Abstract

John Paley was formerly senior lecturer at the University of Stirling. He is now retired but spends a lot of his time writing books: Phenomenology as Qualitative Research: A Critical Analysis of Meaning Attribution (2017), Concept Analysis in Nursing: A new Approach (2021), and constructivism and the Metaphysics of Qualitative Research (due out next year). This talk is about the ideas in the new book. The book’s take-home message is this: The ontological and epistemological sentences that supposedly ‘underpin’ qualitative research are referentially unsuccessful. They appear to make reality-describing claims, but they do not succeed in doing so. The individual words are meaningful, but the sentences do not make sense. So they can’t be used to justify, or ground, or align with, methodological decisions. John is interested in having a conversation about this line of thought: hearing people’s reactions, questions, observations, and discussing the implications.