As used and applied here, bracketing means to suspend or "hold aside" personal/learned values about a topic, idea, or in simply approaching new realities. As such, it is borrowed from Phenomenology, a branch of Philosophy dealing with knowing and perceiving. This branch has been utilized by various social thinkers and has provided keen insights into the realities of our social lives. Bracketing, in particular, is instructive to critical analysis because it calls for us to diminish the effect of our current values on how we perceive, see, and judge those realities around us...including ourselves. Think of bracketing as the process of holding aside these values and previous judgments in order to create a path to a clearer view of something. By doing so we are more able to be empathetic...i.e. understand something on its own terms without interference of our own terms.

Bracketing, however, doesn't require us to abandon or even alter our values. It requires us to temporarily suspend them. After investigation has taken place, a "release" of these brackets allows a "mixing" to take place. Presuming that critical analysis provides new or different "data" to assess, the release of the brackets provides the opportunity for a clash of the old and the new...resulting in yet another "new"...a synthesis that may or may not culminate in a change of values or position. However, given that "values" aren't static...but are everchanging if allowed to be (i.e. not prevented by rigid and controlled adherence), change is likely. Integrity comes into play here. The most authentic change is that which happens because it is warranted...and necessary to maintain the integrity of the "knower" (i.e the "self-conscious" knower).