Living in a house with four cats means I'm constantly seeing what I think is a cat out of the corner of my eye. Is it really a cat, or just a crumpled shirt, or just a shadow from a cloud outside. From the phenomenological perspective, it doesn't matter. We can set aside the question if what I saw was 'real' (this process is called 'bracketing') and ask about the connection between what I saw and what I thought about it. For Edmund Husserl, this process of 'reduction' needs to be done as precisely as possible, to avoid allowing our assumptions to creep into our understanding of what we actually experience in consciousness. This is a great article on Husserl's thinking about phenomenology and makes something that is quite complex easily readible and accessible. I have a lot of time for Husserl and this way of thinking and recommend it.
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