A list of papers I haven’t yet read about:
The reflective move taken by Epoché and Reduction in Phenomenology can be demonstrated with the following diagram. The Subject (or Self) is splitted into an impassive observer and an acting agent engaged in “reality”. The bracketed part now becomes a situation, a phenomenon. Under the phenomenological attitude, The object O turns itself into Noema, i.e. the object being intended (perceived, judged, gazed at, loved, etc.) – it is not a copy or shadow, but the O itself; it is not a mediated representation, but a immediate presentation. The intending act becomes Noesis – it is the same act as in the natural attitude (g = g'), but examined through the lens of Phenomenology.
In comparison, the psychological and the neuron scientific ways (indeed applicable to every positive science) are first and foremost to grasp Self as an objectivized subject – either as a thinking machine, or a special piece of flesh that sustains the function of our consciousness. Epoché and Reduction never happens.
The classical Cartesian model and Empiricist Idealism (John Locke etc.) resorts to a representation that resides inside the mind. This model of mind-world relation will inevitably lead to some variants of empirical skepticism and even agnosticism.
From a weird perspective, we can say Phenomenology is a radicalized, second-ordered version of empiricism and positivism. By the reflective move, the (transcendental) subject is able to see clearly how the objective knowledge is constituted by the (natural) subject, and how the subjectivity is reflectively (re-)shaped.