Set against a background of calls for evidence-based practice, this paper explores the role of evidence and argument in phenomenological research. Drawing on Smith’s (1998) analysis of original argument, the author considers how evidence can be discerned, understood, and communicated, and the resulting kinds and contexts of knowledge that may be constituted in the practice of phenomenological research. Linking Churchill’s (2012) discussion of researcher perspectivity with Smith’s analysis of original argument, contrasts are drawn between rhetorical, demonstrative, and dialectical approaches to (...) argument, with proposed parallels to first-person, second-person, and third-person perspectives explored. Implications for argument-based phenomenological research are discussed. Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology , Volume 12, Special Edition July 2012. (shrink)

The core sense of pistis as understood in Posterior Analytics, De Anima, and the Rhetoric is not that of a logical relation in which cognitively grasped propositions stand in respect to one another, but the result of an act of socially embedded interpersonal communication, a willing acceptance of guidance offered in respect to action. Even when pistis seems to have an exclusively epistemological sense, this focal meaning of pistis is implicit; to have pistis in a proposition is to willingly accept (...) that proposition as a basis for some kind of activity (albeit possibly theoretical) as a result of some kind of communicative act. This is in accordance with Aristotle’s understanding of argumentation as a social practice, entered into in order lead others to certain actions, for certain ends. Understanding pistis in this way allows us to understand how it is that pistis admits of quantitative variation. (shrink)