Frontiers in Psychology
March 3, 2021
Kristian Moltke Martiny, Juan Toro, Simon Høffding
51 citations
A framework for phenomenological mixed methods is proposed, where phenomenology informs both qualitative (first-person, subjective) and quantitative (third-person, objective) data generation, analysis, and interpretation. The authors argue for mutual constraint and enlightenment between these approaches when studying consciousness. Drawing on mixed-methods research and existing examples, they present three cases studying complex social phenomena. A three-fold structure is developed: the phenomenological frame, phenomenologically informed data generation (tier one), and phenomenologically informed analysis and interpretation (tier two). The article maps possibilities, challenges, and common pitfalls for researchers combining phenomenology with qualitative and quantitative methods.
Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences
July 10, 2021
Simon Høffding, Kristian Moltke Martiny, Andreas Roepstorff
45 citations
Phenomenological interviews are a valid and reliable source of knowledge, no less trustworthy than quantitative or experimental methods. The paper addresses skeptic objections about introspection, the unreliability of episodic memory, and the inability of interviews to address psychological, cognitive, and biological correlates of experience. It argues that rejecting the methodological and epistemological justification of phenomenological interviews leads to a deep mistrust that undermines scientific discourse by excluding conscious processes as objects of explanation, with serious consequences for the conception of science.
Phenomenology and the cognitive sciences
January 1, 2021
Simon Høffding, Andrea Schiavio
25 citations
Music-making is better understood as an exploratory activity than solely as aesthetic expression. Drawing on enactive and phenomenological analysis of infants in early musical activities, an expert jazz improviser, and members of a prominent string quartet, the authors argue that music-making involves a dual intentionality: one directed outward toward the sonic, material, and social environment, and one directed inward toward bodily awareness and reflective mental states. In enactivist terms, exploration is a fundamental way of making sense of oneself as coupled with the world. This perspective highlights the developmental, sensorimotor, and advanced cognitive resources involved in music-making.
Journal of Aesthetics and Phenomenology
January 2, 2019
Simon Høffding, Tone Roald
14 citations
Aesthetic experience includes an unavoidable dimension of passive undergoing and surprise, as shown by interviews with museum visitors and a world-renowned string quartet. Analyzing these experiences through Husserl's concept of "passive synthesis" helps explain them, including the sense of subject–object fusion in intense aesthetic encounters. This view is contrasted with enactive aesthetics from cognitive science, which emphasizes active subjective construction and sense-making. The paper argues that the two positions are compatible.
Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland)
May 21, 2025
Remy Haswell-Martin, Finn Upham, Simon Høffding et al.
3 citations
Live music can create transformative, personal aesthetic experiences for listeners, yet concert research often emphasizes shared responses. This paper examines exploratory listening through embodied-enactive engagement and affective resonance, analyzing data from two musically skilled audience members who heard Harald Sæverud's 'Kjempeviseslåtten' (1943) performed by the Stavanger Symphony Orchestra and The Norwegian Radio Orchestra in 2024. Combining phenomenological interviews with measurements of breathing and body motion, the authors find forms of absorbed, imaginative, and embodied involvement that both corroborate crowd patterns and reveal individual exploratory expertise and idiosyncratic affective orientations, challenging a sole focus on synchronized response.
Adaptive Behavior
May 20, 2022
Simon Høffding
3 citations
This commentary applauds the Course-of-Experience method for integrating micro-phenomenology, enactivism, and Peircean semiotics to study lived experience, but raises three concerns: how it compares to similar methods, why Peircean semiotics is essential, and whether it inherits problematic assumptions about pre-reflective experience from micro-phenomenology.