Phenomenology

From Geography

Phenomenology is commonly understood in either of two ways: as a disciplinary field in philosophy, or as a movement in the history of philosophy.

As a disciplinary field, it studies the structures of consciousness as experienced from the first-person point of view. The central structure of an experience is its intentionality, its being directed toward something, as it is an experience of or about some object. An experience is directed toward an object by virtue of its content or meaning (which represents the object) together with appropriate enabling conditions.

Phenomenology as a discipline is distinct from but related to other key disciplines in philosophy, such as ontology, epistemology, logic, and ethics. Phenomenology has been practiced in various guises for centuries, but it came into its own in the early 20th century in the works of Edmund Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty and others. Phenomenological issues of intentionality, consciousness, qualia, and first-person perspective have been prominent in recent philosophy of mind.

There can also be phenomenology in spatial science, this results in phenomenological geography.

Four Phenomenological well-known Philosophers are: Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre and Maurice Merleau Ponty

References:

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: [1] Cloke, P., Philo, Ch. & Sadler, D. (1991) Approaching Human Geography. Chapman, London.

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