Open peer commentary on the article “Meeting You for the First Time: Descriptive Categories of an Intersubjective Experience” by Magali Ollagnier-Beldame & Christophe Coupé. Abstract: While being in total agreement with the bottom-up method used in the target article, I address three issues: the first concerns the intersubjective situation of the explicitation interview itself; the second aims to put the results in the perspective of the traditional phenomenological approaches of intersubjectivity; and the last one considers the analysis of the material, and questions the general categories that emerge from this process.

Research in phenomenology has benefitted from using exceptional cases from pathology and expertise. But exactly how are we to generate and apply knowledge from such cases to the phenomenological domain? As researchers of cerebral palsy and musical absorption, we together answer the how question by pointing to the resource of the qualitative interview. Using the qualitative interview is a direct response to Varela’s call for better pragmatics in the methodology of phenomenology and cognitive science and Gallagher’s suggestion for phenomenology to develop its methodology and outsource its tasks. We agree with their proposals, but want to develop them further by discussing and proposing a general framework that can integrate research paradigms of the well-established disciplines of phenomenological philosophy and qualitative science. We give this the working title, a “phenomenological interview”. First we describe the what of the interview, that is the nature of the interview in which one encounters another subject and generates knowledge of a given experience together with this other subject. In the second part, we qualify why it is worthwhile making the time-consuming effort to engage in a phenomenological interview. In the third and fourth parts, we in general terms discuss how to conduct the interview and the subsequent phenomenological analysis, by discussing the pragmatics of Vermersch’s and Petitmengin’s “Explicitation Interview”.

Key words: phenomenology, qualitative interview, co-generated knowledge, reciprocal interaction, factual (eidetic) variation, explicitation interview.

This article summarily presents the explicitation interview with some examples of interviews. In the first part, referring to three excerpts from protocols, we consider some of the techniques used to guide a subject into an introspective posture. We show how these techniques create conditions conducive to access to pre-reflective knowledge, knowledge stemming from a moment of action experienced by the subject, of which the subject has no knowledge in the mode of reflective consciousness. Some of this knowledge is in fact surprising both for the interviewer and for the interviewee. The experience or the expertise of the subject interviewed is invariably increased as a result. In the second part, we provide a brief insight into the fields of application of the explicitation interview, with reference to three case studies, which are presented in a vivid and detailed way (in the fields of sport, health and training, and artistic creation) We conclude with a very brief panorama of the various known fields of application of the explicitation interview.

Key words: explicitation interview, explicitation techniques, pre-reflective, reflection, verbalization.

Context: There is little research currently on first encounters with a first-person epistemology and empirical evidence. Problem: We want to provide an answer to the question: “What is the lived experience of being with others for the first time?” Method: We rely on a first-person epistemology and a second-person method, namely the explicitation interview, a technique of guided retrospective introspection. We analyze a corpus of 24 interviews conducted after planned first encounters. We identify generic descriptive categories of subjects’ lived experience. Results: We propose a typology of the micro-moments that constitute people’s intersubjective experiences during first encounters. We identify five descriptive categories of these experiences: act, mode of intersubjectivity, sense of agency, experiential modality, and content in terms of involved persons. Implications: This article highlights what a careful investigation of subjective experience can bring to the understanding of intersubjectivity. It shows in particular how an applied phenomenology can complement and revisit less empirical philosophical approaches. It can be useful to scholars conducting third-person studies on first encounters. This study is a first step toward investigating more spontaneous encounters, occurring for instance in everyday situations or in less usual settings. We are currently analyzing interviews on first encounters between health practitioners and their clients, which will offer practical advice to both sides. Constructivist content: Constructivist approaches argue that “reality” is actively brought forth by the subject rather than passively acquired. Questioning the separation between the objective world and subjective experience, they examine how people build their own reality through their perceptions, through their experience of the world, and through their interactions with others. Our study focuses on first encounters “from within,” listening to subjects’ accounts of their lived experience. We aim to defend and promote the experiential perspective in the field of cognitive science. We therefore follow Francisco Varela, Evan Thompson and Eleanor Rosch, for whom the “concern is to open a space of possibilities in which the circulation between cognitive science and human experience can be fully appreciated and to foster the transformative possibilities of human experience in a scientific culture.”

Key words: Intersubjectivity, experience, first encounter, first-person epistemology, micro-phenomenology, explicitation interview, micro-experiential phenomenon, generic descriptive category

The project of neurophenomenology, initiated by Francisco Varela, aims at establishing correlations between descriptions of lived experience (as elicited by the explicitation interview technique) and brain states (as measured with increasing precision and detail by the new brain imaging techniques). However, on their own, such correlation aggravates rather than solve Chalmers’ “hard problem”–how can a neuronal state be a state of consciousness? The question that arises is thus how to interpret such correlations. I will argue that this requires putting the brain in the body of an animal living in the world. Epistemologically, this amounts to putting neuroscience in the context of cognitive science (Varela’s concept of enaction) and cognitive science in the context of biology (Maturana and Varela’s concept of autopoïesis).

Key words: neurophenomenology, enaction, autopoïesis, conscious experience, cognition, life, varela.

Context: The advent of the embodied approach to cognition produced a paradigm shift giving experience a primary place in the different fields of inquiry. This gave rise to the need to develop methodologies for the study of experience from a first-person perspective. In this context, micro-phenomenology emerges as a methodological tool that allows the study of experience in a systematic and rigorous way. Problem: To reproduce and share the micro-phenomenological analysis - crucial for the intersubjective validation of micro-phenomenological research - it is relevant to have a procedure that allows us to trace the different steps of the analysis. As many of the stages of the micro-phenomenological analysis remain implicit, a step-by-step description has not yet been produced. We describe the procedure of analysis of the micro-phenomenological interview, step by step, thus complementing the micro-phenomenological analysis method. Method: In order to specify the analysis procedure, we used the micro-phenomenological interview to explore our experience of abstracting, developing the example of an analysis carried out in the context of a specific investigation. Results: We propose an analysis procedure organized in a concertina-shaped structure. It has fifteen stages organized into five sections. Each surface of the concertina corresponds to one stage of the analysis. We identified grouping as an abstraction operation that participates in the very early stages of the categorization process. This operation participates in the categorization mechanism we called “iterative interrogation.” Moreover, we propose that the refinement of the structures results from a process that involves recursively contrasting the description of the experience, the understanding we have gained from it throughout the analysis and the resulting structures. Implications: The proposed procedure allows the tracing not only of the different steps of the analysis, but also of the criteria used to solve the numerous issues that arise throughout it. The iterative interrogation mechanism makes it possible to reveal, in an orderly manner, the principles used by the analyst to establish the diachronic and synchronic units. This greatly facilitates the communication of a process that is highly implicit. We hope this procedure will contribute to the establishment of standards in micro-phenomenological research, facilitating the exchange between researchers and thus consolidating the intersubjective validation procedures that make it possible to evaluate the quality of neuro- and micro-phenomenological research.

Key words: Micro-phenomenology, neurophenomenology, explicitation interview, iterative interrogation, first-person research, embodied approach, categorization, experience, synthesis process

The main objective of this article is to capitalise on many years of research, and of practice, relating to the use of introspection in a research context, and thus to provide an initial outline description of introspection, while developing an introspection of introspection. After a description of the context of this research, I define the institutional conditions which would enable the renewal of introspection as a research methodology. Then I describe three aspects of introspective practice: 1) introspection as a process of becoming aware, theorized through Husserl’s model of consciousness modes; 2) introspection as recollection, through the model of retention and awakening in Husserl’s theory of memory; 3) the use of universal descriptive categories for the description of all lived experiences, as a guide for skilled practice of introspection in research. Finally I examine the question of the validation of introspective data, suggesting a strong distinction between the ethical criterion and the epistemic criterion of truth.

Key words: Consciousness, Husserl, descriptive categories, explicitation interview, introspection, lived experience, phenomenology, pre-reflective