Editors' Introduction, Phenomenology of Embodied Subjectivity

Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 2012

Empathy may be understood as a particular topic within the larger discussion of the nature of intersubjectivity, i.e. discussions about how we are to understand the basic communicative relations between subjects and the importance of such interpersonal relations for our way of relating to the world as a whole. We routinely say of other persons such things as: 'she is angry'; 'he failed to understand my point', 'we are both looking for the same thing', 'we share a point of view', 'I feel your pain', 'I was upset to see Mary in pain', 'I can differentiate between what he said and what he meant', and so on. (The Cambridge Behaviour Scale gives a good series of questions that highlight various forms of empathic understanding, see Baron-Cohen and Wheelwright 2004). Our ability to apprehend, cognize or co-experience the experiences of other subjects (both human and animal) has an older label in the history of psychology: it was originally called 'sympathy' in the tradition of David Hume (Hume 1978) and Adam Smith (Smith 2002). Thus Hume writes: No quality of human nature is more remarkable, both in itself and in its consequences, than that propensity we have to sympathize with others, and to receive by communication their inclinations and sentiments, however, different from, or even contrary to our own. (Hume 1978, pp. 316-17

Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 2012

Empathy may be understood as a particular topic within the larger discussion of the nature of intersubjectivity, i.e. discussions about how we are to understand the basic communicative relations between subjects and the importance of such interpersonal relations for our way of relating to the world as a whole. We routinely say of other persons such things as: 'she is angry'; 'he failed to understand my point', 'we are both looking for the same thing', 'we share a point of view', 'I feel your pain', 'I was upset to see Mary in pain', 'I can differentiate between what he said and what he meant', and so on. (The Cambridge Behaviour Scale gives a good series of questions that highlight various forms of empathic understanding, see . Our ability to apprehend, cognize or co-experience the experiences of other subjects (both human and animal) has an older label in the history of psychology: it was originally called 'sympathy' in the tradition of David Hume and Adam Smith (Smith 2002). Thus Hume writes:

What empathy is, how it can be defined, how it works, what it is useful to, are currently some of the most pressing questions in several fields: philosophy (especially, but not only, in the philosophy of mind), sociology, psychology, psychopathology, biology, anthropology, neuroscience, artificial intelligence, just to name a few disciplines. This is due to the fact that in the last years (for twenty years at least) the study of the phenomenon of empathy was believed to be the answer to other more general questions about the issue of intersubjectivity, such as: how do we get to know and understand others? Is our cognition of others perceptual or inferential in nature? Do we get to know and understand others on the analogy of ourselvesand, in this case, is self-understanding prior to any understanding of othersor does the understanding of us and others involve the same primordial cognitive mechanism?

Starting from a neurobiological standpoint, I will propose that our capacity to understand others as intentional agents, far from being exclusively dependent upon mentalistic/linguistic abilities, be deeply grounded in the relational nature of our interactions with the world. According to this hypothesis, an implicit, prereflexive form of understanding of other individuals is based on the strong sense of identity binding us to them. We share with our conspecifics a multiplicity of states that include actions, sensations and emotions. A new conceptual tool able to capture the richness of the experiences we share with others will be introduced: the shared manifold of intersubjectivity. I will posit that it is through this shared manifold that it is possible for us to recognize other human beings as similar to us. It is just because of this shared manifold that intersubjective communication and ascription of intentionality become possible. It will be argued that the same neural structures that are involved in processing and controlling executed actions, felt sensations and emotions are also active when the same actions, sensations and emotions are to be detected in others. It therefore appears that a whole range of different 'mirror matching mechanisms' may be present in our brain. This matching mechanism, constituted by mirror neurons originally discovered and described in the domain of action, could well be a basic organizational feature of our brain, enabling our rich and diversified intersubjective experiences. This perspective is in a position to offer a global approach to the understanding of the vulnerability to major psychoses such as schizophrenia.

Handbook of Neuroscience for the Behavioral Sciences, 2009

Research on the neural bases of empathy has exploded in the past decade, potentially laying to rest a pervading and contentious debate about the nature of the phenomenon. Many studies have confirmed the existence of self-other overlap at the neural level, with the same regions activated when feeling and perceiving an affective state. However debate still continues on the extent to which this neural-level resonance underlies more subjective states such as emotional contagion, sympathy, perspective taking and helping. According to a perception-action view, neural overlap between self and other is simply an evolved, adaptive mechanism for understanding others that relies on activation of one’s own representations for action and experience. However, neural resonance is only necessary at the early stages of information processing and need not be consciously experienced. It can subsequently lead to a range of empathic states (emotional contagion, perspective taking, sympathy) depending on the context and the degree to which the observer relates to the situation at hand. This chapter outlines an organizational framework for understanding the interrelationship between neural and subjective resonance, and among various empathic phenomena through a dynamic systems view of how experiential information is processed in the brain and body.

(with Massimo Salgaro) "Gestalt Theory”, 41/2, 2019

The term empathy has become a linguistic commonplace in everyday communication as well as in interdisciplinary research. The results of the research questions, raised in the last hundred (and more) years, coming from different areas, such as aesthetics, psychology, neurosciences, literary theory, lack in fact a clear concept of empathy. Not surprisingly a recent paper has identified up to 43 distinct definitions of empathy in academic publications. By reconstructing the main research lines on empathy, our paper highlights the reasons for this conceptual inadequacy and the deficiencies in the theorization of empathy that create misleading interpretations thereof. Along the line connecting Plato’s insights on empathic experiences to the present neuroscientific experiments, a broad spectrum of issues is deployed for which “empathy” functions as an umbrella term covering a net of categorial relationships – projection, transfer, association, expression, animation, anthropomorphization, vivification, fusion, sympathy – that only partially overlap. Our paper therefore recommends that “empathy” should not be assumed as a self-evident notion, but instead preliminarily clarified in its definition every time we decide to have recourse to it.

Gestalt Theory, 2019

The term empathy has become a linguistic commonplace in everyday communication as well as in interdisciplinary research. The results of the research questions, raised in the last hundred (and more) years, coming from different areas, such as aesthetics, psychology, neurosciences and literary theory, lack in fact a clear concept of empathy. Not surprisingly, a recent paper has identified up to 43 distinct definitions of empathy in academic publications. By reconstructing the main research lines on empathy, our paper highlights the reasons for this conceptual inadequacy and the deficiencies in the theorization of empathy that create misleading interpretations thereof. Along the line connecting Plato’s insights on empathic experiences to the present neuroscientific experiments, a broad spectrum of issues is deployed for which “empathy” functions as an umbrella term covering a net of categorical relationships – projection, transfer, association, expression, animation, anthropomorphization, vivification, fusion, and sympathy – that only partially overlap. Our paper therefore recommends that “empathy” should not be assumed as a self-evident notion but instead preliminarily clarified in its definition every time we decide to have recourse to it.

This special issue targets two topics in social cognition that appear to increasingly structure the nature of interdisciplinary discourse but are themselves not very well understood. These are the notions of empathy and embodiment. Both have a history rooted in phenomenological philosophy and both have found extensive application in contemporary interdisciplinary theories of social cognition, at times to establish claims that are arguably contrary to the ones made by the phenomenologists credited with giving us these notions. But this special issue is not about defending any philosophical tradition or theoretical stance against all others. It is about understanding some central aspects of the nature of our experience of other people.