#69 Indirect phenomenology as supplement only
I found Braddock’s (2001) article on “indirect phenomenology” or “phenomenology through vicarious experience” through Gallagher (2003). The concept of indirect phenomenology fascinates me because the phenomenologist or phenomenological psychopathologist need not actually experience another person’s lived experience, phenomenon, or condition to phenomenologize about said experience, even though some phenomenologists might not agree. The professional philosophical phenomenologist, such as Merleau-Ponty does with his case study called “Schneider” in his book Phenomenology of Perception, reveals that it’s possible for one to decode or find out another’s experiential structures even though he hadn’t experienced them himself.
Indirect phenomenology basically states that one can use first-person accounts of an experience to develop a phenomenology about it. The phenomenologist needn’t have actually experienced the other’s “thing,” as it were. Even though I like Braddock’s progressive argument, contra Varela who’s work I also like and who believes that one should do phenomenology of one’s own lived experience, I would lean more toward doing one’s own phenomenology because personal lived experiences afford a direct and repeatedly accessible (through memories) means to truly know an experience. If one does not have synesthesia or schizophrenia or color blindness or whatever, then first-person accounts are all that someone without these conditions has, and thus must make do with an experience they know nothing about firsthand. Additionally, I see indirect phenomenology rather as more of a supplement to first-person phenomenology. Both are valid because we can compare various interpretations of an experience.
Regarding Braddock’s indirect phenomenology, I admire his seeking and adding to naturalized and applied phenomenological methods. Phenomenology is not a monolith; as far as I know, Heidegger was one of the first or the first dissenter to Husserl’s concepts when it came to the science of consciousness. As well, I heard phenomenologist Dan Zahavi say (and I can’t remember whom he was citing) that phenomenology is a “heretical” philosophy, meaning that subsequent phenomenologists seem to generally discredit or contradict their predecessors. (If you know who Zahavi was citing, please email me or leave a comment below.)
I must look more into phenomenological psychopathology because I want to know how psychopathologists and phenomenologists use, and successfully by the sound of it, other people’s first-person accounts to extrapolate some kind of phenomenology about the phenomenon in question. My personal opinion: use whatever method you can to make your phenomenology, to make your data fit into or expand a particular theory/method. I think researchers shouldn’t box themselves into a rigid or narrow theoretical/methodological focus. Researchers should be open to experiment with the tools available to them, and if there are no tools to drive home their points, then they should create their own tools and sell them in the marketplace of ideas.
For example, some machine parts are only available through 3D printing, or are considerably cheaper to produce through 3D printing. Isn’t it amazing that because of 3D printing some machines can be created that could not have been created without 3D printing, irrespective of the material (e.g. metal, plastic, proteins, etc.)? Does this mean that we shouldn’t use this machine because our normal tools cannot create some of the needed parts? No, of course not. Think of 3D printing as a theoretical construct or research method that delivers a specific result. I see indirect phenomenology and other applied phenomenological methods in the same light as the 3D printer: we must develop new methods to get at a desired understanding of a phenomenon. Not everyone is born with all possible human capabilities, and thus, some of us will need to get creative in finding out what an experience is like, albeit, which highly depends on the method used. I also think it would be interesting to combine classical first-person phenomenology with indirect phenomenology and other methods. As long as you tell your readers you’re swapping methodological hats, I don’t see the problem with applying multiple methods to get at a marbled understanding of a phenomenon.
I also think that one cannot academically/professionally survive on indirect phenomenology alone. Indirect phenomenology should be a supplement for those unexperienceable experiences, however, while using one’s philosophical phenomenological training. If one does phenomenology, one should apply the phenomenological method/attitude to their first-person experiences depending on what they want to discover about a particular lived experience. And so, we must ask: what is original or pure phenomenology that one should (again, my opinion; yes, normative) do most of the time? Personally, I’m not interested in focusing primarily on others’ phenomenology. It is partly for this reason that I haven’t applied to PhD programs; I don’t want to mainly learn about and teach others’ philosophy, rather, I want to think and write my own pertaining to my interests, those being, mainly, to develop a phenomenology of non-ordinary perception elicited by psychedelics. I know I need to know others’ phenomenologies in order to not reinvent the wheel. Further, I need to know what has been done so I can find weaknesses in their arguments and look where my academic predecessors did not, to be heretical, as it were, and then expand upon their contributions to make my own. I don’t mean to be heretical; I simply want to go farther down the rabbit hole than those who came before me, to think of new ways of explaining the human condition, on and off psychoactive substances.
Braddock, G. (2001). Beyond Reflection in Naturalized Phenomenology. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 8(11), 3–16.
Gallagher, S. (2003). Phenomenology and Experimental Design Toward a Phenomenologically Enlightened Experimental Science. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 10(9-10), 85-99.