Abstract
I discuss Husserl’s account of intersubjectivity in the fifth Cartesian Meditation. I focus on the problem of perceived similarity. I argue that recent work in developmental psychology and neuroscience, concerning intermodal representation and the mirror neuron system, fails to constitute a naturalistic solution to the problem. This can be seen via a comparison between the Husserlian project on the one hand and Molyneux’s Question on the other.
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Notes
See, for example, Schutz (1970).
See, for example, Gallagher (2005a, b). Gallagher is interested in a number of issues that are not my concern here, such as whether a suitably naturalised Husserlian account presents an alternative to both theory and simulationism concerning the question of mental state attribution. Thus, my intention is not to present a critique of Gallagher's view but rather of a certain view that might be drawn from his work.
My interest is limited to the account presented by Husserl in Cartesian Meditations. I will not discuss the, somewhat different, accounts of intersubjectivity that he presents elsewhere. There are two main reasons for this. First, this paper is not an exercise in Husserl scholarship. My primary aim is not to get Husserl’s considered view right but to assess the prospects for a specific view put forward by Husserl in Cartesian Meditations. Second, the account in Cartesian Meditations has the virtues of being clear and relatively self-contained. It is thus susceptible to analysis and critique within the present limitations of space. This is not true of Husserl’s views on intersubjectivity considered as a whole.
This is controversial as the goal of Husserl’s project in the fifth meditation might be described in a number of ways. Since my concerns are not primarily exegetical, I will not defend this claim here. For an understanding of Husserl’s eidetic method as akin to conceptual analysis, see Zahavi (2003, pp.38–39). I take it that the goal of such an analysis is to provide conditions that are both necessary and sufficient for the application of the concept in question.
For a very useful discussion of Husserl’s views regarding such matters, see Mulligan (1995).
This formulation is significantly weaker than the claim that objectivity just is public, or intersubjective, agreement.
See Henrich (1989). There are, of course, significant questions to be answered concerning the precise meanings of both ‘application to experience’ and ‘legitimate’. Roughly, in the present context, I take the project to be to show that the concept alter ego is a coherent one, not that there is anything that falls under it. This is not to say that Husserl is unconcerned with the latter question. The question whether transcendental methods can provide a satisfactory answer to the quid juris goes right to the heart of the viability of transcendental philosophy.
As is well known, Husserl contradicts himself in his description of the sphere of ownness. See, for example, the discussion in Smith (2003, pp. 215–220). What I am referring to as “the sphere of ownness” is that for which Smith reserves the term “the solipsistic sphere”.
See, for example, Lee (2002).
“Here it is not a matter of uncovering a genesis going on in time, but a matter of ‘static analysis’” (Husserl 1960, Section 48).
Especially in his discussion of “primal instituting” (Husserl 1960, Section 50). It is unclear to me how Husserl’s use, in the fifth meditation, of the concept of pairing can be made consistent with Zahavi’s claim that “Husserl does not seem to advocate the thesis that the primordial level has a temporal priority compared with the intersubjective level” (Zahavi 2001, p. 27).
See, for example, Schutz (1970, pp. 63–64).
Compare Husserl, “Obviously it cannot be said that I see my eye in the mirror, for my eye, that which sees qua seeing, I do not perceive. I see something, of which I judge indirectly, by way of “empathy,” that it is identical with my eye as a thing (the one constituted by touch, for example) in the same way that I see the eye of an other.” (Husserl 1989), p. 155, n. 1.
Given the obvious fact that the congenitally blind do arrive at an intersubjective awareness, the use of the visual modality must be inessential. I shall simply assume that Husserl’s account could be rewritten in terms of other sensory modalities. Husserl suggests such a thing, for the case of auditory experience, in Husserl (1989), p. 101, n. 1.
Merleau-Ponty goes so far as to say that this disqualifies one’s body as an object of perception, “an object is an object only in so far as it can be moved away from me, and ultimately disappear from my field of vision. Its presence is such that it entails a possible absence. Now the permanence of my own body is entirely different in kind…it defies exploration and is always presented to me from the same angle” (Merleau-Ponty 1962, p. 90).
As is argued in Reynaert (2001).
This point is closely related to the claim that visually grounded self-ascriptions of bodily predicates are not immune to error through misidentification relative to the first person pronoun. On immunity to error, see Evans (1982).
See Martin (1995) for a useful discussion of bodily awareness. Bodily awareness, as understood here, incorporates both elements of the body image, characterised by Gallagher as, “a system of perceptions, attitudes, and beliefs pertaining to one’s own body” (Gallagher 2005a, p. 24), and any experiential elements that may be associated with the body schema, characterised by Gallagher as, “a system of sensory motor capacities that function without awareness or the relevant perceptual monitoring” (ibid.).
For what is essentially this objection posed to analogical accounts in general, see Scheler (2008, pp. 240–241).
See Smith (2003), p. 227.
This way of putting things recalls Merleau-Ponty: “if I wanted to render precisely the perceptual experience, I ought to say that one perceives in me, and not that I perceive” (Merleau-Ponty 1962, p. 215). The related claim that bodily awareness does not have first-personal content is argued for in Smith (2006).
This point also explains what is wrong with the suggestion that the complexities of Husserl’s account are unnecessary, a conception of intersubjectivity being available to any subject with a conception of experience and a capacity to reason with identity, negation and existential generalisation. For the question remains, how does the subject arrive at a conception of experience that is not a conception of their own experience.
The problem of perceived similarity is not the only problem faced by Husserl’s account. Another, much discussed, problem revolves around the claim that the sphere of ownness is an empty notion since experience is intersubjective through and through. One way of fleshing this thought out is that the other’s body is given as an object, thus given in adumbrations, yet the notion of a horizon, essential to something’s being so given, is itself an intersubjectively loaded notion. Thus, intersubjectivity is more fundamental than objectuality. Given this, the account in Cartesian Meditations gets things back to font or, at least, cannot tell the whole story. This line of thought is presented in Zahavi (2001, pp. 39–52). However, as Zahavi sees matters, this is not so much an objection to Husserl’s account but an objection to a misguided way of reading Husserl.
Also see Davidson (1987).
I use ‘naturalisation’ in a rather loose way. I simply assume that an account of the conditions of enjoying a certain type of experience that makes ineliminable reference to the results of empirical psychology will count as naturalistic according to some reasonable conception.
See Meltzoff and Moore (1977).
See, for example, Rizzolatti et al. (2001).
To the best of my knowledge, there is no evidence either for or against the claim that observed tongue protrusion activates the human mirror system either in monkeys or in humans.
A useful discussion of scepticism about strong claims concerning neonatal imitation is Welsh (2006).
For example, Gallagher and Meltzoff (1996).
Although some of the detail of Husserl’s account may have to be rejected, for example the discussion of “primal instituting” (Husserl 1960, Section 50). In any case, there is some scepticism as to whether the empirical evidence is sufficient to warrant an innate intersubjectivity. See, for example, Gergely (2004).
This problem cannot be resolved by appealing to a static conception of the Husserlian account, as was the case with the concern over innateness. The problem here is not one of the temporal priority of the states appealed to but of their content. As such, the problem applies to static and genetic analyses alike.
Jacob (2008) is sceptical about this claim. However, Jacob’s own view that mirror neuron activity presupposes that the subject has a prior representation of the other’s intention would not offer any way out of the present difficulty. Also see Borg (2004) for a useful corrective to implausibly strong readings of the claim that the mirror system represents the target’s intentions.
Umiltà et al. (2001). Rizzolatti et al. (2001, p. 667) distinguish between the intention and the meaning of an action, claiming that the evidence only shows the latter is represented. However, their understanding of the meaning of an action, of ‘what the agent did’, is clearly an understanding of it as intentional. Muthukumaraswamy et al. (2004) report that in humans, although behaviourally equivalent but non-object-involving actions do activate the mirror system, they do so less effectively than their object-involving counterparts. Again, this suggests that the mirror neuron system is responsive to the intention that guides an action.
Not quite. It might be suggested that the mirror system distinguishes between bodily behaviours not in virtue of their guiding intentions but in virtue of their ‘goals’ where grasping something as a goal need not involve a grasp of it as something engaged in by a subject. A goal might be thought of as behaviour in line with the behaving object’s characteristic function. The hand has many functions, one of which is to grasp objects, none of which is to grasp thin air. Thus, the cited evidence might be explained by claiming that the mirror system is sensitive to a bodily activity’s goal and can therefore be appealed to from within the restrictions of the sphere of ownness. This is an interesting possibility which might be thought to gain some support from evidence that suggests that robotic actions can stimulate the mirror system (Oberman et al. 2007). However, it is possible that this effect is the result of the observers’ anthropomorphising of the robot. The suggestion is also in at least some tension with evidence to the effect that the mirror system is activated by the intentional, but non-goal-directed, tracing of geometrical figures in the air (Fadiga et al. 1995).
See Jones (2005) for a trenchant criticism of just this kind of speculation.
For such a claim, see Keysers and Perrett (2004).
There is, of course, a great deal of further evidence for ‘intermodal perception’. See, for example Schmuckler and Fairhall’s (2001) experiments using point light displays and Streri and Gentaz’s (2003) experiments concerning the perception of shape. However, in the former, the infants tested were 5 months, easily old enough for learned associations to have been established; in the latter, the perceptions of shape were argued to be intermodal between vision and touch rather than vision and proprioception. Of course, touch and proprioception are not unrelated, and it may be that some of this research turns out to be relevant to the current concerns. I will not pursue that line of thought here, however.
Molyneux’s question is quoted in Locke (1975), Book II, Chapter 9, Section 8.
Although Evans puts things in terms of the derivation of concepts from experience, this is not essential. The point is that we are concerned with observational concepts—concepts that are applicable purely on the basis on the relevant experience.
For a useful account of early empirical work, see Morgan (1977, Chapter 2).
Such a position would be, in some ways, analogous to the view of Molyneux’s question taken by Campbell, according to which there is no “difference between visual and tactual experience of shape itself” (Campbell 1995, p. 301). Campbell’s view is motivated by his “radical externalism”. This is the view that the phenomenal character of an experience of shape is determined by the shape property of the experienced object. Since it is the same property experienced via both sight and touch, the experience of shape in these modalities share a single phenomenal character. The present suggestion concerning the experience of bodily movements need not, however, be based upon such an externalist account of phenomenal character. In fact, one might think that such a claim would be implausible in the current context since mirror neuron activity is selective for certain types of bodily behaviour only, and it would be surprising if externalism were true of the visual/proprioceptive experiences of intentional action but not of experiences of the bodily behaviours ‘directed towards’ absent objects.
Cf. Campbell, on his radical externalist account of shape properties, writes that “insofar as we are externalist about the character of shape perception, then there is nothing in the character of experience itself to ground a doubt as to whether it is the same properties that are being perceived through vision as through touch” (Campbell 1995, p. 303).
See Loar (1995, p. 320).
For some relevant and interesting results concerning dance, see Cross et al. (2006).
See Loar (1995, p. 324, fn. 1).
I leave it open as to whether such an account of concepts of bodily behaviours must include some a priori element. An answer to this question awaits an adequate account of the relation between observational concepts and a priori entitlement.
I began working on this material as a research fellow with the AHRC Transcendental Philosophy and Naturalism project, based at the University of Essex. Essex was an excellent place to think about transcendental intersubjectivity, and I profited from many fruitful discussions with a number of people there. Thanks also to audiences in both Manchester and London. Special thanks to Sebastian Gardner, Anil Gomes, Wayne Martin, Joseph Schear, Barry Smith, Ernie Sosa, Bob Stern, Ann Whittle and two anonymous referees for Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences. Finally, a great debt of thanks is owed to Mark Sacks, whose combination of sharp criticism and warm encouragement is much missed.
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Smith, J. Can transcendental intersubjectivity be naturalised?. Phenom Cogn Sci 10, 91–111 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-009-9149-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-009-9149-z