In “The Child’s Relations with Others,” Merleau-Ponty argues that certain early experiences are jointly owned in that they are numerically single experiences that are nevertheless given to more than one subject (e.g., the infant and caregiver). Call this the “joint ownership thesis” (JT). Drawing upon both Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological analysis, as well as studies of exogenous attention and mutual affect regulation in developmental psychology, I motivate the plausibility of JT. I argue that the phenomenological structure of some early infant–caregiver dyadic exchanges (...) is best described as involving joint subjects. From birth, some experiences are constitutively social in that certain phenomenal states, such as the positive emotions that arise within these early exchanges, are jointly owned. Along the way, I consider a possible objection. I conclude by considering the explanatory significance of adopting JT. (shrink)

Current theories of social cognition are mainly based on a representationalist view. Moreover, they focus on a rather sophisticated and limited aspect of understanding others, i.e. on how we predict and explain others’ behaviours through representing their mental states. Research into the ‘social brain’ has also favoured a third-person paradigm of social cognition as a passive observation of others’ behaviour, attributing it to an inferential, simulative or projective process in the individual brain. In this paper, we present a concept of (...) social understanding as an ongoing, dynamical process of participatory sense-making and mutual incorporation. This process may be described (1) from a dynamical agentive systems point of view as an interaction and coordination of two embodied agents; (2) from a phenomenological approach as a mutual incorporation, i.e. a process in which the lived bodies of both participants extend and form a common intercorporality. Intersubjectivity, it is argued, is not a solitary task of deciphering or simulating the movements of others but means entering a process of embodied interaction and generating common meaning through it. This approach will be further illustrated by an analysis of primary dyadic interaction in early childhood. (shrink)

Peter Goldie opens the path to a deeper understanding of our emotional lives through a lucid philosophical exploration of this surprisingly neglected topic. Drawing on philosophy, literature and science, Goldie considers the roles of culture and evolution in the development of our emotional capabilities. He examines the links between emotion, mood, and character, and places the emotions in the context of consciousness, thought, feeling, and imagination. He explains how it is that we are able to make sense of our own (...) and other people's emotions, and how we can explain the very human things which emotions lead us to do. He argues that it is only from the personal point of view that thoughts, reasons, feelings, and actions come into view. This fascinating book gives an accessible but penetrating exploration of an important but mysterious subject. Any reader interested in emotion and its role in understanding our lives will find much to think about here. (shrink)

_The Phenomenological Mind_ is the first book to properly introduce fundamental questions about the mind from the perspective of phenomenology. Key questions and topics covered include: • what is phenomenology? • naturalizing phenomenology and the cognitive sciences • phenomenology and consciousness • consciousness and self-consciousness • time and consciousness • intentionality • the embodied mind • action • knowledge of other minds • situated and extended minds • phenomenology and personal identity. This second edition includes a new preface, and revised (...) and improved chapters. Also included are helpful features such as chapter summaries, guides to further reading, and a glossary, making _The Phenomenological Mind_ an ideal introduction to key concepts in phenomenology, cognitive science and philosophy of mind. (shrink)

According to current opinion in western psychopathology, depression is regarded as a disorder of mood and affect on the one hand, and as a distortion of cognition on the other. Disturbances of bodily experience and of social relations are regarded as secondary to the primarily 'inner'and individual disorder. However, quite different concepts can be found in cultures whose members do not experience themselves as much as separate individuals but rather as parts of social communities. Disorders of mood or well-being are (...) then conceived less as intra-psychic, but rather as bodily, interpersonal, or atmospheric processes. On this background, the paper describes depression as a disorder of intercorporeality and interaffectivity. After developing these phenomenological concepts, it analyses depression as a 'detunement' of the resonant body that mediates our participation in a shared affective space. Instead of expressing the self, the body is turned into a barrier to all impulses directed to the environment. This impairs particularly the patient's interaction with others, resulting in a general sense of detachment, separation, or even segregation. Moreover, the restriction of the lived body also corresponds to the triggering situations of depression, namely experiences of a disruption of social bonds. Thus, intercorporeality and interaffectivity are presented as crucial dimensions for an ecological and non-reductionist view of depression. (shrink)

The following text is the first ever translation into English of a writing by German phenomenologist Hermann Schmitz (*1928). In it, Schmitz outlines and defends a non-mentalistic view of emotions as phenomena in interpersonal space in conjunction with a theory of the felt body’s constitutive involvement in human experience. In the first part of the text, Schmitz gives an overview covering some central pieces of his theory as developed, for the most part, in his massive System of Philosophy, published in (...) German in a series of volumes between 1964 and 1980. Schmitz’s System is centred on the claim that the contemporary view of the human subject is the result of a consequential historical process: A reductionist and ‘introjectionist’ objectification of lived experience culminating in the ‘invention’ of the mind (or ‘soul’) as a private, inner realm of subjective experience and in a corresponding ‘grinding down’ of the world of lived experienced to a meagre, value-neutral ‘objective reality’. To counter this intellectualist trend, Schmitz puts to use his approach to phenomenology with the aim of regaining a sensibility for the nuanced realities of lived experience—hoping to make up for what was lost during the development of Western intellectual culture. Since both this text and the overall style of Schmitz’s philosophising are in several ways unusual for a contemporary readership, a brief introduction is provided by philosophers Jan Slaby and Rudolf Owen Müllan, the latter of whom translated Schmitz’s text into English. The introduction emphasises aspects of Schmitz’s philosophy that are likely to be of relevance to contemporary scholars of phenomenological philosophy and to its potential applications in science and society. (shrink)

What does it mean to say that an emotion can be shared? I consider this question, focusing on the relation between the phenomenology of emotion experience and self-regulation. I explore the idea that a numerically single emotion can be given to more than one subject. I term this a “collective emotion”. First, I consider different forms of emotion regulation. I distinguish between embodied forms of self-regulation, which use subject-centered features of our embodiment, and distributed forms of self-regulation, which incorporate resources (...) beyond the subject. Next, I focus on the latter. After discussing the possibility of musically distributed emotion regulation, I consider interpersonally distributed emotion regulation. I then examine Max Scheler’s (1954) phenomenological characterization of the shared grief experienced by the parents of a recently-deceased child. Drawing on the notion of interpersonally distributed emotion regulation, I argue that, with some further clarifications, Scheler’s example gives us a plausible example of a collective emotion. I conclude by briefly indicating why the notion of collective emotions may be of broader interest to debates in both philosophy of mind and emotion science. (shrink)

Existing scientific concepts of group or shared or collective emotion fail to appreciate several elements of collectivity in such emotions. Moreover, the idea of shared emotions is threatened by the individualism of emotions that comes in three forms: ontological, epistemological, and physical. The problem is whether or not we can provide a plausible account of ?straightforwardly shared? emotions without compromising our intuitions about the individualism of emotions. I discuss two philosophical accounts of shared emotions that explain the collectivity of emotions (...) in terms of their intentional structure: Margaret Gilbert's plural subject account, and Hans Bernhard Schmid's phenomenological account. I argue that Gilbert's view fails because it relegates affective experience into a contingent role in emotions and because a joint commitment to feel amounts to the creation of a feeling rule rather than to an emotion. The problems with Schmid's view are twofold: first, a phenomenological fusion of feelings is not necessary for shared emotions and second, Schmid is not sensitive enough to different forms of shared concerns. I then outline my own typology that distinguishes between weakly, moderately, and strongly shared emotions on the basis of the participants? shared concerns of different degree of collectivity, on the one hand, and the synchronization of their emotional responses, on the other hand. All kind of shared emotions in my typology are consistent with the individualism of emotions, while the question about ?straightforward sharing? is argued to be of secondary importance. (shrink)

This article discusses the complex space of the city as an urban milieu of vitality. On the skin of the city, a permanent change of its physical and physiognomic appearance takes place. The alternation of urban “faces” is constituted situationally in the structures and wrinkles of the skin. However, characteristic features of urban quarters do not only appear visually; they become bodily felt and are perceptible as holistic impressions, emanating from atmospheric “vital qualities”. Therefore, lively urban districts are discussed as (...) “body islands” in urban space. Seen from this vitalistic perspective, the city is not only a world of rational actors—as it is common ground in the social sciences—but also an unpredictable space of performativity. (shrink)