PHENOMENOLOGYas a psychological method

Susi Ferrarello PhdSaybrook University

Loyola University

Some QUESTIONS TO unfold the SENSE of the phenomenological method

What’s happened during the analysis?

YOUR QUESTIONS? WHY SHOULD YOU HAVE QUESTIONS?

…

QUESTIONS RAISED DURING THE SEMINAR- Can I claim that something is universal?

Does universality exist?- Who is the other? How can I reach the

other?- What is objectivity?- What is intentionality?- What’s the truth on which we base our

analysis?- When do interpret and when do we

describe?- How does phenomenology study time?

My questions..How would you describe what you did?

Were you describing or interpreting the data?

What were the tools of your analysis? What’s the difference between intution, perception and interpretation? How would you describe the lived-experience before and after the data-analysis Did your attitude change during the reflection on the data?

My questions..What was the intention at the basis of your analysis?

Are you a scientist?

Did you need philosophy to do that?

Does psychology need philosophy?

What’s the difference between the meaning, the sense and the value of your research?

How would you describe what you did?

Phenomenology

Λόγος τών φαινομένων (logos tōn

phenomenon)

Reflection on what is given (φένομένον)

PHENOMENOLOGYAS A SCIENCEHow to ground an

infallible knowledge?

(Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, Heidegger, Neurosciences)

AS A METHODHow do we convey

the sense of what we know?

(Giorgi: descriptive psychological method)

Synthesis and a step ahead“It is plain that I (…) since I am

striving toward the presumptive end, genuine science, must neither make nor go on accepting any judgment as scientific that I have not derived from evidence, from experiences in which the (…) actual giving of the affairs themselves are present to me” (Husserl, Cartesian Meditations, p. 13)

HOW CAN YOU AVOID TO ‘ACCEPT ANY JUDGMENT’? Did your attitude change before and after the data analysis?

DESCARTES AND HUME

Cogito ergo sum (I think therefore I

am)

Perception is the

beginning of our

knowledge

The radical DOUBT or the change of attitude

Epoché (witholding, suspension, parenthesize)Reduction (emphasizing the intuition, going back to the primordial lived-experience)

Imaginative variation

What was your mental attitude before and after the analysis?IntentionalityTendere in = aiming at (Beziehung auf)

Intention of Meaning Bedeutungsintention (L. I.)Instinctive or blind Intentionality (Yamaguchi, Hart)Intentionality as an instinctual presence of the other (Lipps)Intentionality without object (Bernet)Horizontal intentionality (Dan Zahavi)

Narrative way of givenness (Ricoeur)

How would you describe the lived-experience of the participant before and after the data-analysis?

Phenomenon Percept Essence

What were the tools of your research? (a synthesis)

Description or Interpretation (Aufassung)

Epoche and Reduction

Imaginative Variation

Seeing essences

Were you describing or interpreting during your analysis?

…

What’s the difference between the meaning, the sense and the value of your research?

Meaning Sense Essen

ce Truth Eidos Validity

Phenomenological and Natural Attitude: a synthesisNatural Attitude

(Ideas I, 30)Empirical

experiencePresentive

IntuitionPercept or real

object

Phenomenological Attitude (Ideas I, 30)

Reflexive experience

Eidetic intuitionEssence

Does psychology need philosophy and vice versa?

Formal and Material OntologyOntological Region

Science, essences and psychology

“Any concrete empirical objectivity finds its place within a highest material genus, a ‘region’ of empirical objects. To the pure regional essence, then, there corresponds a regional eidetic science or, as we can also say, a regional ontology”. I, § 9, 18En/19Ge

Any science of matter of fact (any experiential science) has essential theoretical foundations in eidetic ontologies”. I, §9, 18En/19 Ge

BIBLIOGRAPHY Dodd, J. (2005) Crisis and Reflection: An Essay on Husserl’s

Crisis of the European Sciences. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

Luft, S. (2012) “Husserl’s Method of Reduction”, in Routledge Companion to Phenomenology, London.

Luft, S. (2007) “From Being to Givenness and Back:  Some Remarks on the Meaning of Transcendental Idealism in Kant and Husserl,” in:  International Journal of Philosophical Studies 15/3, pp. 367-394.

Husserl, (1982) Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy. First Book: General Introduction to a Pure Phenomenology. Translated by F. Kersten. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

Sowa, R. (2012) “The Method of the Eidetic Science”, in Routledge Companion to Phenomenology, London.

Kern, I. (2004) “Les trois voies de la réduction” in Annales de la phénoménologie.

THANK YOU!