Phenomenology As an Approach to Consciousness NEIL

Method: as Beyond Phenomenology an to Approach Consciousness NEIL BOLTON I want to examine the idea of "approaching consciousness." It would be widely agreed that to approach something systematically requires a methodology and this is as true of consciousness as it is of anything else. We do not have an immediate insight into the nature of consciousness, but we can discover that nature by following certain procedures. What are referred to as "facts" are, as we are often told these days, the outcome of interpretations, and a methodology is a way of dealing with interpretations systematically. It would appear, then, that the proper arguments about consciousness are about the appropriate methods for approaching it. There has been a great deal of debate within psychology along these lines and it is possible that a consensus eclecticism is emerging which states that experimental psychology, artificial intelligence and even phenomenology (once certain intellectual excesses are set aside) can be regarded as complementary routes to the same truths. The criticism of psychology implied in Husserl's dictum that a true science follows the nature of what has to be investigated and not its methodological precon- ceptions, and the explicit criticism of Wittgenstein that the discipline is a compound of methodological sophistication and conceptual confusion, are, surely set aside in this assertion of the priority of method, for the modern psychologist does not believe in the possibility of discovering the nature of what has to be investigated by a direct appeal to things as they are, or by conceptual analysis; he/she can claim to be clearing up conceptual confusion with methodological sophistication. Now this claim, which provides the justification for experimental psychology and psychometrics, indeed for all systematic psychology, contains two major presuppositions which can be shown, I think, to be false. In the first place, there is assumed a direct connection between method and psychological concept that allows the concept to be "read off," more or less straightforwardly, from the data yielded by the applica- tion of the method. Thus, we may not know at the beginning of research what intelligence, language, or memory are, but we assume that their meaning will become apparent through the accumulation of results. Our interpretations will become more general and more precise on the basis of 49 50 appropriate methods of investigation; there can be no other source of illumination of these concepts. It is easy to see that implicit in this presupposition is a further one concerning the priority of statements of "particulars" over statements of "generalities." Progress in the definition of psychological concepts can only be a matter of "piecing together" the results of research, as though all that we had before us were bits of a jigsaw but no picture to guide us! For this philosophy of research, the whole is nothing but the sum of its parts, the concept being a classification of phenomena under certain superordinate headings: intelligence, memory, language, and so forth. I shall argue that this reasoning is false because it is a false psychology. That is, these assertions concerning methods of approaching consciousness are themselves expressions of a theory of conciousness, in particular, a theory of the acquisition of knowledge, which can be shown to be mistaken. And, if the theory is mistaken, if consciousness does not constitute the world in the way postulated by the theory, then the methodological principles are undermined. We cannot rely upon them to form concepts of consciousness because concepts are not formed in that way: they are psychologically unreal as statements of the way in which knowledge is acquired, including psychological knowledge. But it is important also to limit the scope of this critique. What I am saying is that the inadequacy of methods for approaching consciousness resides in the nature of methods, of all methods, whether described as experimental, psychometric, or phenomenological, which necessarily involve the accumulation of particulars in order to derive or "read off" general statements. Generalities, statements of the whole, superordinate concepts, call them what you will, are just not derived from particular parts; this is the significant lesson to be learnt from Gestalt psychology and from psycholo- gies akin to Gestalt. If, however, there is no escape from this necessary limitation of methods, then Psychology can never settle its disputes by finding the "true" methods. Moreover, to assert that psychological methods of investigation fall short in leading to necessary psychological generalizations is only to delimit the field of their usefulness in one way. The usefulness of methods may not be exhausted with this limitation, but it may well force upon us an interpretation of their usefulness that challenges established thinking. I shall return to this point at the conclusion of the paper. Enough may have been said already to persuade the reader to open up again for consideration the implications of the remarks of Husserl and Wittgens- tein. I think Husserl's statement is often taken to mean: first, we discover the nature of what has to be investigated, then we investigate it. But we can give no sense to the idea that somehow, independently of empirical .

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