The Phenomenology of Pain. Saulius Geniusas

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СКАЧАТЬ to find a single universalizable method (see Dennett 1991, 44; Metzinger 2003, 591), thereby become understandable. Supposedly, since phenomenology relies on introspectionist methodology, it inevitably generates inconsistencies, which it has no means to resolve.¹³

      We face here widespread confusions. Francisco J. Varela (1996, 334) is fully justified when he maintains that one mixes up apples and oranges when one puts phenomenology and introspectionism into the same bag. Even though it privileges reflection and intuition, phenomenology is not introspectionism. While introspection is focused on individual instances of subjective experience, phenomenology is concerned with experiential essences, that is, with invariants. As Shaun Gallagher has it, “Phenomenology is not simply about subjective experience understood as an internal felt sensation or phenomenal consciousness” (2012, 58). Or as Dan Zahavi maintains, “All the major figures in the phenomenological tradition have openly and unequivocally denied that they are engaged in some kind of introspective psychology and that the method they employ is a method of introspection” (2013, 25–26).¹⁴

      This should not be taken to mean that introspectionism and phenomenology do not have anything in common. Both introspectionism and phenomenology could be qualified as methods designed to examine one’s thoughts and feelings as they are given through the first-person perspective. So also, both could be qualified as analyses of essentially nonextensive phenomena, which can be given only reflectively and intuitively. Yet these significant affinities should not overshadow fundamental differences between them, which are both methodological and thematic. Put in the language common in the philosophy of mind, one could say that both introspectionism and phenomenology obey the mentality condition: both are concerned with generating knowledge about conscious experience, and not about physical events that lie presumably outside one’s conscious experience. Yet phenomenology does not obey two other important conditions that introspectionism obeys, namely, the first-person condition and the temporal proximity condition. First, we need to draw a clear distinction between what in phenomenology is called the first-person perspective and what in the philosophy of mind is called the first-person condition. Introspection meets the first-person condition in that it is a process that is aimed at generating knowledge or beliefs about one’s own mind only, not anyone else’s. By contrast, phenomenology is not concerned with the idiosyncratic nature of anyone’s experience, be it my own or anyone else’s; it is not meant to offer a description of anyone’s mind in particular, but is exclusively focused on generating knowledge about the eidetic structures that must underlie any experience whatsoever. Second, introspectionism obeys the temporal proximity condition insofar as it is a process of learning about one’s own currently ongoing, or very recently past, mental states or processes. By contrast, phenomenology is not concerned with a particular group of temporal experiences, but with the temporality of experience as such.

      To this twofold distinction between phenomenology and introspectionism, one can add a third point of divergence. It concerns the breadth of introspective and phenomenological research. Introspectionism has been employed to study only relatively simple phenomena (for instance, the responses of different subjects under the same and/or different conditions to the same stimulus), while much more complex phenomena (for instance, those that concern mental disorders and personality) could not be addressed introspectively. By contrast, the phenomenological method is meant to enable the researcher to address the essences of any experience, irrespective of how simple or complex it might be.

      3. What does it mean to assert that phenomenology, claims to the contrary notwithstanding, cannot escape the charge of solipsism? To clarify the meaning of this accusation, let us open a brief dialogue between the phenomenology of pain and the phenomenology of medicine by turning to Tania Gergel’s recent critique of the phenomenological method. With reference to the phenomenology of illness, Gergel contends that one of its fundamental goals is “to give an account and help us understand illness as it is experienced by the ill individuals themselves” (2012, 1104). However, as Gergel sees it, phenomenological sensitivity to the experiential dimensions of illness does not facilitate, but rather impedes the capacity to understand and relate to ill individuals. “Far from enabling empathy and understanding, if the true conception of illness resides in the ill individual’s personal experience of the phenomena, we might well ask how it can ever be truly communicated and understood by another” (Gergel 2012, 1104). As Gergel sees it, this is not only a methodological difficulty that afflicts phenomenological studies of illness, but a problem that also impedes phenomenology’s ambition to facilitate a dialogue between patients and health-care practitioners. If illness is confined within the boundaries of experience, then we inevitably come to confront the challenge of solipsism: the experience of illness seems to be inaccessible to anyone except the individual subject of that experience.

      Let us extend this critique from the phenomenology of illness to the phenomenology of pain and let us ask: Does phenomenology truly maintain that the concepts of illness and pain reside in the ill individual’s personal experience in a way that those concepts would elude interpersonal understanding? In light of the foregoing account of the phenomenological method, we can see that we face here a misleading characterization of the phenomenological standpoint. The suggestion that the concepts in question reside in the experience of the patient is a clear instance of psychologism. Phenomenology aims to ground the concepts of illness and pain in experience, yet not to bound them within personal experience. Illness and pain are not confined within, but rooted in, experience.

      Gergel’s characterization of the phenomenology of illness represents the widespread tendency in the philosophy of illness to misidentify phenomenological analyses as types of empirical description of factual experiences pain patients live through. We need to reassert the fundamental methodological commitments that underlie phenomenologically oriented studies. In light of these commitments, the task of the phenomenology of pain is to provide insight into what is essential about pain experience. A study can be qualified as phenomenological, in the Husserlian sense of the term, insofar as it subscribes to the methods of the epoché, the reduction, and eidetic variation. Much confusion would be avoided if not only the critics of phenomenology, but also those who take themselves to be practicing phenomenology, recognized the indispensable role that these methods must play in phenomenologically oriented research.

REVAMPING EIDETIC VARIATION: FROM PURE TO DIALOGICAL PHENOMENOLOGY

      My defense of the method of eidetic variation does not entail that I take this method to be free of difficulties. So far I have left the most severe limitation out of consideration. All too often, this method is understood as an excuse to practice phenomenology in isolation from other intellectual debates and controversies. One thinks that this method proscribes the possibility of any kind of dialogue between phenomenology and other sciences, be they human, social, or natural. Presumably, insofar as these sciences do not rely on the methods of the epoché and the reduction, phenomenologists do not have the right to accept their results in their own research. It appears that phenomenologists are destined to carry out their research not only in methodological loneliness, but also in thematic seclusion. Needless to say, all of this carries regrettable consequences for phenomenological research. When viewed from the perspective of other sciences, phenomenological findings all too often appear extraneous and dispensable. We thus need to ask: Does the phenomenological method place a requirement on the phenomenologists to practice phenomenology in such an insular way?

      If it is indeed true that the method of eidetic variation places such a requirement on the part of the researcher, then I would contend that this method cannot achieve its fundamental objective, namely, it cannot generate insights into the essences of the phenomena. When interpreted in the above-mentioned way, this method becomes entirely dependent upon the phenomenologist’s factual cognitive abilities, which limit the range of possible variation. Even worse: when interpreted in such an insular way, the method of eidetic variation places the investigator back in the arms of psychologism. These remarks call for some further elucidation.

      Husserl claims that at a certain point in the process of eidetic variation, the researcher comes to see the essence СКАЧАТЬ