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we make assumptions all the time to make our way through a complex world

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usually these assumptions are operating in the background

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they shape things if we think about them or not

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sometimes our assumptions are wrong

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what we expect to experience and what we do experience can diverge

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phenomenology lurks in illusions, jokes, riddles, and many other forms of art and inquiry

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the phenomenological attitude is one of inquisitiveness and imagination

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it begins with the suspicion that things might not be as they seem

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maybe the first, most obvious impression is not the only possibility

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that playful outlook makes us reach for the weird

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in doing phenomenology, we deliberately provoke the double-take

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we undermine every assumption and thereby illuminate the dimensions of consciousness that normally unfold beneath notice

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this is the rich meaning of observation, of seeing more

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the active creation of variations in consciousness

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in these ways we learn to increasingly see more

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the phenomenologist has two toolboxes

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1. what else?

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question the first interpretation of what you hear, see, or think

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spin out every conceivable alternative

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the tool of observation

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tools to get behind observation, considering the semi-sensory (parts of e.g. 3D objects that you don't actually see) and the super-sensory (abstract terms that don't refer directly to objects, e.g. love)

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2. what if?

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here we are invited to change our situation

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either physically altering it

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or envisioning an alternative scenario

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the tool of experimental variation

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change the situation in reality or in imagination and watch what happens

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this reveals contrasts among states of consciousness

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if nothing else, with these toolboxes, you will never be at a loss for conversation

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before we began to practice phenomenology, we engaged the world with a natural attitude

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it just is what it is

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after doing some phenomenology, we still believe in ordinary reality

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but perhaps our attitude toward the world shifts

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from the ordinary, natural, unreflective take on the world

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we become circumspect

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we acknowledge that it might be otherwise

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that the way we see the world is contingent

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we don't need to take it for granted

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the world, in short, is suspended in parentheses

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we believe in its reality but we recognize that we constitute that reality

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our own perceptual activity, the doing of seeing, posit objects around us

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and we become aware that this is something we do rather than something that is just sitting there

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phenomenologies have a term for this questioning attitude: epoché

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a Greek word meaning suspension

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we're used to the suspension of disbelieve, pretending that fictional characters are real

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epoché is the opposite

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the suspension of belief

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we regard the real as if it were fiction

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the world is still there right in front of us, but it is a world that consciousness makes, not the world of physics