Argument du déficit d'explication et revendication phénoménologique

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Explanatory gap argument and Phenomenological claim. The central issue in consciousness studies today is undoubtedly the so-called explanatory gap argument, a minimal definition of which is as follows : contemporary materialist theories of cognition do not account for the conscious dimension of cognitive phenomena. The paper is conceived as a first step into a critical examination of the growing development, within the contemporary cognitive community itself and without any reference to the phenomenological movement initiated by Husserl or to the subsequent current of phenomenological psychology, of the idea that the solution of the explanatory gap problem requires the introduction of a phenomenological level of investigation into the theory of cognition. The paper first (§2) sketches out a geographical map of the explanatory gap argument, and offers a fourfold classification of its numerous versions. A general notion of phenomenology is then defined, which is subsequently taken as a basis for the construction of a technical concept of phenomenological claim (§3). Finally, various implicit or explicit calls for introducing a phenomenological component into the science of cognition are examined at the light of this technical concept, so as to evaluate the extent to which such calls should be regarded as proprio sensu phenomenological claims, as well as to assess their fruitfulness.