Phenomenology (philosophy)
Phenomenology is the philosophical study of objectivity and reality (more generally) as subjectively lived and experienced. It seeks to investigate the universal features of consciousness while avoiding assumptions about the external world, aiming to describe phenomena as they appear to the subject, and to explore the meaning and significance of the lived experiences.[1]
For other uses, see Phenomenology (disambiguation).
This approach has found many applications in qualitative research across different scientific disciplines, especially in the social sciences, humanities, psychology, and cognitive science, but also in fields as diverse as health sciences,[2] architecture,[3] and human-computer interaction,[4] among many others. The application of phenomenology in these fields aims to gain a deeper understanding of subjective experience, rather than focusing on behavior.
Phenomenology is contrasted with phenomenalism, which reduces mental states and physical objects to complexes of sensations,[5] and with psychologism, which treats logical truths or epistemological principles as the products of human psychology.[6] In particular, transcendental phenomenology, as outlined by Edmund Husserl, aims to arrive at an objective understanding of the world via the discovery of universal logical structures in human subjective experience.[1]
There are important differences in the ways that different branches of phenomenology approach subjectivity. For example, according to Martin Heidegger, truths are contextually situated and dependent on the historical, cultural, and social context in which they emerge. Other types include hermeneutic, genetic, and embodied phenomenology. All these different branches of phenomenology may be seen as representing different philosophies despite sharing the common foundational approach of phenomenological inquiry; that is, investigating things just as they appear, independent of any particular theoretical framework.[7]
Etymology[edit]
The term phenomenology derives from the Greek φαινόμενον, phainómenon ("that which appears") and λόγος, lógos ("study"). It entered the English language around the turn of the 18th century and first appeared in direct connection to Husserl's philosophy in a 1907 article in The Philosophical Review.[8]
In philosophy, "phenomenology" refers to the tradition inaugurated by Edmund Husserl at the beginning of the 20th century.[9] The term, however, had been used in different senses in other philosophy texts since the 18th century. These include those by Johann Heinrich Lambert (1728–1777), Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), G. W. F. Hegel (1770–1831), and Carl Stumpf (1848–1936), among others.[10][11][12]
It was, however, the usage of Franz Brentano (and, as he later acknowledged, Ernst Mach[5]) that would prove definitive for Husserl.[13] From Brentano, Husserl took the conviction that philosophy must commit itself to description of what is "given in direct 'self-evidence'."[14]
Central to Brentano's phenomenological project was his theory of intentionality, which he developed from his reading of Aristotle's On the Soul.[15] According to the phenomenological tradition, "the central structure of an experience is its intentionality, it being directed towards something, as it is an experience of or about some object."[16] Also, on this theory, every intentional act is implicitly accompanied by a secondary, pre-reflective awareness of the act as one's own.[17]
Phenomenology and empirical science[edit]
The phenomenological analysis of objects is notably different from traditional science. However, several frameworks do phenomenology with an empirical orientation or aim to unite it with the natural sciences or with cognitive science.
For a classical critical point of view, Daniel Dennett argues for the wholesale uselessness of phenomenology considering phenomena as qualia, which cannot be the object of scientific research or do not exist in the first place. Liliana Albertazzi counters such arguments by pointing out that empirical research on phenomena has been successfully carried out employing modern methodology. Human experience can be investigated by surveying, and with brain scanning techniques. For example, ample research on color perception suggests that people with normal color vision see colors similarly and not each in their own way. Thus, it is possible to universalize phenomena of subjective experience on an empirical scientific basis.[73]
In the early twenty-first century, phenomenology has increasingly engaged with cognitive science and philosophy of mind. Some approaches to the naturalization of phenomenology reduce consciousness to the physical-neuronal level and are therefore not widely acknowledged as representing phenomenology. These include the frameworks of neurophenomenology, embodied constructivism, and the cognitive neuroscience of phenomenology. Other likewise controversial approaches aim to explain life-world experience on a sociological or anthropological basis despite phenomenology being mostly considered descriptive rather than explanatory.[74]
