CONTRIBUTIONS OF EDITH STEIN’S PHENOMENOLOGY TO THE MIND-BODY PROBLEM: NOTES FOR PSYCHOLOGY

Abstract

Psychology is a relatively new scientific branch that still lacks consistent methodological foundations to support their investigations. Given their immaturity, that science still faces difficulties to delimit its ontological status, which raises various epistemological and methodological misconceptions. Thus, there is a fundamental question for an elucidation of the object of Psychology: the mindbody problem. The proposal of this article, in this sense, is to discuss the mind-body problem in the light of the Phenomenology of Edith Stein, seeking from there lay the fundation of Psychology. For this, some works of the philosopher was analysed, namely: “Psychic Causality” and “Introduction to Philosophy”. In this way, through the investigations of Stein about the psyche (which can be approximated to what is meant by mind in the context of the Sciences of the mind) and body, concluded that it is possible to conceive the psyche/mind-body issue while a dual-unit that instantiates in the Leib.