I'm herewith c&p-ing sections 3 and 4 of that Zahavi paper because they provide in a few pages an understanding of how and where Dennett, Metzinger and other reductivist/objectivist 'cognitive scientists' completely misunderstand -- and accordingly misrepresent -- the phenomenological movement in philosophy, affective neuroscience, and neurophenomenology.
"3. Phenomenology and Introspection
Let us start with the issue of introspection. Is phenomenology a kind of introspectionism? Dennett is not alone in making this claim. In his book
Being No One Metzinger has recently argued in a similar fashion and has concluded that “phenomenology is impossible” (Metzinger 2003, 83). What kind of argument does Metzinger provide? The basic argument seems to concern the epistemological difficulties connected to any first-person approach to data generation. If inconsistencies in two individual data sets should appear there is no way to settle the conflict. More specifically, Metzinger takes data to be things that are extracted from the physical world by technical measuring devices. This data-extraction involves a well-defined intersubjective 5 procedure, it takes place within a scientific community, it is open to criticism, and it constantly seeks independent means of verification. The problem with phenomenology is that first-person access to the phenomenal content of one’s own mental state does not fulfill these defining criteria for the concept of data. In fact, the very notion of first-personal data is a contradiction in terms (Metzinger 2003, 591).
But to repeat the question, is it really true that classical phenomenology is based on introspection? To answer this question, let us for once make use of the phenomenological dictum and return to the things themselves, which in this case are the actual writings of the phenomenologists. Husserl’s Logische Untersuchungen is a recognized milestone in 20th century philosophy and indisputably a work in phenomenological philosophy. In fact, it constituted what Husserl himself took to be his “breakthrough” to phenomenology. What kind of analyses does one find in this book? One finds Husserl’s famous attack on and rejection of psychologism; a defense of the irreducibility of logic and the ideality of meaning; an analysis of pictorial representations; a theory of the part-whole relation; a sophisticated account of intentionality; and an epistemological clarification of the relation between concepts and intuitions, to mention just a few of the many topics treated in the book. Is the method at work introspection, and is this a work in introspective psychology? I think it should be pretty obvious to anybody who has actually read the book that the answer is no. Should we then conclude that the book is after all not a work in phenomenology or should we rather reconsider our hasty identification of phenomenology and introspective psychology? Again, I think the answer should be obvious.
Although it would be an exaggeration to claim that Husserl’s analyses in
Logische Untersuchungen found universal approval among the subsequent generations of phenomenologists, I don’t know of any instance at all where Husserl’s position was rejected on the basis of an appeal to “better” introspective evidence. On the contrary, Husserl’s analyses gave rise to an intense discussion among phenomenological philosophers, and many of the analyses were subsequently improved and refined by thinkers like Sartre, Heidegger, Lévinas and Derrida (cf. Zahavi & Stjernfelt 2002). Compare this to Metzinger’s claim that the phenomenological method cannot provide a method for generating any growth of knowledge since there is no way one can reach intersubjective consensus on claims like “this is the purest blue anyone can perceive” vs. “no it isn’t, it has a slight green hue” (Metzinger 2003, 591). But these claims are simply not the type of claims that are to be found in works by phenomenological philosophers and to suggest so is to reveal one’s lack of familiarity with the tradition in question.
All the major figures in the phenomenological tradition have openly and unequivocally denied that they are engaged in some kind of introspective psychology and that the method they employ is a method of introspection (cf. Gurwitsch 1966, 89-106, Husserl 1984b, 201-216, Heidegger 1993, 11-17, Merleau-Ponty 1945, 70). To provide a fully exhaustive account of their reasons for this denial would necessitate a positive account of what classical phenomenology actually amounts to, and to do so in extenso falls outside the scope of this paper. However, let me try to briefly list some of the main reasons. 2
To start with, it is important to realize that classical phenomenology is not just another name for a kind of psychological self-observation; rather it must be appreciated as a special form of transcendental philosophy that seeks to reflect on the conditions of possibility of experience and cognition. 3 Phenomenology is a philosophical enterprise; it is not an empirical discipline. This doesn’t rule out, of course, that its analyses might have ramifications for and be of pertinence to an empirical study of consciousness, but this is not its primary aim. In a manuscript entitled
Phänomenologie und Psychologie from 1917, Husserl raised the following question: Why introduce a new science entitled phenomenology when there is already a well established explanatory science dealing with the psychic life of humans and animals, namely psychology. More specifically, psychology is a science of naturalized consciousness. And could it not be argued that a mere description of experience – which is supposedly all that phenomenology can offer – does not constitute a viable scientific alternative to psychology, but merely a – perhaps indispensable – descriptive preliminary to a truly scientific study of the mind (Husserl 1987, 102). As Husserl remarks, this line of thought has been so convincing that the term “phenomenological” is being used in all kinds of philosophical and psychological writings to describe a direct description of consciousness based on introspection (Husserl 1987, 103); a development that Husserl goes on to lament, since it entails a fundamental misunderstanding of the phenomenological enterprise. Thus, Husserl categorically rejects the attempt to equate the notion of phenomenological intuition with a type of inner experience or introspection (Husserl 1987, 36), and he even argues that the very suggestion that phenomenology is attempting to restitute the method of introspection (innerer Beobachtung) is preposterous and perverse (Husserl 1952, 38).
Husserl’s stance on this issue is fully shared by the other phenomenologists. Not only does Heidegger, to take one example, deny that his own analysis of the existential structures of Dasein is a psychological analysis (Heidegger 1986, 45-50), he also writes that the attempt to interpret Husserl’s 6 investigations as a kind of descriptive psychology completely fails to do justice to their transcendental character. In fact, as Heidegger adds, phenomenology will remain a book sealed with seven or more seals to any such psychological approach (Heidegger 1993, 15-16).
What is behind this categorical dismissal? There are many different reasons. One is that phenomenology is concerned with disclosing what it takes to be a non-psychological dimension of consciousness. As Husserl writes in the early lecture course
Einleitung in die Logik und Erkenntnistheorie from 1906-7:
“If consciousness ceases to be a human or some other empirical consciousness, then the word loses all psychological meaning, and ultimately one is led back to something absolute that is neither physical nor psychical being in a natural scientific sense. However, in the phenomenological perspective this is the case throughout the field of givenness. It is precisely the apparently so obvious thought, that everything given is either physical or psychical that must be abandoned” (Husserl 1984b, 242. Cf. Husserl 1966, 338). Phenomenology is certainly interested in the phenomena and in their conditions of possibility, but phenomenologists would typically argue that it would be a metaphysical fallacy to locate the phenomenal realm within the mind, and to suggest that the way to access and describe it is by turning the gaze inwards (introspicio). As Husserl already pointed out in the Logische Untersuchungen the entire facile divide between inside and outside has its origin in a naïve commonsensical metaphysics and is phenomenologically suspect and inappropriate when it comes to understanding the nature of intentionality (Husserl 1984a, 673, 708). But this divide is precisely something that the term “introspection” buys into and accepts. To speak of introspection is to (tacitly) endorse the idea that consciousness is inside the head and the world outside. The same criticism can also be found in Merleau-Ponty, who writes that “Inside and outside are inseparable. The world is wholly inside and I am wholly outside myself” (Merleau-Ponty 1945, 467 [1962, 407]),
and in Heidegger, who denies that the relation between Dasein and world can be grasped with the help of the concepts “inner” and “outer”. As he writes in
Sein und Zeit:
'In directing itself toward...and in grasping something, Dasein does not first go outside of the inner sphere in which it is initially encapsulated, but, rather, in its primary kind of being, it is always already ‘outside’ together with some being encountered in the world already discovered. Nor is any inner sphere abandoned when Dasein dwells together with a being to be known and determines its character. Rather, even in this ‘being outside’ together with its object, Dasein is ‘inside’ correctly understood; that is, it itself exists as the being-in-the-world which knows (Heidegger 1986, 62, cf. Heidegger 1999, 75).
Let us briefly return to the issue of the phenomenological method. It has frequently been argued that the whole thrust of Husserlian phenomenology – the specific aim of the so-called epoché and reduction – is to exclude the world from consideration and bracket or suspend all questions concerning the being of reality in order to allow for a narrow focus on the internal life of the mind. This is also the way Dennett interprets Husserl, but this interpretation is mistaken.
The purpose of the epoché and the reduction is not to doubt, neglect, abandon, or exclude reality from consideration, rather their aim, as Husserl repeatedly emphasizes, is to suspend or neutralize a certain dogmatic attitude towards reality, thereby allowing us to focus more narrowly and directly on reality just as it is given. In short, the epoché entails a change of attitude towards reality, and not an exclusion of reality. As Husserl makes clear, the only thing that is excluded as a result of the epoché is a certain naivety, the naivety of simply taking the world for granted, thereby ignoring the contribution of consciousness (Husserl 1989, 173). To put it differently, the epoché and the reduction do not involve an exclusive turn inward. On the contrary, they permit us to investigate reality from a new reflective attitude, namely in its significance and manifestation for consciousness (Husserl 1989, 178). Although this reflective investigation differs from a straightforward exploration of the world, it remains an investigation of reality; it is not an investigation of some otherworldly, mental, realm. Only a mistaken view of the nature of meaning and appearance would lead to such a misunderstanding. We should consequently not commit the mistake of interpreting the notion of givenness mentalistically, as if it were part of the mental inventory. “Phenomenology ain’t in the head” as Tye would say (Tye 1995, 151).
How do we go about describing the experiential difference between tasting wine and tasting water, between hearing a foghorn and seeing the full moon, or between affirming and denying that the Eiffel Tower is taller than the Empire State Building? Do we do so by severing our intentional link with the world and by turning some spectral gaze inwards? No, of course not.
We discover these differences, and we analyze them descriptively by paying attention to how worldly objects and state of affairs appear to us. The phenomenological descriptions take their point of departure in the world we live in. 4
Ultimately, we should see the field of givenness, the phenomena, as something that questions the very subject-object split, as something that stresses the co-emergence of self and world. This outlook is for 7 instance clearly articulated in the writings of Merleau-Ponty. He insists that a phenomenological description, rather than disclosing subjectivities that are inaccessible and self-sufficient, reveals continuity between intersubjective life and the world. The subject realizes itself in its presence to the world and to others – not in spite of, but precisely by way of its corporeality and historicity (Merleau-Ponty 1945, 515).
By adopting the phenomenological attitude we pay attention to the givenness of public objects (trees, planets, paintings, symphonies, numbers, states of affairs, social relations, etc.).
But we do not simply focus on the objects precisely as they are given; we also focus on the subjective side of consciousness, thereby becoming aware of our subjective accomplishments and of the intentionality that is at play in order for the objects to appear as they do. When we investigate appearing objects, we also disclose ourselves as datives of manifestation, as those to whom objects appear. The topic of the phenomenological analyses is consequently not a worldless subject, and phenomenology does not ignore the world in favor of consciousness. On the contrary, phenomenology is interested in consciousness because it is world-disclosing. Phenomenology should therefore be understood as a philosophical analysis of the different types of givenness (perceptual, imaginative, recollective etc.), and in connection with this as a reflective investigation of those structures of experience and understanding that permit different types of beings to show themselves as what they are. 5
Phenomenology is not concerned with establishing what a given individual might currently be experiencing. Phenomenology is not interested in qualia in the sense of purely individual data that are incorrigible, ineffable, and incomparable. Phenomenology is not interested in psychological processes (in contrast to behavioral processes or physical processes).
Phenomenology is interested in the very dimension of givenness or appearance and seeks to explore its essential structures and conditions of possibility. Such an investigation of the field of presence is beyond any divide between psychical interiority and physical exteriority, since it is an investigation of the dimension in which any object – be it external or internal – manifests itself (cf. Heidegger 1986, 419, Waldenfels 2000, 217). Phenomenology aims to disclose structures that are intersubjectively accessible, and its analyses are consequently open for corrections and control by any (phenomenologically tuned) subject.
It should by now be clear that phenomenology has quite different aims and concerns than introspective psychology. Couldn’t it be argued, however, that the difference in question, rather than being a difference in whether or not introspection is employed, is merely a difference in the use that the introspective results are being put to? To put it differently, couldn’t it be argued that since introspection is a method used to investigate consciousness from the first-person perspective, and given phenomenology’s renowned emphasis on such a first-person approach to consciousness, it is simply ridiculous to deny that phenomenology makes use of introspection? But
this argument simply begs the question by defining introspection in such general terms that it covers all investigations of consciousness that take the first-person perspective seriously.
4. Phenomenology and solipsism
Let me make the transition to the issue of solipsism by briefly commenting on a section from the chapter “The Phenomenal Field” in Merleau-Ponty’s
Phénoménologie de la perception. Not only does Merleau-Ponty in this chapter confirm our preceding analysis, by adding a couple of additional reasons for not conflating phenomenological analyses with introspective observations, but he also broaches an issue that is crucial to the next step of our argument, the issue concerning the relation between conscious experience and bodily behavior and its relevance for our understanding of the similarities and differences between self-experience and other-experience.
Merleau-Ponty starts out by saying that it for a long time has been customary to define the object of psychology by claiming that it is accessible to one person only, namely the bearer of the mental state in question, and that the only way to grasp this object is by means of a special kind of internal perception or introspection. However, this return to the “immediate data of consciousness” quickly turned out to face quite some challenges. Not only did it prove difficult to communicate any insights concerning this private realm to others, but the investigator himself could never be really sure about what exactly this immediate and pure experiential life amounted to, since it by definition eluded every attempt to express, grasp or describe it by means of public language and concepts (Merleau-Ponty 1945, 70).
Echoing (or rather foreshadowing) Dennett’s criticism, Merleau-Ponty then points out that phenomenology has demonstrated how hopelessly mistaken this view is.
According to the findings of phenomenology, the world of experience, the phenomenal field, is not some “inner world”, nor is the phenomenon a “state of consciousness” or a “mental fact” the experience of which requires a special act of 8 introspection. Rather, we should realize that consciousness is not something that is visible to one person only, and invisible to everybody else. Consciousness is not something exclusively inner, something cut off from the body and the surrounding world, as if the life of the mind could remain precisely the same even if it had no bodily and linguistic expressions. Gestures, expressions, and actions are more than brute external data whose psychological meaning is to be sought elsewhere, namely in some superimposed inner experience; rather the intentional behavior constitutes a whole charged with meaning. It is this meaning that is immediately given, and my own “psyche” is given to me in the same way as the “psyche” of others, namely in the form of an articulated and melodic unity of behavior (Merleau-Ponty 1945, 70-71). 6
Merleau-Ponty ends up declaring that phenomenology is distinguished in all its characteristics from introspective psychology and that the difference in question is a difference in principle.
Whereas the introspective psychologist considers consciousness as a mere sector of being, and tries to investigate this sector in the same way the physicist tries to investigate his, the phenomenologist realizes that consciousness ultimately calls for a transcendental clarification that goes beyond common sense postulates and brings us face to face with the problem concerning the constitution of the world (Merleau-Ponty 1945, 72). In other writings, Merleau-Ponty has argued that
unless self-experience is embodied and embedded, intersubjectivity will be neither possible nor comprehensible. Had subjectivity and selfhood been an exclusive first-person phenomenon, only present in the form of an immediate and unique inwardness, I would know of only one case—my own—and would never get to know any other. Not only would I lack the means of ever recognizing other bodies as embodied subjects, I would also lack the ability to recognize myself in the mirror, and more generally, I would be unable to grasp a certain intersubjectively describable body as myself. But
according to Merleau-Ponty, subjectivity is not hermetically sealed up within itself, remote from the world and inaccessible to the other. It is, above all, a relation to the world, and Merleau-Ponty accordingly writes that access to others is secured the moment that I define both others and myself as co-existing relations to the world (Merleau-Ponty 1964, 114). It is because I am not a pure disembodied interiority, but an embodied being in the world, that I am capable of encountering and understanding others who exist in the same way (Merleau-Ponty 1960, 215, 1964, 74). Thus, the standard question, “How do I find an access to the other” is mistaken. It signals that I am enclosed in my own interiority, and that I must then employ specific methods to reach the other who is outside. Such a way of framing the problem fails to recognize the nature of embodiment. To exist embodied is to exist in such a way that one exists under the gaze of the other, accessible to the other; my bodily behavior always has a public side to it. This is not to say that a focus on embodiment will eradicate the difference between self-ascription and other-ascription, between a first-person perspective and a second-person perspective. We should respect this difference, but we should also conceive of it in a manner that avoids giving rise to the mistaken view that only my own experiences are given to me and that the behavior of the other shields his experiences from me and makes their very existence hypothetical (cf. Avramides 2001, 187).
One can find a comparable view in Scheler, who has argued that we should not ignore what can be directly perceived about others and fail to acknowledge the embodied and embedded nature of self-experience. Thus, Scheler denies that our initial self-acquaintance is of a purely mental nature and that it takes place in isolation from others. But he also denies that our basic acquaintance with others is inferential in nature. In his view, there is something highly problematic about claiming that intersubjective understanding is a two-stage process of which the first stage is the perception of meaningless behavior and the second an intellectually based attribution of psychological meaning. On the contrary, in the face-to-face encounter, we are neither confronted with a mere body, nor with a hidden psyche, but with a unified whole. It is in this context that Scheler speaks of an “expressive unity” (Ausdruckseinheit). It is only subsequently, through a process of abstraction, that this unity can be divided and our interest then proceed “inwards” or “outwards” (Scheler 1973, 255).
Both Scheler and Merleau-Ponty would reject the view that our encounter with others is, first and foremost, an encounter with bodily and behavioral exteriorities devoid of any psychological properties. According to such a view, defended by behaviorists and Cartesians alike, behavior, considered in itself, is neither expressive nor meaningful. All that is given are physical qualities and their changes. Seeing a radiant expression means seeing certain characteristic distortions of the facial muscles. According to both phenomenologists, such a view fails not only to recognize the true nature of behavior, but it also presents us with a misleading perspective on the mind, suggesting, as it does, that the mind is a purely internal happening located and hidden in the head.
For both Scheler and Merleau-Ponty, affective and emotional states are not simply qualities of subjective experience, rather, they are given in expressive phenomena, i.e., they are expressed in bodily gestures and actions and they, thereby, become visible to others. As Scheler writes, 9
'For we certainly believe ourselves to be directly acquainted with another person's joy in his laughter, with his sorrow and pain in his tears, with his shame in his blushing, with his entreaty in his outstretched hands, with his love in his look of affection, with his rage in the gnashing of his teeth, with his threats in the clenching of his fist, and with the tenor of his thoughts in the sound of his words. If anyone tells me that this is not 'perception', for it cannot be so, in view of the fact that a perception is simply a 'complex of physical sensations', and that there is certainly no sensation of another person's mind nor any stimulus from such a source, I would beg him to turn aside from such questionable theories and address himself to the phenomenological facts (Scheler 1973, 254 [1954, 260]. Cf. Gurwitsch 1979, 56).'
In short, we should realize that the bodies of others differ radically from inanimate objects, and that our perception of these minded bodies is unlike our ordinary perception of objects. As Sartre has pointed out, it would be a decisive mistake to think that my ordinary encounter with the body of another is an encounter with the kind of body described by physiology. The body of another is always given to me in a situation or meaningful context that is supported by that very body (Sartre 1943, 395).
The relation between self and other is not established by way of a theoretical inference; on the contrary, we should recognize the existence of a distinctive mode of consciousness, frequently called empathy, that allows us to experience behavior as expressive of mind, that is, which allows us to access the feelings, desires, and beliefs of others in their expressive behavior.
Most phenomenologists have argued that it makes no sense to speak of an other unless the other is in some way given and accessible. That I have an actual experience of the other and do not have to do with a mere inference does not imply, however, that I can experience the other in the same way as she herself does, nor that the other’s consciousness is accessible to me in the same way as my own is. The second- (and third-) person access to psychological states differ from the first-person access, but this difference is not an imperfection or a shortcoming; rather, it is constitutional. It makes the experience in question an experience of an other, rather than a self-experience. As Husserl wrote: Had I had the same access to the consciousness of the other as I have to my own, the other would cease being an other and instead become a part of myself (Husserl 1950, 139). To put it differently, the first-personal givenness of the mind of the other is inaccessible to me, but it is exactly this inaccessibility, this limit, which I can experience, and which makes the experience in question, an experience of an other (Husserl 1950, 144). We experience the behavior of others as expressive of the mental states that transcend the behavior that expresses them.
Our experience and understanding of others are fallible. This should not cause us to conclude that we cannot understand others and that empathy is to be distrusted. Other people can certainly fake or conceal their experiences. There is, however, a decisive difference between our everyday uncertainty about exactly what others might be thinking about and the nightmare vision of the solipsist. Although we may be uncertain about the specific beliefs or intentions of others, this uncertainty does not make us question their very existence. In fact, as Merleau-Ponty pointed out, our relation to others is deeper than any specific uncertainty we might have regarding them (Merleau-Ponty 1945, 415).
Are the issue of phenomenological methodology and the issue of intersubjectivity related in any way? They certainly are, as Husserl was quick to point out. Thus, Husserl has consistently argued that my perceptual experience is an experience of intersubjectively accessible being which does not exist for me alone, but for everybody. I experience objects, events and actions as public, not as private. It is against this background that Husserl introduced his concept of transcendental intersubjectivity His idea was that objectivity is intersubjectively constituted and that a clarification of its constitution, accordingly, calls for an examination of my experience of other subjects. (Husserl 1973, 110, 378).
When it comes to the constitution of objectivity, we are faced with an issue that transcends the horizon of the individual and calls for the contribution of other subjects. Objectivity is constitutively related to a plurality of subjects and according to Husserl, the constitution of this objectivity takes place within the framework of a certain normality. For this reason, the phenomenological discussion of subjectivity, which is a discussion of the transcendental, i.e., meaning-bestowing and world-disclosing subject, turns out to be a discussion not simply of the I, but of the we. This is why, Husserl ultimately argued that the transcendental subject is only what it is within intersubjectivity and that intersubjectivity must be taken into consideration if we wish to understand what it means to be a transcendental subject (Husserl 1973, 74-5, 1950, 69, 1954, 275, 472, 1959, 129, 1962, 245- 46). Thus, it is no coincidence that Husserl at times describes his own project as a sociological transcendental philosophy (Husserl 1962, 539) and even writes that the development of phenomenology necessarily implies the step from an “‘egological’ … phenomenology into a transcendental sociological phenomenology having reference to a manifest multiplicity of conscious subjects communicating with one another” (Husserl 1981, 68). Husserl would consequently have had no problem accepting the following 10 statement by Davidson: “A community of minds is the basis of knowledge; it provides the measure of all things. It makes no sense to question the adequacy of this measure, or to seek a more ultimate standard” (Davidson 2001, 218).
There is much more to be said both about the issue of phenomenological methodology, but also about the phenomenological approach to intersubjectivity, but I hope it should by now be clear that the phenomenological take on both issues differs considerably from Dennett’s reading. . . . ."
http://cfs.ku.dk/staff/zahavi-publications/dennett.pdf
