Editing Phenomenology (philosophy) (section)

==Overview<!--'Natural attitude' redirects here-->==
<!--'Natural attitude' redirects here-->
Phenomenology proceeds systematically, but it does not attempt to study consciousness from the perspective of clinical psychology or neurology. Instead, it seeks to determine the essential properties and structures of experience.{{sfn|Menon|Sinha|Sreekantan|2014|page=172}} Phenomenology is not a matter of individual introspection: ''a subjective account of experience'', which is the topic of psychology, must be distinguished from ''an account of subjective experience'', which is the topic of phenomenology.{{sfn|Gallagher|Zahavi|2021|page=21}} Its topic is not "mental states", but "worldly things considered in a certain way".{{sfn|Smith|2023|loc=§2.a}}

Phenomenology is a direct reaction to the [[psychologism]] and [[physicalism]] of Husserl's time.{{sfn|Husserl|1970|loc=part III, §57}} It takes as its point of departure the question of how objectivity is possible at all when the experience of the world and its objects is thoroughly subjective.{{sfn|Gallagher|Zahavi|2021|page=25}}

So far from being a form of subjectivism, phenomenologists argue that the scientific ideal of a purely objective third-person is a fantasy and falsity. The perspective and presuppositions of the scientist must be articulated and taken into account in the design of the experiment and the interpretation of its results. Inasmuch as phenomenology is able to accomplish this, it can help to improve the quality of empirical scientific research.{{sfn|Gallagher|Zahavi|2021|loc=chapter 2}}

Notwithstanding of the field's internal diversity, [[Shaun Gallagher]] and [[Dan Zahavi]] argue that the phenomenological method is composed of four basic steps: the [[epoché]], the phenomenological reduction, the eidetic variation, and intersubjective corroboration.{{sfn|Gallagher|Zahavi|2021|page=30}}

# The ''epoché'' is Husserl's term for the procedure by which the phenomenologist endeavors to suspend commonsense and theoretical assumptions about reality (what he terms the '''natural attitude'''<!--boldface per WP:R#PLA-->) in order to attend only to what is directly given in experience. This is not a skeptical move; reality is never in doubt. The purpose is to see it more closely as it truly is.{{sfn|Gallagher|Zahavi|2021|pages=24–25}} The underlying insight is that objects are "experienced and disclosed in the ways they are, thanks to the way consciousness is structured."{{sfn|Gallagher|Zahavi|2021|page=26}}
# The ''phenomenological reduction'' is closely linked to the epoché. The aim of the reduction is to analyze the correlations between what is given in experience and specific structures of subjectivity shaping and enabling this givenness. This "leads back" (Latin: ''re-ducere'') to the world.{{sfn|Gallagher|Zahavi|2021|pages=26–27}}
# ''Eidetic variation'' is the process of imaginatively stripping away the properties of things to determine what is essential to them, that is, what are the characteristics without which a thing would not be the thing that it is (''Eidos'' is [[Plato]]'s Greek word for the essence of a thing). Significantly for the phenomenological researcher, eidetic variation can be practiced on acts of consciousness themselves to help clarify, for instance, the structure of perception or memory. Husserl openly acknowledges that the essences uncovered by this method include various degrees of vagueness and also that such analyses are defeasible. He contends, however, that this does not undermine the value of the method.{{sfn|Gallagher|Zahavi|2021|pages=28–29}}
# ''Intersubjective corroboration'' is simply the sharing of one's results with the larger research community. This allows for comparisons that help to sort out what is idiosyncratic to the individual from what might be essential to the structure of experience as such.{{sfn|Gallagher|Zahavi|2021|pages=29-30}}

According to phenomenologist [[Maurice Natanson]], "The radicality of the phenomenological method is both continuous and discontinuous with philosophy's general effort to subject experience to fundamental, critical scrutiny: to take nothing for granted and to show the warranty for what we claim to know."{{sfn|Natanson|1973|page=63}} Husserl says that the suspension of belief in what is ordinarily taken for granted or inferred by conjecture diminishes the power of what is customarily embraced as objective reality. In the words of philosopher [[Rüdiger Safranski]], "[Husserl and his followers'] great ambition was to disregard anything that had until then been thought or said about consciousness or the world [while] on the lookout for a new way of letting the things [they investigated] approach them, without covering them up with what they already knew."{{sfn|Safranski|1998|page=72}}