Differentiation between traditional Phenomenology and Phenomenology as

It is questionable whether classical Phenomenology can be integrated into a scientific framework or if this approach is impossible due to irreconcilable assumptions. First, the incompatibility is demonstrated by the fact that a traditional phenomenologist would deny the differentiation between the reality of an object located in the outside and the subjective appearance of the object to the observer (Gallagher & Zahavi, 2008). In contrast, already the description of psychology by James included the distinction between an object in the real world with its features and a mental perception of this object, which could misrepresent other features (1890a, pp. 183–185). He stated that for a psychologist both are objects of an observation. The differentiation of James between the real object and its mental representation is still a central assumption of psychological research. Second, Overgaard (2004) concluded that traditional Phenomenology is not combinable with any scientific approach which accepts mind-brain correlations, since Phenomenology is taken verbal reports of experiences as the fundamental ontological level of consciousness. Consequently, classical Phenomenology in terms of Husserl will never accept any reductionistic explanation of consciousness. In

contrast, cognitive neuroscience is based on the assumption that functions are caused by brain activity. Even in philosophy of mind it is not unusual to represent this kind of naturalism. For example Searle's (2000) notion of a causal relation between neural activity and experiences includes a reduction of experience to a neural level. Therefore, this contradicts with the non-reductionistic assumption of traditional Phenomenology, because if brain structures are used to explain mental states, consciousness would explain nothing by itself (Overgaard, 2004).

To overcome the incompatibility between the traditional understanding of Phenomenology and natural science, Overgaard (2004) advocated an approach which he called naturalizing Phenomenology. He described the idea of naturalized Phenomenology not as a philosophical position, but as a method to systematically describe the experiences of the subject, embedded in a scientific framework. There are several different methodologies to naturalize Phenomenology, but for the sake of brevity only a few are highlighted. These approaches seem to be promising to incorporate naturalized Phenomenology as a methodology in a scientific framework of cognitive psychology or cognitive neuroscience.

Varela (1996) defined a phenomenological methodology for capturing conscious, which he called Neurophenomenology. Varela’s approach faces similar incompatibilities with psychological methodologies as traditional Phenomenology. First, because of the assumption about the irreducible nature of consciousness (Varela, 1996). Second, because Varela and Shear (1999) claimed that the hard problem can be tackled by this approach. Even though these claims may be questioned, Neurophenomenology can be considered as promising methodology to capture subjective experiences in an experimental setting. The working hypothesis of Neurophenomenology, stated that “phenomenological accounts of the structure of experience and their counterparts in cognitive science relate to each other through reciprocal constraints” (Varela, 1996, p. 343). The particularity of this claim is the reciprocity between subjective experiences and third-person data, which were considered as equally important. This highlights the importance of subjective data for the investigation of cognitive processes. The working hypothesis also includes the belief that subjective experiences are an important source for empirical questions and may provide an understanding of third-person data, for example neurophysiological data.

Varela (1996) defined four important aspects of phenomenological approaches, which he called phenomenological reduction. First, he defined an appropriate attitude for phenomenological experiments. This means one should avoid turning attention to automatic thoughts or beliefs about the experiences while observing, but stay by the experience itself.

Second and most important, subjects should attain intimacy with their own experiences. To

1 | General introduction

achieve this, they should become familiarized with variations in the appearance of an object under different experimental conditions. Third, subjects should be trained to communicate observed similarities in experience, through language or sketches. Varela (1996) defined these observed similarities as invariants. Fourth, to fulfill the other aspects, it is necessary to maintain stability in the perception, which is achieved by training. Lutz, Lachaux, Martinerie, and Varela (2002) provided an exemplary implementation of the neurophenomenological reduction in a neurophysiological experiment. Lutz et al. (2002) presented a three-dimensional visual illusion (autostereogramm) and asked subjects to press a button as soon as they perceived the figure completely and give a phenomenological description about their own experience on each trial. After a training, where subjects repeatedly saw the stimuli to gain stability in the perception and to be able to describe their invariants, EEG sessions followed. On each trial they labeled their experienced based on their invariants, which were used to divide the trials into three phenomenological clusters, shared by participants. These clusters categorized the subjective degree of preparation, for example “ready”, “present” and

“well-prepared” as one cluster or “unprepared” as another cluster. Behavioral as well as neurophysiological results show that reaction times as well as prestimulus oscillations were modulated in dependence of the phenomenological clusters. On trials where participants reported to feel well-prepared, a higher local and global neural synchrony was found compared to unprepared trials. Lutz et al. (2002) interpreted their approach as an extension of traditional cognitive psychology, by measuring subjective experience of trained subjects in a trial-by-trial manner, which allows to characterize neural correlates of mental states.

Another but very different attempt to naturalize Phenomenology has been formulated as Heterophenomenology by Dennett (2003). He stated that Heterophenomenology is already incorporated in any kind of research studying consciousness in a scientific way. Dennett (2007) described Heterophenomenology as a third-person approach which brings together subjective aspects of consciousness with scientific approaches. Instead of considering Heterophenomenology as a theory, he described it as a method which organizes the subjective reports to clarify, what must be explained (Dennett, 2003). Dennett (2003) pointed out that the heterophenomenological world, which entails the beliefs of a subject about his or her consciousness experience, should not be confounded with the real world. Thus, he considered statements about experiences as something else than the experiences themselves. According to him, statements should be interpreted as abstractions, which give evidence for beliefs about experience. The utterances of a person was considered as raw, uninterpreted and primary data,

observation, a neutral attitude towards the descriptions was regarded as fundamental (Dennett, 1991). This means, the Heterophenomenologist should neither challenge nor accept the reports of the subjects, but rather interpret the descriptions in a meaningful way (Dennett, 1991).

Gallagher and Sørensen (2006) contrasted these two methodologies. They proposed that the consideration of the four aspects of phenomenological reduction formulated by Varela (1996) is necessary to measure the subjective aspects of experiences. They equated Neurophenomenology with phenomenological approaches and concluded that only this approach is able to fulfill phenomenological requirements. Heterophenomenology was associated with introspective approaches, since both attempts are not only focusing on the experiences as Phenomenology, but on thought and beliefs about the experiences, too.

However, Gallagher and Sørensen (2006) criticism on Heterophenomenology can be doubted.

First, the categories defined by the subjects in the neurophenomenological method are biased by individual variability in perception, linguistic abilities or the focus of attention and so on. Therefore, the mere consideration of individual descriptions of perceptions might be insufficient to make generally valid statements.

Second, Gallagher and Sørensen (2006) criticized Heterophenomenology to wash out any subjective factor, since perceptions are mostly measured by predefined categories, which are not based on subjective experiences. In accordance, Varela and Shear (1999) criticized Heterophenomenology as an approach which tries to collect first-person data while being attached only to a third-person methodology. On the one hand, the criticism is justified because the use of predefined categories that have not been validated on the basis of subjective reports contradicts phenomenological principles. On the other hand, in order to make statements about how experience is related to variations in experimental design, commonalities in perception between subjects must be considered.

Instead of advocating one of the two approaches, the combination of both seems to be a promising approach to satisfy phenomenological methodologies and additionally fulfill the requirements of a scientific framework. In a first step, a neurophenomenological approach allows the collection of descriptions of subjective experiences depending on the condition in a perceptual task. Afterwards, perceptual categories can be defined based on communalities in the descriptions between participants. In a second step, a heterophenomenological approach enables to validate the perceptual categories by searching for similarities in experience associated with experimental conditions. This last step helps to objectify the data collection

1 | General introduction

and allows statements about cognitive or neurophysiological processes related to changes of the experience.