To introduce this collection of research studies, which stem from the pro grams conducted by The World Phenomenology Institute, we need say a few words about our aims and work. This will bring to light the significance of the present volume. The phenomenological philosophy is an unprejudiced study of experience in its entire range: experience being understood as yielding objects. Experi ence, moreover, is approached in a specific way, such a way that it legitima tizes itself naturally in immediate (...) evidence. As such it offers a unique ground for philosophical inquiry. Its basic condition, however, is to legitimize its validity. In this way it allows a dialogue to unfold among various philosophies of different methodologies and persuasions, so that their basic assumptions and conceptions may be investigated in an objective fashion. That is, instead of comparing concepts, we may go below their differences to seek together what they are meant to grasp. We may in this way come to the things them selves, which are the common objective of all philosophy, or what the great Chinese philosopher Wang Yang Ming called "the investigation of things". It is in this spirit that the Institute's programs include a "cross-cultural" dialogue meant to bring about a profound communication among philosophers in their deepest concerns. Rising above artificial cultural confinements, such dialogues bring scholars, thinkers and human beings together toward a truly human community of minds. Our Institute unfolds one consistent academic program. (shrink)

The contemporary revival of interest in the Sacred as a category of philosophico-religious reflection here finds a radical reversal of the traditional direction, taking the Sacred as the starting point of the itinerary toward the Divine. The wide variety of essays contained in this volume attempt to ground philosophy of the Sacred and the Divine in phenomenological evidence. Though employing different methodologies, the contributors register by and large the contribution of A-T. Tymieniecka's phenomenology of life in providing a significant (...) 20th century vision for the accomplishment of this task. Its pursuit finds here expression in philosophical, historical, literary and political explorations leading to construing phenomenology of the Sacred as a prerequisite to the investigation of the Divine. The contributors to this extraordinary collection are: C. Bédard, A. Ales Bello, Gerard Bucher, D. Chidester, D. Conchi, M. Kronegger, S. Laycock, Ph. Liverziani, J.N. Mohanty, E. Moutsopoulos, A.M. Olson, Y. Park, G. Penzo, B. Ross, C. Osowiec Ruoff, Th. Ryba, J. Smith, A-T. Tymieniecka and E. Wyschogrod. (shrink)

This chapter examines phenomena of aesthetic experience and aesthetic creativity in terms of a qualitative dynamics of movement. It notes the lack of consideration of the foundational role of movement in human and other activity, and the need for thorough description of kinetic-tactile and kinaesthetic experience. It recommends the importance of phenomenological methods to achieve this task and outlines an application of such methods to phenomena of aesthetic creativity.

The Husserlian phenomenological approach to organisational research as a way to understand how collectives experience and mean their work context, is rarely used although, when it is, it often functions as a negative criticism of objectivist methods. The sociological potential of phenomenological concepts to enable understanding of subjective experience of social contexts, and the characterisation of those social contexts through ideal type construction, deserves to be used more extensively in a positive proposal of organisational research methodologies. However, a (...) consistent phenomenological approach—with its inherent qualities that enable the transcendental understanding of subjective phenomena and social objectivity—can be sociologically fruitful only if it benefits from accumulated sociological knowledge, realised by various approaches that discuss macro and micro aspects of organisations. The proposed phenomenological methodology considers both aspects. It takes account of social theories that consider the influences of both the macro environment and institutionalisation on structure and culture through their relationship with collective and individual action. Also, it performs collaboration between two close perspectives which recognise the importance of the subjective meanings of the individuals constituting the collective: Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology and Weber’s ideal type construction. It also discusses context, participant selection, the concepts of saturation and generalisation, and the applicability of the methodology. (shrink)

The invention of the computer has revolutionized science. With respect to finding the essential structures of life, for example, it has enabled scientists not only to investigate empirical examples, but also to create and study novel hypothetical variations by means of simulation: ‘life as it could be’. We argue that this kind of research in the field of artificial life, namely the specification, implementation and evaluation of artificial systems, is akin to Husserl’s method of free imaginative variation as applied to (...) the specific regional ontology of biology. Thus, at a time when the clarification of the essence of our biological embodiment is of growing interest for phenomenology, we suggest that artificial life should be seen as a method of externalizing some of the insurmountable complexity of imaginatively varying the phenomenon of life. (shrink)

Autistic difficulties with social interaction have primarily been understood as expressions of underlying impairment of the ability to ‘mindread.’ Although this understanding of autism and social interaction has raised controversy in the phenomenological community for decades, the phenomenological criticism remains largely on a philosophical level. This article helps fill this gap by discussing how phenomenology can contribute to empirical methodologies for studying social interaction in autism. By drawing on the phenomenology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and qualitative data from an (...) ongoing study on social interaction in autism, I discuss how qualitative interviews and participant observation can yield phenomenologically salient data on social interaction. Both, I argue, enjoy their phenomenological promise through facilitating attention to the social-spatial-material fields in and through which social interactions and experiences arise. By developing phenomenologically sound approaches to studying social interaction, this article helps resolve the deficiency of knowledge concerning experiential dimensions of social interaction in autism. (shrink)

The article analyses reflection as a methodology of Husserl's phenomenology. Husserl used reflection as a method in his research, but did not always specifically consider it when describing his own methodology. He paid much more attention to essential intuition, epoché (reduction) and intentional analysis. The author develops the thesis that reflection is inextricably linked with these methods and requires special study. The article discusses the specifics of reflexive analysis used in Husserl's phenomenology to study consciousness and solve problems (...) of cognition of the external world. The author takes into account its goals and objectives, which determine the terminological apparatus for fixing its results and are based on a certain understanding of the experience of consciousness. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that the negative injunctions against certain ways of conceiving of the ethico-political that we can draw explicitly from the methodological strictures of phenomenology are also consistent with some of the core more positive dimensions of contemporary virtue ethics (especially at the more anti-theoretical end of the virtue ethical spectrum), and that central aspects of virtue ethics are consistent with most of the explicit reflections on ethical matters proffered by canonical phenomenologists.

Phenomenology is a challenging method for many students to understand and apply. Introduction to Phenomenology: Focus on Methodology breaks down the history, methodology, and application so students can more easily write proposals and conduct phenomenological research. Author Cheryl Tatano Beck draws on her depth of experience in applying and teaching phenomenological methods to distill the method into a single guidebook for students and new researchers alike. This introductory book provides a clearer picture of phenomenology as method (...) and its applications to social, behavioral, and health sciences, covering both interpretive and descriptive phenomenology from research design through analysis. (shrink)

Open peer commentary on the article “A First-Person Analysis Using Third Person-Data as a Generative Method: A Case Study of Surprise in Depression” by Natalie Depraz, Maria Gyemant & Thomas Desmidt. Upshot: In the first part of the commentary, I argue that the some of the main objectives of Depraz et al.’s target article remain somewhat unfulfilled. In the second part, I touch upon and briefly discuss the issue of what constitutes a valid method of researching experience.

This paper sets out from the hypothesis that the embodied competences and expertise which characterise dance and sports activities have the potential to constructively challenge and inform phenomenological thinking. While pathological cases present experiences connected to tangible bodily deviations, the specialised movement practices of dancers and athletes present experiences which put our everyday experiences of being a moving body into perspective in a slightly different sense. These specialised experiences present factual variations of how moving, sensing and interacting can be (...) like for us as body-subjects. To use of these sources inevitably demands that qualitative research methodologies – especially short-term ethnographical fieldwork – form part of the research strategy and qualify the way the researcher involves a second-person perspective when interviewing dancers and athletes about their experiences. In the subsequent phases analysing the data generated, I argue that researchers first strive to achieve internal consistency of empirical themes identified in the case of movement practices in question thus keeping to a contextualised and lived perspective, also denoted as an emic perspective. In subsequent phases phenomenological insights are then actively engaged in the exploration and discussion of the possible transcendental structures making the described subjective experiences possible. The specialised and context-defined experiences of ‘what a moving body can be like’ are accordingly involved as factual variations to constructively add to and potentially challenge phenomenological descriptions. Lastly, I exemplify how actual research strategies have been enacted in a variety of projects involving professional dancers’, golfers’ and sports dancers’ practices and experiences, respectively. (shrink)

The paper defends the position that phenomenological interviews can provide a rich source of knowledge and that they are in no principled way less reliable or less valid than quantitative or experimental methods in general. It responds to several skeptic objections such as those raised against introspection, those targeting the unreliability of episodic memory, and those claiming that interviews cannot address the psychological, cognitive and biological correlates of experience. It argues that the skeptic must either heed the methodological and (...) epistemological justification of the phenomenological interview provided, or embrace a more fundamental skepticism, a “deep mistrust”, in which scientific discourse can have no recourse to conscious processes as explananda, with ensuing dire consequences for our conception of science. (shrink)

This Alfred Schutz Memorial Lecture discusses the relationship between the phenomenological life-world analysis and the methodology of the social sciences, which was the central motive of Schutz’s work. I have set two major goals in this lecture. The first is to scrutinize the postulate of adequacy, as this postulate is the most crucial of Schutz’s methodological postulates. Max Weber devised the postulate ‘adequacy of meaning’ in analogy to the postulate of ‘causal adequacy’ (a concept used in jurisprudence) and (...) regarded both as complementary and, in the context of sociological analysis, critical. Schutz extracted the two postulates from the Neokantian epistemology, dismissed the concept of causality, and reduced Weber’s two postulates of adequacy into one, namely, the adequacy of meaning. I discuss the benefits and shortcomings of this reduction. A major problem, in my view, is that Schutz’s reformulation lost the empirical concern that was inherent in Weber’s ‘causal adequacy’. As a result, the models of economics (which shaped Schutz’s conception of social science) are considered to be adequate if they are ‘understandable’ to an everyday actor, even when they are based on the most unrealistic assumptions. To recapture Weber’s empirical orientation I recommend a more restrictive interpretation of the postulate of adequacy that links it to qualitative research and unfolds the critical potential of Schutz’s phenomenological life-world analysis. My second goal is to report on some current developments in German sociology in which a number of approaches explicitly refer to Schutz’s analysis of the life-world and attempt to pursue ‘adequate’ empirical research. This lecture focuses on three approaches: ethnophenomenology, life-world analytic ethnography, and social scientific hermeneutics. (shrink)

본 연구는 현재 상담심리학을 포함해서 사회과학의 여러 분야에서 질적 연구방법으로 각광 받고 있는 근거이론을 연구대상으로 삼아 그것의 발생과 분기과정에서 드러나는 존재론적, 인식론적, 방법론적 전제에 대한 현상학적-해석학적 반성을 수행하고자 한다. 이를 위해서 먼저 근거이론의 등장과 분기의 과정과 구조를 대표적인 근거이론가들인 스트라우스-코빈(Strauss-Corbin)의 축코딩의 패러다임 모델을 활용해서 밝혀볼 것이다. 나아가 축코딩의 패러다임으로 밝혀지지 않는 글레이저(Glaser), 스트라우스-코빈 그리고 차마즈(Charmaz)의 대표적인 근거이론들의 존재론적, 인식론적, 방법론적 전제들을 비판적으로 성찰해봄으로써 각각 어떤 이론적 곤경에 처해 있는지 그리고 그것을 어떻게 극복하는지를 밝혀볼 것이다. 끝으로 근거이론이 겪고 있는 이론적 곤경들의 (...) 극복과정이 어떤 점에서 현상학적, 해석학적 통찰과 연관되는지를 밝혀볼 것이다. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with the popularity of phenomenologies and the tensions that arise from their use as research methodologies in nursing. Among these tensions are: the troublesome issues of adapting a fundamentally philosophical means of understanding human being(s) for use as a more pragmatic and robust research approach in a practice discipline; the various types of phenomenology and the confusions that surround these and other interpretive methodologies, particularly within different intellectual and cultural traditions; and the need for nursing to (...) find a space in which it can give voice to aspects of its practice that are silenced in less existentially oriented methodologies. Although phenomenologies are currently popular and possibly fashionable in nursing, there are important issues in relation to their use in a methodological sense that remain to be addressed. (shrink)

Whether, and in what sense, research in phenomenology and phenomenological psychopathology has—in addition to its descriptive and hermeneutic value—explanatory power is somewhat controversial. This paper shows why it is legitimate to recognize such explanatory power. To this end, the paper analyzes two central concerns underlying the debate about explanation in phenomenology: (a) the warning against reductionism, which is implicit in a conception of causal explanation exclusively based on models of natural/physical causation; and (b) the warning against top-down generalizations, which (...) neglect the specificity of the individual. While acknowledging that these two caveats express serious concerns regarding the debate on explanatory models, I show that phenomenology has the resources to respond to them. These can be found in analyses of different types of causation relating to different regions of reality and in the structure of explanatory models based on exemplarity. On the basis of these analyses, I defend a pluralist account vis-à-vis explanatory models. (shrink)

‘Phenomenology and Agency,’ an invited response to Galen Strawson's article on ‘The Self,’ shows how Strawson's putative phenomenological approach to the problem of the self fails to qualify as phenomenology and in turn fails to undergird his metaphysics of the self. It shows further how an item on his own list of fundamental experiences or conceptions of the self languishes for want of attention: Strawson virtually ignores ‘agency.’ The phenomenological procedure of bracketing, the concept of the non-alien that (...) Husserl presents in his Fifth Cartesian Meditation, and developmental accounts of the self are discussed. Conclusions and implications are specified, including the dual implication that a metaphyiscs offered in advance of a bona fide epistemology is imprudent and that a recognition of the metaphysical corollary of materialism--animism, in the sense of being imbued with life, animated--is required for a veridical concept of ‘the self.’. (shrink)

In recent years, interest in pre-reflective self-consciousness has increased significantly. One of the central points of inquiry is whether pre-reflective self-consciousness ubiquitously accompanies phenomenal consciousness. This paper explores a phenomenological justification for the thesis that pre-reflective self-consciousness ubiquitously accompanies phenomenal consciousness. Allegedly, the ubiquity of pre-reflective self-consciousness can be proved on the basis of phenomenological description. The aim of this paper is to develop a new objection against this justification of the ubiquity thesis.

Husserlian phenomenology depends upon a particular and limited set of related methodologies, which assume not merely abilities and results on the part of phenomenologists which have been severely criticized, but more profoundly, that mental contents are atomistic and independently manipulable. I will show not only that this assumption is mistaken and that questioning it undermines traditional phenomenological method, but that it leads to a paradox when turned upon itself which forces the rejection of a purely Husserlian phenomenology. More generally, (...) any theory whose data is confined to the results of particular and limited methodologies is by that fact unable to investigate those methodologies, and is thus at best only able to function in a severely restricted realm. (shrink)

Max van Manen offers an extensive exploration of phenomenological traditions and methods for the human sciences. It is his first comprehensive statement of phenomenological thought and research in over a decade. Phenomenology of practice refers to the meaning and practice of phenomenology in professional contexts such as psychology, education, and health care, as well as to the practice of phenomenological methods in contexts of everyday living. Van Manen presents a detailed description of key phenomenological ideas as (...) they have evolved over the past century; he then thoughtfully works through the methodological issues of phenomenological reflection, empirical methods, and writing that a phenomenology of practice offers to the researcher. Van Manen’s comprehensive work will be of great interest to all concerned with the interrelationship between being and acting in human sciences research and in everyday life. (shrink)

It is difficult to develop a coherent conception of time on the basis of our experience of time. The philosophical analysis of our experience of time is a central topic in phenomenology. So one might expect phenomenology to deliver a contribution to the solution of the most challenging puzzles of the philosophy of time. This paper deals with some methodological issues related to such an expectation. It opposes two main conceptions of the role of phenomenology in the philosophy of time. (...) On the first conception phenomenology draws conclusions about the nature of time from the description of the qualitative features of our experience of time. On the second conception, phenomenology determines what we are rationally entitled to believe about the nature of time on the basis of the way we experience time. It is argued that if one aims at integrating different approaches in one’s philosophical conception of time, then it is the second conception one ought to choose. (shrink)

In his commentary on our article on phenomenological subtypes of highly suggestible individuals , Kumar argues that methodological differences between our studies and previous research on highly suggestible subtypes temper our ability to link the two and that it is unclear whether the existence of phenomenological subtypes has implications for hypnotherapy. Although we agree that it is premature to make conclusive statements about highly suggestible subtypes, we argue that convergent findings across studies with different methodologies are especially salient (...) because they are unlikely to result from a common set of methodological artifacts. In addition, we describe a number of implications that research on phenomenological subtypes has for hypnotherapy. (shrink)

This paper charts the journey that led to the author's discovery of phenomenology as a potential research methodology in the field of science education, and describes the impact on his own thinking and approach of his encounters with the work of Husserl and Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty and Van Manen. Drawing on this theoretical framework, the author argues that, as a methodology for investigating scientific thinking in relation to life experience, learning and curriculum design, phenomenology not only provides a means (...) of accessing subjective knowing and pure perception, but is sufficiently rigorous and systematic to represent the lifeworld experiences of research participants with a high degree of accuracy. In the process, he highlights the uniqueness and value of phenomenology in relation to quantitative and other qualitative research methods. The aim of this paper is to inspire insight into the value in science education research of using a methodology that fosters a deeper understanding of both teachers’ and learners’ lived experience of the scientific world. The challenge to science specialists, whether educators or researchers, would be to shift their default mode of understanding from the object pole to the ego pole, from the physical object to the human subject, from the observable and measurable to the lived as the true source of human knowledge. (shrink)

RESUMEN Aunque las Lecciones de fenomenología de la conciencia interna del tiempo tienen pocas referencias al marco metódico, ciertos pasajes apuntan a la reducción fenomenológica, de modo que su status se diferenciaría del de las Investigaciones lógicas y se acercaría al de Ideas i. Se ha señalado que aun si la reducción es empleada en este texto, no lo sería en su "versión madura". Se busca determinar el estatus metodológico de las Lecciones a partir de una comparación entre los desarrollos (...) metódicos y las descripciones fenomenológicas que se presentan allí y aquellos consignados en Investigaciones e Ideas, teniendo como idea regulativa el esclarecimiento del papel del tiempo en la ampliación del dominio de la fenomenología como conjunto. ABSTRACT Although there are few references to the methodological framework in On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time, certain passages point to the phenomenological reduction. Therefore, its status would differ from that of the Logical Investigations and approach that of Ideas I. Some have argued that the reduction used in this text is not the "mature version" of the same. The article seeks to determine the methodological status of PCIT on the basis of the comparison between the methodological developments and phenomenological descriptions found in this work and those found in Investigations and Ideas. The regulative idea guiding the analysis is the clarification of the role of time in broadening the sphere of phenomenology as a whole. (shrink)

의학 현상학은 질병의 원인을 단순하게 환자의 신체 밖에 존재하는 병원체에서만 찾는 것이 아니라 신체 내부의 환경에서도 찾으려고 시도한다. 의학 현상학은 현상학적 세계 고찰을 통해서 환자의 내면적 체험을 중시하게 되었다. 최근 의학과 간호학에서 현상학적 연구 방법에 기초해서 이러한 환자의 체험에 대한 분석을 담은 연구들을 진행하고 있다. 그러나 전통 현상학 자체에 대한 이해 부족으로 연구 명칭은 현상학적 방법론이지만 그 내용은 형식적인 틀에 머물고 있는 연구물들이 많이 등장하고 있다. 이에 현상학자들의 텍스트 분석을 통해서 현상학의 기본 개념들이 어떻게 의학 현상학에서 응용될 수 있는지에 대한 (...) 기초 작업이 요구된다. 실재로 국내에는 현상학자들의 텍스트에 기초해서 의학 현상학을 소개하는 전문적인 논문들이 매우 적은 편이다. 이런 기초 작업을 위해서 연구자는 이 논문에서 하이데거의 『시간과 존재』에 기술된 ‘내집에 없음’(Unheimlichkeit)이란 개념과 질환 체험과 건강 체험의 유사성에 대해서 고찰하고 있다. 하이데거의 현상학적 존재론의 몇 가지 중요한 개념들을 분석하면서 이것들이 어떻게 의학 현상학에서 응용될 수 있는지를 밝히는 것이 이 논문의 최종 목표이다. (shrink)

This article is a critical methodological reflection on the use of interpretive phenomenological analysis (IPA) initiated in the context of a qualitative research project on the experience of seclusion in a psychiatric setting. It addresses an explicit gap in the IPA literature to explore the ways that Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology can extend the remit of IPA for noncognitivist qualitative research projects beyond the field of health psychology. In particular, the article develops Merleau-Ponty’s understanding of the lived-body, language, and embodied speech, (...) with specific attention to the ethical implications of body and place. It concludes with a discussion on phenomenological reflexivity and prompts a reconsideration of phenomenological methods across a wide range of qualitative research projects concerned with subjectivity and ethical practice, including critical health studies, critical bioethics, and cultural studies that employ a qualitative empirical research design. (shrink)

This book presents the methodological framework of combining Multimodal Conversation Analysis (MCA) with Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) to interpretively analyse translanguaging practices in educational contexts. Beginning with an overview of the three uses of translanguaging - translanguaging as a theory of language, as a pedagogical practice and as an analytical perspective - the book goes on to critically examine the different methodological approaches for analysing translanguaging practices in multilingual classroom interactions. It explains how MCA and IPA are useful methodologies (...) for understanding how and why translanguaging practices are constructed by participants in the classroom and discusses types of data collected and data collection procedures. The author, Kevin W. H. Tai, shows how combining these approaches enables researchers to study how translanguaging practices are constructed in multilingual classrooms and how teachers make sense of their own translanguaging practices at particular moments of classroom interaction. This detailed and concise guide is indispensable for students, practitioners, policymakers, and researchers from across the globe, particularly those working in the fields of applied linguistics and language education. (shrink)

Gurwitsch, following Husserl, described two structural parameters applicable to all phenomena: the intensity of our experiences, and their salience, i.e., their experienced relevance to other entities in consciousness. These dimensions subsume experiences within structures indicating the degree of attention consciously paid to phenomena, and their significance to other phenomena experienced simultaneously. For example, the recession to or from unconsciousness of mental contents may be described by the variation of their saliences and intensities. The focal organization implied by these dimensions gives (...) rise to the "searchlight" configuration underlying many models. Consciousness can be structurally analyzed more deeply than this, however. Through incorporation of two other parameters: an internalization of intentionality which I term “microdirectionality,” and a description of the recursive microstructure of the phenomenal field (“layered recursion”), strata of interrelated structures may be employed to explicate experiences in great depth. I will introduce these structural parameters and describe how this more inclusive perspective enables some aspects of both static interrelationships and the dynamics of the creation and dissolution of a variety of sensory, conceptual and linguistic phenomena to be explicated. I will utilize the tip-of-tongue phenomenon as an illustrative example. (shrink)