Naturalizing Dasein. Aporias of the Neo-Heideggerian Approach in Cognitive Science

Abstract

This paper deals with the neo-Heideggerian approach in cognitive science as espoused by Michael Wheeler in his Reconstructing the Cognitive World: The Next Step (2005). According to Wheeler, this next step amounts to incorporating Heideggerian insights bearing on online intelligence: the kind of intelligence which is exhibited by human agents in embedded, embodied coping. However, this phenomenological reception implies also stripping Heideggerian phenomenology of its overt antinaturalistic and transcendental tendencies. The approach is indeed ‘neo-Heideggerian' inasmuch as tantamount to a naturalization of phenomenological themes. I attempt to put this naturalizing aspiration to the test, and show that the approach remains ‘Heideggerian' only superficially.