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Standing back

[P]henomenology is the study of 'phenomena': appearances of things, or things as they appear in our experience, or the ways we experience things, thus the meanings things have in our experience.*
Why are these excursions into the first selections of "evidence" important? and why is the matter of "phenomenology = writing" important?

Easy question first. These first selections (arguments) point to a central truism(?) about writing, that it, the text, is a representation of what is/was in the mind of the maker. The text is the essence and attributes of the content of mind made manifest, as good and as imperfect as that artifact might be. Because of that, a reader re-presents that content/experience to him- or herself in the act of reading, thereby "seeing" the phenomena that the creator re-presented for him or her.

Harder question, and this is just a first cut. To the question of what is phenomenology we get three answers. In over-simplified terms:

One it is a description of what something is like for a percipient, both a what-it-is (appearance in consciousness) and how it is (ways of experiencing it). Second, phenomenology is doing phenomenology, that is following a process (method) of producing the description--with the intent implicit than another will let that description create an experience similar to or the same thing as. . . . Thirdly, phenomenology is a way of seeing and therefore being.

The first selections of evidence, these address the artifact, a text or writing. The next selections are about the processes of doing phenomenology, that is writing, if these can be interchangeable terms.** The last selections are about a way or ways of being in the phenomenal world.

Why are all these important? They are attempts to understand and practically fix phenomena so that we may navigate based on the best maps and practices. Which phenomena are worth our time to study oh-so-carefully? Each that each of us finds important, for navigation touches all aspects of our lives. That some phenomena are not important for some but for others, that is as life is. We have differences. Where differences matter, that is in the intersections of our lives with those others, then phenomenology matters, writing (re-presenting) matters, being matters.

Is that it? the why-bother for all these words and considerations? Well, here is a serious albeit rhetorical question in reply. Isn't the  stuff of what we deal with and are concerned with in living our lives and doing whatever we do most important and fundamental for survival and thrival? Even the perennial questions of where we come from, what is the meaning of life, and where do we go afterwards are questions with its and how they appear to us.

Name one human activity that does not involve our trying to nail down what it is (noema) and how it is (noesis) for us. A possible exception to this naming (essence/invariant finding) and talking about might be the activity of meditating. When emptying the mind, we are not concerned with the what-is or the how-it-is, just being now.

Or is this the same as our third response to what is writing and what is phenomenology: is phenomenology the practice of being mindful? For a discussion of this, we must continue the  investigation.

--
* Phenomenology (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy). (30.10.13). Retrieved from http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/phenomenology/
**  Max van Manen asserts this equivalence. Phenomenology Online: Homepage. (30.10.13). Retrieved from http://www.phenomenologyonline.com/home.html

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