Despite its long history of investigating sociality, phenomenology has, to date, said little about online sociality. The phenomenological tradition typically claims that empathy is the fundamental way in which we experience others and their experiences. While empathy is discussed almost exclusively in the context of face-to-face interaction, I claim that we can empathetically perceive others and their experiences in certain online situations. Drawing upon the phenomenological distinction between the physical, objective body and the expressive, lived body, I: (i) highlight that (...) empathy involves perceiving the other’s expressive, lived body, (ii) show that the lived body is not tied to the physical body and that empathy can take place outside of face-to-face interactions, and (iii) argue that the lived body can enter online space and is empathetically available to others there. I explore two ways in which the other’s lived body enters online space and can be empathetically perceived: first, in cases where our face-to-face encounter is technologically-mediated over video link and, second, by showing how the other’s texts, as speech, can form part of the other’s lived body. Investigating empathy online not only furthers our understanding of online encounters but also leads to a refined conception of empathy more generally. (shrink)

Mutually adaptive interaction involves the robot as a partner as opposed to a tool, and requires that the robot is susceptible to similar environmental cues and behavior patterns as humans are. Recognition, or the acknowledgement of the other as individual, is fundamental to mutually adaptive interaction between humans. We discuss what recognition involves and its behavioral manifestations, and describe the benefits of implementing it in HRI.

Critical reflections on the work of Angus Charles Graham, renowned Western scholar of Chinese philosophy and sinology.

In this article, I respond to important questions raised by Gallagher and Jacobson in the field of cognitive science about face-to-face interactions in Heidegger’s account of ‘intersubjectivity’ in Being and Time. They have criticized his account for a lack of attention to primary intersubjectivity, or immediate, face-to-face interactions; he favours, they argue, embodied interactions via objects. I argue that the same assumption underlies their argument as did earlier critiques of a lack of an account of the body in Heidegger ; (...) namely that because the body is not explicitly discussed in Being and Time, embodiment, rather than stressing the immediacy of experience, is insufficiently acknowledged in his emphasis on ‘being-in-the-world’. Through placing Gallagher and Jacobson’s accounts of intersubjectivity and the body alongside Heidegger’s accounts of Mitsein and Leib, this article shows Heidegger’s radical position on the body as immersed in a holistic environment, and its reverberations on his account of intersubjectivity. I argue that Dasein’s embodied engagement in the world is always one of immediacy and that the body of the other is perceived as ‘tied into’ its context, as well. In so doing, I offer an Heideggerian account of ecstatic involvement which moves away from the distinction between primary and secondary intersubjectivity toward an immediate engagement with objects and people always already ‘tied into’ a context; an account that, through the concept of Fürsorge, includes shifts of attention between objects and people that allow for the ethical distinctions Gallagher and Jacobson are looking for. (shrink)

What does it mean for an actor to empathize with the character she is playing? We review different theories of empathy and of acting. We then consider the notion of “twofoldness”, which has been used to characterize the observer or audience perspective on the relation between actor and character. This same kind of twofoldness or double attunement applies from the perspective of the actor herself who must, at certain points of preparation, distinguish between the character portrayed and her own portrayal (...) effected in her craft. We argue that this concept helps us to understand how the actor can empathize with her character. For the actor who must study and rehearse her character, empathy may begin with higher-order processes that provide a contextualized understanding of the character. This understanding eventually integrates with more basic empathic processes in her actual performance. (shrink)

In an earlier paper, I set out to apply to animal mimicry the definition of the sign, and, more specifically, of the iconic sign, which I originally elaborated in the study of pictures, and which was then extended by myself and others to language, gesture, and music. The present contribution, however, while summarizing some of the results of those earlier studies, is dedicated to the demonstration that animal mimicry, as well as phenomena of the human Lifeworld comparable to it, are (...) in a sense the opposite of signs. It has often been observed, not only within speech act philosophy, but also by the semiotician Luis Prieto, that as sign can only function as such once it is recognized to be a sign. Animal mimicry, camouflage, and the like, in contrast, only work as such, to the extent that they are not perceived as signs. Unlike what speech act philosophy claims, nevertheless, the “difference which makes a difference” is not the recognition of a purpose attributed to the subject producing the sign. A footprint, for example, has to be recognized as a sign in order to function as such. Nevertheless, to the extent that a purpose is attributed to the subject setting the sign, it may be considered a sign, but one that hides its nature, a fake footprint. Mimicry and camouflage, however, are similar to such “natural meanings” as footprints in entertaining a different relation to the agent initiating the act and the agent perceiving it. Classical studies of mimicry distinguish its varieties according to what is rather vaguely called function. In this paper, we will investigate whether these classifications can be recuperated from a semiotic point of view, or whether a semiotically valid classification should start from scratch. (shrink)

Mutually adaptive interaction involves the robot as a partner as opposed to a tool, and requires that the robot is susceptible to similar environmental cues and behavior patterns as humans are. Recognition, or the acknowledgement of the other as individual, is fundamental to mutually adaptive interaction between humans. We discuss what recognition involves and its behavioral manifestations, and describe the benefits of implementing it in HRI.

In this paper I argue that there are gestalt principles underlying intersubjective interactions and that this means that intersubjective ‘units’, can be recognised as unified gestalt wholes. The nub of the claim is that interactions within a ‘plural subject’ can be perceived by others outside this plural subject. Framed from the first-person perspective: I am able to recognise intersubjective interactions between multiple others who are not me. I argue that the terminology of gestalt structures is helpful in framing and understanding (...) the non-reducible make-up of these relational units. I consequently defend the legitimacy of the claim that we can attend to more than one other person at once, holding multiple others as a single focus of attention insofar as we can attend to multiple others as a gestalt whole. I argue that it is therefore legitimate to talk about attending to, perceiving and addressing multiple others at the same time, in the second-person plural. I argue that this can be identified in the phenomenology of such interactions and in an analysis of the core underlying structures of these interactions. (shrink)

This paper argues that intuition plays a role in the diagnosis of schizophrenia and presents its phenomenological rationale. A discussion of self-assessment questionnaires and empirical studies in the clinical setting provides evidence that despite the prevalence of operational diagnosis, the intuitive judgment of schizophrenia continues to take place. Two related notions of intuitive diagnosis are presented: Minkowski’s diagnostic by penetration and Rümke’s praecox feeling. Further on, the paper explores and clarifies the phenomenology behind the praecox feeling. First, it is argued, (...) intuitive diagnosis is neither a feeling nor an experience, but a typification operating at an implicit level. Second, it is not simply subjective as spatially it takes place in the in-between of the clinical interaction. Finally, it is not just momentary, but temporally extended, and, hence, partly reflective. The paper suggests that intuitive diagnosis requires critical testing on the side of the psychiatrist to either confirm or falsify it through reflective operations. In conclusion, the merits and shortcomings of intuitive vs. operational diagnosis are presented. (shrink)

Games Studies reveals the performative nature of playing a character in a virtual-game-world (Nitsche 2008, p.205; Pearce 2006, p.1; Taylor 2002, p.48). Tbe Player/Character relationship is typically understood in terms of the player’s in-game “presence” (Boellstorff 2008, p.89; Schroeder 2002, p.6). This gives the appearance that living-into a game-world is an all-or- nothing affair: either the player is “present” in the game-world, or they are not. I argue that, in fact, a constitutive phenomenology reveals the Player/Character relationship to be a (...) multi-dimensional matter of empathy. I advance a broadly Schutzian framework, drawing on his 1932 discussions of “face-to-face encounters” and ”historical predecessors,” showing how at- tention to empathy reveals a variety of “presences” that different kinds of Player/Character relationships afford. The central determinants of empathetic affordances which I focus on here are (i) how much players know about a character (especially the character’s past) and (ii) how players learn this information.The purpose of this discussion will be to show that a phenomenological analysis reveals that the relationship between a player and their character is complex, highly variable, and inherently social. Furthermore, it will add to the growing body of scholarship that demonstrates that video games are rich social objects deserving of study. (shrink)

This dissertation contributes to the philosophy of empathy and biomedical ethics by drawing on phenomenological approaches to empathy, intersubjectivity, and affectivity in order to contest the primacy of the intersubjective aspect of empathy at the cost of its affective aspect. Both aspects need to be explained in order for empathy to be accurately understood in philosophical works, as well as practically useful for patient care in biomedical ethics. In the first chapter, I examine the current state of clinical empathy in (...) medicine including professional opinions about empathy, the dominant definition being employed, and the problems that arise from this definition. By trying to define empathy in a way that is useful to the current presuppositions in medicine, clinical empathy aligns with simulation theory, which has three problems: the discrepancy between the way empathy is defined and the way it is explained, the lack of diversity that this theory of empathy allows in our understanding of others, and the lack of affective understanding and affective engagement involved in the patient-physician interaction. These three problems are used to derive three questions that are important for any theory of empathy: (1) What is the phenomenon being explained? (2) What is the intersubjective context of empathy? (3) What is the affective dimension of empathy? The best theory of clinical empathy can be formulated by answering these three questions as they relate to phenomenological theories, which are more attuned to overcoming presuppositions. Chapters two and three each examine a different phenomenological approach to empathy from opposite extremes in their theories of intersubjectivity. Husserl and Stein begin from an isolated, transcendental subject that needs empathy to bridge the gap between itself and others, while Scheler begins from a primary intersubjectivity in which self and other are undifferentiated, making empathy a largely unnecessary skill. Despite their strongly opposed positions, and the acknowledgement that their theories of intersubjectivity necessitate their theories of empathy, I argue that both fail to understand the affective dimension of empathy. Husserl and Stein leave no room in empathy for it to be an affect, while Scheler prioritizes affects that reunite subjects, but leaves empathy itself as a non-affective skill. Chapter four explains Gallagher’s interaction theory as a more moderate approach to the relation between empathy and intersubjectivity. He draws on the insights of the other two theories, but conceives of empathy as a multi-leveled phenomenon that allows for an understanding of others. While this theory does aid in addressing the intersubjective context of empathy in a way that best solves the first two problems with clinical empathy, interaction theory still fails to fully address the affectivity of empathy, maintaining empathy as a largely cognitive ability. Gallagher does acknowledge the affective core of empathy, but he does not explain the way in which it is affective. In response to this problem, I explain Anya Daly’s application of Merleau-Ponty’s theory of reversibility to affectivity as a possible solution to the problematic gap in Gallagher’s theory. Chapter five focuses on theories of clinical empathy in order to address the neglected affective aspects of empathy, and respond to the problem of detached concern. The problems caused by detached concern are explained, as well as why the theories discussed in the middle chapters are still unable to solve them. This is done in two parts. In the first part, I explain the basis of this issue in the cognitive/feeling divide, as explained in the philosophy of emotion. Then, I give a brief overview of the phenomenology of affectivity to be used as a guide to the affectivity of empathy. In the second part, I examine three theories of clinical empathy that attempt to solve the problem of detached concern, noting their strengths and weaknesses based on their similarities to phenomenological approaches to empathy and affectivity. (shrink)

There is a conspicuous tendency of humans to experience empathy and sympathy preferentially towards members of their own group, whereas empathetic feelings towards outgroup members or strangers are often reduced or even missing. This may culminate in a “dissociation of empathy”: a historical example are the cases of Nazi perpetrators who behaved as compassionate family men on the one hand, yet committed crimes of utter cruelty against Jews on the other. The paper aims at explaining such phenomena and at determining (...) the limits of empathy. To this purpose, it first distinguishes between two levels of empathy, namely primary or intercorporeal and extended or higher-level empathy. It then investigates the mutual interconnection of empathy and recognition, which may be regarded as a principle of extending empathy to others regardless of whether they belong to one’s own group or not. However, this principle is in conflict with ingroup conformism and outgroup biases that hamper the universal extension of empathy. Thus, a denial of recognition and exclusion of others from one’s ingroup usually results in a withdrawal or lack of extended empathy which then influences primary empathy as well. On this basis, and using the historical example of mass executions during the Holocaust, the paper investigates the mechanisms of exclusion which may lead to a withdrawal of recognition and finally to a dissociation of empathy. (shrink)

One of the central questions within contemporary debates about collective intentionality concerns the notion and status of the we. The question, however, is by no means new. At the beginning of the last century, it was already intensively discussed in phenomenology. Whereas Heidegger argued that a focus on empathy is detrimental to a proper understanding of the we, and that the latter is more fundamental than any dyadic interaction, other phenomenologists, such as Stein, Walther and Husserl, insisted on the importance (...) of empathy for proper we-experiences. In this paper, I will present some of the key moves in this debate and then discuss and assess Husserl’s specific proposal, according to which reciprocal empathy, second-person engagement and self-alienation are all important presuppositions for group-identification and we-identity. (shrink)

In recent years, the social dimensions of selfhood have been discussed widely. Can you be a self on your own or only together with others? Is selfhood a built-in feature of experience or rather socially constructed? Does a strong emphasis on the first-personal character of consciousness prohibit a satisfactory account of intersubjectivity or is the former rather a necessary requirement for the latter? These questions are explored in the following contribution.

This paper presents a phenomenological account of empathy inspired by the proposal put forward by Edith Stein in her book On the Problem of Empathy, published originally 1917. By way of explicating Stein’s views, the paper aims to present a characterization of empathy that is in some aspects similar to, but yet essentially different from contemporary simulationist theories of empathy. An attempt is made to show that Stein’s proposal articulates the essential ingredients and steps involved in empathy and that her (...) proposal can be made even more comprehensive and elucidating by stressing the emotional aspect of the empathy process. Empathy, according to such a phenomenological proposal, is to be understood as a perceptual-imaginative feeling towards and with the other person’s experiences made possible by affective bodily schemas and being enhanced by a personal concern for her. To experience empathy does not necessarily or only mean to experience the same type of feeling as the target does; it means feeling alongside the feeling of the target in imagining and explicating a rich understanding of the experiences of the very person one is facing. (shrink)

Work on analogy has been done from a number of disciplinary perspectives throughout the history of Western thought. This work is a multidisciplinary guide to theorizing about analogy. It contains 1,406 references, primarily to journal articles and monographs, and primarily to English language material. classical through to contemporary sources are included. The work is classified into eight different sections (with a number of subsections). A brief introduction to each section is provided. Keywords and key expressions of importance to research on (...) analogy are discussed in the introductory material. Electronic resources for conducting research on analogy are listed as well. (shrink)

Collective intentionality is one of the most fundamental notions in social ontology. However, it is often thought to refer to a capacity which does not presuppose the existence of any other social facts. This chapter critically examines this view from the perspective of one specific theory of collective intentionality, the theory of Margaret Gilbert. On the basis of Gilbert’s arguments, the chapter claims that collective intentionality is a highly contingent achievement of complex social practices and, thus, not a basic social (...) phenomenon. The argument proceeds in three steps. First, Gilbert’s thesis that certain kinds of collective intentionality presuppose joint normative commitments is introduced. Second, it is argued that, on this view, individual commitments can only constitute the relevant kinds of collective intentional states if there are socially shared “principles of membership” that connect the force of individual commitments to a shared content. Third, it is shown that strong collective intentionality depends on the practical acceptance of shared norms and on the establishment of authority relations through mutual recognition. (shrink)

Crucial in Girard's Mimetic Theory is the notion of mimetic desire, viewed as appropriative mimicry, the main source of aggressiveness and violence characterizing our species. The intrinsic value of the objects of our desire is not as relevant as the fact that the very same objects are the targets of others' desire. One could in principle object against such apparently negative and one-sided view of mankind, in general, and of mimesis, in particular. However, such argument would misrepresent Girard's thought. Girard (...) himself acknowledged that mimetic desire is also good in itself, because is at the basis of love, and even more importantly because it's the opening out of oneself. Starting from the notion of desire as openness to others I will discuss from a neuroscientific perspective the implications for social cognition of mimesis against the background of Girard's Mimetic Theory, an ideal starting framework to foster a multidisciplinary approach to the study of human intersubjectivity. It will be posited that a different, not mutually exclusive, account of mimesis leads to social identification henceforth to sociality. Mimesis is neither good or bad, but has the potentials to lead not only to mimetic violence but also to the most creative aspects of human cognition. Results of empirical research in neuroscience and developmental psychology show that such account of mimesis finds solid supporting evidence. It will be concluded that a thorough and biologically plausible account of human intersubjectivity requires the integration of both sides of mimesis. (shrink)

The article explores and compares the accounts of empathy found in Lipps, Scheler, Stein and Husserl and argues that the three latter phenomenological thinkers offer a model of empathy, which is not only distinctly different from Lipps’, but which also diverge from the currently dominant models.

In professional medical ethics, the physician traditionally is obliged to fulfil specific duties as well as to embody a responsible and trustworthy personality. In the public discussion, different concepts are suggested to describe the desired underlying attitude of physicians. In this article, one of them—empathy—is presented in an interpretation that is meant to depicture (together with the two additional concepts compassion and care) this attitude. Therefore empathy in the clinical context is defined as the adequate understanding of the inner processes (...) of the patient concerning his health-related problems. Adequacy is scrutinized on behalf of the emotional and subjective involvement of he physician, and on the necessary dependence on medical—moral—goals. In the present interpretation, empathy alone is no guarantee of the right moral attitude, but a necessary instrumental skill in order to perceive and treat a patient as an individual person. The concepts of compassion and care that will be discussed in two forthcoming articles are necessary parts to describe the desired moral attitude of the physician more completely. (shrink)

This paper assesses the so-called “direct-perception” model of empathy. This model draws much of its inspiration from the Phenomenological tradition: it is offered as an account free from the assumption that most, if not all, of another’s psychological states and experiences are unobservable and that one’s understanding of another’s psychological states and experiences are based on inferential processes. Advocates of this model also reject the simulation-based approach to empathy. I first argue that most of their criticisms miss their target because (...) they are directed against the simulation-based approach to mindreading. Advocates of this model further subscribe to an expressivist conception of human behavior and assume that some of an individual’s psychological states (e.g. her goals and emotions, not her beliefs) can be directly perceived in the individual’s expressive behavior. I argue that advocates of the direct-perception model face the following dilemma: either they embrace behaviorism or else they must recognize that one could not understand another’s goal or emotion from her behavior alone without making contextual assumptions. Finally, advocates of the direct-perception model endorse the narrative competency hypothesis, according to which the ability to ascribe beliefs to another is grounded in the ability to understand narratives. I argue that this hypothesis is hard to reconcile with recent results in developmental psychology showing that preverbal human infants seem able to ascribe false beliefs to others. (shrink)

This article describes some of the main arguments for the existence of other minds, and intersubjectivity more generally, that depend upon a transcendental justification. This means that our focus will be largely on ‘continental’ philosophy, not only because of the abiding interest in this tradition in thematising intersubjectivity, but also because transcendental reasoning is close to ubiquitous in continental philosophy. Neither point holds for analytic philosophy. As such, this essay will introduce some of the important contributions of Edmund Husserl, Martin (...) Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Karl-Otto Apel, all of whom use transcendental reasoning as a key part of their analyses of intersubjectivity, and we also consider the work of Peter Strawson who does likewise in the analytic tradition. (shrink)

Psychotic and prodromal states are characterized by distortions of intersubjectivity, and a number of psychopathologists see in the concrete I-You frame of the clinical encounter the manifestation of such impairment. Rümke has coined the term of ‘praecox-feeling’, designated to describe a feeling of unease emanating in the interviewer that reflects the detachment of the patient and the failure of an ‘affective exchange.’ While the reliability of the praecox-feeling as a diagnostic tool has since been established, the explanation and theoretical framing (...) of the phenomena is still lacking. By drawing on enactivist approaches to social cognition, the paper will attempt to provide such an explanation. This is relevant, since such an explanation could contribute to a more precise understanding of the phenomena in question and possibly add to our knowledge regarding the link between experiential vulnerability to psychosis and disturbed I-Thou intersubjectivity. (shrink)

I draw upon the conceptual resources of the extended mind thesis to analyze empathy and interpersonal understanding. Against the dominant mentalistic paradigm, I argue that empathy is fundamentally an extended bodily activity and that much of our social understanding happens outside of the head. First, I look at how the two dominant models of interpersonal understanding, theory theory and simulation theory, portray the cognitive link between folk psychology and empathy. Next, I challenge their internalist orthodoxy and offer an alternative "extended" (...) characterization of empathy. In support of this characterization, I analyze some narratives of individuals with Moebius syndrome, a kind of expressive deficit resulting from bilateral facial paralysis. I conclude by discussing how a Zen Buddhist ethics of responsiveness is helpful for articulating the practical significance of an extended, body-based account of empathy. (shrink)

Despite its linguistic roots in ancient Greek, the concept of empathy is of recent intellectual heritage. Yet its history has been varied and colorful, a fact that is also mirrored in the multiplicity of definitions associated with the empathy concept in a number of different scientific and non-scientific discourses. In its philosophical heyday at the turn of the 19th to the 20th century, empathy had been hailed as the primary means for gaining knowledge of other minds and as the method (...) uniquely suited for the human sciences, only to be almost entirely neglected philosophically for the rest of the century. Only recently have philosophers become again interested in empathy in light of the debate about our folk psychological mindreading capacities. In the second half of the last century, the task of addressing empathy was mainly left to psychologists who thematized it as a psychological phenomenon and process to be studied by the method of the empirical sciences. Particularly, it has been studied by social psychologists as a phenomenon assumed to be causally involved in creating prosocial attitudes and behavior. Nevertheless, within psychology it is at times difficult to find agreement of how exactly one should understand empathy; a fact of which psychologists themselves have become increasingly aware. The purpose of this entry is to clarify the concept of empathy by surveying its history in various philosophical and psychological discussions and by indicating why empathy was and should be regarded to be of such central importance in understanding human agency in ordinary contexts, in the human sciences and for the constitution of ourselves as social and moral agents. (shrink)

Intersubjectivity is the proposition that human experience occurs in a world of shared and embodied understandings, mediated by culture and language. Nursing is fundamentally relational, and nursing research stems from an exchange between participants and researchers and indeed around the transaction of the patient and the nurse in the intersubjective space of clinical settings. Through the philosophical standpoints of Husserl, Merleau‐Ponty, Heidegger, and Gadamer we examine these differing philosophical constructs of intersubjectivity and the contribution of these positions to phenomenological nursing (...) inquiry. Particular framings of intersubjectivity should influence the way researchers interact with their participants and data so that the chosen philosophy sits coherently within a research plan and methodology. This exploration of philosophical standpoints is extended through examples of, and reflections upon, the authors' experiences of intersubjectivity in our published phenomenological nursing studies and through dynamic interactions that characterise interpretive activities within a research team. (shrink)

The paper investigates phenomenology’s possibilities to describe, reflect and critically analyse political and legal orders. It presents a “toolbox” of methodological reflections, tools and topics, by relating to the classics of the tradition and to the emerging movement of “critical phenomenology,” as well as by touching upon current issues such as experiences of rightlessness, experiences in the digital lifeworld, and experiences of the public sphere. It is argued that phenomenology provides us with a dynamic methodological framework that emphasizes correlational, co-constitutional, (...) and interrelational structures, and thus pays attention to modes of givenness, the making and unmaking of “world,” and, thereby, the inter/subjective, affective, and bodily constitution of meaning. In the case of political and legal orders, questions of power, exclusion, and normativity are central issues. By looking at “best practice” models such as Hannah Arendt’s analyses, the paper points out an analytical tool and flexible framework of “spaces of meaning” that phenomenologists can use and modify as they go along. In the current debates on political and legal issues, the author sees the main task of phenomenology to reclaim experience as world-building and world-opening, also in a normative sense, and to demonstrate how structures and orders are lived while they condition and form spaces of meaning. If we want to understand, criticize, act, or change something, this subjective and intersubjective perspective will remain indispensable. (shrink)

Is there a sense in which we can be said to empathize with a philosophical position and, if so, what does empathy consist of here? Drawing on themes in the work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, I sketch an account of the relationship between philosophical language and philosophical thought, according to which the task of understanding, evaluating, and building upon an explicit philosophical position can involve engaging with the experiential world of its author. If accepted, this account has broader implications for how (...) we conceive of both empathy and philosophical thought. (shrink)

How do we understand other minds? The current debate uses the iridescent term “empathy” to explain our quite different mindreading capacities. Since no alternatives seemed to be available the discussion has been mostly in a deadlock between “simulation theory” and “theory theory”. Only recently the relevance of phenomenological findings on the issue has been brought forward. In this paper Husserl’s two concepts of “Einfühlung”, as developed in the second volume of his Ideas, are set against the background of the latest (...) discussion. Husserl’s explanation of empathy in terms of analogical experience highlights the transcendental role of empathy in the context of constitution. At the same time it may solve some of the many riddles left by the recent debate. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe aim of this narrow-focused text is to argue against the claim that the appresentation of unperceived features of objects that is implied in perceptual intentionality presupposes a reference to perceptions other subjects could have of these objects. This claim, as it has been defended by Dan Zahavi, rests upon an erroneous supposition about the modal status of the perceptual possibilities to which the perceived object refers, which shall not be interpreted as effectively realizable but as mere de jure possibilities, (...) perceptions that could have been realized in principle, but that are maybe beyond one’s reach considering one’s concrete factual powers and opportunities. Horizontal intentionality is better accounted for in terms of perceptions that one could have had because of one’s embodied character and the always open possibility of occupying another position with respect to the object. This modal ubiquity which is inherent to one’s being-in-space is what supports the field of de jure possibil... (shrink)

In his bookThe Conscious MindDavid Chalmers introduced a now-familiar distinction between the hard problem and the easy problems of consciousness. The easy problems are those concerned with the question of how the mind can process information, react to environmental stimuli, and exhibit such capacities as discrimination, categorization, and introspection. All of these abilities are impressive, but they are, according to Chalmers, not metaphysically baffling, since they can all be tackled by means of the standard repertoire of cognitive science and explained (...) in terms of computational or neural mechanisms. This task might still be difficult, but it is within reach. In contrast, the hard problem — also known astheproblem of consciousness — is the problem of explaining why mental states have phenomenal or experiential qualities. Why is it like something to ‘taste coffee,’ to ‘touch an ice cube,’ to ‘look at a sunset,’ etc.? Why does it feel the way it does? Why does it feel like anything at all? (shrink)

Merleau-Ponty's reversibility thesis argues that self, other and world are inherently relational, interdependent at the level of ontology. What is at stake in the reversibility thesis is whether it overcomes skeptical objections in both assuring real communication and avoiding solipsism in assuring real difference; the Other must be a genuine, irreducible Other. It is objected that across the domains of reversibility, symmetry and reciprocity are not guaranteed. I argue that this is a non-problem; rather the potentialities for asymmetry and non (...) reciprocity in fact guarantee the irreducibility of the Other; reversibility needs to be appreciated as dialectical or aesthetic, not as a literal or ‘mechanistic’ reversal. A further criticism targets the viability of ontology itself, whether alterity is ever compatible with ontology. This paper considers these objections from two of Merleau-Ponty's contemporaries—Claude Lefort and Emmanuel Levinas. Levinas developed a philosophy which while intersecting with Merleau-Ponty's at important junctures, nonetheless arrived at an entirely different destination. I argue alongside Martin Dillon against the objections of Lefort, and alongside Dan Zahavi against the objections of Levinas. Both of these interpreters, I propose remain faithful to the core directions and spirit of Merleau-Ponty's endeavours without becoming diverted by the less significant inconsistencies. (shrink)

Recent years have seen a rise in the number of sociological, anthropological, and ethnological works on the gift metaphor in organ donation contexts, as well as in the number of philosophical and theological analyses of giving and generosity, which has been mirrored in the ethical debate on organ donation. In order to capture the breadth of this field, four frameworks for thinking about bodily exchanges in medicine have been distinguished: property rights, heroic gift-giving, sacrifice, and gift-giving as aporia. Unfortunately, they (...) all run into difficulties in terms of both making sense of the relational dimensions of postmortem and live organ donations and being normatively adequate in the sense of shedding light and providing guidance on ethical concerns when body parts are donated. For this reason, this article presents a phenomenological framework of giving-through-sharing, based on Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy. This framework makes sense of relational dimensions of postmortem and live organ donation. It also sheds light on three highly debated concerns in organ donation ethics: indebtedness on the part of recipients, the fact that some live donors do not experience donation as a matter of choice, and the potentially painful experience of donors’ relatives, who need to make decisions about postmortem organ donation at a time of bereavement. It can indirectly support what may be called a normalization of bodily exchanges in medicine. (shrink)

The foundational status that Edmund Husserl envisages for phenomenology in relation to the sciences would seem to suggest that the successful unfolding of contemporary debates in the field of social cognition will be conditioned by progress in resolving certain central controversies in the phenomenology of intersubjectivity, notably in long-standing questions pertaining to the priority of subjectivity in relation to intersubjectivity, and the priority of empathy in relation to other forms of intersubjectivity. That such controversies are long-standing is in no small (...) part attributable to the fact that the debate surrounding Husserl’s seminal attempts to elucidate these problems has placed his account, and certainly his published position, under a certain amount of pressure, pressure which stems from the suspicion that intentionality toward others may be more deeply embedded in subjectivity than the Husserl of Cartesian Meditations seems prepared to admit. Is the primordinally reduced solipsistic subject of the Fifth Meditation really capable of discovering intersubjectivity in the way that Husserl describes, or is such putative discovery (indeed, subjective transformation) already conditioned by a more primitive form of intersubjectivity? This paper investigates two ways in which this kind of “circularity” objection might arise. Firstly, it might be argued that Husserl presupposes an external perspective on one’s own body, a perspective which rationally would have to be correlated with an indeterminate foreign subjectivity. Secondly, the view has been advanced (Zahavi in Husserl and transcendental intersubjectivity: a response to the linguistic-pragmatic critique. Ohio University Press, Athens, OH, 2001b) that horizonal perceptual awareness of another spatio-temporal entity turns out to be essentially intersubjective, on the grounds that awareness of some of an object’s averted aspects commits one to positing the possibility in principle of those averted aspects being available to an indeterminate foreign subjectivity. Objections such as these seem to place the phenomenological enquiry into the encounter with another person at something of a crossroads. On the one hand, they have led some to argue that basic empathy, as Husserl conceives it, must indeed be conditioned by the anonymous constituting influence of a more primitive form of intersubjectivity. On the other hand, the option remains open to seek to defend Husserl’s published position against the charges of circularity. This paper pursues the latter alternative, and argues that, with appropriate clarification, the objections from circularity can be convincingly answered. It will be argued that the key to understanding why the standard Husserlian position can be sustained lies in recognising the centrality of the activity of the imagination as a condition for the possibility of intersubjectivity. (shrink)

The arguments advanced in this paper are the following. Firstly, that just as Trevarthen’s three subjective/intersubjective levels, primary, secondary, and tertiary, mapped out different modes of access, so too response is similarly structured, from direct primordial responsiveness, to that informed by shared pragmatic concerns and narrative contexts, to that which demands the distantiation afforded by representation. Secondly, I propose that empathy is an essential mode of intentionality, integral to the primary level of subjectivity/intersubjectivity, which is crucial to our survival as (...) individuals and as a species. Further to this last point, I argue that empathy is not derived on the basis of intersubjectivity, nor does it merely disclose intersubjectivity, rather it is constitutive of intersubjectivity at the primary level. Empathy is a direct, irreducible intentionality separable in thought from the other primary intentional modes of perception, rationality, memory and imagination, but co-arising with these. In regard to the inter-personal level, the concrete relations with others, primary empathy is both the ground for the possibility of the secondary manifestations—pity, sympathy, perspective taking, etc., and motivates them. Thirdly, it is the movement in the core of subjectivity initially generated by shifting attention between the ‘I’ and ‘we’ perspectives and later ‘solidified’ through affect to become shifting identification, which opens up the intersubjective domain. So we can affirm that we are not only born into sociality but our sociality goes to the roots of our being as Husserl, Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty have claimed. (shrink)

The article investigates the possibilities of phenomenology to contribute to the study of animal behaviour, and, respectively, asks how and on what grounds phenomenology can benefit from the research done within empirical sciences. The theoretical point of departure is Maurice Merleau-Ponty's The Structure of Behavior and the essay "The Metaphysical in Man".

During the pandemic of Covid-19, internet-based communication became for many the primary, or only, means of interaction with others, and it has been argued that this had a host of negative effects on emotional and mental health. However, some people with a lived experience of mental ill-health also perceived improvements to their wellbeing during the period in which social activities were moved online. In this paper, I explore the possibility that some of these improvements are due to the partial “disembodiment” (...) of emotions facilitated by internet-mediated interaction. In particular, I consider the phenomenology of social anxiety and how it may be impacted upon by encountering others primarily through the medium of internet-enabled technology. I will start by reconstructing a phenomenological account of social anxiety to which disruptions of bodily experience are central. I will then move to consider how the experiential dynamics that are particularly prominent in social anxiety can be weakened when communicating with others via video calls, instant messages, and social media more broadly. I will suggest that this is the case due to the diminished visibility of the body online, and the higher degree of control and agency over one’s experience that can be exercised in this context. Finally, I will argue that the weakening of social anxiety through internet-mediated contact exemplifies some of the processes which are key to emotion regulation more widely, thus suggesting that communication and interaction online could have a positive effect on a wider range of affective disturbances. (shrink)

This paper deals with phenomenological distinctions concerning empathy with real persons and empathy with fictional characters. We will introduce both contemporary accounts of our perception of others and Edith Stein’s account of empathy. These theories will turn out to be fruitful in defending our main thesis, i.e. that the differences between empathy with real people and empathy with fictional characters are not structural but just qualitative. We will argue that in both cases empathy is a direct act of perceiving others (...) and their lived experience. However, stemming from Stein’s work, we will underline that empathy with real persons is in principio more vivid and intense than empathy with fictional characters. In order to identify similarities and differences between empathy de vivo and empathy in fiction, we will focus on the following issues: the quality of perception; the motivational context and the “life-world context”; the ontological status of persons vs. characters. (shrink)

This paper is devoted to the study of the emotions in Edith Stein’s early work On the Problem of Empathy. After presenting her work embedded in the tradition of the early phenomenology of the emotions, I shall elaborate the four dimensions of the emotional experience according to this authoress, the link between emotions and values and the phenomenon of the living body. I argue that Stein’s account on empathy remains incomplete as long as we ignore the complex phenomenology of emotions (...) underlying her work. (shrink)

In recent years, the phenomenological approach to empathy becomes increasingly influential in explaining social perception of other people. Yet, it leaves untouched a related and pivotal question concerning the unique and irreducible intentionality of empathy that constitutes the peculiarity of social perception. In this article, I focus on this problem by drawing upon Husserl’s theory of image-consciousness, and I suggest that empathy is characterized by a “seeing-in” structure. I develop two theses so as to further explicate the seeing-in structure in (...) question: first, empathy as a phenomenologically sui generis act is an intentional fusion of both presentation and re-presentation; and second, empathic intentionality is in essence twofold in that it is at once directed at both the other’s sensuously given body and the other’s non-sensuously given mentality. In this light, I argue that empathy is better conceived as a quasi-perceptual act that is fundamentally different from external perception simpliciter and other complex acts such as signitive, recollective and imaginative intention. (shrink)

This article explores the phenomenon of “phantom pain.” The analysis is based on personal experiences elicited from individuals who have lost a limb or live with a paralyzed body part. Our study reveals that the ways in which these individuals express their pain experience is an integral aspect of that experience. The material consists of interviews undertaken with men who are living with phantom pain resulting from a traumatic injury. The phenomenological analysis is inspired by Zahavi :151–167, 2001) and Merleau-Ponty. (...) On a descriptive level the metaphors these patients invoke to describe their condition reveal immense suffering, such as a feeling of being invaded by insects or of their skin being scorched and stripped from their body. Such metaphors express a dimension of experience concerning the self that is in pain and others whom the sufferer relates to through this pain, as well as the agony that this pain inflicts in the world of lived experience. This pain has had a profound impact on their lives and altered their relationship with self, others and the world. Their phantom pain has become a reminder of their formerly intact and functioning body; they describe the contrast between their past and present body as an ambiguous and disturbing experience. We conclude that these sensitive and personalized experiences of phantom pain illuminates how acts of expression—spoken pain—constitute a fundamental dimension of a first-person perspective which contribute to the field of knowledge about “phantom pain”. (shrink)

In phenomenological research, layered understandings emerge from a complex process of experiencing and reflection, engaged in by both researcher and participant. Researcher and participant engage in a dance, moving in and out of experiencing and reflection while simultaneously moving through a shared intersubjective space that is the research encounter. If researchers are to empathise - imaginatively project themselves into participants’ experience - they need to be open to this intersubjective space. First, I describe and reflect upon two particular moments of (...) empathy which have arisen in two different phenomenological research interviews. I then attempt to make sense of these encounters with reference to phenomenological theory and philosophy related to empathy and intersubjectivity. A final section discusses some dilemmas we face as researchers when we apply empathy in our phenomenological research practice and considers the epistemological status of our empathic findings. (shrink)

We argue that progress in our scientific understanding of the `social mind' is hampered by a number of unfounded assumptions. We single out the widely shared assumption that social behavior depends solely on the capacities of an individual agent. In contrast, both developmental and phenomenological studies suggest that the personal-level capacity for detached `social cognition' (conceived as a process of theorizing about and/or simulating another mind) is a secondary achievement that is dependent on more immediate processes of embodied social interaction. (...) We draw on the enactive approach to cognitive science to further clarify this strong notion of `social interaction' in theoretical terms. In addition, we indicate how this interaction theory (IT) could eventually be formalized with the help of a dynamical systems perspective on the interaction process, especially by making use of evolutionary robotics modeling. We conclude that bringing together the methods and insights of developmental, phenomenological, enactive and dynamical approaches to social interaction can provide a promising framework for future research. Keywords: theory of mind; cognitive science; phenomenology; embodied cognition; dynamical systems theory; enactive approach; social cognition; interaction theory; evolutionary robotics. (shrink)

Experiences with art have been of longstanding concern for phenomenologists, yet the psychological question of the appearing of art appreciation has not been addressed. This article attends to this lack, exemplifying the merits of a phenomenological psychological investigation based on three semi-structured interviews conducted with museum visitors. The interviews were subjected to meaning condensation as well as to descriptions of the first aesthetic reception, the retrospective interpretation, and the “horizons of expectations” included in the meeting with art. The findings show (...) that art appreciation appears as variations in experiential forms comprised of gratifying experiences of beauty, challenges to the understanding, and bodily-informed alterations of the emotions. The phenomenological psychology of actual, lived experience can embrace the phenomenological theories of art appreciation by Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty, yet highlight the psychological importance of experiences with art. (shrink)

A critical commentary on the article “The Epistemic Harms of Empathy in Phenomenological Psychopathology” by Lucienne Spencer and Matthew Broome (2023) is presented. The authors committed the “fallacy of ambiguous or vague definition” by incorrectly interpreting Karl Jaspers’ conceptualizations, resulting in difficulties following logical arguments and arriving at reasonable conclusions. To overcome this fallacy, the commentary provides conceptual clarifications regarding Jaspers’ empathic understanding (einfühlendes Verstehen), conceived as the foundational concept of his project to develop a phenomenologically oriented psychopathology. Jaspers initially (...) introduced this concept in the article “Die phänomenologische Forschungsrichtung in der Psychopathologie” [The Phenomenological Research Direction in Psychopathology], published in 1912, and extended in his magnum opus “Allgemeine Psychopathologie” [General Psychopathology], published in 1913. (shrink)

[Przekład] W artykule tym opowiadam się za zunifikowaną kognitywistyką, przyjmując dla swej argumentacji niecodzienny punkt wyjścia: stanowisko określane czasem jako „teza o kontinuum życia-umysłu”. Zamiast więc traktować jako pewnik powszechnie akceptowane założenia początkowe, a następnie proponować odpowiedzi na pewne dobrze określone pytania, muszę najpierw dowieść, że koncepcja kontinuum życia-umysłu może w ogóle stanowić właściwy punkt startowy. Zacznę zatem od oceny pojęciowych narzędzi, odpowiednich do budowania teorii umysłu na tej podstawie. Czerpiąc spostrzeżenia z wielu różnych dziedzin – szczególnie z połączenia egzystencjalistycznej (...) fenomenologii ze skoncentrowaną na organizmie biologią – dowodzę, że można pojmować umysł jako zakorzeniony w życiu, ale tylko wtedy, gdy równocześnie zgodzimy się, że interakcja społeczna gra konstytutywną rolę w naszych zdolnościach poznawczych. (shrink)

The review is devoted to a joint monograph of Phenomenological Approaches to Intersubjectivity and Values published in 2019. The peculiarity and novelty of this monograph is that it is devoted not so much to the cognitive and epistemological aspects of phenomenology of intersubjectivity as to ethical, existential and value problems of relations with the Others, presented in various phenomenological concepts. One of the advantages of the work is the pluralistic approach, which allows the reader to get acquainted with the solutions (...) to the problem of intersubjectivity posed by a number of the most prominent phenomenologists, i. e. Husserl, Scheler, Heidegger, Sartre, Marcel, Levinas and others. The book traces the idea that emerging of the topic of intersubjectivity in phenomenology caused a socio-ethical and axiological shift in the phenomenological movement. Considering moving of modern philosophy towards “the intersubjective paradigm”, the aim of the authors of the monograph to show the relevance and innovation of phenomenology in discussing the problems of the Other, communication and ethics can be assessed as a promising theoretical project. Whereas critics of the phenomenological movement reproached “methodological solipsism” of phenomenology, which develops Cartesian-Kantian subjectivism, a serious analysis of the works of the most prominent representatives of the phenomenological tradition leads the authors of the monograph to the conclusion that a phenomenological subject is social in its essence. The review draws a conclusion that the joint monograph brings into sharp focus that phenomenology is in possession of deep and diverse ways of studying the common being of people and collectively shared values. (shrink)