A phenomenological ethnography of radiology: exploring the enactive and intersubjective aspects of radiological praxis

Abstract

This paper presents qualitative field research conducted at a radiology department in the USA. It examines ‘the radiologist at work’ and analyses the intersubjective ground for her individual diagnostic intentions and personalized strategies for enacting diagnostically-relevant experiences via imaging technology. The paper incorporates the radiologists’ use of ‘enactive proofs’—observations and professional memories made explicit through their interaction with medical imaging technology and other practitioners in the field. The observations strongly support the development of enactive phenomenology and provide a critique of representationalism and of the primacy of inference in cognition. The results demonstrate the crucial role of shared intentions, providing insight into expert performance in the form of concrete dealings with imaging technology, habituality, the origin of mistakes, multilayered communication, and discovering new ways for improving professional praxis. The findings have much to offer to philosophy, anthropology and radiological practice.

Keywords:

• Ethnography
• radiology
• intersubjectivity
• embodied cognition
• enactivism

Acknowledgments

This research has benefitted from the valuable feedback provided by Prof. Shaun Gallagher, Prof. Harris Cohen, and Prof. Rūta Briedienė. I thank them for their comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 This is a real physiological or psychological element that is a constituent of the imaginative state.

2 Research and experiments around this idea were conducted by A. Michotte’s followers (e.g. Tremoulet and Feldman 2000; Scholl and Tremoulet 2000).

3 See, in this regard, Bill Viola’s art projects.

4 Ostensive definition: defining words by literally pointing out their objects.

5 Wittgenstein (2009) distinguishes between pointing to the thing and giving a name, and pointing to the shape or color and giving a name.