Studying Experience

Scientific Difficulties

The intrinsic features of experience-RL4 are precisely those that bedevil all the social sciences when empirical research methods are applied.

Social scientists often claim that their research efforts are impeded by the inherent nature of the field. Without explaining why, they describe their object of study as self-evidently:

  • fluid, changing, or changeable
  • complex, complicated, subtle and irreducible
  • capable of endless further interpretation or elaboration
  • based in the first person, carrying meaning or providing significance to life
  • requiring the sensitivity of a human observer to be noted
  • not the same for the spontaneous participant is for an observer
  • altered by investigation or articulation.

These properties are easily recognized characteristics of human experience and part of our non-material psychosocial reality.

Requirement for Progress

The core ideas required to grapple with what experience is about are the following:

  • Experience exists in the sense that it can be referred to directly and labeled using terms (names or concepts).
  • Terms can be applied to experiences:

    • scientifically i.e. in a limited defined way using concepts to ensure common understanding;

      OR
    • symbolically i.e. in a private diffuse way using associations to generate further personal experiences.
  • For clarity—which is essential if social cooperation is relevant—and for scientific progress, names for experiences require to be used systematically and consistently. This is only possible if the names are linked by direct reference to actual experiencing.
  • Aligning the logical meaning and the felt meaning of experiential terms enables development of a science that can be understood and used easily by both scientists in research and by others in everyday life.
  • Experience needs to be divided up for study into the domains of human functioning intrinsic to endeavour i.e. deciding, inquiring, communicating, intending &c.
  • One of those domains is experiencing itself: and this poses certain issues, especially in regard to its fluidity.

Using these assumptions, led to the discovery of a Taxonomy of Human Elements in Endeavour: THEE. The taxonomy has been elaborated as related frameworks on this website. These not only map functioning but, when used thoughtfully, they enable us to be far more effective and ethical.

The present focus is on the final point: how experiencing contributes to endeavour and how it handles itself.

Originally posted: 4-Oct-2014. Last updated 15-Nov-2014.