1.1       Empathy

One aspect of concrete intersubjectivity is empathy (Thompson 2001, p.16). Broadly defined, empathy arises out of the intentional processes of consciousness. It is the capacity to act intentionally to gain understanding of another’s experience of their lived body, feelings and emotions. “As a unique kind of intentional act, empathy is directed toward, and thereby has as its intentional correlate, the experience of another person” (Thompson 2005 p.263).

Founded on sense perception, empathy is more than the sum of perception and inference; it involves directly experiencing the other as an expressive intentional being. The task of the phenomenologist is to “analyze the modes or ways in which the other is disclosed as another subjectivity, as well as the intentional structures of consciousness that make this disclosure possible” (Thompson 2007, forthcoming p.570). The active process of empathising with the other “generates a state or situation in oneself that is more applicable to the other’s state or situation than to one’s own prior state or situation” (Thompson 2005 p.264). This is the experience of “feeling led by an experience that is not one’s own, but that is given in one’s experience of another’s expressive bodily presence” (Thompson 2007, forthcoming p.572). Empathy is a ‘self-displacing’ or ‘self-othering’ act (Thompson 2001, p.20).

According to Husserl, consciousness is implicitly open intersubjectively (Thompson 2007, forthcoming p.565). The co-intention or appresenting function of perception, whereby one intends the presence of, for instance, the hidden profiles of objects, provides a demonstration of open intersubjectivity and reflects the role of open intersubjectivity in the formulation of objectivity. The very concept ‘object’ implies a plurality of subjects (Thompson 2007, forthcoming p.566).

The point is rather that the intentional structure of perception discloses objects as transcending one’s individual consciousness of them in such a way as to imply their presence to and perceptibility by other possible subjects. In this way, the intentionality of consciousness is intersubjectively open, and incompatible with any solipsism that would deny the possibility in principle of a plurality of subjects who view the same world as I do. (Thompson 2007, forthcoming p.567)

This a priori openness to the other also underpins the structure of subjectivity (Thompson 2007, forthcoming p.568). In this way, “the self and other enact each other reciprocally through empathy” (Thompson 2007, forthcoming p.565). Thompson provides an evaluation of the similarities between cognitive science, phenomenology and Buddhism with respect to empathy (Thompson 2005 pp.270-275). Buddhism provides a role similar to phenomenology for the active empathic imagination in the decentering of the ego and the understanding of the relation between ‘self’ and ‘other’ (Thompson 2005 p.271). According to Buddhism, “‘self’ and ‘other’ have no independent existence and intrinsic identity but exist only on the basis of conceptual or mental imputation” (Thompson 2005 p.270). Buddhist practices such as mindful awareness, and the cultivation of compassion, illustrate the fact that empathy involves a developmental process (de Waal, Thompson, and Proctor 2005, p.43). Thompson discusses cases where empathy is lacking and encourages the acknowledgement of empathy as a cultivated skill (de Waal, Thompson, and Proctor 2005pp.48-51).

First-person phenomenology considers the concrete practice of empathy to be a central requirement to any science of consciousness. In order to study consciousness, it is necessary to recognise a subject as conscious, which requires a sense of empathy with that subject. Likewise, interpreting a subject’s reported experiences and asking a subject to follow a procedure and report on their experiences assume empathy. “One could even argue that empathy is in certain ways constitutive of consciousness” (de Waal, Thompson, and Proctor 2005, p.44). To achieve an understanding of the role of empathy in consciousness research requires that Husserl’s concept of empathy be refined and incorporated into the experimental context and, conversely, that empathy be considered key to scientific praxis (Depraz and Cosmelli 2003, p.166). As a ‘working experience’, this requires an empathy that is grounded in the lived body.

Empathy involves a spectrum of states (Thompson 2005, p.265). First-person research distinguishes four particular strands within this spectrum (Depraz 2001, pp.172-4; Thompson 2007, forthcoming, pp.579-592). Through prereflective perception and action, empathy exists firstly as affective resonance and sensorimotor coupling (Thompson 2007, forthcoming pp.579-82). This ‘sensual empathy’ is not initiated voluntarily but forms a foundation for the later forms of empathy (Thompson 2005 p.265). Passive by nature, sensorimotor coupling is grounded in the holistic experience of the lived body of both participants and is based on their resemblance. “Coupling is an associative process through which my lived body and your lived body experience a similar functioning of our tactile, auditory, visual, proprioceptive body-style, of our embodied behaviour in the world, and of our affective and active kinaesthetic habits and acts” (Depraz and Cosmelli 2003p.172). Thompson discusses the evidence for coupling from cognitive science and neurology (Thompson 2007, forthcoming pp.579-82). Recent findings with respect to mirror neurons (Gallese 2001) point towards a biological substrate for this initial form of empathy. Affective resonance occurs when individuals affect each other’s emotional state or when an individual attempts to affect the emotional state of another (Thompson 2007, forthcoming p.582).

The second form of empathy, imaginative transposition, or cognitive empathy, requires the active cognitive act of putting oneself in another’s position (Thompson 2007, forthcoming p.582). Cognitive empathy requires the imaginative act of spatial transposition, a movement that allows the individual to take the mental perspective of the other (Thompson 2005 p.266). Evidence for this kind of empathy is found in developmental psychology (Thompson 2007, forthcoming p.584-5). When this second form of empathy is ‘reiterated’, it becomes the mutual understanding of ‘self’ and ‘other’. This third form of empathy requires the ability to see oneself as an ‘other’, from the perspective of the ‘other’. Thompson refers to this as perspective-taking (de Waal, Thompson, and Proctor 2005, p.39). “Understanding you as an other to me and me as an other to you” requires more than just the first-person perspective and facilitates linguistic interpretation (Thompson 2005 p.267). Evidence for the emergence of this intersubjective perspective appears in infants at a very early age (Thompson 2007, forthcoming p.586-9). The reiteration of empathy required here creates an ambiguity with respect to the body. Although one experiences one’s body from the first-person proprioceptive perspective one is also aware that the other perceives my body from the third-person exteroceptive perspective (Thompson 2007, forthcoming p.589). One cannot escape one’s body as the ‘zero-point’ of reference for the world one inhabits. One perceives this world always through one’s lived body. It is through recognising that one’s body is an object for the ‘other’ that one comes to understand it as an object within an intersubjective world (Thompson 2005 p.268).

Fourthly, empathy is involved in the moral perception of the ‘other’ “as a being who deserves concern and respect” (Thompson 2007, forthcoming p.590). The first and second forms of empathy, involving cognitive and emotional capacity, form the basis for such moral sentiment (Thompson 2007, forthcoming p.591). All of these forms of empathy are intertwined through the lived body and language.

You imagine yourself in my place on the basis of the expressive similarity and spontaneous coupling of our lived bodies. This experience of yours contributes to the constitution of me for myself, for I experience myself as an intersubjective being by empathically imagining your empathic experience of me. Conversely, I imagine myself in your place, and this experience of mine contributes to the constitution of you for yourself. As we communicate in language and gesture, we interpret and understand each other dialogically. This dialogical dynamic is not a linear or additive combination of two pre-existing, skull-bound minds. It emerges from and reciprocally shapes the nonlinear coupling of oneself and another in perception and action, emotion and imagination, and gesture and speech. In this way, self and other bring forth each other reciprocally through empathy. (Thompson 2007, forthcoming pp.591-2)

This position stresses the need to make all four forms of empathy central to the working experience (Depraz and Cosmelli 2003, p.171). Bringing together this phenomenological basis to empathy and Buddhist understandings of empathy and intersubjectivity the ‘hard problem’ of consciousness or the ‘explanatory gap’ can be viewed very differently. “The problem cannot be ‘how do we go from mind-independent nature to subjectivity and consciousness?’ because, to use the language of yet another philosophical tradition, that of Madhyamika Buddhism, natural objects and properties are not intrinsically identifiable (svalaksana); they are identifiable only in relation to the ‘conceptual implications’ of intersubjective experience” (Thompson 2001, pp.20-21). There is no nature external to consciousness because it is only through consciousness that nature is perceived as an object.

Watt (2005) investigates the psychological, cognitive and neurobiological models and definitions of empathy and the relationship between empathy, emotion and social bonds and proposes a model of gated resonance induction of another’s distress for the empathic response.

Toombs (2001) stresses the role of empathy in clinical practice, suggesting that illness as a lived experience needs to be understood on the basis of empathy (Toombs 2001 p.248). It is through acquaintance with our own body that we form the basis for imagining and empathising with the body experience of another. In the case of a physician, what this requires is both the learning and unlearning of bodily normality (Toombs 2001p.254). Toombs comments: “It is not just that medical training results in the ‘unlearning of bodily normality’, but that, for the most part, we remain remarkably unattuned to our bodies (Toombs 2001p.254). In contrast, practices such as mindfulness meditation can be used to enhance an individual’s conscious embodiment (Toombs 2001pp.254-5). The specific skills that Toombs suggests are required to achieve this are empathic listening and a practiced ability to exercise imagination with respect to the lived experience of illness (Toombs 2001pp.255-288). For the present research, understanding the role of empathy acts as a means by which the researcher may be self-reflective.