Phenomenological Facts are facts about a person’s directly experienced subjective experience what the experience is like from the person’s own point of view.
Simple definition
Phenomenological Facts: facts about how an experience is experienced, rather than claims about what objectively caused it.
For example, someone reports:
- “I felt a presence in the room.”
- “I heard a voice.”
- “I experienced intense fear.”
- “I saw a bright light.”
- “I felt as though I left my body.”
- “The experience seemed completely real to me.”
These may be phenomenological facts in the sense that the person genuinely experienced the sensation, perception, emotion, or awareness they describe.
Important distinction
| Phenomenological fact | Interpretation/explanation |
|---|
| “I experienced a presence.” | “A spirit was present.” |
| “I heard a voice.” | “A deceased person communicated with me.” |
| “I felt outside my body.” | “My consciousness actually left my body.” |
| “I remembered being someone else.” | “I was reincarnated.” |
The first column describes the experience itself. The second makes a claim about what caused or explains the experience.
In psychology and parapsychology
This distinction is particularly useful with unusual experiences. A researcher may take the person’s phenomenology seriously without immediately deciding whether the explanation is:
- psychological,
- neurological,
- social/cultural,
- spiritual,
- paranormal,
- or something not yet understood.
For example:
Phenomenological fact: “The individual reports a vivid experience of remembering a previous life.”
That may not, by itself, establish that reincarnation occurred. The reincarnation hypothesis is an interpretation of the phenomenological experience.
This approach allows you to be open minded without being uncritical: take the experience seriously, while keeping the explanation provisional.
Shervan K Shahhian
LIBERTY PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION 