First-person methodologies for investigating empathy have historically faced two challenges: epistemic suspicion of self-observation as valid data, and lack of systematic protocols ensuring reliability and bias mitigation. This paper introduces the Phenomenological Evidence Ecosystem, a structured methodology for investigating empathy infrastructure as described in Empathy Systems Theory (EST)....
Researcher-as-phenomenon investigations—where investigators study phenomena accessed through their own lived experience—face a structural validation problem that traditional epistemological mechanisms cannot resolve. Replication fails because others cannot replicate the researcher's phenomenology. Bracketing fails because one cannot bracket oneself from oneself. This circularity deepens at the...