Distinguish Before Concluding

When a human experience is recounted, it is tempting to move quickly: to seek an explanation, give meaning, formulate a conclusion. The Aksoydan Laboratory works differently. Before concluding, it first seeks to distinguish levels that often become mixed together.

A first distinction concerns the research process.

Observation

An observation refers to what is directly observed, documented or reported descriptively. It does not yet contain an explanation. Saying what was seen, heard, noted or transmitted is not yet saying why it happens.

Interpretation

An interpretation is the meaning attributed to an observation. Several interpretations may coexist. They can be useful, but they must remain separate from the observed facts.

Hypothesis

A hypothesis is a provisional explanatory proposition. It can help research move forward, but it must remain open to being refined, corrected, abandoned or replaced. A hypothesis does not become a conclusion simply because it seems coherent.

A second distinction concerns human experience itself.

Lived experience

First there is lived experience: what was lived by the person. In research, we do not necessarily access it directly: we may access it, among other things, through what the person reports about it. That report already belongs to the account of the experience.

Account of the experience

Then there is the account of the experience: the way this experience is told. An account can change over time. It can be influenced by memory, language, culture, emotions, context or what the person learned after the event.

Interpretation of the experience

Finally there is the interpretation of the experience: the frame used to explain what was lived. This frame may be psychological, neurological, philosophical, spiritual, social, cultural or something else. Several frames may coexist, but their coexistence does not mean that they automatically validate one another.

Fictional example

A fictional example can help clarify this. A person says: “After that conversation, I felt relief.” The relief belongs to lived experience. The phrase used to report it belongs to the account. Saying that the conversation caused this relief is already an interpretation or a hypothesis. The laboratory does not reject what was lived. Nor does it immediately turn it into proof.

These distinctions are not meant to cool down human experience. They are meant to protect it from conclusions drawn too quickly. They make it possible to preserve what is observed, what is recounted, what is interpreted, what is hypothetical and what remains unknown.

The methodological work is then to keep these levels separate for as long as necessary. Research can move forward without resolving everything immediately. It can note an experience, observe the way it is recounted, propose several interpretations, preserve competing hypotheses and recognize what is not yet established.

🍅 We note. We observe. We translate.