Studying Experience
Scientific Difficulties
The intrinsic features of 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 as 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 is about are the following:
- exists in the sense that it can be referred to directly and labelled using terms (i.e. given names).
- The fluidity within the domain poses challenges to its clarification.
- Terms can be applied to :
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 .
- For clarity—which is essential if social cooperation is relevant—and for scientific progress, need to be used systematically and consistently. This is only possible if the names are linked by direct reference to actual .
- Aligning the logical meaning and the felt meaning of enables development of a science that can be understood and used easily by scientists in research and by others in everyday life.
- appears to be one of the primary domains within discovered through a focus on endeavour. The others are: .
Use of these propositions 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 contributes to and how it handles itself.
- Confront the fluidity of experience.
- Get a handle on the confused terminology.
- Distinguish mind, self, identity, existence.
- Consider the function of experience in endeavour.
- Review the elements of experience in the .
Originally posted: 4-Oct-2014. Last updated 15-Nov-2014.
