Experimental phenomenology, a challenge.

Abstract

Experimental phenomenology is both a theory and a method and is derived from, but not the same as, Gestalt psychology. The theoretical foundations of this methodological approach maintain that the kind of information obtained during conscious perceiving or imagining is directly given in present awareness, is qualitative in nature, is endowed with meaning, and is not merely a product of the computational representation, retrieval, or elaboration of physical stimuli. From a phenomenological standpoint, a broad line of current research of experimental psychology reflects, methodologically, a reductionistic simulation of the physical sciences and fails, theoretically, to explain the laws of dependence among the (ontologically) different levels of reality. Sharing common phenomenological foundations for the experimental study of sensory consciousness, the five articles in this special issue and the two other following sections describe perceptual “illusions,” three-dimensional spatial perceptions, perception of color and light, expressive qualities, and other sensory phenomena as studied by experimental phenomenology differently from psychophysical research. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved)