Phenomenology Trumps All?

[nicholls]

Seems if you hang in the academic world, sooner or later when one is confronting the irrational beliefs, untestable claims, or rejections of science that are increasingly prevalent, somewhere in the background "phenomenology" will turn out to be the trump card that beats you. It's happened to me in the context of a particular profession and discipline -- music therapy -- that I have dealings with (I'm not a music therapist myself). But the same thing goes on in many of the social sciences, health sciences, and other fields nowadays.

Now, phenomenology bristles with difficulties for the naive questioner -- for starters it's highly professionalized with a whole dictionary full of terms, and the original texts are in impenetrable (even for those of us who read both languages) German or French. As just an informed layperson I am, to a highly trained phenomenologist, probably making a hash of the topic. But let's just suppose that I do my phenomenological thing anyway and, instead of describing a table, I BRACKET the exterior world, focus on the table purely as an object of my consciousness (INTENTIONALITY), and relate my EXPERIENCE of the table. It seems that many academics now see that as a path to rigorous, knowledge! It can become material for qualitative research, which is widely accepted now in all kinds of areas of academe.

Now, I find the process of phenomenology a great way to generate ideas, associations, creative works, but I just don't see knowledge derived from it as rigorous or even valid at all. Yet at the academies, phenomenology and subsequent developments in Continental philosophy seem to be taken as givens, rather than as highly conjectural movements that would seem to be opposed to everything that Randi stands for. Can anyone enlighten?

 

[Dancing David]

There are a couple of ways to approach the issue, and I am suprised that more people have not responde to this post. Perhaps Interesting Ian will join the debate, although I do believe he has me on ignore.

1. Phenomena or sensation or perceptions are studied by psychology and anthrolpology. Both fields have insight into the description and categorization of these events.

2. Immaterialists seem to focus upon the 'private' behaviors of things by calling them 'qualia' and demanding that they can never be objective events.

I understand little of the field of phenomenology

But let's just suppose that I do my phenomenological thing anyway and, instead of describing a table, I BRACKET the exterior world, focus on the table purely as an object of my consciousness (INTENTIONALITY), and relate my EXPERIENCE of the table.

From my viewpoint of the nihilist buddhist I can try to paraphrase this series of events.

I BRACKET the exterior world: there is a limited subset of awareness that I can maintain, constrained by sensations. I have habits, thoughts and feelings about tables after my raw sensation of it's 'tableness'. These are not constraints upon my experience but merely patterned referents based upon the past.

focus on the table purely as an object of my consciousness (INTENTIONALITY): this is kind of a redundant step. I can not be aware of the table outside of my consiousness, there is no experience of the table betond the sensations and the entrained patterns of habit, thoughts and emotions. The existance of the table is assumed from past experience. But there is no way to focus on the table as an object of consiousness, it can only be a product of the processes reffered to as consiousness. There seems to be a high probaility of the table's existance, but I can not limit my already limited experience of sensation.

relate my EXPERIENCE of the table.: Well duh, what else can they possibly relate.

I am not sure about this phenomenology?

1. Does it require the existance of non-existant things like "self" and "consiousness"?

2. Does it assign trancendential values and refferants to the universe? Like Platonic "beauty"?

3. Does it place high value upon the 'irreducable' nature of experience?

Thanks!

 

[Kopji]

As much as we wish to, we still can't judge a book by the cover.

 

[nicholls]

Thanks Dancing David for your thoughtful questions! People on Randi's forum need to be aware that developments in twentieth century Continental philosophy (phenomenology, existentialism, post-structuralism, post-modernism) have a lot to do with the academy's embrace of the irrational in humanities, social sciences, education, health -- which in turn influence's society's views of knowledge and reality.

Phenomena or sensation or perceptions are studied by psychology and anthropology.

But not with the assumptions of phenomenology. Phenomenology was the turn "to the things themselves" (Husserl) which claimed that consciousness was always of "consciousness of something" (e.g. the table), and that one could examine one's consciousness of something and relate it as "experience".

Immaterialists seem to focus upon the 'private' behaviors of things by calling them 'qualia' and demanding that they can never be objective events.

That is something like the phenomenological notion of intentionality. Our "consciousness of something" is not an objective event, of course, but somehow the attentive focus and constant return to "the things themselves" is supposed to make possible an experience that can be related as real data, not just as subjective impressions.

Does it require the existance of non-existant things like "self" and "consiousness"?

Yes I think it does -- if you think consciousness is only neurochemical processes, I can't see how that could be a stable enough base for phenomenology.

Does it assign trancendential values and refferants to the universe? Like Platonic "beauty"?

No, that sounds like more like idealism -- Husserl was trying to get away from German Idealism, while also avoiding vulgar positivism.

Does it place high value upon the 'irreducable' nature of experience?

Yes it does. And today's qualitative research is full of people's related experiences considered as fundamental, valid data for anaysis.