Reddit mentions of The Phenomenological Mind

>What is this and how does it work?

The phenomenological reduction is the turning of our attention to how we are experiencing, and to how things appear in experience. Once one has turned their attention to the how of their experiencing, they can start to do phenomenology, and describe their experience.

In order to get to this stage where one can be in a position to adequately describe their experience one has to put aside, suspend, or bracket what is referred to as the natural attitude. The natural attitude refers to any beliefs, judgements, opinions, or theories, that we have which go beyond what is immediately given to us in experience - and thus aren't useful for us in describing experience. The central attitude we take which goes beyond direct lived experience is that we live in a real world. That the objects that we perceive exist out there in the world, and continue to exist when we aren't perceiving them. When one returns to their rice boiling on the stove for example, it isn't a surprise that the rice has now cooked, because it is assumed that when we weren't perceiving the rice, it continued to exist and cook. Likewise if one comes across a bear in the wild one does not start to ponder whether or not the bear is something that actually exists, rather we act as if it does exist, and run the hell away from it. So we bring many beliefs, judgements, opinions, or theories about how things work, to our experience, whether they are based on science or common sense, and these are all collectively referred to as the natural attitude. Importantly this natural attitude goes beyond what is directly given in experience. Whether or not the rice continues to exist or not when we don't perceive it, or whether or not the rice we experience on the stove is real or a hallucination, are questions that go beyond what is immediately given in experience. But since the aim here is to describe experience itself, we must put aside the natural attitude and any assumptions it brings to the table. This process of bracketing the natural attitude is called the epoché (a Greek word for suspension of belief - pronounced ep-okay).

>Why does Husserl think it is the necessary first step in the practice of phenomenology?

It is a necessary first step because to engage in phenomenology is to describe experience as experienced, and in order to do that we have to put aside things that don't aid us in our descriptions, such as metaphysical questions about the nature of reality. This putting aside of things that go beyond what is immediately given in experience is the phenomenological reduction.

At this point it might help to say something about why one might want to do phenomenology in the first place. Why might one want to describe experience as it is experienced. I think this quote from Shaun Gallagher's book Phenomenology will help to answer to this question:

>Consciousness is like our window onto the world. Of course we are usually interested in the things we perceive through that window; maybe we are fascinated with the stuff that we find around us. But how do we know that we are getting a good view through our window? For example, what if the window is dirty, or colored, or distorted. What if the way the window is designed, or the window frame, keeps us from seeing everything we want to see. The phenomenologist suggests that before we study the things that we see when we look outside the window, we should first be concerned about the condition of the window – whether it’s dirty, colored, distorted, or structured in such a way that it gives us only poor access to the objects on the other side of it. Returning from the metaphor, the phenomenologist thinks that the first step in understanding the basis for knowledge is to study the conditions imposed by consciousness – and specifically the structural features of consciousness, the way it works, and perhaps the systematic distortions that might bias it.



>What are some reasons why one might disagree with Husserl, even while remaining sympathetic to the general idea of phenomenology?

One way that someone might disagree with Husserl, in terms of the general approach of phenomenology is to claim that phenomenology is a form of introspectionist psychology and is thus subject to the same criticisms of introspectionism. This is an approach Daniel Dennett seems to take. Husserl was also an anti-naturalist, that is he didn't think science was the only valid form of knowledge. In this line he didn't think (phenomenal) consciousness could naturalised, briefly because consciousness, specifically the transcendental ego, is not something that is part of the world but is taken for granted by it. So one might want to disagree with this view, be a naturalist but also use some of the techniques that phenomenology has developed, such as the phenomenological reduction. This would allow one to bring a methodology to the description of experience in for example neuroscientific experiments whilst also being a naturalist, and something like this is held by neurophenomenology. Whether or not phenomenology can be naturalised is still a subject of debate. Here's a talk from the phenomenologist Dan Zahavi who goes into this issue.

For further reading i'd check out the SEP article on Husserl, there is a section on the epoché and the phenomenological reduction. There is also an [IEP article on the phenomenological reduction](https://www.iep.utm.edu/phen-red/. And for a short introduction to phenomenology Gallagher's Phenomenology and Zahavi and Gallagher's The Phenomenological Mind and Gallagher's Phenomenology are quite good.

You could start with a modern overview and fan out from there (following threads from various references).

Or - obviously - you could start taking some courses (but that's - obviously - not an option for everyone).