IEP 405: Phenomenology and Environment

AWAYMAVE - The Distance Mode of MA in Values and the Environment at Lancaster University

Week 7. Phenomenology as Method

With regard to the Introduction to Phenomenology by Sokolowski, I hope you have covered chapters 5-10 by this time. The discussion of intersubjectivity might help with choosing a phenomenon to practice on.

Introduction to phenomenology as a method of investigation

To give an account of phenomenology as method is always going to be contentious, there are many interpretations of what a phenomenological method might be and certainly it is not possible to give an uncontentious set of procedures.

Although there are obvious dangers in thinking that phenomenology can be simply a technique that one can employ in an unproblematic way, the intention is that there is a method - a way of seeing - that can be adopted.

The Method

One of the most systematic presentations of what that method is, drawn from the presentations of phenomenology in many of the classic texts is by Herbert Spiegelberg in The Phenomenological Movement Vol. 2. p.659. (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1978). Spiegelberg, drawing on other phenomenologists as well as Husserl, places less emphasis on the reduction(s) than other commentators, but his analysis is clear and it is set out as an activity which one might try out. The seven steps he delineates are:

1. Investigating particular phenomena;
2. investigating general essences;
3. apprehending essential relationships among essences;
4. watching modes of appearing;
5. watching the constitution of phenomena in consciousness;
6. suspending belief in the existence of phenomena;
7. interpreting the meaning of phenomena.

I shall give an account of the method as set out under these steps to serve as a way into phenomenology as a method.

1. Investigating particular phenomena:

This first step in the procedure is advanced primarily by phenomenological description. However, the dictum "phenomenology begins in silence" suggests that we cannot begin describing before we have looked. The initial part of describing could be "looking and listening", or 'opening oneself to' the phenomenon.
But what is a phenomenon, what counts as one? It is perhaps necessary to remember that phenomena as understood by phenomenology are not 'things out there' but things as they appear to consciousness. David Bell describes the Husserlian term 'object' as "the broadest, least specific ontological category there is" (1991:93) or as he quotes Husserl's own words "an anything-whatsoever" So a phenomenon, a thing, can be something I perceive, something I feel, something I synthesise in my understanding. It could be a table, a response to criticism or a concept such as justice. The instruction to just look in order to intuit the phenomenon makes the process sound easy, but as Spiegelberg points out:

This may be so in theory but it is certainly not so in practice. It is one of the most demanding operations, which requires utter concentration on the object intuited without becoming absorbed in it to the point of no longer looking critically. (1978:659)

Descriptions are not the things they describe so the act of description is one of guiding. When the phenomenon was something previously unknown for which we have no distinct name the situation is a particularly revealing one for understanding the process of phenomenological description. In these cases it is clear that one is left with negations, with similarities and with metaphor - Its not at all like x, it shares something with y etc. Thus the relationship of resemblance rather than identity between the spoken/written description and the experience itself is underlined. An important aspect of this process of describing is that it becomes a means to enrich the experience of the thing. The thing as an experience deepens through a simple process of noticing and recording. If my phenomenon was clouds I could say that yesterday it was cloudy for most of the day with a few breaks in the cloud in the early afternoon. That would be a pretty poor description, close observation even for a few minutes could produce a much more complete picture including colours, forms, positions, shifts and changes in those factors, effects on the appearance of the landscape, effects on my mood, changes in animal behaviour. What becomes apparent through phenomenological description is the impossibility of its ending, we could go on describing in ever finer detail and as circumstances change we would have to change the description. Thus even in the first step we already begin discriminating between those features we see as important to a thing and those which do not require pursuing with description. But for phenomenology the decision has to be imposed from the phenomenon and not from prior categorisation of what should count as relevant.

Exercise
Have a go at a phenomenological description to the point where you are starting to narrow down your description to what is relevant. Then investigate your decisions of relevance to see whether you think it is possible to discriminate between imposing something on the thing and perceiving an aspect of the description to be relevant to the thing.

N.B. to really get at what is being attempted here you are going to have to do the exercises. The term exercise is a really useful here and if it brings to mind the idea of going to the gym and working out GOOD. Imagine if you wanted to develop more strength and agility so you buy a book of exercises and then just read the book and expect the act of reading to develop your muscle tone. If you want to be able to do close observation and description then you have to practice.

2. Investigating general essences

Termed by Husserl 'eidetic intuition' this step in the method moves beyond the particular instances of phenomena to the general essences. It could be called a 'seeing through to' or 'uncovering' the essence of the phenomenon. Again this step involves a seeing, an analysing and a describing. But we are no longer describing, for example, this apple but what it is about it that allows us to see it as an apple.

There are two uses of the human imagination in phenomenology.

Imagination 1.

The first aspect of imagination to be used in the phenomenological process occurs without the conscious application of imagination as a tool. To explore the experiencing of something Husserl refers to the noematic structure of the experience of something. The noematic structure reveals that when we, for example, perceive something we perceive not just the single appearance of the thing but what is 'meant along with it'. For example we see the thing not from just the angle available to us but also via the imagination from all the other possible angles, or at least, those to which we have in the past had access to or can imagine. The predicted texture or temperature of a thing can also be provided by imagination. It is only when later experience shows that these imaginatively provided predictions sometimes get it wrong -that snakes are not slimy etc.- that we notice the action of imagination in providing the noematic structure. (This is discussed more under modes of appearing).

Think

can you give your own example of this experience of being 'caught out' providing a 'mistaken' noematic structure that then gets 'corrected' by a new one coming along hot on its heels.

Imagination 2.

in the process of eidetic description the second and explicit use of imagination comes in with the technique called free imaginative variation. In order to see the essence of a phenomenon the original phenomenon, i.e. that which is experienced, is imaginatively varied. The example that Husserl gives of the experience of perception uses a 'table-perception'. We can imagine the table-perception differently. As he suggests:

Perhaps we begin by fictively changing the shape or the colour of the object quite arbitrarily, keeping identical only its perceptual appearing. Cartesian Meditations p. 70.

What is gained by this process is not only a range of what are possible perceptions, but also the identity of what it was not possible to imagine of perceptions. From the identification of the principle which guides our intuition about what it is and what it is not possible to imagine as perceptions we see what is essential to perception. That is: what an experience must have and what it must not have in order to be a perception.

Free imaginative variation can also be used on the table itself to reach the essence of tableness. We can imagine the wooden table of our present experience as an iron table or as green instead of brown, but it cannot be imagined as made of water (in its fluid state). Thus from the use of imagination we can reach an understanding of something which is essential not just to all tables existent but of all possible tables. This essential something is the eidos of table.

Thus in phenomenology the eidos of the thing is reached via the imaginative variation of certain aspects. Phenomenology as a science of essences has been much criticised but usually on mistaken beliefs about what it is. Husserl's idea of essences has been accused of both reintroducing Platonic hypostatisation (believing that ideal forms exist in another realm of which the things in the world are poor reflections - 2nd rate copies) and being 'nothing but' linguistic analysis of general types I would maintain that he is doing neither of these, but that's probably more detail than you need at present.

Back to the practical approach of this block
One way of reaching that essence of something would be to describe how far, e.g., an apple can be from this apple before it would be a pear or anything which we could no longer recognise it as, or even coherently imagine it as, an apple. Thus we can define where the boundaries lie, not linguistically but, by examination of the essence of the phenomenon.

OK, off you go with testing out imaginative variation.

Try with a physical object or with a concept, one student tried friendship last year

3. Apprehending essential relationships:

Spiegelberg separates two forms of essential relationships which this step explores. One is the relationship between parts of a single thing and the other is the relationship between separate but connected things. Exploring the former he uses the example of a triangle. With the triangle it is easy to see that we might vary some aspects of a particular triangle, e.g., its size, without "exploding" its essence. Whereas its number of sides cannot be varied without destroying its triangleness. The example given of related phenomena is that of colour and extension. So that you can experience a particular essential relationship and verify or refute its essential nature I would like you to try this one out. Make sure you do it as you read and don't read ahead.

Exercise
What I would like you to do is imagine the colour yellow, perhaps we should agree to make it a lightish yellow, now could you deepen it a little.

Perhaps you could deepen it even more, add some red and mix it in to make a warm orange.

So you have experience of a colour and you have also experienced moving it in your imaginations changing the colour, now I'm just guessing here but is your yellow spread out in some sense, is it a surface or perhaps a gaseous form?

don't read on till you have that held in your imagination

Now try to experience the colour with no extension, so it must not spread out at all and of course even a very small surface is still a surface.

It becomes apparent in this operation that no occurrence of the colour can be imagined without it being extended. Thus we have apprehended an essential relationship between colour and extension.
That's an easy one, what about your phenomenon - the one you described before can you discover some essential relationships with that one. Any interesting observations to the discussion site please.

4. Watching modes of appearing:

To examine the phenomenon we must examine how it is appearing to us. One aspect that arose from this systematic exploration as carried out by Husserl can be seen in his discussion of 'horizons'.

In this instance the given object is an object in the world -a die- but the phenomenon -die- as explored by Husserl clearly contains more than what we might term the 'perceptually given' as it might be interpreted naively. Examination of the modes of appearing reveal to us that we bring to the die more than what is immediately present to the senses. Our conceptual horizons are not limited to what is seen because we also conceptualize the meaning-along-with-it. Thus if the die open to our visual field has the side with one spot we know that there will be a hidden side with six spots. The die appearing to our consciousness has not only this appearance but other possible appearances as well.

Moreover, the die open to our conception will not only contain all that is meant-along-with-it but also the consciousness of its having a single appearance which includes never being able to see the six and the one at the same time. The appearance that is the sum of all its possible states is its fixed essential type (Seine feste Wesenstypik). It is in this manner that we can see the essence beneath the flux of appearances: not the re-consolidation of this particular instance or position of the die but the combination of appearances plus meaning.

Another aspect of observing modes of appearing, which is perhaps the opposite of the foregoing recognition that we 'see' more than we see, is the recognition of degrees of distinctness. In this aspect the mode of appearing is studied to see where the lack of clarity or haziness resides. Merleau-Ponty explores this aspect of perception in some detail to highlight that, for example, haziness is not a failing of perception it is an experience of haziness.

Check

Don't move on until you have thought of your own example of a horizon or 'meant along with it'.

5. Exploring the constitution of phenomena in consciousness:

Beyond watching the modes of appearing it is also possible to observe the way in which a phenomenon is constituted in our consciousness. One way of explaining the difference is to say that constitution is not just the full appearing but also the taking shape and "crystallisation" of the phenomenon. In this example the constituting is particularly drawn out to demonstrate what the phenomenologist would do when faced with an object to 'unpack' how it has come to appear to them in the way it has.

Someone tells me they have a cat, their cat is now for me a phenomenon. However, it is empty in detail, all I know is that it is a cat and so would expect it to be a domestic cat within certain boundaries of ordinary catness. I might add detail imaginatively and I might learn further details from the owner and thus over time the phenomenon is being continually constituted in my consciousness. The owner always wears stripes and so I might speculate that she would chose a tabby cat, I later learn that it is overweight and so the phenomenon becomes a fat tabby cat. That some details have more weight than others (excuse the pun) is also a part of the phenomenon. For example, when I eventually meet the cat I would be much more surprised if it were thin than if it were black.

Exploration of the constitution of the phenomenon reveals not only aspects of consciousness but also aspects of the phenomenon. Even if I met the cat before being told of its existence I would not know it all at once. It might be a fat black cat but is it friendly? Friendliness in cats is an aspect of the phenomenon that can only be determined over time and in certain situations. Thus by exploring the constitution of the phenomenon it is revealed that it has certain hidden aspects. Nevertheless the phenomenon is in one sense always fully known because its unknown aspects or empty features are constituted as presently empty but open to further constitution.

Although the examination of constitution reveals it to be a very active process it is not, and should not be mistaken for, construction. If by constituting the world we constructed it then the cat above would remain tabby. The blackness of the cat we accept as being seen naively or constituted phenomenologically from the hyletic data, either way it is a black cat.

Only thus can we understand Husserl's constant contention that the constitution of the world is not the creation of the world; it is taking the world which is already there and consciously "immanentizing" it in order to remove from it all possibility of doubt.

Now! take whatever is in front of you, pencil, cup, plant, role of cellotape - anything and examine how it is constituted in consciousnes - how did it come to be for you the thing it is?

6. Suspending belief in existence:

That which is represented here as a sixth step is variously called the reduction or bracketing or holding in abeyance or Epoché. Spiegelberg's demotion of the phenomenological reduction from its usual primary position is contentious. The reasons he gives for this move are:

a) that the reduction is not "common ground" for all phenomenologists,
b) that Husserl did not introduce the technique until after some of his most accomplished phenomenological analyses in the Logische Untersuchungen which suggests that it is not as crucial as was later claimed, and
c) there is in Husserl's work no clear and definitive statement giving the meaning and function of the phenomenological reduction.

The procedure is perhaps most usefully termed bracketing, the metaphor being derived by Husserl from the mathematical operation of putting in brackets any part of a larger mathematical problem which one is not dealing with at present. But what is gained by this? The claim is that by bracketing an aspect of our natural attitude -the assumption of existence- we are free to explore all aspects of a phenomenon, even those which the natural attitude or a theoretical preconception would not normally allow us to entertain. As Spiegelberg puts it:

What is all-important in phenomenology is that we consider all the data, real or unreal, or doubtful, as having equal rights, and investigate them without fear or favour. The reduction will help us to do justice to all of them, especially to those which are under the handicap of initial suspicion as to their existential claims. p.692

Some commentators have set out the method as a process of ever more radical reductions. For an example see Quinten Lauer in The Triumph of Subjectivity ch. 3 where the reductions are outlined as "the psychological reduction", "the eidetic reduction", "the phenomenological reduction or transcendental reduction" and so on. I am not sure how helpful that is as an approach, so perhaps the key thing to take from the reduction idea is that it is a way to avoid any categorising or theory driven means to understand something even to the extent of not seeing it as a thing that necessarily exists beyond my consciousness.

Exercise

I want you to have two goes at bracketing. First just have a try at taking a phenomenon you know well and attempt to set aside something you know about it. For example, the name of a plant or (and this will hint at a potentially powerful aspect of this technique) a particular character trait of a person.

Then secondly, have a go at bracketing whether something exists. You could try this with something you are sceptical about and with something you can see right in front of you.

7. Interpreting concealed meanings:

The seventh stage goes beyond the work of Husserl, whom Spiegelberg has adhered to most closely until this point. By moving onto interpretation he cites himself within a hermeneutic phenomenology closer to Heidegger or Merleau-Ponty. The describing that has taken place in the previous steps, of course, carries an appreciation of meaning. However, the aim in this step is to uncover the meanings which are not "manifest to our intuiting, analyzing and describing."p. 695. The results of such an interpretative action could be construed as explanatory hypotheses which the foregoing steps had tried to avoid. But the phenomenologists making this further move into interpretation would claim to be drawing the hidden meanings from "clues" in the manifest meanings. The hidden interpretation once drawn out is presumably then 'visible' or manifest in the phenomena in a similar way to the meanings which are open to intuition through the operation of the previous steps.

You can guess what I am going to suggest now, I am sure.

Exercise
Take a single phenomenon, perhaps the one you tried out with the describing exercise, or something else if that didn't work well or keep your attention. Remember this could be an anything whatsoever, but make it something that interests you. Now try all 7 steps and see what emerges.

Results or problems to the discussion site please

A word of warning
It is clear from Husserl's representation of the difficult progress of phenomenology that repeating the phenomenological procedures of bracketing and eidetic description etc. are not automatically accessible abilities, hence my note at the beginning about practice.

As Quinten Lauer put it:

this kind of knowing, this kind of apodicitically evident ideal entity, cannot spring fully panoplied from the untutored mind, like Minerva from the head of Jove. The mind in which philosophy's ideal objects are constituted must be a mind which develops, a mind which becomes better and better equipped to know, a mind which has been trained to employ consciously the phenomenological method, not of finding evidence but of making evident. (Lauer, Q. the Triumph of Subjectivity p xxi

I believe it is very useful to return to these fundamental aspects of technique and practice them again and again as well as question them. There are many uses of phenomenology in other disciplines and we will be looking at some examples in the next block. The next reading is an example of phenomenology used within social science, although it is one that sticks unusually close to a Husserlian interpretation. The chapter you have will give a different, though not confusingly so, take on the 7 steps above. You will have observed from your own practical application that the steps merge into one another and here Moustakas is working through four procedures.

Now read Clark Moustakas' chapter on Epoche, Phenomenological Reduction, Imaginative variation and Synthesis.

In the next chapter he applies these ideas to conducting research in the human sciences by what he calls the Stevick - Colaizzi - Keen method and is constructed from his modification to methods of analysis used by the three authors.

The steps for this are given as follows:

1. Using a phenomenological approach, obtain a full description of your own experience of the phenomenon.
2. From the verbatim transcript of your experience complete the following steps:
a) Consider each statement with respect to significance for description of the experience.
b) Record all relevant statements.
c) List each nonrepetative, nonoverlapping statement. These are the invarient horizons or meaning units of the experience.
d) Relate and cluster the invariant meaning units into themes.
e) synthesise the invarient meaning units and themes into a description of the textures of the experience. Include verbatim examples.
f) Reflect on your own textural description. Through imaginative variation, construct a description of the structures of your experience.
g) Construct a textural-structural description of the meanings and essences of your experience.
3. From the verbatim transcript of the experience of each of the co-researchers complete the above steps a to g.
4. From the individual textural-structural descriptions of all co-researchers' experiences, construct a composite textural-structural description of the meanings and essences of the experience, integrating all individual textural-structural descriptions into a universal description of the experience representing the group as a whole.

You will see from this how crucial the idea of intersubjectivity is both as a finding of phenomenological research and as a means to the application of phenomenological ideas to social science - or practically any - research question.

Web notes by Isis Brook updated March 2005