At the heart of Murray Smith’s proposal of a methodological “triangulation” is the principle that in our research we take into serious account three levels of analysis, with their respective types of evidence: the phenomenological level; the psychological level; and the neurophysiological level.
However, the author’s trust in phenomenological evidence appears to be fluctuating, and the issue of how to concretely take advantage of it appears underexplored. On this grounding, I will address the broad topic of a rigorous usage of phenomenological evidence by touching upon three main points: 1) The nature of phenomenological evidence; 2) The methods to gather phenomenological evidence; 3) The reliability of this type of evidence. In my discussion, I will focus on a particular method stemming from Francisco Varela’s neuro-phenomenological framework and developed by Claire Petitmengin, i.e. “micro-phenomenology”.
Over the last couple of decades, the debate has reignited about the opportunity to complement theoretical aesthetics with empirical research.
In Italy, until recently, it was arguably film scholars—rather than philosophers—to be most eager to do so. However, as of today, a growing number of scholars in aesthetics committed to unpacking and understanding, if not actively practicing, empirical aesthetics.
A recent and meaningful event in this regard was the discussion, promoted by the Giornale italiano di psicologia, around Stefano Mastandrea’s target article (2020). Speaking as a psychologist but hoping to spark the interest of philosophers too, Mastandrea suggested that times were ripe to inaugurate in Italy a proper “empirical aesthetics”, in which updated theoretical contributions would combine with…
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