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In addition to a large number of misrepresentations of phenomenology,¹ one can see an increasing interest in phenomenology among cognitive scientists and analytic philosophers. It is the method of phenomenology from which one expects to shed some light on the problem of consciousness. How does this approach work? What are the specific tools of phenomenology? Explanations as well as critical discussions of phenomenological methods are scattered across the literature. Moreover, the sometimes misleading or impenetrable terminology of classical phenomenology blocks easy understanding. The language of phenomenology may be an important reason why the working cognitive scientist who may be ready to delve into the primary sources of phenomenology might be discouraged, puzzled or disappointed by the notorious difficulty of many of the classical phenomenological authors.² Thus the main goal of this essay is to offer a sketch of the methods of phenomenology, which appeals to outsiders of phenomenology, and, hopefully, to a few insiders too, if it can provide a (not quite) new way of looking at some (not quite) old ideas. After a short remark on the general character of phenomenology (Part II), phenomenological methods will be presented as a series of steps (Part III) and as a toolbox (Part IV). A concluding remark relates the offered account of method to the issue of the naturalization of phenomenology (Part V).

DOI: 10.1007/978-90-481-2646-0_3

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