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At the conception of phenomenology, studies in psychology and natural sciences were attempting to prove that philosophy was a thing of the past. In order to maintain that philosophy was something deserving of attention and study, Edmund Husserl and others who followed his lead, had to prove their studies and methods of studies were entirely different from psychology. As time passed, undertones of anti-psychologism and anti-naturalism became more present in philosophy as a result (Gallagher & Zahavi, 2008). Through the twentieth century, technology began to improve and, as expected the cognitive sciences along with it. With the inception of cognitive sciences, philosophers put forth a few proposals for a philosophy of mind that gained traction with the emerging fields. Shaun Gallagher and Dan Zahavi describe the models and proposals as:
… Philosophers began to propose various models of the mind: at first, an orthodox computational model mainly based on computer sciences, then a connectionist model mainly based on neurosciences, and recently dynamical or even enactive and embodied models based on various research fields such as robotics or an ecological approach. (Gallagher & Zahavi, 2008)
As the relationship between philosophy, more specifically phenomenology, and cognitive sciences grew stronger, phenomenological methods of inquiry shifted from a transcendental method to a more naturalized method. This gives rise to many questions namely; is it possible to separate phenomenology and psychology, or are the two fields more deeply intertwined than originally anticipated? In this paper I will argue that much of the research involved in the cognitive sciences, specifically social psychology, clinical psychology and neuroscience, use transcendental phenomenological theories that have been naturalized as the foundation for their research in understanding ourselves, the other, and our relation to the other. I will start by shedding light on what it means to naturalize phenomenology by discussing its difference from traditional transcendental phenomenology. I will then discuss Edmund Husserl’s theory of embodied experience and kinesthetic cues as a way of understanding intersubjectivity.[1] After discussing Husserl’s theory of embodied experience as the scaffolding for how we understand ourselves in the world, I will discuss neurophenomenology and its relation to neuroscience—specifically looking at how empathy relates to neuroscientific studies. I will then use the topic of empathy which has been widely disputed in phenomenology, psychology and neuroscience to show that phenomenology serves as the jumping-off-point for questions related to consciousness and the responsibility to the other. In order better to understand the source of empathy research, I will discuss Max Scheler, Edith Stein and Maurice Merleau-Ponty specifically their theories on empathy. I will then discuss empathy research in clinical and social psychology while making references to the ideas of the main transcendental phenomenologists presented earlier to show that phenomenology does indeed have its place in the natural sciences today.
Both the cognitive sciences and also phenomenology have played a role in the advancement of the other discipline (i.e. cognitive sciences cannot gain ground scientifically without bringing phenomenological questions with them). One particular way that phenomenology has influenced or grown with cognitive sciences is the view of naturalism in phenomenology. Though many have seen Edmund Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology as a critique of naturalism, it can also be understood as one that develops alongside with naturalism. Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology does not say that naturalism is bad, but rather that they are two opposing views that develop together with different end-goals in their phenomenological method of understanding consciousness. The transcendental phenomenologist sees the essence of what we experience as the scaffolding for describing and analyzing the phenomena of what we experience. As it relates to the problem of consciousness, transcendental phenomenology uses the theory of intentionality, which essentially states that we are always conscious of something.[2] Naturalizing phenomenology in the simplest terms means to attempt to tackle the meta-physical problems (i.e. consciousness) and reduce them to concrete phenomena explained and analyzed through concrete processes in the mind (Gallagher, 2012). While this may seem to contradict what Husserl says regarding the understanding of the “essence” of our experience, both naturalism and transcendentalism stem from the same thought. Instead of seeing naturalism as a method that holds back phenomenology, it can be seen as a method of understanding that brings the cognitive sciences and phenomenology closer together so they may develop and grow while simultaneously challenging the ideas of the other.
Following this trend, it becomes clearer that phenomenology has an overlap with the new philosophy of the mind based around theories of embodiment, embedded, extended and enactive character of mind.[3] In a phenomenological sense, though, what is embodiment? Embodiment, according to Husserl (1925), is the scaffolding through which consciousness can be understood. He goes about discussing this using four main distinctions to make the theory of embodiment important and distinct from the natural sciences. Firstly, he must bring the concepts and previously understood assumptions about the body to light; secondly he brackets the idea of the natural body as a vehicle for our minds as something that can be dismissed for the idea of “embodied personhood;” thirdly, he describes phenomenologically how embodied personhood is structured; and finally, that our intersubjectivity must be based in a theory of kinesthetic consciousness.[4]
Husserl (1970) lays out the idea of kinesthetic consciousness by proposing that we move our bodies in specific ways and our intersubjective experiences with other embodied persons allows us to see the others as like us. Therefore, the way we make sense of ourselves amongst others in the world is constantly an ongoing process and is one that will never end regardless of our motility. The body becomes the median through which something or someone is experienced as such.
How does the theory of embodiment contribute or attempt to answer the problem of consciousness and make for the foundation of study in cognitive sciences? Why is there a shift from the transcendental view of intersubjectivity to a naturalized view of intersubjectivity? How does Husserl’s theory of embodiment allow us understand the mental state of another? Before we answer we must understand the origin of embodiment and intersubjectivity from Max Scheler who says:
For we certainly believe ourselves to be directly acquainted with another person’s joy in his laughter, with his sorry and pain in his tears, with his shame in his blushing, with his entreaty in his outstretched hands, with his love in his look of affection, with his rage in the gnashing of his teeth, with his threats in the clenching of his fist, and with the tenor of his thoughts in the sound of his words…. Thus I do not simply see another person’s eyes, for example; I also see that he is looking at me and even that ‘he is looking at me as though he wished to avoid my seeing that he is looking at me’ (Scheler 1913/1954, p. 260-61).
In the quote above, Scheler puts forth a similar idea to Husserl that we notice others as expressive phenomena, but Husserl removes the mystery of how we understand it.[5]
Husserl suggests that our kinesthetic experience, or “…the sensory experience of one’s own movement” (Gallagher, 2005, p. 97) serves as the framework for understanding others and puts this idea forward in the Fifth Cartesian Meditation. He claims this experience of centrality of kinesthetics to be a matter of “pairing” (Husserl, 1970, p. 112). Pairing allows us to understand that we share the world with others who are “like us,” but how does it cue us into the understanding of another’s emotional or mental state? Husserl says that essentially, “… I never have anything like an experience of the other that is exactly like that I have of myself… to experience the other ‘as other’ is to have an experience of the limits of my own experience” (Simmons and Benson 2013, p. 26).
This embodied experience of a feeling phenomenologically shifts the understanding of how the world is experienced by allowing some possibilities of being-in-the-world and disallowing others. As Matthew Ratcliffe explains, “So a bodily experience is also an experience of one’s relationship with the world and a sense of being in the presence of other [experiences]…” (Ratcliffe 2013, p. 276).
Contemporary research in cognitive sciences has used phenomenological foundations related directly to Husserl’s kinesthetic cues and intersubjectivity as a form of social cognition, or other-oriented cognition. Studies in cognitive neuroscience show the specifics areas of the brain that are active when experiencing the joy or pain of others (Morelli, Sacchet, & Zaki, 2015).[6] Simply studying our relation to others is not enough for naturalized phenomenology. We must also have a way of explaining and analyzing the data present from the phenomenon regarding our relation to others. This phenomenological understanding of our relation to others is best explored through neurophenomenology.
Neurophenomenology is defined as, “… a research strategy in cognitive science that has been developed in order to reciprocally elucidate neuroscientific data (hence “neuro”) and descriptive first-person reports the interpretation of which is informed by phenomenological analysis (hence “phenomenology”)” (Klaasen, Reitveld, & Topal, 2009, p. 59). This concept of neurophenomenology is similar to a dynamic systems theory, which boils down to the mathematics and conceptual framework for interpreting the data of the phenomenon. The main goal of neurophenomenology is, “… to realize an integration of phenomenological analysis of experience and empirical work in neuroscience by using dynamic systems theory” (Klaasen et al., 2009, p. 60).
Simply put, neurophenomenology attempts to add the fist-person perspective to what cognitive sciences can only understand from the third-person perspective. In this way, neurophenomenology can add and quantify the “lived experience” of being-in-the-world that cognitive sciences cannot. The goal then becomes to, “… wed the first with the third-person by the use of these standard tools [fMRI magnets, eye-trackers, computer software that records reaction times in behavioral experiments]; and this is an embodied cognitive science precisely because our bodily experience creates or forms the pre-reflective structures that shape and suffuse first-person conscious experiences” (Rupert, forthcoming, p. 22).
How can neurophenomenology capture the first-person perspective in scientific practice? A possible answer comes from a case study where subjects view a computer screen with two dots, one that was not fused and one that could be fused. The participants were asked to press a button when the hidden dot that was once fused appeared and then they were asked to reflect on their mental status before and during the experiment. The results showed that the participants self-reported frames of mind, which were categorized, accounted for the difference in their reaction times to seeing the dot defuse from the other figure and that those categories statistically correlated with long and short-range firing of the EEG corresponding to specific electrodes place on the participants. Those “firings” also produced distinct EEG patterns that were evoked from the figures in the experiment (Lutz, Lachaux, Martinerie & Valera 2002). The descriptions of the participants’ feelings in the moment of experience capture the first-person perspective and thus we can concretely understand consciousness as something tangible.
More information on our understanding of the other comes from studies in neuroscience. Recent studies in neuroscience found mirror neurons in the premotor cortex, supplementary motor area, primary somatosensory cortex and inferior parietal cortex.[7] These mirror neurons are activated under two specific conditions: when someone intentionally engages in an action, and when someone watches the other person intentionally engage in that specific action (Kohler, Keysers, Umiltà, Fogassi, Gallese & Rizzolatti, 2002).[8]
The finding of mirror neurons confirms the phenomenological theory of embodiment as a theory of social perception or social cognition. This theory of social cognition states that we respond to others and their reactions in a situation, differently than if we were to see an object or a person. This is different than the idea of person and object perception in that it involves the response that stems from the perception of the person in a situation. For example, returning to the quote above from Scheler, “… he is looking at me as though he wished to avoid my seeing that he is looking at me” (Scheler, 1913/1954, p. 261). Perceiving that he wished he had not seen me realizing that he was looking at me is seeing the person as neither an object nor useful, but producing a specific feeling created by the interaction with the person giving themselves as expressing a phenomena in the social situation. Studies in neuroscience regarding the understanding of emotions in others show that there are specific areas of the brain that are responsible for understanding the emotions of others and emoting the same response in our own mind (Carr, Iacoboni, Dubeau, Mazziotta, & Lenzi, 2003).[9]
In the phenomenological theory of mind, there are mainly two ways in which we perceive an action or an emotion of the other. The first is the “theory theory,” (TT) which states “… our understanding of others relies on taking a theoretical stance toward them, specifically by appealing to a particular theory, namely, folk psychology, for our understanding of others” (Gallagher, 2005, p. 98). In this sense, TT is best understood as simply putting ourselves in the other’s shoes and understanding their actions as specifically correlated to an emotion because of theories that have been studied by other psychologists. In contrast to TT, simulation theory (ST) states, “… our understanding of others is based on self-simulating their beliefs, desires, or emotions” (Gallagher, 2005, p. 98).
The phenomenological theory of empathy asks the questions of consciousness as it relates to our relationship with the other from the first-person perspective or “from within,” whereas the sciences of psychology and neuroscience attempt to answer the questions “from without” (Bornemark, 2013, p. 259). Unlike TT and ST, phenomenological theory allows us to feel with the other in the same way the other does.[10] This phenomenological theory allows us to understand the other in a way that we come to understand ourselves by analyzing through the first and second person perspective. Why is it so important that we understand the other from a first and second perspective view? Simply put, those two perspectives allow for us to add the “lived experience” of the other so that we can then understand the other’s consciousness as something that can be examined and naturalized.