Investigating Experience

The «Human Element»

The research always involved helping people achieve. That brings the «human element» to the fore. I came to realize that we are all learners in the «school of life».

It became evident that the psycho-social things, elements of personal functioning, that are intrinsic to willed endeavour are both «psycho-» i.e. experiential and private, and «-social» i.e. inter-personal or communal and public.

The features of the «human element» that make it so intractable for conventional scientific methods emerge from the nature of inner felt experience and its interaction with the social and physical environment.

Artificial intelligence, the practical wing of computational views of brain functioning, also struggles with human experience: which it refers to as «bizarre»: see here.

Consider the qualities of your «inner experiences»:

  • Fluid, changing, complex, subtle and irreducible.
  • Capable of endless further interpretation or elaboration.
  • Based in the first person, incorporating meaning, providing significance.
  • Noticeable only via a sufficient sensitivity of human observers.
  • Altered by investigation or articulation.
  • Not the same for the spontaneous participant as for an observer.

Read more about «experience» in its own Satellite.

The taxonomic approach must be considered part of social science, broadly considered. Because academia divides up human functioning amongst discrete disciplines, presentation here is difficult. Psychology claims consciousness, but anthropology and sociology also deal with subjective experiences. Social science methods are extremely diverse and variable. See The Hub for a comparative account of methods.

Consciousness is So Different

The elements of personal functioning are so different from elements of the physical and technological world that many scientists can barely admit their existence. The uncontrollable psychosocial world, with its properties and relationships, is then ignored, devalued or ludicrously simplified—even by social scientists. If prepared to admit that a distinct realm exists, many researchers will insist that:

  • it cannot be studied scientifically (i.e. at all), &/or
  • existing scientific methods must be applied (i.e. even if inappropriate).

ClosedContribution of Philosophers

Anglo-Saxon philosophers have largely withdrawn their attention from human experience and social existence except in relation to specific foci (e.g. justice). When focusing on experience, they typically turn to the colour red (or sometimes green). Because the simplest sensation is so difficult to grasp and agree about, anything more complicated is ignored.

Continental philosophers, at least since Plato, have engaged more positively with life: think of Hegel, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard. In more recent times, many have been motivated by human problems which are viewed as societal e.g. the Frankfurt school («critical theory») explicitly seeks to liberate people and emancipate them from unnecessary domination.

One, mostly ignored, UK philosopher who has spent his life providing arguments to substantiate the present approach is Nicholas Maxwell. However, the school of philosophy that underpins the present scientific study is believed to be Wittgensteinian.

ClosedContribution from Neuroscience

Investigators of brains claim to be on the brink of answering the mysteries of awareness and meaning. Such research is important and it deserves support. But the claim is misleading because it plays on different meanings of the word «answering». They are typically referring to knowledge of underlying mechanisms, that does not speak in any way to handling the experience of living.

A similar confusion exists when scientists and bloggers speak of the brain or its neurons or circuits as deciding or thinking or comparing or hypothesizing. No!because only a person decides, thinks, compares, hypothesizes. The brain simply has cell networks that fire and form patterns of firing, which may well underlie or correspond to or even stimulate a person in deciding, thinking &c. Note that no-one says that neuron's prosper or torture or are accountable—because that is more obviously silly.

Reading:Closed A leading neuroscientist, M. Bennett, and philosopher, P. Hacker, have written extensively on this fallacy: see their Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience, and History of Cognitive Neuroscience.

Neuroscience may well help us understand the Taxonomy, its operation and evolution. I personally believe it will, and I am working to that end. But such knowledge will never give answers to the everyday challenges, conflicts and confusions of our personal and social life. These are only meaningfully handled in an experience-drenched psychosocial way.

Differences between inquiries in academic disciplines and in the psychosocial realm have lead to a polarization that often manifests in social conflict and disparagement.

ClosedClick here to see a psychosocial analysis of differences which necessarily must extend beyond scientific method alone.

Originally posted: May 2010; Last updated: 7-Oct-2016.