ferrarello (2013) phenomenological philosophy -an introduction for psychologists
TRANSCRIPT
DESCRIPTIVE PHENOMENOLOGICAL PSYCHOLOGICAL RESEARCH
Dr. Susi Ferrarello
Loyola University, Rome
Florence University of the Arts
Associate Editor of Quaderni di Sabbia
WHAT DOES “PHILOSOPHY” MEAN TO YOU?
PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE
Philosophy means love
of knowledge (Gr.φίλος+
σοφία)
Science means
knowledge (Lt. Scio= I
know)
HOW CAN PHILOSOPHY AND PSYCHOLOGY WORK TOGETHER?
PHENOMENOLOGY AND HUMAN SCIENCE
Phenomenology is a philosophical approach applied to psychology
Both philosophy and psychology are human sciences
Study of phaenomenon (Gr. Φαίνω, What appears to us)
HUMAN AND NATURAL SCIENCE
The word science is not a univocal term
Scientia comes from Latin scire and refers to the outcome of inquiry within a community of knowers
The meanings of science have been debated for millennia
ARE HUMAN AND NATURAL SCIENCES OBJECTIVE?
ORIGIN OF DISTINCTION BETWEEN HUMAN AND NATURAL SCIENCE
Galileo Galilei
René Descartes
John Locke
Auguste Comte
Wilhelm Dilthey
GALILEO GALILEI (1564-1662, ITALY)
Father of modern,
objective and natural science
Learn to read the book of
nature
Learn to be nature
HOW CAN WE BE NATURE AND SPEAK ITS LANGUAGE?
THE LANGUAGE THAT NATURE SPEAKS
[The universe] cannot be read until we have learned the language and become familiar with the characters in which it is written. It is written in mathematical language, and the letters are triangles, circles and other geometrical figures, without which means it is humanly impossible to comprehend a single word.
-Opere Il Saggiatore, p. 171
HOW CAN YOU PROVE THE EXISTENCE OF THINGS IF YOU DON’T FIRST PROVE YOUR OWN EXISTENCE?
RENÉ DESCARTES (1596-1650, FRANCE)
“I think, therefore I am” (Je pense, donc je suis or
Cogito ergo sum)
Res Cogitans (I think - Mind)
Res Extensa (I am - Body )
Res Cogitans and Res Extensa
interact through the pineal gland
JOHN LOCKE (1632-1704, ENGLAND)
Founder of Empirical science
Nature speaks in the language of experience
Reliable knowledge is grounded in the evidence of sensory experience and established by means of experimentation
DO WE SPEAK THE SAME LANGUAGE AS NATURE? IS HUMAN SCIENCE THE SAME AS NATURAL SCIENCE?
AUGUSTE COMTE (1798-1857, ENGLAND)
Founder of positivism
Human science can be studied using the methods of the
natural sciences
Natural Science is a positive science
Positive comes from Latin positum
ARE WE OBJECTS? HOW CAN OUR LIVED-EXPERIENCE BE INVESTIGATED?
WILHELM DILTHEY (1833-1911, GERMAN)
The human science movement arose in the 19th century as an alternative to positivism, which had become the dominant philosophy of science
Human science argues that meanings, not just facts, are critical in understanding human phenomena: Dilthey was a founder of this movement
Geistes- Naturwissenschaften (Human and Natural science) have to use the same objectivistic method
PHENOMEOLOGY
Founder: Edmund Husserl
(1859-1938)
Works : Crisis of European
Science and the Amsterdam Lectures on
Phenomenological Pyschology
IS SCIENCE OBJECTIVE AND UNBIASED? IS IT REALLY POSSIBLE TO SPEAK THE LANGUAGE OF NATURE?
CRISIS OF EUROPEAN SCIENCE (1936)
Objectivism of the Human and Natural Sciences led
Europe toward a
“deluge of skepticism”
Mathematical and Empirical
language alienated us
from our lifeworld
Science is always
subjective
All our knowledge
come from us
Transcendental
Subjectivism
HUSSERL:
If man loses this faith, it means nothing less than the loss of faith "in himself," in his own true being. This true being is not something he always already has, with the self-evidence of the "I am," but something he only has and can have in the form of the struggle for his truth, the struggle to make himself true. True being is everywhere an ideal goal, a task of episteme or "reason," as opposed to being which through doxa is merely thought to be, unquestioned and "obvious."
HUSSERL:
As men of the present, having grown up in this development, we find ourselves in the greatest danger of drowning in the skeptical deluge and thereby losing our hold on our own truth. As we reflect in this plight, we gaze backward into the history of our present humanity. We can gain self -understanding, and thus inner support, only by elucidating the unitary meaning which is inborn in this history from its origin through the newly established task [of the Renaissance], the driving force of all [modern] philosophical attempts.
MERLEAU-PONTY (1908-1961, FRANCE)
Phenomenology of Perception
Humans are more than a chain of facts
There is no objective and higher language of nature to be excluded from
All our knowledge begins with the act of perception