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Empathy and Direct Social Perception: A Phenomenological Proposal

Review of Philosophy and Psychology volume 2, pages 541–558 (2011)Cite this article

Abstract

Quite a number of the philosophical arguments and objections currently being launched against simulation (ST) based and theory-theory (TT) based approaches to mindreading have a phenomenological heritage in that they draw on ideas found in the work of Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Stein, Gurwitsch, Scheler and Schutz. Within the last couple of years, a number of ST and TT proponents have started to react and respond to what one for the sake of simplicity might call the phenomenological proposal (PP). This paper addresses some of these critical responses, and distinguishes—in the process—substantive disagreements from terminological issues and other issues that are symptomatic of different research agendas. It does so by focusing specifically upon some objections made by Pierre Jacob. These epitomize the kinds of concerns that are being raised about PP at the moment, and thus facilitate a reply on behalf of PP that also applies more generally.

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Notes

  1. Our respective accounts of empathy, for example, are quite different (cf. Gallagher 2011).

  2. Slightly different versions of the account can for instance be found in de Vignemont and Singer 2006, and de Vignemont and Jacob 2010/under review.

  3. It is a slight irony that the example considered by Jacob was actually described by me as a case that more obviously exemplified sympathy than empathy (Zahavi 2008, 516). So in his attempt to show that the example involves a form of interpersonal similarity, Jacob is doing his best to undermine his own classification.

  4. For the uninitiated, a trocar is a surgical instrument with a sharply pointed and often three-sided end which is used within a cannula, and designed to be inserted into a vein, artery, bone marrow or body cavity.

  5. Just to avoid misunderstandings, when claiming that social perception is as direct as the perceptual experience of inanimate objects, the claim is not that interpersonal understanding ought to be modeled on our understanding of inanimate objects. The point is not that social perception is simply a subclass of object-perception. The claim is rather that it is a distinct form of intentionality that is as direct as object-perception.

  6. In addition, one might also opt for a disjunctive account of behavior. As Overgaard puts it, “On this account, the difference between the person who genuinely vents her anger and the person feigning anger is not that in the former case, there is the angry behaviour plus a feeling of anger, while in the latter case, there is only the behaviour (or rather, that plus an intention to deceive, say). Rather, even if the two behaviours are movement-for-movement indistinguishable to an outside spectator, they are different kinds of processes. In the one case, the visible behaviour is a person’s coming to grips with the world as infuriating; in the other it is not” (Overgaard 2012).

  7. That is also why I would object to a recent claim by Newen and Schlicht, namely that the central assertion of the Interaction-Theory defended by Gallagher and Zahavi is that in most cases—and this would include even complex mental states—we directly perceive what other people are up to (2010, 236). This is not my view. I am not denying that others can at times be very hard to figure out; I am denying that the very recognition of others as minded beings is a very challenging task, one that involves a leap from observable behavior to unobservable mental states.

  8. It would at this point have been natural to consider and discuss Gallese’s notion of embodied simulation. This is so, not only because it seeks to offer a very basic and low-level account of action and emotion understanding that relies on mirror-resonance mechanisms, and because it has recently been subjected to an influential criticism by Jacob (2008), but also because Gallese explicitly and repeatedly claims that his own account is in line with, and a further development of, the account of interpersonal understanding found in Stein, Husserl and Merleau-Ponty (Gallese 2001, 2003, 2005). If this were correct, it would obviously challenge the suggestion that PP constitutes a real alternative to ST. However, since I am addressing this question in a separate publication, I will not pursue it further here (cf. Zahavi 2011).

  9. Whereas it makes good sense to characterize different types of sub-personal information processing as simpler or more complex, it is harder to see an obvious application of the concept of “direct” in that domain, since all the processes will involve various degrees of mediation.

  10. It is also intriguing that Jacob in presenting his own case writes that there is nearly universal consensus “that most, if not all, of another’s psychological states and experiences are unobservable” (Jacob 2011: § 1). Why this slight hesitation on his behalf? If he is prepared to accept that a few mental states might be observable, would he then also be prepared to accept that there might some cases where direct social perception is possible?

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Acknowledgments

Thanks to Galen Strawson, Pierre Jacob, Shaun Gallagher and an anonymous referee for helpful comments to an earlier version of this text.

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  1. Center for Subjectivity Research, Department of Media, Cognition and Communication, University of Copenhagen, Njalsgade 140-142, DK-2300, Copenhagen S, Denmark

    Dan Zahavi

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Zahavi, D. Empathy and Direct Social Perception: A Phenomenological Proposal. Rev.Phil.Psych. 2, 541–558 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13164-011-0070-3

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Keywords

  • Social Cognition
  • Intentional Object
  • Social Understanding
  • Expressive Behavior
  • Theoretical Inference