Tuesday, October 20, 2009

What is not right?

I came across this website on which I found the article "Understanding life experiences through a phenomenological approach to research". The main ideas of the articles are as follows.

First, phenomenology is one type of qualitative research that examines human's lived experiences, and phenomenological researchers work to gain understanding of the essential "truths" of the lived experience.

Second, phenomenology has been described as a philosophy, methodology, and method. Seeing phenomenology as a philosophy, "phenomonologists believe that truth and understanding of life can emerge from people's life experiences."

Trotman (2005), Conceicao (2006), and Moustakas (1994) shared the idea that phenomenological research is a description of the givens of immediate experience and a process of sharing experience which contains rich insights into various phenomena to understand experiences. Thus, experience is a valid source of knowledge.

From Trotman, Conceicao, and Moustakas points of view, I would argue that saying truth can emerge from people's life experience is not appropriate. Human beings experience the world with a kind of mediator we call "the tool" or "the artefact" which includes material/technical tools, mental/psychological tools, and conceptual/symbolic tools. Different people experience the same world with different tools, so their report on their own experience will be different. Thus, there will be no universal truth about human experience accordingly.

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