Thomas Byrne

In recent debates in qualitative research, it has been emphasized that methods are not merely collections of techniques, but socially stabilized ways of making knowledge claims intelligible. In this paper, I intervene at this meta-methodological level by examining what it means for a qualitative method to claim philosophical grounding. Rather than evaluating empirical results, I ask under what conditions an appeal to a philosophical source can function as a genuine grounding relation. Specifically, the case examined is the phenomenological methodology of Max van Manen's, who presented Edmund Husserl as a point of departure. Through textual analysis of how van Manen portrays Husserl's accounts of the epoché, transcendental reduction, and intentionality, I show that van Manen misrepresented Husserl's own concepts. Because the figure named "HUSSERL" no longer corresponded to Husserl's own project, van Manen could not claim Husserlian grounding and could not serve as a basis for researchers who seek such grounding themselves.

Contemporary health research often examines patient objectification, patient self-objectification, and good patient performance as separate concerns. Treating them in isolation makes it difficult to see how they combine to shape what patients feel able to express in clinical encounters. To address this gap, this study examines how cancer survivors describe objectification, internalization, and performance within oncology care. Through this analysis, we develop a unified analytic account of these three experiences. In doing so, we reframe the “medical gaze” in existential terms as the “medical look,” by drawing on Sartre’s account of how becoming visible to another reshapes lived experience and existence. We interpret clinical visibility as a structure that unfolds across encounters, rather than as isolated interactional events. Drawing on 29 interviews with cancer survivors, our findings show that being positioned through clinical routines, adopting those framings as self-measures, and calibrating self-presentation in anticipation of clinical judgment were lived as connected movements within one structure of visibility. Recognizing this continuity clarifies communication pressures and constrained agency in oncology, and identifies points where clinical practice may ease the conditions under which patients manage how they appear.

The phenomenological and eidetic reductions have long been misunderstood and misused in qualitative research, hindering cumulative and cooperative progress. To restore conceptual clarity and to reframe any possible use of the reductions within qualitative inquiry, this paper advances a three-step remedy. First, because current difficulties stem from proliferating divergent interpretations, I return to Edmund Husserl’s own descriptions to establish a historical and conceptual baseline. I provide an orthodox, succinct, and practical outline of Husserl’s phenomenological and eidetic reductions. Second, I shift from Husserl’s account of the reductions to the uptake of these reductions in qualitative research. I specifically unpack one example, where the reductions are mischaracterized, by critically engaging Marius Bytautas’s recent article in this journal, “What is Reduction in Phenomenology, Really?”. I show that Bytautas describes the reduction in such vague ways that his account can offer no methodological guidance. I also demonstrate that Bytautas presents what he takes to be the outcome of the reduction – essences – in ways that contradict or confuse central phenomenological terms and insights. Third, I situate Bytautas’ difficulties within the broader literature, showing that his problems are not anomalies, but reflect recurring challenges in attempts to operationalize phenomenological reductions for empirical research. Using Bytautas as a case in point, I highlight how these difficulties arise when phenomenological reductions are asked to bear incompatible demands within qualitative inquiry. I conclude by indicating more viable ways phenomenological insights can be taken up in qualitative research without reproducing the analytic breakdown evident in Bytautas’ reconstruction.

This article accomplishes two goals. First, it diagnoses the risks of importing phenomenological methods and concepts into qualitative research. Phenomenological methods introduce inherent risks, because their aims are structurally misaligned with qualitative inquiry, while the risks of using phenomenological concepts are contingent, stemming from misinterpretation and the lack of a guiding framework. Second, it prescribes how phenomenology can be integrated more productively by retiring Husserl’s methods as study procedures and adopting a concept-led framework that aligns phenomenological insights with empirical aims. This framework offers a clearer and more coherent basis for phenomenological qualitative research.

This paper provides an original perspective on the lived experiences of STEM doctoral students concerning their interactions with Principal Investigators, revealing insights into the often-overlooked dynamics of these relationships. While doctoral supervision is commonly seen as a nurturing process, our qualitative research exposes it as a space of conflict, control, and, at its worst, a kind of psychological hell. These findings dismantle the comforting narrative of mentorship, revealing a darker, more unsettling reality at the heart of academia; the supervisory relationship is a warzone of identity, where students are often reshaped into versions of themselves that they no longer recognize in three distinct ways. In the first way, the “surveilled self,” students are subject to a relentless sense of observation, creating a defensive, hyper-vigilant state. Second, in the “overwritten self,” students’ own identities are obliterated, subsumed by their supervisors’ demands and expectations until they can no longer recognize themselves. Finally, the “censored self” embodies a profound silencing, where students suppress their authentic thoughts and emotions. We arrived at these insights by employing a novel methodological approach, Phenomenologically Grounded Qualitative Research (PGQR), which applies philosophical phenomenology to reveal the existential pressures shaping student identity. By focusing on underlying structures of consciousness, PGQR allowed us to capture the hidden, intense dimensions of conflict and dependency within supervisory relationships, offering a depth of understanding that traditional qualitative methods might overlook.

This paper presents findings from qualitative interviews with nineteen cancer patients and survivors, examining how they experience and articulate the existential structure Heidegger calls being-towards-death. The study accomplishes two goals. First, it responds to the widespread misinterpretation of Heidegger in contemporary death studies, palliative care, and psycho-oncology. While existing research often treats being-towards-death as a vague metaphor or rhetorical gesture, this study takes Heidegger’s account as a serious philosophical framework. Our team – composed largely of phenomenological philosophers – integrated his concepts into every stage of inquiry, from the design of interview protocols to the interpretation of participant narratives. We also employed an original qualitative method, presented in a form that is clear and transferable to future research. Second, we show how engaging Heidegger’s account as a substantial framework has direct and unsettling implications for clinical care. If care is to address the human being – not merely stabilize the body – then two practices must be reconsidered. First, the collapse of meaning following diagnosis should not automatically be pathologized, but recognized as a possible opening to authentic existence. Second, symbolic reframing, legacy projects, and spiritual reassurance are not neutral forms of support. They function to deny death’s finality and re-anchor the patient in social norms just as those norms begin to lose their hold. Rather than fostering resilience, these strategies may interrupt the one moment when patients can begin to live – and die – on their own terms.

This essay examines how Husserl stretches the bounds of his philosophy of meaning, according to which all propositions are categorical, to account for existential propositions, which seem to lack predicates. I examine Husserl’s counterintuitive conclusion that an existential proposition does possess a predicate and I explore his endeavor to pinpoint what that predicate is. This goal is accomplished in three stages. First, I examine Husserl’s standard theory of predication and categorial intuition from his 1901 Logical Investigations. Second, I show how Husserl imposes those 1901 insights to uncover the predicate of the existential proposition in unpublished manuscripts and lectures. He determines that the existential proposition predicates of the subject, that it corresponds to an actual object. This analysis reveals that Husserl’s descriptions of existential propositions from the late 1890s employed both static and genetic methodologies. In those texts, he carefully untangles and clarifies the co-enmeshed passive and active moments of consciousness and shows that the passive givenness of certain circumstances is the condition of possibility for our active verifying of propositions. Finally, I execute a critical assessment of Husserl’s thought to reveal that, while his insights about existential propositions are largely correct, they are augmented by re-construing them within the context of his mature philosophy. Only by renouncing his metaphysical neutrality and by accounting for intersubjectivity, can Husserl properly clarify existential propositions.

This paper accomplishes three goals. First, the essay demonstrates that Edmund Husserl’s theory of meaning consciousness from his 1901 Logical Investigations is internally inconsistent and falls apart upon closer inspection. I show that Husserl, in 1901, describes non-intuitive meaning consciousness as a direct parallel or as a ‘mirror’ of intuitive consciousness. He claims that non-intuitive meaning acts, like intuitions, have substance and represent their objects. I reveal that, by defining meaning acts in this way, Husserl cannot account for our experiences of countersensical, absurd, or impossible meanings. Second, I examine how Husserl came to recognize this 1901 mistake in his 1913/14 Revisions to the Sixth Logical Investigation (Husserliana XX-1/2). I discuss how he accordingly reformulates his understanding of non-intuitive meaning acts from the ground up in those Revisions, where this also allows for him to properly account for the experience of impossible meanings. Instead of describing them as mirrors of intuitions, Husserl takes non-intuitive meaning acts to be modifications of intuitions, where they have no substance and do not represent their objects. Finally, in the conclusion to this essay, I demonstrate how this fundamental change to his understanding of meaning consciousness forced Husserl to revise other central tenets of his philosophy, such that the trajectory of his thought can only be properly understood in light of these revisions to his theory of non-intuitive meaning consciousness.

This essay accomplishes two goals. First, contra accepted interpretations, I reveal that the early Husserl executed valuable and extensive investigations of wishes—specifically in manuscripts from Studies concerning the Structures of Consciousness. In these manuscripts, Husserl examines two ‘kinds’ of wishes. He describes wish drives as feelings of lack. He also dissects wish intentions to uncover previously obscured partial acts, including nullifying consciousness, an existentially oriented act, and a preferring. Second, I reveal how these insights from Studies partially prefigure Husserl’s mature genetic phenomenology of drives and wish intentions. The mature Husserl develops his previous observation, that drives are experiences of lack, by describing these drives as having two moments: impulse and movement. Husserl also comes to new insights about wish acts, when he juxtaposes these intentions—as pure feelings that have no power to reach a telos—to drives, which he now conceives of as volitional doings.

This paper examines the relationship between philosophical phenomenology and its application in qualitative educational research, with a specific focus on Edwin Creely’s 2018 article, “Understanding Things from Within”. This analysis accomplishes two goals. First, I engage directly with Creely’s text to present a more careful interpretation of Husserl’s phenomenology and its potential role in qualitative research. In doing so, I identify key errors in Creely’s reading of Husserl, mistakes in his methodological application, and shortcomings of his empirical findings. Second, I situate Creely’s misapplication within a broader discussion of why misinterpretations of Husserl’s phenomenology persist in qualitative education research. By using Creely as a case study, I identify underlying reasons for common errors in the application of Husserl’s methods and core concepts. I conclude by pointing to a more viable approach that avoids the methodological and conceptual pitfalls frequently found in Creely’s work and similar studies.

The most contentious tenet of Husserl's phenomenology of feelings is his conclusion that there is an analogy between axiological reason and theoretical reason. Simply, Husserl asserts that the axiological validation of feelings is analogical to the theoretical validation of judgments. While the scholarship has debated the merits of Husserl's analogy over the last 120 years, this paper presents a new accurate interpretation, because it is the first to highlight how Husserl develops this analogy by most often comparing the fulfillment of judgments to the fulfillment of wish feeling intentions. Specifically, I examine how Husserl analogizes wish fulfillment to theoretical fulfillment at different times; in the 1901 Logical Investigations, in his 1908 Lectures on Ethics, and in 1910 manuscripts from Studien zur Struktur des Bewusstseins. In light of this original interpretation, I conclude by arguing – contra popular readings – that Husserl does not over-intellectualize feelings and their validation.

This essay accomplishes two goals. First, contra accepted interpretations, I reveal that the early Husserl executed valuable and extensive investigations of wishes—specifically in manuscripts from Studies concerning the Structures of Consciousness. In these manuscripts, Husserl examines two ‘kinds’ of wishes. He describes wish drives as feelings of lack. He also dissects wish intentions to uncover previously obscured partial acts, including nullifying consciousness, an existentially oriented act, and a preferring. Second, I reveal how these insights from Studies partially prefigure Husserl’s mature genetic phenomenology of drives and wish intentions. The mature Husserl develops his previous observation, that drives are experiences of lack, by describing these drives as having two moments: impulse and movement. Husserl also comes to new insights about wish acts, when he juxtaposes these intentions—as pure feelings that have no power to reach a telos—to drives, which he now conceives of as volitional doings.

This essay comprises a first phenomenological semiotics of ChatGPT. I analyse how we experience the language signs generated by that AI. This task is accomplished in two steps. First, I introduce a conceptual scaffolding for the project, by introducing core tenets of Husserl's semiotics. Second, I mould Husserl's theory to develop my phenomenology of the passive and active consciousness of the language signs composed by ChatGPT. On the one hand, by discussing temporality, I demonstrate that ChatGPT can passively demand me to understand its signs. On the other hand, I show that a conflict arises between active and passive consciousness when reading ChatGPT. While I actively know that there is no communicating subject, I still passively experience these signs as made by another. I argue that it is this conflict which lends ChatGPT its 'magical' character. I conclude by showing how these observations can inform future regulation of AI models.

This essay disambiguates the relationship between phenomenology and explanation, whereby we uncover a fundamentally new way to understand the function of phenomenology within the sciences. These objectives are accomplished in two stages. First, we propose an original way to interpret Husserl's claim that his phenomenology is non-explanatory. We demonstrate, contra accepted interpretations, that Husserl did not think phenomenology is non-explanatory, because it is descriptive or because it does not deal with causes. Instead, we demonstrate that Husserl concluded that phenomenology is non-explanatory, because it engages in a dialectical process of conceptual clarification. To substantiate this interpretation, we examine how Husserl understood the function of explanation in three different tiers of standard science and how he grasped the role of phenomenology in pure logic. Having properly clarified Husserl's conclusion—that phenomenology is non-explanatory—we then execute our second task, namely to challenge just that idea. We argue that Husserl has—despite his claims to the contrary—de facto and inadvertently described his phenomenology as an explanatory nomological science. Our paper therefore not only clears up a longstanding misinterpretation of Husserl, but opens a new area of debate concerning the status of phenomenology within the scientific nexus.

This essay reshapes our understanding of the origin and trajectory of the phenomenology of feelings. In contrast to accepted interpretations, I show that Husserl’s 1896 manuscript “Approval, Value, and Evidence”—and not his 1901 Logical Investigations—is the foundation of his subsequent phenomenology of feelings as it is found in Lectures on Ethics and Value Theory, Ideas I, and other manuscripts. This is for two reasons. First, in the 1896 manuscript—published in Studies Concerning the Structures of Consciousness—Husserl introduces the core problem, which continues to motivate his philosophy of feelings. He sees that feelings are not just affective, but also surprisingly rational. Second, Husserl addresses this enigmatic duality, by pioneering the method of analogizing, which he would employ for the next twenty years. In sum, I show that the 1896 manuscript introduces the problems and methods, in the absence of which Husserl’s later phenomenology of feelings appears inconceivable.

This essay is motivated by the contention that an incomplete picture of Edmund Husserl’s philosophy of feelings persists. While his standard account of feelings, as it is presented in his major works, has been extensively studied, there is another branch of his theory of feelings, which has received little attention. This other branch is Husserl’s rigorous and distinct investigations of the feeling of approval. Simply stated, the goal of this essay is to outline the evolution of this secondary branch of Husserl’s philosophy of feelings from 1896 to 1911. I highlight how Husserl’s examinations of approval – as an intention that performs both an axiological and a seemingly cognitive function – lead him to extraordinary observations about the execution of feelings and the truth of judgments.

Husserl’s early picture of explanation in the sciences has never been completely provided. This lack represents an oversight, which we here redress. In contrast to currently accepted interpretations, we demonstrate that Husserl does not adhere to the much maligned deductive-nomological (DN) model of scientific explanation. Instead, via a close reading of early Husserlian texts, we reveal that he presents a unificationist account of scientific explanation. By doing so, we disclose that Husserl’s philosophy of scientific explanation is no mere anachronism. It is, instead, tenable and relevant. We discuss how Husserl and other contemporary thinkers draw theoretical inspiration from the same source—namely, Bernard Bolzano. Husserl’s theory of scientific explanation shares a common language and discusses the same themes as, for example, Phillip Kitcher and Kit Fine. To advance our novel reading, we discuss Husserl’s investigations of grounding, inter-lawful explanation, intra-mathematical explanation, and scientific unification.

This essay examines how Husserl stretches the bounds of his philosophy of meaning, according to which all propositions are categorical, to account for existential propositions, which seem to lack predicates. I examine Husserl’s counterintuitive conclusion that an existential proposition does possess a predicate and I explore his endeavor to pinpoint what that predicate is. This goal is accomplished in three stages. First, I examine Husserl’s standard theory of predication and categorial intuition from his 1901 Logical Investigations. Second, I show how Husserl imposes those 1901 insights to uncover the predicate of the existential proposition in unpublished manuscripts and lectures. He determines that the existential proposition predicates of the subject, that it corresponds to an actual object. This analysis reveals that Husserl’s descriptions of existential propositions from the late 1890s employed both static and genetic methodologies. In those texts, he carefully untangles and clarifies the co-enmeshed passive and active moments of consciousness and shows that the passive givenness of certain circumstances is the condition of possibility for our active verifying of propositions. Finally, I execute a critical assessment of Husserl’s thought to reveal that, while his insights about existential propositions are largely correct, they are augmented by re-construing them within the context of his mature philosophy. Only by renouncing his metaphysical neutrality and by accounting for intersubjectivity, can Husserl properly clarify existential propositions.

The young Edmund Husserl stressed that the success of his philosophy hinged upon his ability to determine the subject and the predicate of impersonal propositions and their expressions, such as ‘It is raining’. This essay accordingly investigates the tenability of Husserl’s early thought, by executing the first study of his analysis of impersonal propositions from the late 1890s. This examination reshapes our understanding of the inception of phenomenology in two ways. First, Husserl pinpoints the subject by outlining why impersonal expressions are employed during communication. This contravenes interpretations of the early Husserl as uninterested in intersubjectivity. Second, by studying how Husserl determines the predicate by investigating existential propositions, I show that Husserl, in the late 1890s, came to his final view on the concept of being.

This paper accomplishes two goals. First, the essay elucidates Husserl’s descriptions of meaning consciousness from the 1901 Logical Investigations. I examine Husserl’s observations about the three ways we can experience meaning and I discuss his conclusions about the structure of meaning intentions. Second, the paper explores how Husserl reworked that 1901 theory in his 1913/14 Revisions to the Sixth Investigation. I explore how Husserl transformed his descriptions of the three intentions involved in meaningful experience. By doing so, Husserl not only recognized intersubjective communication as the condition of possibility of linguistic meaning acts, but also transformed his account of the structure of both signitive and intuitive acts. In the conclusion, I cash out this analysis, by showing how, on the basis of these new insights, Husserl reconstructs his theory of fulfillment.

This paper accomplishes two goals. First, I present a distinct interpretation of the inception of the phenomenology of feelings. I show that Husserl’s first substantial discussion of intentional and non-intentional feelings is not from his 1901 Logical Investigations, but rather his 1893 manuscript, “Notes towards a Theory of Attention and Interest”. Husserl there describes intentional feelings as active and non-intentional feelings as passive. Second, I show that Husserl presents a somewhat unique account of feelings in “Notes”, which is partly different from his later theories of feelings found in Lectures on Ethics and Value Theory and Studies Concerning the Structures of Consciousness. In contrast to those mature writings, in “Notes”, Husserl describes intentional feelings while avoiding cognitivism and he analyses non-intentional feelings without employing the content-apprehension schema. On this basis, I argue that “Notes” is an important untapped resource for constructing original phenomenologies of feelings.

This paper examines the evolution of Husserl’s philosophy of nonintuitive intentions. The analysis has two stages. First, I expose a mistake in Husserl’s account of non-intuitive acts from his 1901 Logical Investigations. I demonstrate that Husserl employs the term “signitive” too broadly, as he concludes that all non-intuitive acts are signitive. He states that not only meaning acts, but also the contiguity intentions of perception are signitive acts. Second, I show how Husserl, in his 1913/14 Revisions to the Sixth Logical Investigation, amends his 1901 theory of non-intuitive acts, which he now calls “empty” intentions. He there accurately distinguishes empty meaning acts from the empty intentions of perception. In the conclusion, I reveal how Husserl’s alterations to his theory of non-intuitive intentions can inform our understanding of a larger shift in his philosophy.

This paper accomplishes three goals. First, the essay demonstrates that Edmund Husserl’s theory of meaning consciousness from his 1901 Logical Investigations is internally inconsistent and falls apart upon closer inspection. I show that Husserl, in 1901, describes non-intuitive meaning consciousness as a direct parallel or as a ‘mirror’ of intuitive consciousness. He claims that non-intuitive meaning acts, like intuitions, have substance and represent their objects. I reveal that, by defining meaning acts in this way, Husserl cannot account for our experiences of countersensical, absurd, or impossible meanings. Second, I examine how Husserl came to recognize this 1901 mistake in his 1913/14 Revisions to the Sixth Logical Investigation. I discuss how he accordingly reformulates his understanding of non-intuitive meaning acts from the ground up in those Revisions, where this also allows for him to properly account for the experience of impossible meanings. Instead of describing them as mirrors of intuitions, Husserl takes non-intuitive meaning acts to be modifications of intuitions, where they have no substance and do not represent their objects. Finally, in the conclusion to this essay, I demonstrate how this fundamental change to his understanding of meaning consciousness forced Husserl to revise other central tenets of his philosophy, such that the trajectory of his thought can only be properly understood in light of these revisions to his theory of non-intuitive meaning consciousness.

This paper examines the evolution of Edmund Husserl’s theory of perceptual occlusion. This task is accomplished in two stages. First, I elucidate Husserl’s conclusion, from his 1901 Logical Investigations, that the occluded parts of perceptual objects are intended by partial signitive acts. I focus on two doctrines of that account. I examine Husserl’s insight that signitive intentions are composed of Gehalt and I discuss his conclusion that signitive intentions sit on the continuum of fullness. Second, the paper discloses how Husserl transforms his 1901 philosophy in his 1913 revisions to the Sixth Logical Investigation, affirming that the occluded parts of perceptual objects are intended by empty contiguity acts. I demonstrate how he overturns the two core doctrines of his theory from the Investigations in these revisions, claiming that empty intentions are not composed of Gehalt and asserting that those acts break with the continuum of fullness. Husserl implements these changes to solve problems that arise from his recognition of two new kinds of intentions; darker and completely dark acts. Finally, in the conclusion, I cash out this analysis, by indicating that, in 1913, Husserl transforms his theory of fulfillment on the basis of his new insights about empty acts.

This paper accomplishes two tasks. First, I examine in detail Edmund Husserl’s earliest philosophy of surrogates, as it is found in his 1890 “On the Logic of Signs ”. I analyze his psychological and logical investigations of surrogates, where the former is concerned with explaining how these signs function and the latter with how they do so reliably. His differentiation of surrogates on the basis of their genetic origins and degrees of necessity is discussed. Second, the historical importance of this text is disclosed by showing how Semiotic serves as both the inspiration for, and the foil to, Husserl’s 1901 First Logical Investigation. Husserl not only adopts the idea that linguistic signs can function via association, but also maintains that such signs can motivate me to execute one of two experiences. The key difference between the texts is that Husserl abandons his theory of surrogates in 1901, instead holding that I can experience absent objects by means of empty intentions. The reasons why Husserl found it necessary to transform this tenet of his philosophy are discussed at length.

This paper demonstrates that Edmund Husserl’s frequently overlooked 1890 manuscript, “On the Logic of Signs,” when closely investigated, reveals itself to be the hermeneutical touchstone for his seminal 1891 Philosophy of Arithmetic. As the former comprises Husserl’s earliest attempt to account for all of the different kinds of signitive experience, his conclusions there can be directly applied to the latter, which is focused on one particular type of sign; namely, number signs. Husserl’s 1890 descriptions of motivating and replacing signs will be respectively employed to clarify his 1891 understanding of the authentic and inauthentic presentations of numbers via number signs. Moreover, his schematic classification of replacement-signs in Semiotic will illuminate the reasons why he believed the number system to be necessary for the operation of replacing number signs.