What is lived experience in phenomenology
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Article Preview : Qualitative research examines life experiences (ie, the lived experience) in an effort to understand and give them meaning. This usually is done by systematically collecting and analyzing narrative materials using methods that ensure credibility of both
the data and the results. Phenomenology is one of many types of qualitative research that examines the lived experiences of humans.(1) Phenomenological researchers hope to gain understanding of the essential "truths" (ie, essences) of the lived experience. Examples of phenomenological research include exploring the lived experiences of women undergoing breast biopsy or the lived experiences of family members waiting for a loved one undergoing major surgery. The term phenomenology often
is used without a clear understanding of its meaning. Phenomenology has been described as a philosophy, methodology, and method.(2) Furthering confusion, the term phenomenology has been used interchangeably with the term hermeneutics (ie, analyses of the written word).(3) This column will provide a brief overview of phenomenological philosophy, methodology, and method. PHENOMENOLOGICAL PHILOSOPHY Phenomenologists believe that knowledge and understanding are embedded in our
everyday world. In other words, they do not believe knowledge can be quantified or reduced to numbers or statistics.(4) Phenomonologists believe that truth and understanding of life can emerge from people's life experiences. Although phenomenologists share this belief, they have developed more than one approach to gain understanding of human knowledge. Before the seventeenth century, religion or nature often provided the basis for man's understanding of the world. Rene Descartes,
however, articulated a split between man's mental being and his physical being. This viewpoint served as an impetus to link all knowledge to the realm of science. Scientists of that time heralded the scientific method, objectivity, and a fixed, orderly reality as the sole approach to knowledge discovery. Many early philosophers, however, found the scientific method too reductionistic, objective, and mechanistic; therefore, they advanced phenomenology as a preferred method to discover the meaning
of life experiences.(5) The father of phenomenology frequently is cited as Edmund Husserl.(6) Husserl was a German philosopher as well as a mathematician.(7) The works of Husserl, as well as those of Martin Heidegger, are cited in many nursing studies as the framework for the research approach and methods.(8) Even though both philosophers are considered phenomenologists, their approaches to research and understanding life experiences differ. PHENOMENOLOGICAL METHODOLOGY
Methodology links a particular philosophy to the appropriate research methods and bridges philosophical notions to practical and applicable research strategies. Husserl, for example, purported that essences serve as the ultimate structure of consciousness.(9) He contended that bracketing (ie, setting aside preconceived notions) enables one to objectively describe the... Get Full Access Gale offers a variety of resources for education, lifelong learning, and academic
research. Log in through your library to get access to full content and features! Access through your library Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2001 Elsevier Science Publishers Gale Document Number: GALE|A73308177 Show Summary Details Quick Reference1. Personal knowledge about the world gained through direct, first-hand involvement in everyday events rather than through representations constructed by other people. It may also refer to knowledge of people gained from direct face-to-face interaction rather than through a technological medium. 2. In phenomenology, our situated, immediate, activities and encounters in everyday experience, prereflexively taken for granted as reality rather than as something perceived or represented: see also natural attitude. 3. From Althusser's structuralist Marxist perspective, all human activity, which he emphasized is not a given or pure ‘reality’, but a ‘peculiar relationship to the real’ which is ‘identical with’ ideology. Reference entriesLived Experience: an Introduction to PhenomenologyThis is an online course (Eastern Time) What is phenomenology? Drawing on lived, first-person experience, phenomenology is the attempt to analyze and understand the very structures of human experience and consciousness. What are the elements of perception, and why do different people, different subjects, perceive things differently? What’s universal about consciousness? In what ways do individual identity, circumstance, history, language, and memory condition lived experience—and thus perception and our ability to express it? Phenomenology and phenomenological ways of understanding the world stand at the center of many contemporary scholarly inquiries, from philosophy to anthropology and far beyond. What can we learn through studying the foundations of phenomenological thought concerning objectivity, subjectivity, meaning, mind, and truth? In this course, students will study phenomenology as a philosophical movement from its origins to the present day. We will aim for a critical understanding of the distinctive methodology, fundamental claims, problems and prospects of phenomenology by working through some key texts of its most influential proponents. After considering Franz Bretano’s and Edmund Husserl’s attack on “psychologism” (or, the reduction of consciousness and rationality to mere psychology), we’ll examine Husserl’s classic Logical Investigations, which gives definitive treatment to the phenomenological theory of “intentionality.” Next we’ll turn to Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s attempt to incorporate “embodiment” into the phenomenological tradition. Lastly, we’ll consider phenomenology’s influence on contemporary discussions in cognitive science on “motor intentionality,” and skilled behavior. Is the study of the experience of phenomena a philosophical or ultimately a scientific question? Indeed, what can a study of phenomenology tell us about the natures of philosophy and science and the boundary that divides them? How do we learn from lived experience? Course ScheduleThursday, 6:30-9:30pm ET $315.00 Registration Open What is meant by lived experience?What is Lived Experience? Lived experience is defined as “personal knowledge about the world gained through direct, first-hand involvement in everyday events rather than through representations constructed by other people.”
What does lived experience mean in research?What Is Lived Experience? Lived experience in the context of this study is “representation and understanding of an individual's human experiences, choices, and options and how those factors influence one's perception of knowledge”1 based on one's own life.
What is lived experiences in qualitative research?Lived experience, as it is explored and understood in qualitative research, is a representation and understanding of a researcher or research subject's human experiences, choices, and options and how those factors influence one's perception of knowledge.
What is the lived experience in philosophy?A lived experience is not only something that is experienced, “its being experienced makes a special impression that gives it lasting importance” (Gadamer, 2004, p. 53). This hermeneutic conceptualization of lived experience shows the centrality of the meaning attributed to the experience.
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