The epistemological status of Transpersonal Psychology – the database argument revisited

Transpersonal psychology often treats introspective reports as objective data, an approach criticized as Naïve Objectivism of Introspective Data (NOISED). This paper argues for a middle ground: taking inner experience seriously without naivety. Future transpersonal methodology must move from subjective to intersubjective experience, similar to how science treats outer-world data, but no equivalent method exists for inner experience. Simply accepting experience as data is insufficient. The solution is to develop a pragmatic catalogue of criteria for judging inner experiences, a future task for transpersonal epistemology. This requires a circular structure linking experience to tradition and testing it pragmatically. The paper develops how and why this should be done.

Study at a glance

Abstract

Transpersonal psychologists often subscribe to what I call here a Naïve Objectivism of Introspective Data (NOISED) approach to inner experience. This has been criticised. I propose here to take introspective data seriously, but not naively so. Trying to hold the middle-ground, it is argued that similar to science proper, a future transpersonal methodology will have to make an important step from subjective and inner experience to potentially intersubjective experience. While there is a canon of methods how this can be done in science with experience of the outer world, there is no equivalent in transpersonal psychology for inner experience. Simply taking experience as data won’t do. The only chance is to use pragmatic criteria and develop a pragmatic catalogue of how to judge inner experiences. This is a future task for transpersonal epistemology. It will have to use some circular structure, linking experience to tradition und probing it by pragmatic criteria. How this can be done, and why it should be done is developed in this paper.