OUGD601 - RESEARCH - Phenomenology

PHENOMENOLOGY:
Shaun Gallagher

- 'phenomenology is the study of human experience and of the ways things present themselves to us in and through such experience' (Sokolowski, 2000).
- 'phenomenology is the study of structures of consciousness as experienced from the first-person point of view' (Smith, 2008).
- 'the first-person point of view means that the phenomenologist, the investigator of consciousness, studies his or her own experience from the point of view of living through that experience'.
- Edmund Husserl considered as the founder of the phenomenological movement.
- 'phenomenology is usually characterised as a way of seeing rather than a set of doctrines. In a typical formulation Edmund Husserl presents phenomenology as approaching 'whatever appears to be as such', including everything meant or thought, in the manner of its appearing in the how of its manifestation' (Moran, 2002). (pg.7).

- phenomenology is a way of seeing rather than a set of doctrines.
- "method of seeing".
- 'for Husserl, phenomenology (literally, the 'science of appearances') was a method that attempted to give a description of the way things appear in our conscious experience'.
- 'the way things appear in our conscious experience may be different from the way things actually are in reality, but the phenomenologist is rather concerned about how we experience things' (pg.8).

- 'similar to empiricists like Locke and Hume, who claim that all knowledge comes from sensory experience, Husserl would say that all knowledge comes through consciousness' (pg.9).

- Martin Heidegger's definition of phenomenology (1962) - phenomenology means letting that which shows itself be seen from itself in the very way in which it shows itself from itself. This is the formal meaning of that branch of research which calls itself 'phenomenology''.
- 'that is, Heidegger thinks that phenomenology is concerned with the question of the meaning of being' (pg.10).
- (Gestalt psychology - links?)

- 'the phenomenologist investigates his/her own experience. 'I' examine my own consciousness. As a result, one objection that is often raised against phenomenology is that is it subjective' (pg.56).

- 'the issue concerning subjectivity is not about the subject matter, it concerns the approach: first-person vs third-person'. Third-person studies consciousness from the outside and indirectly.
- 'phenomenology distinguishes between two senses of objectivity: 1. objectivity in the sense of excluding biases, 2. objectivity in the sense of studying something as an object (from the outside)'.
- 'phenomenology claims that its first person approach is objective (in the first sense) - it is careful to rule out any presuppositions or biases that come by way of pre-established beliefs, theories, opinions, etc. And phenomenology also appeals to the importance of intersubjective validity' (pg.57).

- objection: hermeneutics (theory of interpretation) 'contends that since phenomenology needs to use language, such use introduces uncontrolled biases that may be built into languages itself - how do we know that the structure introduced by language doesn't distort the supposed structure of consciousness?' (pg.59).

- 'phenomenology ultimately makes an appeal to intersubjective validity. One can do cross-cultural phenomenological studies and negotiate among different languages to abstract the essential commonalities of description'.
- 'phenomenology aims for universality (pure transcendental description) but doesn't claim that is it easily achieved' (pg.60).

Intentionalities:
- 'one of the central concepts in phenomenology is that consciousness is characterised by intentionality' (pg.62).

- 'every mental phenomenon is characterised by what the scholastics of the middle ages called the intentional (or mental) inexistence of an object, and what we might call, though not wholly unambigiously, reference to a content, direction towards an object (which is not to be understoof here as meaning a thing) or immanent objectivity. Every mental phenomenon includes something as object within itself' (Brentano, 1995).
- 'medieval philosophers refer to the relationship between the form of an object and the knowledge act of the mind as intentionality'.
Husserl's theory of intentionality:
- 'intentionality is the 'aboutness' or the 'directionality' that is involved in perceiving or knowing anything' (pg.63).

- 'intentionality is also taken to be the 'mark of the mental'.
- 'every mental phenomenon includes something as object within itself, although they do not all do so in the same way. The intentional inexistence is characterised exclusively of mental phenomena. No physical phenomenon exhibits anything like it. We can, therefore, define mental phenomena by saying that they are those phenomena which contain an object intentionally within themselves' (pg.64).

- 'intentionality means all means all consciousness is consciousness of something' (pg.67).

- 'Husserl would say that the fact that consciousness is characterised by intentionality means that consciousness has a certain structure which can be expressed as 'consciousness of something as something' (pg.68).

REFERENCE: Gallagher, S. (2012) Phenomenology. London: Palgrave Macmillan.