IS EXPERIENCE RESEARCHABLE? Urban Kordeš, PeF UL

Transcription

1 IS EXPERIENCE RESEARCHABLE? Urban Kordeš, PeF UL

2 COGNITION - 3 main viewpoints

3 What is experience? everything within the,ield of consciousness What are phenomenal data? In spite of the variety of terminology being used, a consensus seems to have emerged that Thomas Nagel s expression what it is like to be succeeds in capturing well what is at stake. Clearly what it is like to be a bat or a human being refers to how things (everything) looks when being a bat or a human being. In other words this is just another way of talking about what philosophers have called phenomenality since the Pre- Socratic s. A phenomenon, in the most original sense of the word, is an appearance and therefore something relational. (Varela, 1996) /Varela&Shear: The View from Within

4 Researching experience? Husserl phenomenological reduction (epoche) Although Goethe cannot necessarily be criticized for the accuracy and extent of his observations, scientists in general have found little use for his theory because not much can be predicted by means of it. Wundt: introspection

5 Research experience? Dennet (no method, heterofenomenology) NO Searle ( excavation error : inquiry is just another experiential state) Husserl, Varela, Velmans,... YES - Rapid development of neuroscience brought need for better methods for accessing phenomenology (not so easy as it looks) - Attempts to bridge explanatory gap (Varela s neurophenomenology) - Experience - one of the last terrains, out of scientific reach (WE KNOW AMAZINGLY LITTLE ABOUT OUR EXPERIENCE)

6 Colorful palette of phenomenological approaches, methods & research goals Soft phenomenological inqury (attempts to deal with experience the same way as science deals with other experimental data) In psychology, sociology and education "Duquesne School", Amedeo Giorgi, Jonathan Smith Data and/or text mining, Sentiment analysis Peter Turney (2002). "Thumbs Up or Thumbs Down? Semantic Orientation Applied to Unsupervised Classification of Reviews". Proceedings of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL). pp # Dunja Mladenič, IJS# As a complement to neurophysiology in cognitive science Hard phenomenological inqury (taking individuality of human experience seriously) Schooler, Mason: experience sampling Zahavi, Parnas (?) Damasio...

7 Main problems 1. Problem of the language 2. We don t know our experience 3. Who is researcher, actually?

8 1. Language only covers intersubjective experiences experience l a n g u a g e mathematics&logic intersubjective

9 How subjective can we get? Different approaches to phenomenological interview according to degree of openness experience l a n g u a g e mathematics&logic intersubjective Categories (questionnaires, scales...) Categories - open; as de,ined by participant Open inquiry

10 2. We don t know our experience Systematic training of introspection needed (Varela, 1996)...as well as systematic training of epoche (bracketing) Dialogical, hermeneutic interview ( debrie,ing ) (Vermersch in Petitmengin, 2006)

11 Colorful pallete of phenomenological approaches, methods & research goals Neurophenomenology and Paris school Varela, Francisco J. (1996). Neurophenomenology: A Methodological Remedy for the Hard Problem. Journal of Consciousness Studies. 3 (4): Petitmengin, C. (2006). Phenomenological interview Rule 1: keep the introspective procedure explicit and systematic. This will assist in possible replication by other researchers. Rule 2: minimize dependency on extra-experimental, pre-established categories. On the face of it, this seems to prohibit replication. That is, if one cannot use the categories developed in the experiment one is trying to replicate, how is replication possible? It is important to realize that a prohibition against the use of pre-established categories is, in the case of studies of first-order experience, a prohibition against a certain kind of bias, but it is not a prohibition against using the same categories used in the previous experiment. The very same (or very close) categories might in fact be generated within each experiment by following the same introspective procedure. And if very different categories are generated from one experiment to the next, then something is still in need of explanation. This very possibility motivates the final rule. Rule 3: triangulate. /Gallagher, 2002 Similar attempts: Lutz, Mason

12 Attempts of connecting neurophysiological and phenomenological data

13 Attempts of connecting neurophysiological and phenomenological data

14 Neurophenomenology - main sources Varela, Francisco.J Neurophenomenology: A Methodological Remedy for the Hard Problem. Journal of Consciousness Studies. 3 (4): Baynes, Tim (preprint). Closing the Gap? Some Questions for Neurophenomenology. Phenomen ology and the Cognitive Sciences. Gallagher, Shaun Mutual Enlightenment: Recent Phenomenology in Cognitive Science. Journal of Consciousness Studies 4, (3): Gallagher, S Experimenting with introspection (Comment). Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 6 (9): Gallagher, S. and M. Sasma Phenomenology and neurophenomenology: An Interview. May 1 5, 2003 following Gallagher's Hebdomades Lectures at the Philosophy Department of the Univerzita Palackho v Olomouci, Czech Republic. Jack, A.I. and Roepstorff, A Introspection and cognitive brain mapping: from stimulus- repsonse to script- report. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 6: Lutz, A Neurophenomenology: How to combine subjective experience with brain evidence. Science and Consciousness Review 4 (March 2003). Roy, J- M., Petitot, J., Pachoud, B., and Varela, F. J Beyond the Gap: An introduction to naturalizing phenomenology. In J. Petitot, F.J. Varela, J.- M. Roy, and B. Pachoud (Eds.), Naturalizing Phenomenology: Issues in Contemporary Phenomenology and Cognitive Science (pp. 1-80). Stanford: Stanford University Press. Rudrauf, David, Antoine Lutz, Diego Cosmelli, Jean- Philippe Lachaux, and Michel Le Van Quyen From autopoiesis to neurophenomenology: Francisco Varela's exploration of the biophysics of being. Biological Research 36 no.1: Schooler, J Re- representing consciousness: dissociations between experience and meta- consciousness. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 6:

15 Colorful pallete of phenomenological approaches, methods & research goals Descriptive experience Sampling Russell Hurlburt

16 Descriptive experience sampling - the general idea Step 1: Taking random samples of experience throughout the day Interview time (approx 7 samples/day) Step 2: analysing sample data Some of the categories, obtained by DES (Hurlburt et al.,2010) Inner Speech (IS) Partially Worded Speech (PWS) Unworded Speech (UWS) Worded Thinking (W) Image (I) Imageless Seeing (XI) Unsymbolized Thinking (U) Inner Hearing (IH) Feeling (F) Sensory Awareness (SA) Just Doing (JD) Just Talking (JT) Just Listening (JL) Just Reading (JR) Just Watching TV (JW) Multiple Awareness (M)

17 Derivations of DES Positive Csíkszentmihályi, psychology, Mihály (1996), #,low Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention, # New York: Harper Perennial# Psychotherapy: real time monitoring Schiepek G, Eckert H, Bauhofer C, Weihrauch S (2008). Diagnostik dynamischer Systeme. In Röhrle B, Caspar F, Schlottke PF (Hrsg). Lehrbuch der klinisch-psychologischen Diagnostik (S ). Stuttgart: Kohlhammer. Mind wondering research: descriptive experience sampling

18 Our ongoing project: Phenomenology of communication Idea: sampling of two partners in dialogical situation at the same (random) moments Method: extension of DES, two synchronized beepers Taking random samples of experience throughout the day Interview time (approx 7 samples/day) Interview