Abstract

The dissertation offers an interpretation and development of Edmund Husserl's 1925 Phenomenological Psychology Lectures. The Lectures show how and why we should develop a phenomenological psychology. ;First, the dissertation provides a historical context for Husserl's argument. It considers the prominent psychophysical psychology from 1850 through 1920, as well as Wilhelm Dilthey's and Franz Brentano's suggestions for psychology. ;Then the dissertation poses and discusses Husserl's argument per se. That is, psychology has not attained a unanimously accepted method. To do so, it must be clear about its field of investigation. To gain clarity about descriptive natural sciences' provinces, we must return to our initial extra-scientific experiences of the world, and from here pose abstractions whereby we gain these provinces. ;Concretely, within the world we see animate versus inanimate realities, as well as cultural objects. With animate realities we recognize the animating mental, as contrasted with a physical embodying substrate. To gain the province of descriptive physics, we exclude the mental "side" of animate and cultural objects. To gain externally directed psychology's province, we exclude interest in the physical substrate of animate beings . Further, external reality is perceived through appearances. If physics and external psychology are to study objective external reality, these appearances must be excluded. Still, these appearances are mental in belonging to the perceiving scientist's consciousness. Therefore, psychology, an internally directed psychology, must treat them. To do so, it suspends interest in the appearing external reality. Thereby, internal perception of these appearances is possible. ;Husserl's argument presupposes a theory of perception. The dissertation offers supplemental analysis of this and rival theories. Further, it develops Husserl's notions of internal perception's adequacy and external perception's inadequacy, and the consequent evidence supplied for internal and external perceptual judgments