RESEARCH PROJECT 3
In this project we engage in phenomenological exploration of the remnants of the influence of the use of the natural science model in psychology. We believe that the philosophical origins of the natural science trend in contemporary psychology rest upon too narrow a conception of phenomenology. Contemporary psychology completely excludes an ethical foundation, and we believe that the theoretical insights of Emmanuel Levinas can be used to fill this lacuna. We also believe that, in the main, western psychology distorts the nature of the self. It is this distortion---in which consciousness is viewed as a thing---that precludes an ethical foundation and an adequate phenomenology.

We assume that contemporary psychology has the intellectual responsibility to investigate the full range of human experience in such a way that will satisfy the demands of science. Therefore, we must scrutinize the adequacy of the kind of science we have been using in psychology for the last hundred years. It is no secret that in its beginnings psychology borrowed the methodology and worldview of the natural sciences, assuming that this world view represented the best expression of total reality. While it may be true that the procedure of the natural sciences is adequate to natural phenomena, we argue that it does not adequately comprehend the phenomenon of human experience. What is more mysterious and problematic is in what an adequate anthropology and phenomenological account of humans could consist. We locate it in an ethical foundation.