[Fis] Response to all re this session

[Maxine Sheets-Johnstone]

To all FIS colleagues:

If I may be permitted a few last words before we close this session—-
by no means final words (!)for further thoughts and discussion should
be possible, as you suggest, Plamen—-I would like to post the following:

(1): Phenomenology as practice and knowledge cannot be separated;
phenomenological methodology is integral to bona fide phenomenological
findings. If something is termed “phenomenological” but the methodology
is not followed, then either one should re-define how they are using the
term “phenomenological” to describe the work or the work is a work of-—
to use Plamen’s term—-the “inner self,” the work being “This is what I 
think.”
In effect, in a way similar to the way in which scientific methodology 
prescribes
a distancing from the object of investigation, so phenomenological 
methodology
prescribes a distancing from the object of investigation.

(2): Husserl’s fundamental concern was how we come to know the world and 
build
our knowledge of it, hence with perception and cognition, hence with an 
I-world
relationship. The methodology he constructed is integral to bona fide 
understandings
and knowledge of that relationship. Being true to the truths of 
experience is,
in short, integral to phenomenological practice and knowledge.

(3): I was hoping—-and am still hoping—-that someone would take up the 
challenge
of doing a phenomenological analysis of information.  Perhaps the 
possibility of
someone’s doing a bona fide phenomenological investigation of 
information will
take shape—-perhaps someone will take the challenge seriously. The 
relationship
of meaning to information and of information to meaning might then be 
undertaken.
That step, to my mind, would provide solid ground for linking 
informational sciences
and phenomenology, linking by way of 
showing—-demonstrating--complementarities.

Cheers,
Maxine