From Intersubjectivity to Interbeing

Article: Human Consciousness: from intersubjectivity to interbeing. Evan Thompson

URL = http://www.philosophy.ucf.edu/pcsfetz1.html

on the enactive theory of consciousness

Contextual Quote

"Human consciousness is not located in the head, but is immanent in the living body and the interpersonal social world. One’s consciousness of oneself as an embodied individual embedded in the world emerges through empathic cognition of others. Consciousness is not some peculiar qualitative aspect of private mental states, nor a property of the brain inside the skull; it is a relational mode of being of the whole person embedded in the natural environment and the human social world."

- Evan Thompson [1]

Description

Evan Thompson contrasts three approaches to human consciousness. He finds that both the cognitivist and the connectionist approaches rely on a undue separation between a representational mind and the world it represents. The enactive approach, pioneered by Varela and others, on the other hand, is based on a structural coupling of the brain, the body, and its environment.

Summary

From the reading notes of Michel Bauwens, 2006:

There are three approaches to the study of the mind within cognitive science:

   - 1) cognitivist
   - 2) connectionist
   - 3) enactive

Let's summarize the differences:

In the first two models, there is no place for human experience; but for the enactive paradigm, consciousness equals being in the world, and are NOT merely 'mental states'

Cognitivist: 1950-70s

- The 'computer model of the mind'. Cognition is seen as information processing, the brain is a physical symbol system. Personal consciousness has no access to subconscious mental processes; deductive logic.

Connectionist: late seventies

- 'Mind as self-organizing neural network; interaction between lower elements lead to the emergence of higher phenomena; percepttual pattern recognition; non-linear dynamics.

Enactive: eighties

- Cognition emerges from interaction between brain, body , and environment; mind and world are not separated but a couple; the cognitive unconscious is embedded throughout the body.

Discussion

In the first two models, there is no place for human experience; but for the enactive paradigm, consciousness equals being in the world, and are NOT merely 'mental states'. Cognitism and connectionism leave unquestioned the relation between cognitive processes and the world. They are disembodied in the sense of not involving real-time interactions, assuming instead a abstract representation relation (mind represents world). Mind and world are independent of each other.

For the enactive approach, the self is embodied: next to the objective body, we have a lived body (so: two perspectives). The lived body is intertwined with the environment and the interpersonal world. There is distance between the lived body and its environment ('structural coupling'). In the same way, the brain is structurally coupled to the body. The dynamics of these three coupled systems enact the lived-body environment. The brain is NOT a conductor hidden in the head, but adaptive behaviour results from the 3-coupled interactions: " one of a group of players involved in a jazz improvisation. The role of the brain/nervous system is to shape and evoke the appropriate patterns of dynamic response. No single piece of the system can take the credit. The differentiation of the senses (fragmentation) converge in the things-in-the-world I am relating to.

We are destined for relationship. It is through the engagement of what is not me that I effect the integration of my senses and experience my own unity. The example of lived space' is given to illustrate this, thereby showing how these themes were already treated in precisely such ways by Phenomenology (Husserl, Merleau-Ponty.)

Intersubjectivity: Self and Other

Infant imitation, which can be seen one hour after birth already, proves that body schemas are already operative at birth. The infant has 'proprioceptive' awareness of her own unseen facial movements! Vision, propioception, and action are co-dependent and integrated! The schema is inter-corporeal from the start. Affect is the bridge: the perception of the other through bodily feeling is a pervasive aspect of our being.

The author discusses emotion / feeling based on Damasio, then turns to empathy: it makes possible an intersubjective field in which there is no one single zero-point of orientation (since the other is recognized as having its own center). Reiterated empathy is our ability to see our selves through others (three levels of empathy are distinguished).

More information

• More by Evan Thompson at http://individual.utoronto.ca/evant/

• Empathy and Consciousness. By Evan Thompson.