Missed Conversation

Many of the new trends in the philosophy of mind are little over a generation old. They could hardly have come about without the crucial scientific and philosophical innovations forged between 1890 and 1935. During that revolutionary period, important thinkers aspired to describe dynamic processes and unearth the "genetic" foundations of their disciplines. They addressed the question of consciousness and bodily intelligence, seeking a way past inherited versions of mind-body dualism. Early neurological and phenomenalist models would more than influence computationalism, connectionism, and enactivist approaches to consciousness, representations and judgments, memory, and even lived intersubjectivity. They constitute the first act in the complex drama ongoing today. The Missed Conversation thus enacts a conversation--among others, between Freud the neurologist and Husserl in his pursuit of the embodied depths of consciousness. While they never studied each other, the book shows how dynamic neurology and psychology can be set into enlightening dialogue with phenomenology. It sheds light on the history of philosophy of mind, showing its value to sciences of mind today. Without "naturalizing" phenomenology, Bettina Bergo demonstrates the importance of phenomenology for contemporary computational and enactive inquiry. She argues for the value of a neurologically-informed psychology, able to expand the descriptive limits of phenomenology while addressing contemporary problems in cognitive science. This groundbreaking work presents the fruit of 20 years of research in phenomenology, the history of neurology, psychoanalysis, and metapsychology. It shows how we might think critically about the history of philosophy of mind, mobilizing a pluralistic approach to embodiment, embeddedness in the world, as well as about the relationship between first and third-person standpoints.

Bettina Bergo is Professor of Philosophy at the Université de Montréal. She is the author of Anxiety: A Philosophical History (OUP 2021), and Levinas: Essays on Phenomenology, Hermeneutics, and Jewish Thought (Brill 2025). She is the co-editor of several collections, including "I don't see color!": Personal and Critical Perspectives on White Privilege (2015), The Trauma Controversy (2009), and Levinas and Nietzsche: After the Death of a Certain God (2008). She is also a scholar and translator of Levinas, critical studies in psychoanalysis and the history of psychology, hermeneutics, and Nietzsche's philosophy.