In Western philosophy, the concept of intersubjectivity is generally associated with the ‘problem of other minds’ and the classical argument from analogy (Thompson and Zahavi 2007, forthcoming, p.33). Both the theory-theory and the simulation-theory in social cognition and cognitive science share common assumptions with the argument from analogy. These arguments treat mental life as distinct from outward behaviour by assuming that intersubjectivity involves representing “unobservable, inner mental states on the basis of outward behaviour” (Thompson and Zahavi 2007, forthcoming, p.34). First-person phenomenology (Depraz 2001) contests the common assumption that underpins this view: that the mind is in the brain and that brains, being spatially discrete, are totally separate from each other.
Again, it does not cease to amaze me how some philosophers of mind have spent litres of ink on debates about how to prove that you have a consciousness and that we are not surrounded by zombies. Quite frankly I find this ludicrous. This issue is squarely upside down: the presence and reality of other is so intimately close that the pertinent question is how can we ever come to have the notion that we are that separate and distinct? (Depraz 2001, p.79)
These assumptions wrongly juxtapose individuality and intersubjectivity. Instead, Varela argues that intersubjectivity and individuality are necessarily complementary.
The phenomenological tradition provides rich and sometimes competing accounts of intersubjectivity (Depraz 2001; Kern and Marbach 2001; Zahavi 2001). A convergence between these accounts and Eastern practices and conceptualisations of intersubjectivity is emerging (Arisaka 2001; Depraz 2001; Wallace 2001). Zahavi calls for a systematic synthesis of phenomenological accounts of intersubjectivity and reviews the features that they share (Zahavi 2001, pp.165-166). Broadly, the phenomenological tradition questions whether the mind is solitary and exclusively internal. “The problem with this assumption is that our initial self-acquaintance is not with a purely internal, mental self, for we are embodied and experience our own exteriority, including our bodily presence to the other” (Thompson and Zahavi 2007, forthcoming, p.35). Phenomenology also questions whether the only direct access we have to the other is through our external perception of their physical movements. “The problem with this assumption is that what we directly perceive is intentional or meaningful behaviour – expression, gesture, and action – not mere physical movement that gets interpreted as intentional action as a result of inference” (Thompson and Zahavi 2007, forthcoming, p.35). These critiques prompt a reassessment of the assumption that mind is an essentially inner mental state in contrast to the purely outer behaviour of body.
Phenomenologists such as Merleau-Ponty emphasise that expression is more than a bridge between the inner and outer, it is a “direct manifestation of the subjective life of the mind” (Thompson and Zahavi 2007, forthcoming, p.35). Subjective life is communicated to the subject through the ‘lived body’ of the other. Through empathy, a unique form of intentionality, I am directed towards the lived experience of the ‘other’ as an “intentional being whose bodily gestures and actions are expressive of his or her experiences or states of mind (Thompson and Zahavi 2007, forthcoming, p.36). These interactions are capable of changing the constitution of the lived body (Savage-Rumbaugh, Fields, and Taglialatela 2001, p.290).
Drawing on Husserl, Zahavi’s (1999) discussion of the self-awareness that is associated with the first-personal given experience of the cogito places particular emphasis on the constitutive role for the subject of alterity (otherness).
For both Husserl and Sartre, mundane self-awareness entails a self-apprehension from the perspective of the Other, and it therefore has the encounter with the Other and the Other’s intervention as its condition of possibility. It is, in other words, a type of self-awareness which does not have its origin in the self but depends upon radical alterity. When I experience the Other as experiencing myself and when I take over the Other’s objectifying and alienating apprehension of myself, my self-awareness is mediated by the Other. (Zahavi 1999, p.164)
It is through the experience of the ‘other’ that the self experiences itself as a self within a world of others and as an object amongst objects. Without ‘thou’, ‘we’, ‘other’ and ‘world’ there is no ‘I’: the concepts ‘I’ and ‘other’ are relative. The ontological implications of this conception of intersubjectivity are that ‘self’, ‘other’ and ‘world’ are inseparably interconnected and reciprocally illuminating (Zahavi 2001). The self encompasses an openness to the ‘other’: an intersubjectivity (Zahavi 1999, pp.164-166). Thompson refers to this as open intersubjectivity (Thompson 2001, p.15). Evidence for this concept of intersubjectivity is emerging from affective neuroscience, cognitive ethology, evolutionary neurobiology, developmental neuroscience, developmental psychology, and the philosophy of mind and psychology (Cheyne 2001; Thompson 2001 , pp.5-13). The recent discovery of mirror neurons in cognitive neuroscience is further evidence for intersubjectivity (Gallese 2001).
For Husserl, self-alterity involves self-alteration, the ‘inner opening’ within egoic subjectivity through which the self is continually self-altering and self-altered. Self-alterity is by definition non-unified and self-alteration, a dynamic process. In this way, consciousness is generative and intersubjectively open (Depraz and Cosmelli 2003, pp.180-81).
Consciousness, for Husserl, is intentional, which does not mean first and foremost deliberate or wilful, but rather simply a directedness towards the external object and an openness to the world. In that respect, intentionality can be active or passive, voluntary or driven, attentional or affective, cognitive or emotional, static or genetic. Furthermore, open-directedness indicates a strong relativization of the subject/object polarity. (Depraz and Cosmelli 2003, pp.179-180)
Phenomenology identifies the directedness and openness of experience as a dynamic structure referred to as transcendence. “Phenomenologists understand transcendence as a dynamic structure of experience – experience aims beyond itself and is always already open to what is other” (Thompson 2005 p.272). This allows for experiential change and creativity.
Furthermore, Husserl argues that it is the experience of the interplay between the ipseity and alterity of one’s bodily awareness that underpins the ability to recognise the ‘other’ as an intentional embodied being. “Consequently, prior to any concrete perceptual encounter with another subject, intersubjectivity is already present as co-subjectivity in the very structure of perception” (Gallagher and Varela 2003, pp.105-6; Thompson and Zahavi 2007, forthcoming, p.37). In this way, objectivity is intersubjectivity constituted.
My experience of the world as objective is mediated by my experience of and interaction with other world-engaged subjects. Only insofar as I experience that others experience the same objects as myself, do I really experience these objects as objective and real. (Thompson and Zahavi 2007, forthcoming, p.38)
It is through “intersubjective regulation” that the subject or researcher validates experience such that it can be shared (Depraz and Cosmelli 2003, p.163). This requires a “re-styled objectivity founded on such ruled inter-individual practices” (Depraz and Cosmelli 2003, p.163). This embodied intersubjectivity extends beyond the membrane of the organism into its environment “especially the interpersonal, social world of self and other” (Thompson 2001, p.2). Varela uses his own experience of receiving a liver transplant to demonstrate tangibly these elements of intersubjectivity.
This inescapable intersubjectivity (the ‘team’) of mental life shapes us through childhood and social life, and in the transplantation experience takes a tangible form as well. But it is also true in the organism’s very embodiment, appearing as the depth of space, of the intrinsically extensible nature of its sentience, especially in exploring the lived body. (Varela 2001, p.262)
An evaluation of the similarities between phenomenology and Buddhism with respect to ipseity and alterity is provided by Thompson (2005 p.272).
Historically, objectivity has been described as both necessary and universal. This stems from philosophy’s emphasis on identity and permanence. “Movement and mobility therefore never could acquire the dignity of scientific objects: the deadlock of the Heraclitean flux as well as Zeno’s paradoxes attest to this clearly” (Depraz and Cosmelli 2003, p.188). An intersubjective objectivity of consciousness in alignment with quantum physics and dynamical systems theory takes instability as constitutive, no longer “a side-effect of a phenomenon initially defined by its stability” (Depraz and Cosmelli 2003, p.188). This implies that “variability (which involves singularity) needs to be considered as a genuine component of scientific objectivity” (Depraz and Cosmelli 2003, p.189).
An intersubjective methodology which takes this concept of objectivity as its basis needs to employ several main components: a subject that is open to all aspects of a given phenomena, including its situated individuated multidimensionality, the production of a full categorising description and an awareness of the need for the experimenter to adopt the same attitude of openness (Depraz and Cosmelli 2003, pp.191-2). Depraz and Cosmelli discuss the heuristic processes by which categories emerge, stressing that these often coincide with the moment of account (Depraz and Cosmelli 2003, p.192).
Depraz and Cosmelli discuss the validity of retrospective categorisation by reference to the phenomenality of categorisation in the moment of the experience. They treat retrospective categories as necessarily dependent on and arising from the phenomenality of the original experience:
… it is important to become attentive to the way our descriptive categories emerge to our mind as the experience unfolds and develops … [the categorising process] results as a gradual back-and-forth between certain categories and the unfolding of the experience. Hence the necessary heuristic character of such gradually and experientially produced categories … before we are able to meet any validating categories, that is objectifying (universal and necessary) ones. (Depraz and Cosmelli 2003, p.193)
They propose three types of categories: “(1) expressive categories, which are both bodily, either strictly organic (sensory-kinesthetic) or behavioural (gestures and actions); (2) literary-linguistic categories, which belong to the significant dimension in Saussure’s terminology, be they onomatopoeic words, images, and metaphors or again periphrases; (3) technical linguistic categories, which are culturally inherited in a broad sense, either as dialectical notions or educationally transmitted as a specific Bildung (domain of formation)” (Depraz and Cosmelli 2003, p.193).
Depraz and Cosmelli propose three criteria for validating variability which enhance the objective validity of the given phenomena:
(1) individual training as a means to develop more stability in the self-observation and self-description of one’s own experience
(2) intra-individual trials distributed along a specific temporal period in the life of the individual subject, which enable one to compare different performances of the same individual and better evaluate their more-or-less successful results
(3) inter-individual sharing of a given experience, which allows the emergence of conflicting descriptions but also of convergent analysis. (Depraz and Cosmelli 2003, p.194)
The authors discuss a number of case studies where these criteria are applied.
Affect is a prime example of an intersubjective, ‘two-organism’, self-other event. Embedded in bodily-awareness and action, affect involves most of the somatic systems in the body, the “pleasure-displeasure valence axis; social signalling and coupling; and conscious evaluation and assessment” (Thompson 2001, p.4). Affect is intersubjectively perceived through the embodied comportment of the other, rather than through any simulation of an emotional state. This affective comportment plays a substantial role in the individual’s understanding of the mental state of the other even when the other is not a human being (Gallagher and Varela 2003; Savage-Rumbaugh, Fields, and Taglialatela 2001; Smuts 2001; Thompson 2001). “It is here that we see affective comportment blossoming into empathy, in the sense of a meta-affective cognitive capacity for grasping another’s point of view” (Thompson 2001, p.5).
Varela describes all cognitive phenomena as emotional-affective. He claims that mind is generated from affective-empathic phenomena. This is demonstrated by research that shows that what distinguishes children and higher primates from other animals is not their capacity for language but, rather, their extraordinary capacity to interpret the other’s mind.
This represents a peculiar type of intelligence related to understanding mental states such as desires, intentions and beliefs from the other’s bodily presence: face, posture and sound. … The pioneering work of D. Stern in his studies on babies noticed already that the boundaries of self and others are not delineated even in perceptual events, and that being a ‘me’ and constituting a ‘you’ are concomitant events. The baby’s amazing capacity for empathic response emerges a few hours after birth. (Thompson 2006, forthcoming, p.80)
In other words, the act of cognising the self arises simultaneously with and is dependent on cognising the other. “Intersubjective interaction is the cognition and affectively charged experience of self and other” (Thompson 2006, forthcoming). The depth to which we embody this co-determination is illustrated by studies that show that the bodily expression of genetic traits in children and the properties of their brain activity are related to the degree of love and care they receive from those around them (Savage-Rumbaugh, Fields, and Taglialatela 2001). Varela summarises his concept of intersubjectivity with the following two phrases: “this mind is that mind” or “cognition is generatively enactive, that is a co-determination of Me-Other” (Thompson 2007, forthcoming, p.80).
Not only is our perception of our self dependent on our concept of the other, Varela argues that much of this emotional affective substratum to cognition is primordial, it has affected us before our ‘I’ has arisen. “Affect is a pre-reflective dynamic in self-constitution of the self, a self-affection in a literal sense. Affect is primordial, in the sense that I am affected or moved before any ‘I’ that knows” (Thompson 2001, p.80). This process happens on three principal time scales.
The first scale is emotions proper, the awareness of a tonal shift that is constitutive to the living present. The second is affect, a dispositional trend proper to a longer time (hours or days), a coherent sequence of embodied actions. Finally there is mood, the scale of narrative description over a long duration (many days or weeks). (Thompson 2001, p.81)
Varela argues that the pre-verbal or primordial quality of affect makes it inseparable from the presence of the ‘other’. To demonstrate why this is the case it is necessary to focus on the bodily correlates of affect, that is, not only our external behaviours but also our corporeal experience of affect. I am linked to the ‘other’ through both these aspects of my embodiment. The ‘other’ has a body like mine and is an embodied presence. Both of these aspects of embodied affect are necessary for empathy. The first-person conception of intersubjectivity brings the possibility of the second-person position to life, in relation to the first-person, through its understanding of the role of empathy.
The term ‘expression’ refers to all forms of the signification of experience (Depraz, Varela, and Vermersch 2003, pp.65-7). Expression is a direct manifestation of experience, “the subjective life of the mind” (Thompson and Zahavi 2007, forthcoming, p.35). Just as the ‘self’ and self-awareness always acknowledge their alterity, that is they include and are mediated by the ‘other’, self-expression, like suspension and redirection, is always an intentional intersubjective action (Depraz, Varela, and Vermersch 2003, pp.68-70; Zahavi 1999, pp.164-166). Expression is intersubjectively open (Thompson 2001, p.15). Expression, and the reception of expression, are, through transcendence, both ‘self-altering’ and intersubjectively ‘other-altering’ (Thompson 2005 p.272). What the second-person researcher perceives is the expressive actions of research participants’ intentional meaningful behaviour (Thompson and Zahavi 2007, forthcoming, p.35). This is not simply their external movement which is then given intention and meaning through inference.