Exploring Experience as a Myriad Richness: Micro-phenomenology as a Transformative Approach to Research

Over the past two decades, cognitive science research on ways of knowing has grown, particularly through the 4-E cognition paradigm, which holds that cognition involves the whole body and its environmental situation. This article argues that a first-person approach, especially the micro-phenomenological interview, enriches understanding of knowledge by reintegrating subjective experience and questioning classical dichotomies. It explores how the epoché—suspension of judgment—occurs and relates to embodiment, drawing connections between concrete practices of Husserlian epoché and Gendlin's Focusing process, which accesses an inner felt sense. The paper suggests that the 'clearing a space' step and the 'bodily felt shift' in Focusing parallel the conversion in epoché, potentially enabling new models of knowledge processes with epistemological, ethical, and societal implications.

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Abstract

Over the last twenty years, researches within cognitive sciences has massively grown in the field of the ways of knowing. For instance, in recent years, the paradigm of 4-E cognition suggests that cognition involves the whole body, as well as the situation of the body in the environment. This article argues that a first-person approach enriches the understanding of the ways of knowing in their complexity - particularly by seeking to re-question classical dichotomies - through the re-integration of subjective experience. In the heart of first-person epistemology, the micro-phenomenological interview - based on the explicitation interview - consists in “guided retrospective introspections”, and allows to scientifically access subjective experience. This technique relies on the epoché – the suspension of judgement – a process at first investigated by philosophers that was made accessible to psychology to empirically investigate and study subjective experience. How does the epoché happen? What concrete acts make it up? More broadly, what is the relationship between the epoché and embodiment? This paper sheds lights on possible relations between researches describing concrete practices of the Husserlian epoché and Gendlin’s work concerning the process of Focusing, which aims at accessing the inner felt sense of experience. The process of Focusing, is a way of paying attention to one’s being-in-the-world, one’s interaction as it is experienced through the individual (but not separate) body. We will especially consider the process of “clearing a space” that Gendlin describes, as well as the rupture that occurs during the “bodily felt shift” which can be compared to the conversion happening within the process of epoché. Finally, we discuss how our proposition can allow the construction of new models of knowledge processes, the challenge of such a proposal being not only epistemological, but also ethical and societal. KEYWORDS Subjective experience, embodiment, micro-phenomenology, epoché, focusing.