Subjective Knowing in Phenomenological Studies

Q1. Although theoretically a researcher conducting a phenomenological inquiry could establish hypotheses to predict the structure and features of phenomena being explored, this approach would not follow the “bracketing” method suggested by Husserl. What are the advantages of either using hypotheses to predict phenomena or bracketing to explore such phenomena? Are these two approaches mutually exclusive? If so, why? Phenomenological research does not naturally lend itself to constructing a hypothesis along the lines of the scientific method. It is by definition context-specific and observational.

There is no attempt to isolate particular variables from the researcher’s framework and simply focus on a single phenomenon. Husserl’s use of bracketing frames any predictions specifically from a first-person standpoint: “to ensure that the respective item is described exactly as is experienced, or intended, by the subject” (Beyer, 2016, p.5). The observer can predict that he or she will perceive something but not state that this observation is true of the phenomenon itself.

Thus the scientific method with a predictive hypothesis is not always useful for a researcher, although in some limited instances, where only observational impressions are being predicted, it could be applied to some specific contexts.

For example, when talking to a group of African-American teens about their interactions with the police, it might be hypothesized that the teens were likely to believe that race had an impact upon their interactions with the police, without determining beforehand what those impressions might be; by merely bracketing the phenomenology and solely focusing upon the impressions of the researcher, arguably some of the value of conducting such an investigation might be lost.

The downside, however, is that with the bracketing method, the focus of the research is solely upon the researcher not upon the actual subjects. The only way in which the hypothesis method and the bracketing method could coexist is if the researcher developed a hypothesis about his or her own bracketing, or the impressions he or she was likely to have. But this might only serve to reinforce any personal prejudices he or she might have about the observed phenomenon, again making the observations of limited value.

While Husserl may be correct in noting the only thing we can truly know are our own impressions, most readers want at least some useful information, even if it is imperfectly derived, about something beyond the observer’s mind. Reference Beyer, C. (2016). Edmund Husserl. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved from:. Q2. Heidegger's concept of fallenness was appropriated by philosophical Christian theologians such as Karl Jaspers as a way of explaining the relationship between reality and our fallen condition as humans.

Jaspers, in particular, implied that objectivity resulting from the scientific method could not explain all human knowing. Indeed, modern psychological inquiry into religious experience has shown that such experience may be personal by nature, not easily reduced to delineated objects of science.

Does this perspective, namely, the subjective nature of personal religious experience, align well with both descriptive and interpretative approaches to phenomenology? Why or why not? Karl Jaspers insists upon a radical subjectivity, arguing that “Most modes of rationality, he suggested, are conveniently instrumental or ideological forms, which serve distinct subjective and objective functions, and they habitually stand in the way of genuine knowledge” (Thornhill & Miron, 2017, p. 4).

Even the rational construct of the scientific method and the idea that human beings can suddenly abandon all preconceived notions, he argues, is a personal perspective based not on logic but upon belief, much like religious experience itself. This aligns with the phenomenological perspective in the sense that phenomenology fundamentally revolves around describing a particular phenomenon as recounted in the experiences of others, through the subjective lens of the researcher. Experience is thus always filtered, whether it is a religious experience or an ethnography.

However, in contrast to Jasper’s evident mistrust of subjectivity, phenomenology celebrates it. Phenomenology arose in reaction to the notion that objectivity had silenced many important voices, such as the voices of native people themselves in ethnography, women, minorities, and.