Talk:Phenomenology (philosophy)

Kant
Kant should be mentioned in the first paragaph, as either an early practitioner of phenomenology (his constructivist epistomology) or as Husserl's inspiration.
 * Yes, although Husserl also disagreed with Kant on certain points. He was also influenced by Brentano and Frege. Now, there's criticism below stating that people do not understand what phenomenology is based on this article. There are two basic contrasts missing. In philosophy, phenomenology is contrasted with the classical disciplines of ontology and epistemology, and this, for one, makes it notable. In cognitive science, phenomenology is contrasted with psychology and neuropsychology. It studies the structuration of consciousness and lived experience via bracketing biological concerns away and thus focuses on consciousness/experience itself drawing its methodology and terminology from there. As one example, phenomenology studies emotions such as hate, but with disregard to the chemistry or the evolutionary function of hate. Thus, it studies hate as it appears. This makes sufficient sense and obviously has many applications. However, phenomenology is not claimed to be something fancy and abstract but something simple and concrete-- some basic notions that had been ignored. I could try to improve the introduction. Femke 01 (talk) 07:16, 15 January 2023 (UTC)

This article needs major clearing up
Even after reading this article I am still not sure what the hell Phenomenology IS. I gently suggest that those who are working on this article should make it clearer. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Foamhead (talk • contribs) 11:11, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Unfortunately the subject may bear a good deal of the responsibility for this obscurantism. Jaydubya93 (talk) 13:13, 16 January 2014 (UTC)
 * I agree the subject matter makes it hard to describe and grasp. I think some organization may be helpful such as adding a "history" section describing the history of the subject itself and its adherents. With all the already intense subject matter and many contributors to the ideas of phenomenology, it was easy to get lost in various parts of the article. Halio45 (talk) 05:55, 21 January 2021 (UTC)


 * Phenomenology characterises itself by the study of phenomena, which literally means appearances, opposed to reality. This train of though come directly from Plato’s cavern, so by your interpretation we could start the phenomenological investigation with Plato who tried to talk about phenomena. Like Plato, Hegel and Kant are not phenomenologist who follow the methodology created by Husserl. What Hegel and Kant mainly meant by phenomenology was the study of appearances fundamental to empirical knowledge by sensory certainty. Husserl, greatly inspired by Franz Brentano’s Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint (1874), developed a clear conception of phenomenology, tightly allied with the conception of intentionality.  So with Husserl, phenomena must be reconceived as objective intentional contents (sometimes called intentional objects) of subjective acts of consciousness. Even if people like Hegel and Kant where talking about perception and thoughts, which meant that they where indeed applying phenomenology, the where not phenomenologist in the proper sense that we use in a contemporary context. We could say that epistemology came into its proper being with Descartes, metaphysics with Aristotle who followed Plato, and phenomenology came into its own with Husserl. --JLRoy (talk) 16:43, 21 October 2019 (UTC)

/*Change first sentence, sources-links*/
- Change: Phenomenology (from Greek phainómenon "that which appears" and lógos "study") is the philosophical study of the structures of experience and consciousness.

-Change to: Phenomenology (from Greek phainómenon "that which appears" and lógos "study") is the philosophical study of observation as the presence of human being existence. .


 * Semantically more comprehensive sentence, go for the consensus, thanks...Arnlodg (talk) 17:54, 2 February 2019 (UTC)


 * Sorry that doesn't make sense -Snowded TALK 23:33, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

Uncited addition
Ald81, please do not make uncited additions of text, as you did here. Per WP:VERIFY, any addition you wish to make requires a supporting citation. The text you added ("The Logical Investigations are the epistemological foundations of modern Artificial Intelligence providing a compelling mathematical framework going beyond Cartesian-Newtonian-Kantian logical thought structuring axioms. They offer instead a new scientific method that can be applied to fields from the latest theological advancements in Christology to solving medical research questions as well as support the coding architectures suited for Quantum Computing") is quite unnecessary. It is only vaguely relevant to the topic of the article, and per WP:LEAD has no place in the lead. It is also worded in a promotional rather than a neutral way and as such is not appropriate to Wikipedia. FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 03:03, 30 March 2019 (UTC)

Citations awry in 10.1 Heidegger's
It seems like most or all of the citations with footnote 48 should be 49, but I can't confirm their accuracy. 48 Introna (2005) seems odd here in general, as the text doesn't even mention Heidegger (and Feenberg just once as a reference) and I don't see how it relates to his phenomenology or criticisms of it at all.

[48] - Introna, L. (2005) Disclosing the Digital Face: The ethics of facial recognition systems, Ethics and Information Technology, 7(2) & [49] - Feenberg, A. (1999) 'Technology and Meaning', in Questioning Technology, London and New York: Routledge. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dom Sjuk (talk • contribs) 23:26, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

Gabriella Farina quote in the lead
It doesn’t give any insight or meaningful information about phenomenology besides Farina’s opinion of it. I think it might only trip up people’s understanding of phenomenology when they come to this article. Bagabondo (talk) 19:22, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

Language,Phenomenology and wikipedia entries
1/ It seems the word 'phenomenology' has many diverse usages; even the definitions of which are not agreed. -is it the function of a wikipedia entry (or any encyclopedia entry) to arbitrate in it's coverage: --the relative importance of those usages ? -- the best definition of any of those usages ? 2/ The word 'science' also has several diverse usages; the definition of one such might be: -"Falsifiable theories about the shared, objective phenomena of time and space." - with such a definition; the definition of [phenomenology] as : "science of subjective experience"; might be seen as a contradiction in terms. - this would seem to point to yet another problem for encyclopedic entries, this time linguistic; ie how to deal with linguistic conflicts involving the definitions of the constituent words in an entry ? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rhnmcl (talk • contribs) 01:37, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

“Brentano” should be a link
The article’s single reference (by last name only) to “Brentano” should be a link to Franz Brentano [Franz Clemens Brentano (1838–1917)]. This would help disambiguate Franz Brentano from, inter alia, Bernard von Brentano, novelist; Christian Brentano, German writer; Clemens Brentano, poet and novelist. Jaredkieling (talk) 15:52, 7 April 2023 (UTC)

Selectively archiving Talk page
This article needs a lot of work, and this page is unmanageably cluttered. I am archiving everything more than a few years old that no longer seems relevant. Others are, of course, invited to review the contents of the archive and restore anything they see fit. Link: Talk:Phenomenology_(philosophy)/Archive_1

Cheers, Patrick J. Welsh (talk) 16:08, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

notes on reorganization
I have reorganized much of the material in the body of this article. My hope is that this TOC will better enable editors to make constructive contributions.

I have eliminated duplicate material where I found it. I've also deleted some stuff that just does not belong on the main page for phenomenology. Please see the summaries in the article history for justifications.

The current historical material, which is almost entirely devoted to Husserl and Heidegger, should be further condensed. Also, to state the obvious, Merleau-Ponty deserves a few paragraphs. Probably also Sartre and de Beauvoir. And there should be something about the ongoing interdisciplinary research of folks like Shaun Gallagher.

I put a generic "requires cleanup" banner at the top to alert any readers who somehow can't tell that this article has rather serious issues.

Feel free to tag me with any questions.

Cheers, Patrick J. Welsh (talk) 18:53, 25 July 2023 (UTC)


 * I've nominated this as an "article for improvement." If you're reading this, there is a good chance you agree things are, indeed, much in need of improvement. You can express that with #Support here (or—hey!—just edit away with whatever you've got.) Cheers, Patrick J. Welsh (talk) 23:55, 25 July 2023 (UTC)
 * I've delisted it here. I think we probably need folks with a little philosophy background now. Patrick J. Welsh (talk) 21:22, 27 July 2023 (UTC)
 * The External links section now includes many articles at the IEP and SEP. All articles on this sites are by scholars who publish in the area. They are also peer-reviewed and entirely free and open. This makes them great sources for improving Wikipedia. Patrick J. Welsh (talk) 18:47, 26 July 2023 (UTC)

section on applications
I have moved the section on technology below from the article to be preserved on this Talk page. Right now, it seems quite out of place. Also, it needs a little bit of work to make it accessible. I do think, however, that it should be restored as a subsection of section on applications of phenomenology (or something along those lines). The SEP and IEP have entire articles devoted to the phenomenology of religion, race, ethics, and other topics of broad interest to readers. It would be nice to select some of these (or other areas covered elsewhere) to get just a paragraph or two each that would illustrate the phenomenological method at work.

Approaches to technology
For some phenomenologists the 'impact view' of technology as well as the constructivist view of the technology/society relationships is valid but not adequate (Heidegger 1977, Borgmann 1985, Winograd and Flores 1987, Ihde 1990, Dreyfus 1992, 2001). They argue that these accounts of technology, and the technology/society relationship, posit technology and society as if speaking about the one does not immediately and already draw upon the other for its ongoing sense or meaning. For the phenomenologist, society and technology co-constitute each other; they are each other's ongoing condition, or possibility for being what they are. For them technology is not just the artifact. Rather, the artifact already emerges from a prior 'technological' attitude towards the world (Heidegger 1977). Patrick J. Welsh (talk) 21:25, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

Convergent phenomenology
I am also moving this from the article to preserve here. As best I can determine, it is a legitimate thing, but quite marginal from the perspective of phenomenology writ-large. It was previously sourced to a thesis talk given over 40 years ago, but I removed that as a uselessly bad source.

Rudy has, however, published at least three volumes, at least one with an academic press, and another with a blurb from a top Husserl scholar. So there are sources out there. Probably it ought to go back into the article in some capacity.

To present it as the final moment in the history of phenomenology, however, is just completely wrong and unacceptable.

Convergent phenomenology
The work of Jim Ruddy in the field of comparative philosophy, combined the concept of "transcendental ego" in Husserl's phenomenology with the concept of the primacy of self-consciousness in the work of Sankaracharya. In the course of this work, Ruddy uncovered a wholly new eidetic phenomenological science, which he called "convergent phenomenology." This new phenomenology takes over where Husserl left off, and deals with the constitution of relation-like, rather than merely thing-like, or "intentional" objectivity. Patrick J. Welsh (talk) 21:40, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

Philosophy
Phenomenalogy concludes that people cannot fully and directly experience the physical world but we can only see and analyze the conscious of our minds that perceive the real word or distinguish the natural world 152.32.107.64 (talk) 11:16, 6 September 2023 (UTC)


 * Are you perhaps thinking of phenomenalism? This article needs more work, but the your assertion is contradicted by the Lead and the Overview, both of which are supported by high-quality sources.
 * Cheers, Patrick J. Welsh (talk) 17:15, 6 September 2023 (UTC)