In Rita Charon's account of narrative medicine, empathy seems to be an essential element of the clinical relationship. However, empathy has not received much attention, which I believe is problematic. First, I show that not only is there no clear definition of what empathy is, but that this conceptual gap creates ambiguity about its role in the practice of narrative medicine. Second, I argue that certain passages in Charon's work seem to implicitly characterize empathy as a combination of cognitive empathy, (...) affective empathy, and sympathy, and that its inclusion in the practice of narrative medicine can be problematic. Third, following Dan Zahavi, I argue that a phenomenological account of empathy not only seems most compatible with the practices, values, and theoretical framework of narrative medicine, but is also capable of resolving the problems posed by alternative definitions of empathy and the ambiguity about the role of empathy in narrative medicine. (shrink)

Empathy is an integral aspect of human existence. Without at least a basic ability to access others’ affective life, social interactions would be well-nigh impossible. Yet, recent studies seem to show that the means we have acquired to access others’ emotional life no longer function well in what has become our everyday business – technologically mediated interactions in digital spaces. If this is correct, there are two important questions: (1) What makes empathy for frequent internet users so difficult? and (2) (...) What can we do to alleviate the negative consequences? Correspondingly, the aim of this paper is twofold. First, we identify structural differences between offline and technologically mediated interactions that can explain why digital empathy is harder to achieve. Second, drawing on the literature on ‘situated affectivity,’ we consider the idea of modifying digital spaces in ways specifically designed to ‘scaffold’ empathy where our evolved mechanisms fail. Section 2 argues that empathy is requires interpreting the behavior of embodied subjects. Section 3 identifies three factors that are crucial for this interpretative endeavor: the empathizer’s affective repertoire, their perceptual input, and their background knowledge. Section 4 argues that technologically mediated interactions differ from face-to-face interactions with regard to these factors in ways which render our evolved empathy mechanisms less effective in the digital world. Section 5 introduces the idea that situational factors can serve as ‘empathic scaffolds,’ i.e., as ‘tools’ that can ‘shape’ people’s empathic reactions. Section 6 wraps up the main line of reasoning, responds to objections and invites further scholarship. (shrink)

I have two objectives in this article. The first is methodological: I elaborate a minimal phenomenological method and attempt to show its importance in studies of infant behavior. The second objective is substantive: Applying the minimal phenomenological approach, combined with Meltzoff’s “like-me” developmental framework, I propose the hypothesis that infants learn the pointing gesture at least in part through imitation. I explain how developments in sensorimotor ability (posture, arm and hand control and coordination, and locomotion) in the first year of (...) life prepare the infant for acquiring the pointing gesture. The former may directly enable the latter by allowing the infant to experience its own body as being “like those” of others, thus allowing it to imitatively appropriate a broader range of adult behavior. My proposal emphasizes the embodiment of mind in the development of cognition, contrary to latent dualistic tendencies in some developmental literature. (shrink)

The objective of my paper is to present a psychopathological conception of psychopathy and compare it with the mainstream nosographic diagnosis. This theoretical essay is informed by clinical situations involving psychopaths who were interviewed in prison or in forensic centres. The method applied a phenomenological psychopathology analysis to the clinical material. I first compare Binswanger’s conception of mania with psychopathic functioning. Patients’ behaviour is similar but the difference relates to the dialectic between the ego and the alter ego. A patient (...) with mania has a fundamental crisis of the ego, which a psychopath does not have. A second finding concerns emotions and the adaptive dimension of psychopathy. An epistemological discussion of the concept of emotions reveals that psychopaths are competent at managing emotional stimuli, which confers a psychological advantage upon them. Finally, a reflection on empathy and sympathy clarifies the presentation of “psychopathic being-in-the-world”. Starting with the tension between clinical practice and critique of the dominant diagnostic scales, we can consider that the “essential characteristics” of the psychopathic disorder are reification of the alter ego without presenting an ego-related disorder, the adaptive benefits of emotional coldness, and empathic skills without sympathy. (shrink)

This article investigates the relationship between for-me-ness and sociality. I start by pointing out some ambiguities in claims pursued by critics that have recently pressed on the relationship between the two notions. I next articulate a question concerning for-me-ness and sociality that builds on the idea that, occasionally at least, there is something it is like ‘for us’ to have an experience. This idea has been explored in recent literature on shared experiences and collective intentionality, and it gestures towards the (...) question of the extent to which some social interactions make a difference in the phenomenal character of their participants’ experiences. Finally, I present a construal of for-us-ness that complements the received understanding of for-me-ness, by drawing on Alfred Schutz’ concept of the we-relationship, and on the idea of second-personal awareness, i.e. awareness of a ‘you’. The current proposal provides a suitable account of some basic forms of phenomenally manifest social connectedness, in a way that is cognitively undemanding and without incurring the costs of a sui generis plural pre-reflective self-awareness. (shrink)

In this paper, I analyse whether empathy with future generations is feasible and whether it is a potentially useful instrument in effectively providing resources for future generations. I argue that empathy with future generations is possible, that it likely leads to a form of minimal concern, and that it can help in solving the relevant motivational problem. The most significant hurdle is not so much to do with achieving the required normative recognition of future generations, but with epistemic problems regarding (...) the right actions in protecting future interests and needs. Empathy can again be of help in this regard, but it would need to be successfully trained and supported. We need to stretch our empathy to non-existing people and we need to constrain our imagination in adequate ways to achieve a sufficient understanding of the perspectives of future people. (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.

Recent years have seen an upsurge of interest in the second-person perspective, not only in philosophy of mind, language, law and ethics, but also in various empirical disciplines such as cognitive neuroscience and developmental psychology. A distinctive and perhaps also slightly puzzling feature of this ongoing discussion is that whereas many contributors insist that a proper consideration of the second-person perspective will have an impact on our understanding of social cognition, joint action, communication, self-consciousness, morality, and so on, there remains (...) considerable disagreement about what exactly a second-person perspective amounts to (see Eilan 2014; Conant and Rödl 2014). What is the difference between adopting a second-person and a third-person perspective on another? How does one relate to another as a you and how does that differ from relating to another as a he, she or they? In the following, I will consider three different proposals and argue that a promising but somewhat overlooked account can be found in the work of Husserl. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIn my discussion of Ganeri's [2018] article, I first examine the sense of ownership: Is it post-hoc, backwards directed, and past-oriented? I then consider whether episodic memory, understood as a form of past-directed attention, has to be supplemented by another cognitive mechanism to allow for a sense of ownership, or whether attention in and of itself exemplifies a type of I-consciousness. In the final and most extensive part of my commentary, I discuss whether Ganeri is right in suggesting that a (...) reflexivist account of the subjectivity of experience commits one to a form of solipsism. (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 my short commentary, I dwell on the distinction between basic and complex empathy, and suggest that a basic perception-based form of empathy might point to the existence of a type of social understanding that is more direct and more fundamental than the types of social cognition normally addressed by simulation theory and theory theory.

Emotion Review, Volume 14, Issue 3, Page 187-189, July 2022.

In recent years, theories of social understanding have moved away from arguing that just one epistemic strategy, such as theory-based inference or simulation constitutes our ability of social understanding. Empirical observations speak against any monistic view and have given rise to pluralistic accounts arguing that humans rely on a large variety of epistemic strategies in social understanding. We agree with this promising pluralist approach, but highlight two open questions: what is the residual role of mindreading, i.e. the indirect attribution of (...) mental states to others within this framework, and how do different strategies of social understanding relate to each other? In a first step, we aim to clarify the arguments that might be considered in evaluating the role that epistemic strategies play in a pluralistic framework. On this basis, we argue that mindreading constitutes a core epiststrategy in human social life that opens new central spheres of social understanding. In a second step, we provide an account of the relation between different epistemic strategies which integrates and demarks the important role of mindreading for social understanding. (shrink)

Zahavi and Gallagher’s contemporary direct perception model of intersubjectivity has its roots in the phenomenological project of Edmund Husserl. Some authors :731–748, 2010; Krueger in Phenomenol Cogn Sci 11:149–173, 2012; Bohl and Gangopadhyay in Philos Explor 17:203–222, 2014) have utilised, and criticised, Husserl’s model of direct empathic perception. This essay seeks to correct certain misunderstandings of Husserl notion of direct empathic perception and thus, by proxy, clarify the contemporary direct perception model, through an exegesis of Husserlian texts. In the first (...) half of this essay I clarify the analogy between the directness of regular material object perception and the directness of empathic perception via a clarification of Husserl’s notion of co-presence. I argue that contemporary renditions of Husserl’s account which stress the dis-analogy between these two types of perception are based on a superficial and incorrect rendering of Husserl’s notion of co-presence. In the second half of this essay I clarify the notion of verification. I argue that, for Husserl, behaviour does not verify mental life. Instead, empathic verification occurs via the relation between concepts and intuitions. In my conclusions I show how contemporary authors misunderstand the fundamental nature of Husserl’s account of empathy because of the downgraded status of psychic life within contemporary cognitive science. (shrink)

Moral perception has made something of a comeback in recent work on moral epistemology. Many traditional objections to the view have been argued to fail upon closer inspection. But it remains an open question just how far moral perception might extend. In this paper, I provide the beginnings of an answer to this question by assessing the relationship between the metaphysical structure of different normative properties and a plausible constraint on which properties are eligible for perceptual awareness which I call (...) the Counterfactual Strengthening Test. Along the way I consider and reject a few other possible constraints on perceptual awareness. I defend the view that moral perception is restricted to the perception of evaluative and pro tanto deontic properties. I conclude with a few gestures toward what this limitation on moral perception may mean for broader moral epistemology. (shrink)

A theory of the first-person plural occupies a unique place in philosophical investigations into intersubjectivity and social cognition. In order for the referent of the first-person plural—“the We”—to come into existence, it seems there must be a shared ground of communicative possibility, but this requires a non-circular explanation of how this ground could be shared in the absence of a pre-existing context of communicative conventions. Margaret Gilbert’s and John Searle’s theories of collective intentionality capture important aspects of the We, but (...) fail to fully account for this shared ground of communicative possibility. This paper argues that Merleau-Ponty’s concept of intercorporeity helps reconcile the positive aspects of these accounts while also explaining how the genesis of the social world is continuous with perceptual life in general. This enables an account of the first-person plural as dependent on reciprocal communicative interaction without the need to posit a primitive or primordial “we-mode” of consciousness. “Intercorporeity” designates a bodily openness to others that is not fundamentally different in kind from the general style of bodily comportment found in Merleau-Ponty’s rich analyses of perceptual life. (shrink)

This paper presents an account of empathy as the form of experience directed at embodied unities of expressive movement. After outlining the key differences between simulation theory and the phenomenological approach to empathy, the paper argues that while the phenomenological approach is closer to respecting a necessary constitutional asymmetry between first-personal and second-personal senses of embodiment, it still presupposes a general concept of embodiment that ends up being problematic. A different account is proposed that is neutral on the explanatory role (...) of the first-person sense of embodiment, which leads to an emphasis on the transformative nature of empathy and a broadening of the scope of possible targets of empathic awareness. (shrink)

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, EarlyView.

This paper is an attempt to build a bridge between the fields of social cognition and social ontology. Drawing on both classical and more recent phenomenological studies, the article develops an account ofgroup-directed empathy. The first part of the article spells out the phenomenological notion of empathy and suggests certain conceptual distinctions vis-à-vis two different kinds of group. The second part of the paper applies these conceptual considerations to cases in which empathy is directed at groups and elucidates the sense (...) in which individuals can empathically target not only other individual’s emotions, but also shared emotions as such. Clarifying the structure of group-directed empathy, it will also be argued that the latter is, by default, more informative than individual-directed empathy. The third and last section of the paper is devoted to one central consequence of the proposed account: if it is possible to empathize with groups as such, and if empathy necessary builds on body-perception, then both ideas seem to be conducive to the claim that groups as such have a body. (shrink)

The current debates dealing with empathy, social cognition, and the problem of other minds widely accept the assumption that, whereas we can directly perceive the other’s body, certain additional mental operations are needed in order to access the contents of the other’s mind. Body-perception has, in other words, been understood as something that merely mediates our experience of other minds and requires no philosophical analysis in itself. The available accounts have accordingly seen their main task as pinpointing the operations and (...) mechanisms that enable us to move beyond body-perception—and here acts such as inference, simulation, and projection have usually been the main candidates. This whole setting, however, seems to rely on a somewhat Cartesian assumption, according to which body-perception fundamentally amounts to the perception of a material thing, res extensa, starting from which we then strive to grasp the other as a res cogitans. Insofar as one begins with the question of how we can discover and understand mindedness in things that cannot be directly perceived as minded, the Cartesian setting is already taken for granted—and this is, in fact, exactly what most of the available proposals seem to be doing. From a phenomenological point of view, the Cartesian setting is untenable and seriously misleads the whole debate. The present article reassesses the role and status of body-perception in empathy. Making use of the Husserlian theory of expressivity in particular, the article engages a phenomenological framework of analysis, challenges the above-mentioned assumption concerning the nature of body-perception, and argues for the immediate nature of empathy. (shrink)

Recently, an increasing body of work from sociology, social psychology, and social ontology has been devoted to collective emotions. Rather curiously, however, pressing epistemological and especially normative issues have received almost no attention. In particular, there has been a strange silence on whether one can share emotions with individuals or groups who are not aware of such sharing, or how one may identify this, and eventually identify specific norms of emotional sharing. In this paper, I shall address this set of (...) issues head-on. I will do so by drawing on one of the most elaborate, but rather neglected phenomenological accounts of sociality, namely Edith Stein’s work on communal experiences and her theory of empathy. I wish to show that a suitably amended Steinian account affords us with an intriguing alternative to both phenomenalist and normativist construals of collective emotions. Moreover, I shall argue that it provides a more fine-grained account of the different types of emotional sharing than standard accounts, ranging from face-to-face, or shared, to more robust but less direct, or collective, emotions. Finally, I will propose a tentative answer to the above questions by pointing to non-dyadic or collective forms of empathy. (shrink)

This paper argues for a comprehensive conception of empathy as comprising epistemic, affective, and motivational elements and introduces the ancient Stoic theory of attachment as a model for describing the embodied, emotional response to others that we take to be distinctive of empathy. Our argument entails that in order to provide a suitable conceptual framework for the interdisciplinary study of empathy one must extend the scope of recent “simulationalist” and “enactivist” accounts of empathy in two important respects. First, against the (...) enactivist assumption that human mindreading capacities primarily rely on an immediate, quasi-perceptual understanding of other’s intentional states, we draw on Alfred Schutz’ analysis of social understanding to argue that reflective types of understanding play a distinct, but equally fundamental role in empathic engagements. Second, we insist that empathy also involves an affective response toward the other and their situation. We suggest analyzing this response in terms of the Stoic concepts of attachment, concern, and a fundamental type of prosocial motivation, that can best be described as an “extended partiality.” By way of conclusion, we integrate the above concepts into a comprehensive conceptual framework for the study of empathy and briefly relate them to current debates about empathic perception and prosocial motivation. The result, we argue, is an account that stays neutral with regard to the exact nature of the processes involved in producing empathy and can therefore accommodate discussion across theoretical divides—e.g., those between enactivist, simulationalist, and so-called theory-theorist approaches. (shrink)

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)

This paper presents and explicates the theory of empathy found in Edith Stein’s early philosophy, notably in the book On the Problem of Empathy, published in 1917, but also by proceeding from complementary thoughts on bodily intentionality and intersubjectivity found in Philosophy of Psychology and the Humanities published in 1922. In these works Stein puts forward an innovative and detailed theory of empathy, which is developed in the framework of a philosophical anthropology involving questions of psychophysical causality, social ontology and (...) moral philosophy. Empathy, according to Stein, is a feeling-based experience of another person’s feeling that develops throughout three successive steps on two interrelated levels. The key to understanding the empathy process á la Stein is to explicate how the steps of empathy are attuned in nature, since the affective qualities provide the energy and logic by way of which the empathy process is not only inaugurated but also proceeds through the three steps and carries meaning on two different levels corresponding to two different types of empathy: sensual and emotional empathy. Stein’s theory has great potential for better understanding and moving beyond some major disagreements found in the contemporary empathy debate regarding, for instance, the relation between perception and simulation, the distinction between what is called low-level and high-level empathy, and the issue of how and in what sense it may be possible to share feelings in the empathy process. (shrink)

This paper presents and explicates the theory of empathy found in Edith Stein’s early philosophy, notably in the book On the Problem of Empathy, published in 1917, but also by proceeding from complementary thoughts on bodily intentionality and intersubjectivity found in Philosophy of Psychology and the Humanities published in 1922. In these works Stein puts forward an innovative and detailed theory of empathy, which is developed in the framework of a philosophical anthropology involving questions of psychophysical causality, social ontology and (...) moral philosophy. Empathy, according to Stein, is a feeling-based experience of another person’s feeling that develops throughout three successive steps on two interrelated levels. The key to understanding the empathy process á la Stein is to explicate how the steps of empathy are attuned in nature, since the affective qualities provide the energy and logic by way of which the empathy process is not only inaugurated but also proceeds through the three steps and carries meaning on two different levels corresponding to two different types of empathy: sensual and emotional empathy. Stein’s theory has great potential for better understanding and moving beyond some major disagreements found in the contemporary empathy debate regarding, for instance, the relation between perception and simulation, the distinction between what is called low-level and high-level empathy, and the issue of how and in what sense it may be possible to share feelings in the empathy process. (shrink)

In this paper I aim to show with the aid of philosophers Edith Stein and Peter Goldie, how empathy and other social feelings are instantiated and developed in real life versus on the Internet. The examples of on-line communication show both how important the embodied aspects of empathy are and how empathy may be possible also in the cases of encountering personal stories rather than personal bodies. Since video meetings, social media, online gaming and other forms of interaction via digital (...) technologies are taking up an increasing part of our time, it is important to understand how such forms of social intercourse are different from in real life meetings and why they can accordingly foster not only new communal bonds but also hatred and misunderstanding. (shrink)

Can phenomenological evidence play a decisive role in accepting or rejecting social cognition theories? Is it the case that a theory of social cognition ought to explain and be empirically supported by our phenomenological experience? There is serious disagreement about the answers to these questions. This paper aims to determine the methodological role of phenomenology in social cognition debates. The following three features are characteristic of evidence capable of playing a substantial methodological role: novelty, reliability, and relevance. I argue that (...) phenomenological evidence lacks all three criteria and, consequently, should not play a substantial role in debates about social cognition. (shrink)

Direct Social Perception (DSP) is the idea that we can non-inferentially perceive others’ mental states. In this paper, I argue that the standard way of framing DSP leaves the debate at an impasse. I suggest two alternative interpretations of the idea that we see others’ mental states: others’ mental states are represented in the content of our perception, and we have basic perceptual beliefs about others’ mental states. I argue that the latter interpretation of DSP is more promising and examine (...) the kinds of mental states that plausibly could satisfy this version of DSP. (shrink)

Direct Perception is the view that we can see others' mental states, i.e. that we perceive others' mental states with the same immediacy and directness that we perceive ordinary objects in the world. I evaluate Direct Perception by considering whether we can see intentions, a particularly promising candidate for Direct Perception. I argue that the view equivocates on the notion of intention. Disambiguating the Direct Perception claim reveals a troubling dilemma for the view: either it is banal or highly implausible.

According to direct perception approaches we directly see others’ emotions, and by seeing emotions we immediately ascribe them to others. Direct perception is explicitly presented as an alternative account of mindreading, but it also contains an implicit thesis about the extent of the reach of perception. In this paper emotion perception is defended: siding with the direct perception approach I claim that we can simply see emotions and not just low level features of the facial and bodily displays, but contra (...) the direct perception approach I argue that seeing emotions is not sufficient for recognizing emotions as mental states in order to ascribe them to others. (shrink)

The concept of empathy has received much attention from philosophers and also from both cognitive and social psychologists. It has, however, been given widely conflicting definitions, with some taking it primarily as an epistemological notion and others as a social one. Recently, empathy has been closely associated with the simulationist approach to social cognition and, as such, it might be thought that the concept’s utility stands or falls with that of simulation itself. I suggest that this is a mistake. Approaching (...) the question of what empathy is via the question of what it is for, I claim that empathy plays a distinctive epistemological role: it alone allows us to know how others feel. This is independent of the plausibility of simulationism more generally. With this in view I propose an inclusive definition of empathy, one likely consequence of which is that empathy is not a natural kind. It follows that, pace a number of empathy researchers, certain experimental paradigms tell us not about the nature of empathy but about certain ways in which empathy can be achieved. I end by briefly speculating that empathy, so conceived, may also play a distinctive social role, enabling what I term ‘transparent fellow-feeling’. (shrink)

Expanding the debate about empathy with human beings, animals, or fictional characters to include human-robot relationships, this paper proposes two different perspectives from which to assess the scope and limits of empathy with robots: the first is epistemological, while the second is normative. The epistemological approach helps us to clarify whether we can empathize with artificial intelligence or, more precisely, with social robots. The main puzzle here concerns, among other things, exactly what it is that we empathize with if robots (...) do not have emotions or beliefs, since they do not have a consciousness in an elaborate sense. However, by comparing robots with fictional characters, the paper shows that we can still empathize with robots and that many of the existing accounts of empathy and mindreading are compatible with such a view. By so doing, the paper focuses on the significance of perspective-taking and claims that we also ascribe to robots something like a perspectival experience. The normative approach examines the moral impact of empathizing with robots. In this regard, the paper critically discusses three possible responses: strategic, anti-barbarizational, and pragmatist. The latter position is defended by stressing that we are increasingly compelled to interact with robots in a shared world and that to take robots into our moral consideration should be seen as an integral part of our self- and other-understanding. (shrink)

In the past decade, the fields of machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) have seen unprecedented developments that raise human-machine interactions (HMI) to the next level.Smart machines, i.e., machines endowed with artificially intelligent systems, have lost their character as mere instruments. This, at least, seems to be the case if one considers how humans experience their interactions with them. Smart machines are construed to serve complex functions involving increasing degrees of freedom, and they generate solutions not fully anticipated by humans. (...) Consequently, their performances show a touch of action and even autonomy. HMI is therefore often described as a sort of “cooperation” rather than as a mere application of a tool. Some authors even go as far as subsuming cooperation with smart machines under the label ofpartnership, akin to cooperation between human agents sharing a common goal. In this paper, we explore how far the notion of shared agency and partnership can take us in our understanding of human interaction with smart machines. Discussing different topoi related to partnerships in general, we suggest that different kinds of “partnership” depending on the form of interaction between agents need to be kept apart. Building upon these discussions, we propose a tentative taxonomy of different kinds of HMI distinguishing coordination, collaboration, cooperation, and social partnership. (shrink)

What would be an adequate theory of social understanding? In the last decade, the philosophical debate has focused on Theory Theory, Simulation Theory and Interaction Theory as the three possible candidates. In the following, we look carefully at each of these and describe its main advantages and disadvantages. Based on this critical analysis, we formulate the need for a new account of social understanding. We propose the Person Model Theory as an independent new account which has greater explanatory power compared (...) to the existing theories. (shrink)

The psychology and phenomenology of our knowledge of other minds is not well captured either by describing it simply as perception, nor by describing it simply as inference. A better description, I argue, is that our knowledge of other minds involves both through ‘perceptual co-presentation’, in which we experience objects as having aspects that are not revealed. This allows us to say that we perceive other minds, but perceive them as private, i.e. imperceptible, just as we routinely perceive aspects of (...) physical objects as unperceived. I discuss existing versions of this idea, particularly Joel Smith’s, on which it is taken to imply that our knowledge of other minds is, in these cases, perceptual and not inferential. Against this, I argue that perceptual co-presentation in general, and mind-perception in particular, yields knowledge that is simultaneously both perceptual and inferential. (shrink)

This paper claims that we have direct and complete perceptual access to other people’s emotions in their bodily and behavioural expression. The claim is understood, not by analogy with the perception of three-dimensional objects or physical processes, but as a form of Gestalt perception. In addition, talk of direct perceptual access to others’ emotions is shown not to entail a behaviourist view of mind; and talk of complete perceptual access is shown to include both the phenomenological character and the dispositional (...) nature of emotions. (shrink)

In this article I consider how the problem of social (intersubjective) cognition relates to time-consciousness. In the first part, I briefly introduce Husserl’s account of intersubjective cognition. I discuss the concept of empathy (Einfühlung) and its relation with time-consciousness. I argue that empathy is based on pre-reflective awareness of the other’s harmony of behaviour. In the second part, I distinguish pre-reflective (passive) and reflective (active) empathy and consider recent empirical research in the field of social cognition. I argue that these (...) levels of empathy are related with different levels of intersubjective temporality. By the intersubjective temporality I do not understand being in the same moment of objective time (so called clock time) but rather the shared experience of time and sharing temporal structure of actions. In the final part, I gather my considerations together and propose a general three-level framework of intersubjective temporality. (shrink)

The unobservability thesis states that the mental states of other people are unobservable. Both defenders and critics of UT seem to assume that UT has important implications for the mindreading debate. Roughly, the former argue that because UT is true, mindreaders need to infer the mental states of others, while the latter maintain that the falsity of UT makes mindreading inferences redundant. I argue, however, that it is unclear what ‘unobservability’ means in this context. I outline two possible lines of (...) interpretation of UT, and argue that on one of these, UT has no obvious implications for the mindreading debate. On the other line of interpretation, UT may matter to the mindreading debate, in particular if we think of it as a thesis about the possible contents of perceptual experience. The upshot is that those who believe UT has implications for the mindreading debate need to be more specific about how they understand the thesis. (shrink)

I distinguish three kinds of other minds problems—conceptual, epistemological and empirical. I argue that while Merleau-Ponty believes embodiment helps with tackling the conceptual and epistemological problems, he suggests that it is of no clear use in solving the empirical problem. I sketch some considerations that could lend support to Merleau-Ponty’s claims about the conceptual and epistemological problems, without claiming that these are conclusive. I then proceed to argue that Merleau-Ponty’s take on the empirical problem is essentially correct.

According to ‘direct social perception’ (DSP) accounts of social cognition, perception may be ‘smart’ enough on its own to inform us about other people’s emotions. Some DSP advocates suggest that ‘smart’ social perception should be conceived along ‘enactive’ lines. In this paper, I suggest that DSP needs social perception to have representational content. This seems in tension with the main versions of enactivism, which deny that perception is representational. I thus present the following challenge to ‘enactive’ versions of DSP: either (...) they show how perception can have the requisite smartness without representational content, which I doubt that they can, or they embrace the orthodox idea that perceptual experiences have representational contents. I also suggest that DSP defenders, whether or not they want to be enactivists, can cheerfully accept the latter idea. (shrink)