Shaun Gallagher

Hidden away in the remote corners of one of the largest parts of Husserl's Kˆrper, if we can use that word to translate Corpus, there is ein Leib , an animate body of text that reverberates not only with some of Husserl's other little known texts, but also with some of the most recent discoveries in neuroscience. These texts suggest a theory of intersubjectivity, or what psychologists term social cognition. Let me start with a proviso: whether Husserl ever fully settled on this theory is completely open to interpretation. Accordingly, I will leave it to Husserlian scholars to determine whether this is a position that Husserl actually or ultimately embraces, either in the years 1906 through 1913 when he writes some of these texts, or later when he writes other related texts. The texts in question are from Husserl's early years and they are rather tentative and reactive in nature, since he was just beginning to think of these problems, and he was responding to proposals put forward by Lipps and Meinung. That's also why I claim that these texts suggest a theory of social cognition rather than anything like a pure phenomenology of intersubjectivity. Husserl was trying to work out ways to counter the theories of Lipps and Meinung, and his reflections, I think, should count as phenomenologically informed theory.

In recent years there has been some hard-won but still limited agreement that phenomenology may be of central importance to the cognitive sciences. This realization comes in the wake of dismissive gestures made by philosophers of mind like Dennett (1991), who mistakenly associates phenomenological method with the worst forms of introspection. For very different reasons, resistance can also be found on the phenomenological side of this issue. There are many thinkers well versed in the Husserlian tradition who do not even want to consider the usefulness of phenomenology for enlightening the sciences of the mind. For them cognitive science is simply too computational or too reductionistic to be seriously considered as capable of explaining experience or consciousness. [1] This is surprising in light of the fact that a highly respected phenomenologist like Merleau-Ponty was integrating phenomenological analyses with considerations drawn from the empirical sciences of psychology and neurology long before cognitive science was constructed as a framework to include just those aspects of psychology and neurology that focus on cognitive experience. Merleau-Ponty aside, philosophers on both sides of this issue have only gradually come to acknowledge the possibility that phenomenology may be directly relevant for a scientific understanding of cognition. Sometimes the empirical scientists themselves have arrived at this conclusion even before, and in spite of the philosophers. Francisco Varela's work on neurophenomenology provides an important example (Varela, 1996). Even the hardest of hard scientists have made peace offerings to phenomenology. Recently, for example, the neuroscientist Jean-Pierre Changeux declares that his purpose "is not to go to war against phenomenology; to the contrary, [he wants] to see what constructive contribution it can make to our knowledge of the psyche, acting in concert with the neurosciences" (Changeux and Ricoeur, 2000, p. 85)

I argue against epiphenomenalist views that consciousness is part of and has an effect on the system in which action is generated. Those who deny free will based on recent results in neuroscience are looking for it at the wrong level of explanation. Free will is not about subpersonal neuronal processes, muscular activation, or basic bodily movements, but about contextualized actions in a system that is larger than many contemporary philosophers of mind, psychologists, and neuroscientists consider.

I clarify recently developed phenomenological approaches to social cognition. These are approaches that, drawing on developmental science, social neuroscience, and dynamic systems theory, emphasize the involvement of embodied and enactive processes together with communicative and narrative practices in contexts of intersubjective understanding. I review some of the evidence that supports these approaches. I consider a variety of criticisms leveled against them, and defend the role of phenomenology in the explanation of social cognition. Finally, I show how these phenomenological approaches can solve the “starting problem” of social cognition.

In the past dozen years a number of theoretical models of schizophrenic symptoms have been proposed, often inspired by advances in the cognitive sciences, and especially cognitive neuroscience. Perhaps the most widely cited and influential of these is the neurocognitive model proposed by Christopher Frith (1992). Frith's influence reaches into psychiatry, neuroscience, and even philosophy. The philosopher John Campbell (1999a), for example, has called Frith's model the most parsimonious explanation of how self-ascriptions of thoughts are subject to errors of identification. "On reflection, it also seems that this is not just one possible theory; it is the simplest theory which has any prospect of explaining the sense of agency, and we ought to work from it, introducing complications only as necessary" (1999a, p. 612). Not everyone agrees. In their recent analysis of alien voices and inserted thoughts in schizophrenia, Stephens and Graham (2000) offer a critique of Frith. Their criticism, however, although serious, is neither deep nor extensive. They outline three points. First, Frith fails to provide an adequate account of why a subject who experiences thought insertion would misattribute that thought to some other agent. Second, Frith does not clarify the distinction between thought insertion and thought influence. And third, Frith fails to explain how a subject can claim both that he is thinking the thought and that the thought is someone else's thought (Stephens and Graham..

Abstract: This article poses a number of questions to Richard Shusterman concerning his concepts of somaesthetics and body consciousness in his book Body Consciousness: A Philosophy of Mindfulness and Somaesthetics. How do the concepts relate to the kind of forgetfulness of the body that can happen in expert performance? What is the nature of somatic reflection, and how is it different from pre-reflective awareness of the body? The article suggests that our immersed involvement and overt orientation toward things, and toward other people that concern us, involve bodily practices characterized by a performative forgetting of the body. Depending on the nature of the way we become aware of (or practice awareness of) the body, performance may be improved or disrupted

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 539 ls There a Measure on Earth? Foundations for a Nonmetaphysical Ethics. By WERNER MARX. Trans. Thomas J. Nenon and Reginald Lilly. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987. Pp. 172. (Hardcover.) (Originally published as Gibt es au/ Erden ein Mass? Grundbestimmungen einer nichtmetaphysischen Ethik. Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1983.) Is there a non-metaphysical earthly measure for responsible action? Marx takes his question from Holderlin and directs it at Heidegger, in whom Marx finds no explicit answer. It is not the case that Heidegger simply fails to ask or answer this question, but rather that the corpus of Heidegger's later work itself motivates the question and leaves us searching for the path to an answer which must, on Heideggerian principles, differ from the one embraced by Holderlin, Schelling, and the metaphysical tradition in general. Marx explores.the various possibilities offered in Heidegger's texts but fails to. find a definite answer with respect to a measure for responsible action. In his concise interpretation Marx is led in one inevitable direction--4:owards the concept of death. How does death qualify as a measure for action? Before he addresses this question Marx attempts to understand 1the concept of measure, which, he contends, can be viewed as either a metaphysical or a nonmetaphysical concept. He sets out the metaphysical concept of measure on the basis of his reading of Schelling. Schelling's onto-theological concept of measure is characterized as normative, transcendent, immanently powerful, obligatory, self-same, manifest and univocal (20). This conception is then taken to represent the traditional metaphysical position. Here a number of questions could be raised regarding what Marx himself calls the "not completely satisfactory route" of his own analysis (17). One could certainly agree with his beginning assumption, "ithat our contemporary understanding of measure still contains certain residual traditional meanings" (17). But the stronger and genuinely operative assumption in Marx's analysis is more questionable. Why does Schelling's conception stand as.the representative of an entire metaphysical tradition? Although Schelling's conception of measure nicely facilitates Marx's projecl: vis-a-vis Heidegger, the reader might remain unconvinced that the full metaphysical conception of measure is reflected therein. Consider, for example, Marx's contention ithat 1the traditional measure is univocal and therefore leaves no room for ambiguity (42). On this basis he asserts that we cannot take Heidegger's notion of "the fourfold," which involves an "inner mobility " of play, as a.traditional measure. The ambiguity and "basic 540 BOOK REVIEWS instability inherent in playing and mirroring is irreconcilable with the traditional meaning of a measure" (42). By avoiding the more extensive analysis to which he makes reference, Marx neatly steps around an extremely important problematic involved in the concepts of ambi· guity and univocity. The following question indicates this problem in the simplest way: Does univocity belong to the measure itself or to our perception or predication of the measure? We might say, for example,,that there is no ambiguity in God, but that there is a high degree of ambiguity involved in our perception or predication of God. Certainly in the tradition, whether we take Arisotle's spoudaios, or God's eternal law, or Christian love in the model of Christ as our measure, we do not escape the ambiguity of our own finite interpretations. Thus Aristotle's caution about.the nature of ethics (N. Ethics 1094bl2-15), Aquinas's qualification about knowing the natural law with respect to details (ST 94,, 4), or Kierkegaard's acknowledgment of the paradox of Christ. This problematic is also to be found in Heidegger's writings where he indicates a play of concealedness-unconcealedness involved in Being or "the fourfold," and thus an ambiguity in the measure itself. But would Heidegger say that this concealing-unconcealing play of Being is something that happens in itself, outside of language, or independent· ly of the one who is looking after Being? (See Marx's discussion, 9192, 123). The difference between Heidegger and the tradition on this point is.this: in the tradition the " location " of ambiguity is unambiguous ; it is found in human perception, language, and reason, hut not in the measure itself. In Heidegger, ·the location...

We argue that progress in our scientific understanding of the `social mind' is hampered by a number of unfounded assumptions. We single out the widely shared assumption that social behavior depends solely on the capacities of an individual agent. In contrast, both developmental and phenomenological studies suggest that the personal-level capacity for detached `social cognition' (conceived as a process of theorizing about and/or simulating another mind) is a secondary achievement that is dependent on more immediate processes of embodied social interaction. We draw on the enactive approach to cognitive science to further clarify this strong notion of `social interaction' in theoretical terms. In addition, we indicate how this interaction theory (IT) could eventually be formalized with the help of a dynamical systems perspective on the interaction process, especially by making use of evolutionary robotics modeling. We conclude that bringing together the methods and insights of developmental, phenomenological, enactive and dynamical approaches to social interaction can provide a promising framework for future research. Keywords: theory of mind; cognitive science; phenomenology; embodied cognition; dynamical systems theory; enactive approach; social cognition; interaction theory; evolutionary robotics

The conception of paralogy, which Jean-Francois Lyotard develops in The Postmodern Condition, motivates a number of questions concerning justice and the moral life. In this paper I suggest that Lyotard's account fails to provide an adequate answer to these questions, and that a more satisfactory account of justice in paralogy can be developed by exploring the concept of phronesis. John Caputo's "ethics of dissemination," in some respects, leads us in this direction. Although both theorists attempt to develop their accounts in terms of the concept of phronesis, Lyotard reduces phronesis to cleverness, while Caputo elevates it to what he calls "meta-phronesis," a conception of how we are meant to cope under conditions of postmodern paralogy. Caputo's analysis of meta-phronesis, however, is carried out within the framework of a critique of the traditional concept of phronesis. To show how Caputo's account might lend itself to a fuller conception of phronesis, one which is appropriate to a postmodern hermeneutics, I raise some questions about the radical definition of the paralogical situation offered by both Lyotard and Caputo, Caputo's critique of phronesis, and his characterization of meta-phronesis

Is it possible to say that there is no real self if we take a non-Cartesian view of the body? Is it possible to say that an organism can engage in pragmatic action and intersubjective interaction and that the self generated in such activity is not real? This depends on how we define the concept "real". By taking a close look at embodied action, and at Metzinger's concept of embodiment, I want to argue that, on a non-Cartesian concept of reality, the self should be considered something real, and not simply an illusion

In a New York Times article last month, entitled Cells that read minds, the neuroscience reporter, Sandra Blakeslee (January 10, 2006) provided a list of all the things that mirror neurons can explain. As we know, mirror neurons, discovered by Rizzolattis group in Parma, are neurons that are activated when we engage in action, and when we perceive intentional movement in another person. According to Blakeslee and the scientists she interviewed, mirror neurons explain not only how we are capable of understanding another persons actions, but also language, empathy, how children learn, why people respond to certain types of sports, dance, music and art, why watching media violence may be harmful and why many men like pornography. Let me set aside the controversial questions about whether mirror neurons can explain all of these things, and accept that mirror neurons are clearly smart little cells. But let me ask whether Blakeslee and her scientists are expressing things in the right way.

Que signifie le fait d’avoir le statut de personne morale, c’est-à-dire d’avoir la capacité de responsabilité morale? Dans un important essai sur la question, Dennett a proposé six conditions qui définissent ce concept. Premièrement, l’entité à laquelle nous attribuerions le statut de personne morale doit être douée de rationalité. Deuxièmement, elle doit être capable d’adopter la position intentionnelle — c’est-à-dire qu’elle doit être capable d’attribuer des intentions aux autres. Troisièmement, elle doit pouvoir être l’objet d’une certaine attitude. Quatrièmement, elle doit être capable de réciprocité de manière à pouvoir répondre à cette attitude. Cinquièmement, elle doit être capable de communiquer avec les autres. Les troisième, quatrième et cinquième conditions, de façon explicite et significative, impliquent des dimensions sociales, bien que, pour Dennett, la nature précise de ces dimensions sociales demeure une question encore ouverte. Enfin, ces cinq premières conditions sont nécessaires pour la sixième : l’entité doit être capable de conscience de soi. La conscience de soi est comprise ici comme étant un processus mental d’un ordre supérieur, dont, ainsi que le suggèrent Dennett et d’autres, les jeunes enfants sont incapables. Bien plus, dans une variété d’autres contextes, Dennett.

On the phenomenological view, a minimal form of self-consciousness is a constant structural feature of conscious experience. Experience happens for the experiencing subject in an immediate way and as part of this immediacy, it is implicitly marked as my experience. For the phenomenologists, this immediate and first-personal givenness of experiential phenomena must be accounted for in terms of a pre-reflective self-consciousness. In the most basic sense of the term, selfconsciousness is not something that comes about the moment one attentively inspects or reflectively introspects one's experiences, or in the instant of self-recognition of one's image in the mirror, or in the proper use of the first-person pronoun, or in the construction of a self-narrative. Rather, these different kinds of self-consciousness are to be distinguished from the pre-reflective self-consciousness which is present whenever I am living through or undergoing an experience, i.e., whenever I am consciously perceiving the world, whenever I am thinking an occurrent thought, whenever I am feeling sad or happy, thirsty or in pain, and so forth

I review the problem of how to define consciousness. I suggest that rather than continuing that debate, we should turn to phenomenological description of experience to discover the common aspects of consciousness. In this way we can say that consciousness is characterized by intentionality, phenomenality, and non-reflective self-awareness. I explore this last characteristic in detail and I argue against higher-order representational theories of consciousness, with reference to blindsight and motor control processes

I examine several aspects of the experience of time in depression and in the experience of different emotions. Both phenomenological and experimental studies show that depressed subjects have a slowed experience of time flow and tend to overestimate time spans. In comparison to patients in control conditions, depressed patients tend to be preoccupied with past events, and less focused on present and future events. Recent empirical findings in studies of emotion perception show different degrees of over- or underestimation of time in perception of faces showing different emotions compared with neutral faces. Clinical phenomenology predicts that the effects on time estimation would not be additive if these tests were conducted with depressed subjects