consequent fall into epistemological positions, like representationism and phenomenalism, which, in fact, are both theoretically untenable and historically out-of-date. Moreover, such an internalism, which is inherent to the materialistic denial of intentionality of consciousness, has a further negative consequence. By placing mental activity within the brain, it paradoxically achieves the same result obtained by the dualistic spiritualism of Descartes, i.e. the separation between mind and world, where the world is to be taken not only as physical but as social and cultural too. Therefore, the notion of intentionality is able to found an externalism that explains the nature of mind (an extended mind) in a much better way.