Two Interpretative Positions in Phenomenology




© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015
Ian Rory OwenPhenomenology in Action in PsychotherapyContributions To PhenomenologyIn Cooperation with The Center for Advanced Research in Phenomenology7910.1007/978-3-319-13605-9_3


3. Two Interpretative Positions in Phenomenology



Ian Rory Owen 


(1)
Leeds and York Partnerships NHS Foundation Trust, Leeds, United Kingdom

 



 

Ian Rory Owen




Keywords
Consciousness attitudeEinstellungVerständnisNatural attitudeNaturalistic attitudePsychological attitudeEidetic analysisPure psychological attitudeIntentionality within a psychophysical contextPsychological phenomenological attitude within the natural attitudePsychological reduction in the natural attitudeContextualisationHermeneutics of intentionalityTranscendental attitudeTranscendental phenomenological attitudeIntentional analysis without constraintTranscendental phenomenologyTranscendental reductionPure phenomenologyReduced objectPhantomPure psychologyReduced intentional objectsNoetic-noematic senseEmpathised cultural objectsTheoretical psychologyDescription of givennessInterpretationGivennessMode of awarenessIntentionalityNoeticsNoetico-noematic senseHermeneutics of experienceDiltheyAuslegungExperiential meaningExperiential senseInterpretationInterpretationenNonverbalConceptual hermeneuticsHermeneutics of natural sciencesEmicInherent interpretationEticProjected interpretation from another region of beingBedeutungInterpretation of conceptual meaningInterpretation of nonverbal meaning or sensePre-reflexiveReflectionPhenomenology of worldWeltPhenomenology of lifeworld


This chapter introduces the case for a method of theory-making and idealism about meaning in Husserl’s two approaches for understanding how consciousness makes sense through its mental processes. The two types of phenomenology are transcendental phenomenology and pure psychology . It is the case that: “Psychology as an empirical science naturally concerns human beings as they actually, empirically are”, (XXIV, 146–147). But pure theoretical psychology is “not a factual science of the facts of this sphere of inner intuition but is a science of the essence , i.e., one which investigates the invariant, properly essential structures of a soul or of a community of psychic life”, (V, 144). The aim is creating an ideal understanding of consciousness as the fundamental way to grasp instances and universals of meaningful experience. The chapter explains the two approaches to consciousness in overview. Below, it is shown how these two versions of phenomenology differ in their theory-producing method and stance. The chapter regards both forms of phenomenology as types of making sense in working from instances towards universals, which is a way of structuring an argument for increased self-reflexivity in the natural scientific and other disciplines. The sequence of topics below starts with a note on the commonality between Husserl and Kant and notes hermeneutics as a ubiquitous term for sense-making so that reductions are regarded as serving the function of overthrowing the deadwood of received wisdom and re-invigorating professional discourses about their experiential referents. Second, experiential hermeneutics is explained in relation to its traditional meaning in the history of philosophy and with respect to the type of critique made in Philosophy as Rigorous Science. The third and fourth sections also employ hermeneutics in the sense of contextualisation to explain the two types of phenomenology. The difference between pure psychology in the world and transcendental phenomenology , allegedly outside of it, is explained. This study endorses pure psychology as intentional analysis of intentional implication and modifications of forms of being aware and intersubjective intentional implication . Intentional analysis operates within a theoretical context that is contemporarily called biopsychosocial that Husserl called “psychophysical”, (IX, 279, 305), where all is understood as intentional processes. Husserl’s perspective goes past the Cartesian opposition between spirit and nature, consciousness and biological substrate, to include three foci as they appear to consciousness. The consequence for pure psychology is the possibility of being able to work with contemporary empirical disciplines because all viewpoints are relative to consciousness in intersubjectivity . If psychology did become more qualitatively focused on understanding meaning then it would ensure its connection to making an impact on everyday experience.


Schema and Reduced Object


“The phenomenological field is not “there” at all but must first be created. Thus the phenomenological reduction is creative, but of something which bears a necessary relation to that which is “there””, (Cairns 1976, 11). The way that this definitive comment is explained is to make links between the reduction in relation to what it produces which are ideal-essences . Because of the complexity of Husserl’s viewpoint only the most basic items are noted at this point in the explanation. The act of reduction allegedly removes false understanding of the natural and naturalistic and forces a phenomenological attitude in one of two ways: Either a pure psychological or a transcendental attitude . The terms natural attitude and pre-reflexive refer to what occurs before reduction and before reflection (defined below). The extent of what is unclearly assumed to be the case about consciousness can be large indeed. After reflection it is only in the light of findings that specify the forms of intentionality in relation to its specific regions of objects does it become clearly understood what the role of consciousness is. The equivalent terms natural attitude, commonsense and folk-psychology refer to what everybody experiences first-hand about the world, others and themselves in it. The meaningful life in the natural attitude of naive realism is in-part the discursive reality of everyday culture in addition to the nonverbal and embodied life that is conditioned through the contexts of family, work, culture , society and history . What ‘everybody says’ is unclear and unjustified but what citizens may take to be real. As Husserl put it, the “natural attitude is therefore the attitude of experience. The I experiences itself and has experience of things, of lived bodies, and of other I’s. This attitude of experience is the natural one, in as much as it is exclusively that of the animals and pre-scientific man”, (XIII, 120). In other words, the natural attitude concerns naive belief in the existence and content of the world and ordinary limited perspectives on parts of it. The natural attitude is the totality of all that is actual and assumed to exist in culture refers to inaccurate understandings of consciousness and its intentionality as part of the physical body (also III, 48–50, IV, 375, V, 2–3, XIII, 112, 125, XVII, 239, Misch 1950, 1–3, cf Plato, The Republic, VII, 514–517c).

Another important attitude to be reduced and understand is the naturalistic one: when “I proceed from the natural-scientific attitude. Natural science wants to be a science of nature, a science of all nature in general… In all areas of the one nature, natural science wants to grasp existing entities as something necessary, i.e., as lawfully and exactly determined… Everything that in terms of nature is real or actual is dependent on the other actual realities. The dependencies involve parts of reality, dealing with reality as a context of disjunctive realities; each real being is integrated within a system whose elements belong together in such a way that each change of an element brings about functional changes in others, in accordance with strict laws (in physical nature these are laws of a mathematical form)”, (XIII, 90–91, cf XIII, 125–126). But either the natural or the naturalistic attitudes are what are useful to understand consciousness as the medium of all understanding.

A first principle is that unclarified natural attitude experience is the birthplace (and the boxing ring) for manners of argument, evidence and conclusions. Phenomenologists carry out reflection and variation and understand the role of theoretical ideals in supporting practical outcomes. The base experience of any intentionality-object relationship, (also known as noesis-noema correlate) is that the intentionality of consciousness is a universal. For instance, meaningful experiences are forever available to anyone at any moment of the day or night. Even in the case of silence or sitting in the dark, the mind wanders on to some memory , imagination or anticipation . All these experiences are instances of intentionality in referring to some sense. Every living moment is a piece of data in the laboratory called life and capable of intentional analysis . Experiments that test theories and attempt replicate the work of other scientists can be expressed as meaningful experiences for consciousness that are about something specific. Defining experiments and their findings in terms of intentionality becomes one application of phenomenological understanding. Forms of evidence about the work of consciousness are abundant and can be communicated and help collegiate activities.

There is an overlap between Kant’s idea of schematism, contemporary psychology and psychotherapy, and Husserl’s mapping of consciousness, where the word schema comes from the Greek σχήµα, meaning form or figure. Kant used the word in the sense of there being mental processes, syntheses , that the most fundamental categories of understanding are applied to perceptual experience in the creation of knowledge or experience “The schemata, therefore, are nothing but a priori determinations of time according to rules, and these, in regard to all possible objects, following the arrangement of the categories, relate to the series in time, the content in time, the order in time, and finally, to the totality in time in respect to all possible objects”, (1787, B185). Husserl’s usage of the terms schema and phantom are equivalent for a reduced object and have connections with Kant (Cairns 1976, 57). To interpret an object adequately in language means having the intention to achieve a full, prolonged experience of its manifold appearances (possibly through increasing the number of experiences of it in several different noetic ways). Thus, foreclosure is prevented: latching on to one noematic sense about an object that could get reified and habituated, and so lose contact with the manifold of its fuller presentations of sense for consideration. So, concluding on schemata in concepts generally is a formal way of noting ideal parts and wholes of sense of all kinds (I, 173, III, 256–259, 315, 316–317, IV, 37, 56–58, 95, 127, 201, 340, X, 6). It has to be noted that the formal and general terminology refers to everyday experiences that are already understood (XVIII, 253). And because of the abstract quality of the language used it’s always better to focus on the specific tangible sorts of experiences that are being referred to. Specifically, the commonality between these areas under the common term of “schema” is that parts and wholes of recognisable objects of attention are being referred to. A schema for a human face would have the parts of eyes, nose, hair, mouth and so on that comprise the recognisable whole: A human face in general, and its schema, its form and its dependent moments , are what is internal to the map of consciousness in general—and these enable the recognition of specific persons’ faces. “Schemata” in Kant refers to concepts that point to nonverbal experience and are understandable as ordering principles between the two, and also operate at the nonverbal level and temporality (1787, B177–B178, B180, B185–B186). The schemata are recurrent patterns, shapes and identifiable rules ordering or structuring meaningfulness across both areas. So this is another point of connection between Kant and Husserl because they both make assertions about meaning for consciousness across time, place and social context.


Reading Phenomenology as Experiential Hermeneutics in Relation to Meaningful Sense


Joseph Kocklemans has done much to link Husserlian phenomenology to the development of hermeneutics and make links to how the phenomena of science can also be understood in such a context (1993, 2002). In the same vein Ernst Orth (1987) points out that the traditional meaning of hermeneutics is that it was used for interpreting religious texts, literature, poetry and the law. Orth complains about Martin Heidegger’s usage of hermeneutics as part of the ontological phenomenology of Da-sein (GA 2, 12, 37). Orth argues that for hermeneutics to maintain its proper sense , then any contemporary usage should refer back to its traditional usage. However, Husserl at one point conceded that in: “the method of correlation-research, the method for questioning back behind intentional objectivity . Genuine analysis of consciousness is, so to say, the hermeneutic of conscious life, where the latter is taken as that which continuously intends entities (identities), and constitutes them within its own self in manifolds of consciousness that pertain to those entities in essential ways”, (XXVII, 177). This is taken as a mandate to make the processes of analysis clearer and conceptualise the application of ideals about the universal structure of consciousness and refer to specific instances of it. It highlights those passages in Husserl that this reading calls inherent interpretation by interpolating within the whole set of givennesses of what appears. It is true that the traditional usage of hermeneutics is theory of interpretation , in relation to texts and forms of textual analysis in literature, religion and philosophy. It is argued that Husserl’s writing and methodology of reflection , reduction , abstraction and imaginative variation to cognise essences amounts to hermeneutic stances about how to de-contextualise, re-contextualise and make ideal conclusions. The psychological and transcendental reductions have an explicitly hermeneutic function in preventing contamination of understanding when attending to noetic-noematic givenness and concluding on these essences (III, 275, 283). The central focus is concluding on mental processes, intentionalities, by comparing and contrasting the differences in senses of objects (and different types of object) formed across the different noetic awareness of each, across manifolds of different views of the same thing. Contextualisation is a part of any argument and empirical method though: Parallel to the core senses of the application of words to nonverbal experience, to avoid persuasion and see for oneself in Kant (1787, B848), in Freud (1900a), and in the natural attitude usage of speech. Phenomenology studies conscious phenomena through becoming aware of the workings of consciousness in its social contexts (VI, 240). But it is not the point to stay immersed in experience and apply words without critical thought, as though the intent to achieve “mere description” will avoid all problems. The reading of phenomenology made in these pages is one that argues that in the years after 1913, the interpretation of what appears, in Dilthey’s sense , was the actual focus for phenomenology because conclusions are made through comparisons.

Hermeneutics was defined by Wilhelm Dilthey as the comparative procedure of showing what concepts and passages mean by comparing their senses and intentions to communicate (GS V, 332–337). A similar comparative procedure is invoked in phenomenology as the comparison of experiences, then using carefully-chosen language to name the key facets of how meaning and intentionality can be understood (I, 92–93, III, 201–202, 204, IV, 299). Husserl stated his research question clearly as experiencing and making clear the “really inherent in pure mental process, contained in it as the parts, the pieces and the moments not divisible into pieces, of a whole”, (III, 202). This aim is expressed in Marbach’s notation (1993, 2010) that links the many different noemata experienced through different noeses , to the here and now perceptual context and embodiment in it. The intentional analytic methods lead to the inherent interpretation of the different forms of experience. This has various consequences which are explored below. One central concern is noting inappropriate forms of model and metaphor for understanding the work of consciousness. (In the negative, the same task is identifying naturalised versions of consciousness and meaning to set them aside by purposefully not considering natural being , natural cause and higher-level forms of non-phenomenological ungrounded philosophy). The interpretative ideal can be explained by some terminology from anthropology . In anthropology the word “emic” is used to describe those forms of understanding that are based on the inherent being of the topic under discussion (VI, 236, 239). Emic approaches look beyond what is already known in favour of an immersion in experiences that show the differences between forms of cognised being , and only then would they want to account for what they find there as genuine understanding.

The word hermeneutics is used to evoke the sense of how the same situation can be represented in three different ways. In the natural attitude , consciousness in intersubjective sharing of meaning is obscured by ideas of natural causes and biological being, while natural science and statistics are used to quantify, test and falsify predictions. The reason why hermeneutics is used in defining phenomenology is that Husserl is arguing for comparisons of attitudes and complementary abstractions, to focus on different types of givenness that indicate intentionality . Each aspect of the biopsychosocial can be approached differently and appear differently, whilst each moment remains a part of the dependent whole . It’s clear that the complex system of biopsychosocial being is teased apart and its pieces inspected, so referring to different background contexts, for instance the “physicalist thing manifesting itself in the intuitively given thing”, (IV, 77). For instance, in one passage three attitudes are discussed in short succession (IV, 190–191). Complementary abstractions could feature the naturalistic attitude on natural being; or the psychological attitude on intentional being in intersubjective intentional implication in the lifeworld (VI, 229). Or what might be discussed is the transcendental attitude focused only on intentionality in the lifeworld in history . The focus on the return to the lifeworld has the purpose of beating either-or thinking. It makes intentionality and natural being-as understood become united. What saves rationality is looking at the evidence in the proper way which is to give proper emphasis to consciousness as the starting point (IX, 55–56). When it is realised how consciousness predominates then it is obvious that “the Cartesian theory of two substances is defeated simply because abstracta are not “substances””, (VI, 232). This is part of an argument for understanding the importance that all meanings are for consciousness. And when meaning for consciousness in history is properly understood, then it makes cohesive sense that intersubjectivity is ontologically prior and necessary condition of possibility because the contextualisation of instances occurs in much wider vistas of time and place (IV, 294–316). Of course, following the emphasis on intentionality inevitably leads further towards the transcendental attitude which makes communion with natural being and the naturalistic and psychological attitudes problematic. “Knowledge of nature abstracts only from all other values besides the cognitive values: “I want nothing other than to experience nature more richly by means of ‘theoretical experience’ and to know, in a theoretical knowledge on the basis of experience, just what that which appears is, what nature is””, (IV, 26). There are many exhortations to describe faithfully and attend to manifest phenomena of what appears to oneself in a number of different wordings. But describing something faithfully is not a sufficient instruction and misleading. What the descriptions require is the comparison of forms of reference in the sense that what is attended to are objects in contexts, implications of sense projected onto perceptual givenness , that are learned in the collective past. For instance, how dependent moments and wholes are comprised of experiences of higher self-consciousness in lower pre-reflexive self-presence before reflection began, such as how the other’s bodily expressiveness indicates their point of view as well as their speech .

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Apr 9, 2017 | Posted by in PSYCHOLOGY | Comments Off on Two Interpretative Positions in Phenomenology

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