Episode 146 - Togetherness with Dan Zahavi

Transcript

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David: Hello and welcome to Overthink.

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Ellie: The podcast where your two favorite philosophy professors together investigate the human condition.

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David: I'm Dr. David Pena Guzman.

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Ellie: And I'm Dr. Ellie Anderson. David, you and I have been doing the show together for five years now, which is wild to think about. And I wanna start this episode on togetherness by reflecting a little bit on some of our experiences of togetherness doing the show.

We started recording remotely, as many of our listeners probably already know. And for the bulk of our time together, we have recorded remotely. We had a couple of in-person recording sessions over the years, but by and large, because you live in San Francisco and I live in LA, it's made sense for us to record separately.

We've recently changed that in part because we wanted to bring together the video stream of our podcast that is mainly living on YouTube and now also on Substack with our audio podcast. Like our audio podcast is core to who we are, but we were like, Hey, we could also record in person and try it on video, and then if people wanna watch it, they can do it.

Definitely that's like very much a trend in podcasting these days. And so I'm not trying to front like that came out of nowhere, but we thought it might be helpful because otherwise we were recording separate videos for YouTube and separate videos for our podcast. So anyway, as many of you already know, we started recording on video this fall and that has meant that suddenly, David, we are recording almost all of our episodes in person.

That's a very different kind of togetherness than recording remotely. Although we are, I should say, recording remotely right now because as a guest based episode, we usually do those still remotely. You're in Madrid right now. What has your experience been of recording remotely versus in person? What's the difference in togetherness?

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David: Okay. So I think one important difference that I've noticed is just our dynamic over the course of recording, because when you are together in the same space, you have a lot more access to reading body language, to reading affect in a way that's just not the same with a flat screen, which is what's happening now, for example.

You know, and maybe if we were literally together, in person at this moment you could pinch me under the table or like give me a little bump. But there

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Ellie: You should have pinched me under the table a while ago 'cause I was really yapping.

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David: No, but I think, you know, this is an argument that a lot of people have made about the difference between in person and virtual communication. And that is that you do flatten a lot of dimensions of the interest, objective experience from linguistic components, , all the way to bodily communication.

And so for me, it's been really nice actually to go back to in-person recording because I am more present in the recording and in the discussion. Something that I think you can recreate of course in spaces like this, but not to the same degree. How would you describe the differences between those two?

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Ellie: I think the differences are actually less stark than I perhaps would've imagined because I do think that there is still so much togetherness that we can experience remotely, especially when video is involved, but even just when audio is involved. But I would say, the main difference has to do with a kind of absence of distraction.

It is easy for us, I think, when we're online to maybe have another screen open occasionally, you know, like if we get an email ping or something like that, it can be easy to get distracted. Whereas when we're in person there's really no chance of that. And so I would say it's the absence of distractibility.

That said, I think, you know, so many of our viewers and listeners, I would say, like all of us who lived through the pandemic have experienced really starkly the differences between in-person and remote communication and just the proliferation of video conferencing technology has fundamentally changed the way that we live now, you know, years after the first quarantine.

And so I have some friends, for instance, who prefer meetings online, even when people are in the same city to meetings in person. And I have some questions about sort of why that might be and what the benefits and drawbacks of that are. But I think for me, the difference between the kind of togetherness that we experience in person and in these video conferencing technologies is just way less stark than the differences between synchronous and asynchronous communication, especially when that asynchronous communication lacks video and or voice.

And so one thing I was thinking about a little bit in preparation for this episode on Togetherness is this book by Sherry Turkle called Alone Together. Turkle is a really well-known researcher on recent technologies, and she's concerned about the rise of loneliness when we live so much of our lives online, when we're interfacing with robots and other forms of technologically mediated communication.

Turkle's real concern in this book, alone together, is that we might think that we're more connected than ever, but we're actually more and more disconnected than ever. And I'm curious what you think about the way that our asynchronous communication, or actually often the way that as so many have remarked on, it's increasingly less clear to us when we're communicating with a person versus when we're communicating with a bot what that might mean for our sense of togetherness.

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David: Yeah, no, I think the a mbiguity of who our interlocutor is has become a real problem, especially in the age of generative AI because many of us recognize, or at least feel a difference between and talking to a real person and talking to a large language model. And we feel somewhat cheated when we realized that, oh, this whole time we were talking to an AI, 'cause we suddenly get the sense that the norms, the social norms that attend to language were not in place this whole time.

For example, like I had to call my phone provider a little while ago and I didn't realize I was talking to a bot until like three minutes in. And it was a kind of sense of. I've wasted time thinking that this was heading in a particular direction when it's no longer the case. But I think another factor here is just the temporality of the call and the response.

So when you are talking to somebody at the same time, synchronously, you are entitled to expect a response and to be able to modulate the response of other people based on the sense of urgency of your query. So if I tell you, Ellie, I need something from you right away, I sort of like incur your attention and direct it towards me.

Whereas with asynchronous interactions, you can't do that. And so you can't force a response to something urgent and you're just waiting open-endedly to the next time the other person decides to connect and so I think the temporality of me saying something and then waiting for the response gets really deformed in asynchronous spaces.

And it's something that I think a lot of us who are in education felt very intensely, and it led us to a kind of technological despair during the pandemic, especially when teaching asynchronous courses where it's like, I don't know if there is anybody on the other side of this interaction, because it might be that they respond in five minutes, or it might be that they respond in three days.

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Ellie: Yeah, and of course that kind of ambiguity around whether or not we should expect a response at what time and so on and so forth is made possible by technologies that increase our capacity for togetherness. But I think Turkle's point also, and what you're drawing attention to as well, is the fact that these technologies in some ways, by increasing our capacity for togetherness, also increase our capacity for aloneness, as well as proliferating uncertainties and ambiguities around what our expectations of each other should be.

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David: No, I think that's right and a number of people have also talked about. degree to which some of our, let's say, evolutionary tendencies for reacting to others do, rely and depend on cues that require a kind of essential togetherness that gets cut off by some of these technologies. So much of our experience of other people is filtered by our reaction to the face, our reaction to body language, that when that's erased, we are left unsure about what exactly it is that we're experiencing.

And so I think a lot of our sense of indifference in a lot of these platforms can be explained at least partially in terms of some deeply seated human tendencies, not really finding something to take root in. But I think there's a way of thinking also about human experience that suggests that we are with others even when we feel deeply alone, or even when we think we are not surrounded by other people. So I'm here thinking about a book that I read a couple of months ago called Voices of Recent Voices of Insanity, by Philip Thomas and Ivan Leudar and the authors of this book, which is about hallucinations essentially, make the claim that for a long time people thought of hallucinations as being together with voices that are not real, right? Like there are imaginary people around, and we typically associate hallucinations with psychopathology, something is deeply wrong if you are hearing voices that are not actually there. But they point out and they lean on George Herbert Mead for this claim.

That there is an aspect to our experience that is very close to what we might call hallucination, but that is absolutely normal and not pathological. And that is that in the course of our development as subjects, we reach a point at which we have to internalize the voice and perspectives of other people as a kind of inner conscience or as an, inner tribunal And it means that we have the voices of other people inside us, even when we are literally alone in a technical sense. And that inner tribunal is what Freud, for example, would call a super ego, right? This voice of a powerful other that exercises authority over us. And that claim made me think about an argument that we also explored in our silence episode, which is that maybe it's impossible to ever experience pure silence, right? Because even if you try to be quiet, you hear like the sounds of the body, the sounds of the background environment, you can't ever get pure silence. And I wonder whether the same thing is true of aloneness that we're never truly alone because we do have the case or the perspective of the other sort of seared into our minds.

Because that's what it means to be a self. It means to have other selves within.

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Ellie: Yeah, and I mean listeners, anyone familiar with my research will know. I'm fascinated by this idea that our solitude is not actually just an experience of an absence of relation, but rather that we're always in relation to ourselves here. And I think when we also think about the fact that as humans, we're not born alone, right?

We are born out of another body. And we're surrounded by others. And so our very subjectivity and self is through and through conditioned by this togetherness. I think we can also understand that our self relation is in some sense, a matter of interjected voices, at least when we're thinking in terms of the kind of conscious or reflective experiences of ourselves and Mead, yeah, Mead's quite the character on this. He literally thinks that we develop an internal dialogue by interjecting the voices of others. And Zahavi, our guest for today, has some issues with that claim, not in what we'll be talking to him about, but he, I've had some conversations with him about that and how Mead's view here is like a little weird, but you can, I think, absolutely think about the way that developmentally speaking humans are born and raised in situations of togetherness and we would not survive if it weren't for the our dependency on others being met through care.

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David: Well, and the authors of this book that I mentioned, voices of Recent Voices of Insanity follow me in this regard. They say, we do kind of hear like there is an almost like oral quality to our relationship to that internalized voice of the other, which is why it's kind of like a non-pathological hallucination because we're hearing voices inside our head that guide our behavior.

It's just that it's socially accepted rather than pathologized, but aside from the domain of, let's say, social development or moral psychology, I think we also find examples of this interjection that we're talking about in cognitive development. This is an observation that Alison Gopnik makes in her book, The Philosophical Baby. Obviously plays really important for children's cognitive and mental development, right? Like children learn a lot about the physical world through play. They learn cause and effect relationships, so on and so forth. And a lot of object play in children, especially like three to five, tends to be solitary play, right, where the kid is playing with Legos in the corner or throwing the ball and chasing it.

But a lot of what passes sometimes for solitary play in children is actually not solitary, especially if we think about the prevalence of imaginary companions in early childhood experiences. So Gopnik suggests that children reach an age where they start creating others imaginatively, the imaginary companion that has a personality, that has a voice that demand certain things of the child.

A nd she goes all the way to suggest that it's not as if the child becomes a self and then posits this other, but rather that they come to have a theory of mind precisely through playing with the boundaries between self and other. And so this takes that even one step earlier in the developmental ladder than the argument that I made earlier about, you know, moral development and like a sense of what other people expect of me.

And final example, very quickly I recently read an article about the fact that even in the womb fetuses are influenced by the voices they hear, including the voice of the mother.

So if there is a symbol of aloneness, it's the womb, right? Because there is nobody else there. It's this oceanic environment protected by a membrane.

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Ellie: Unless you're like a twin or a triplet.

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David: Yeah, true. So, but even in those cases, we don't think about there being a lot of social dynamics, , happening between the fetuses. But there is this research showing that whatever language, the fetuses or fetus are exposed to in the womb will shape the neurophysiology of how speech will later be coded in their central nervous system. So even in the womb there is this relationality and exposure to others that points to an ontological togetherness.

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Ellie: Dan Zahavi is Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Center for Subjectivity Research at the University of Copenhagen, the author of numerous books and dozens of articles on the topics of phenomenology, self-consciousness, and selfhood. Dr. Zahavi joins us today to discuss his recent book, Being We Phenomenological Contributions to Social Ontology.

Dan, it is such a pleasure to have you join us on Overthink Welcome.

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Dan: Thank you so much.

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Ellie: I think one of the interesting things about your book is that you're trying to argue, at least in part, against this idea that the communal or social precedes the self. It's very common to hear nowadays that the self is the product of recent Western philosophy, and you have for a very long time defended the idea of the self as more than this, as being essential to experience, at least in the sense that consciousness always involves self-consciousness.

So in being we, you suggest that we need to have some conception of the self in order to have a conception of the social. Why is this? Why does there need to be some conception of the self that in some sense precedes sociality for you?

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Dan: So I think, I mean there are different ways one can, approach this, question. I mean, one very quick way to respond would be to say, what is sociality? I mean, sociality is about intersubjectivity. Now I think in order to understand what Intersubjectivity is all about, I mean, we need to look at a plurality of subjects.

I mean, you can't really dismiss or ignore the question of subjectivity when you talk about inter subjectivity. It is really a relation between subjects. I think the more specific argument that I'm making in the book really has to do with the question of whether the we and not just sociality in general, whether the we understood as a first person plural, presupposes or requires some account of the first person singular.

And I mean, that's to a large extent, one of the main aims of the book is to make the case that if we want to understand the we, if we want to understand collective intentionality, we also need to look at questions pertaining to identity, to self-identity, and basically suggesting that not only do we need to consider the self, but we actually also need to consider two distinct types of dimensions of self, if we want to understand what a first person, plural, what a we is. Here's one way perhaps to think about it. A, we is a first person, plural. I mean, there's both a reference to the first person and there's a reference to plurality when thinking about the we. What I think that requires us to do is both to have something that allows for difference between us, a difference that has to be preserved, but there also has to be something can unite us and I want to, I'm then introducing two different notions of self that tries to capture these two aspects. So on the one hand, I'm thinking about a very minimal, I'm sometimes calling it the minimal self or the experiential self that basically has to do with the first person character of consciousness.

And I'm arguing that if one does not factor in this dimension of consciousness, I see absolutely no likelihood of being able to account convincingly for something like shared emotion, shared experiences, collective forms of intentionality. I am also offering an argument, a more principled argument against any attempts at trying to account for or reduce this notion of self to some kind of social construct.

So that relates back to your question of what has primacy? So I would want to say, well, this minimal notion of self. First personal character of consciousness is really something that is required for sociality, for instersubjectivity, for community to take off. But then there's also another dimension of self that is not just a question of our basic experiential structure, but which to a much larger extent is nly constrained.

It's a dimension of self-identity that is established in and true committing to specific values, having certain norms that can function as a guideline for the way you want to live your life. And I think that notion of self is clearly one that has a social origin. I mean, it's partly as a result of socialization and enculturation, but this dimension is established.

And I think what is interesting about that dimension is that is also what then allows us to see commonality between ourselves and other subjects with whom we share values and norms. So on the one hand, again, we all experiential perspectives and I'm very opposed to any suggestion that we can somehow fuse or constitute a kind of common stream of consciousness.

I think there is a kind of an irreducible plurality there. I think that's very important. But if that was the only thing we had, I mean, I also think it would be very difficult to understand how something like a, we could emerge because we is also a shared perspective. It's a perspective that we jointly apply onto the world.

And here I think something like, common tradition, shared norms, shared values and commitments are precisely, if you will, the glue that can allow us then also to see common analysis between my identity and the identity of author. So I think it's, so again, I mean, I think we really need both of those dimensions in order to do justice to something like communal experiences.

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Ellie: I just wanna throw in here that I think that's really powerful as a way of navigating or maybe pointing out the contradiction between two popular ideas today. One of which is that the we precedes the I, which as you've mentioned is something. You disagree with. And also this idea that you often hear that, well, I can never be in your shoes, I can never know your experience.

And people often appeal to those ideas without really thinking about the fact that they don't work well together. Right? And so I think what your work gives us is a way of understanding how I can never be in the shoes of the other person because my subjective experience is irreducible, while also still understanding that there's a kernel of truth in the idea that we comes before I, in a sort of perhaps developmental sense.

But that is ultimately a false statement because we have to be able to think about the irreducible of subjective experience and the way that our social self is kind of layered. I wouldn't, maybe not on top of, but let's say it's more about a matter of the what of our experience rather than the how of our experience.

The how of our experience for you is irreducibly, first person.

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Dan: Yeah. Well, I mean,

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Ellie: Ooh, or not.

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Dan: I, no, yeah, I think I would be prepared to actually defend a slightly stronger claim. I mean, so that the claim would be that what is shared is not exclusively on the what side. I mean, that's how I understood what you were saying now because I do think there is a difference in also the, what it's like for me to undergo an experience and what it's like for us to undergo an experience.

Now, of course, I would still say that for us to jointly experience something, again, does not overrule or eliminate the first person perspective, I, that is clearly still in place. But I, but I do think that the intertwining between our respective individual streams of consciousness actually does something to the very living true of those experiences.

That, again, is more over and above simply changing, if you will. The the what side?

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Ellie: Yeah. Thanks. That's a helpful clarification. Okay.

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David: Yeah, and it reminds me of a metaphor that you've used in previous work for thinking about this, which is the metaphor of liquid and coloring, where you say, you know, water can be colored using a dye. And so we can think of water as the self. And yes, language, culture, community can color that liquid, but ultimately we cannot forget that the liquid sort of has an existence of its own that needs thinking and that requires philosophizing.

Now your book draws attention to some largely overlooked figures in the traditional phenomenology, and in particular, you focus on early 20th century phenomenologists who were around during the rise of the movement with its founder, Edmund Husserl.

And a lot of these figures were women whose contributions are only now receiving the attention that they deserve. And one of these thinkers is Gerda Walther, can you tell us a little bit about her philosophy and why you think she can help us think about sociality, social life, togetherness in a fruitful way?

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Dan: When talking about early women in the phenomenological movement, I mean, I guess the most well-known figures, of course, Edith Stein, and, I mean, her popularity has of course exploded after she was canonized by John Paul II. So there has been a lot of focus and recent years about her work. But of course there are other figures as well.

And so, Gerda Walther whom you mentioned, I mean, it's a very interesting figure and certainly somebody who's much less well known as Stein, and I think there are several reasons for that. I mean, one reason is that she did not publish as much as Stein did. another factor is that until last week, her books were not, translated into English.

But I think a very joyful kind of event is that last week, I mean her dissertation, which is the one that I'm primarily drawing on, just came out in English. So in the English translation is called Towards and Ontology of Social Communities. And hopefully the fact that it is now available in English, might, I mean, make a much more accessible, of course, to a larger audience.

Now, what is this book about? And before saying a little bit about it, I mean, I also just want to say that I just find it so remarkable because the book, it's one of the most condensed, focused theological investigations of community and existence and defended it in 1921, when she was 23, 24 years old.

I just find it mind barling because I think it's a very, very good work. I mean, personally, I think it's much more original than Stein's dissertation on empathy. What Walther does, in the book is really to explore the nature of the we. What is the we, how is it established?

What kind of intentionality does it involve? You mentioned, that David, I mean the, the issue of togetherness, so this is one of the main features of her understanding of a we that what characterizes a we in contrast to other social formations that might also involve a number of different individuals that are interacting together is precisely the presence of what Walther calls a sense of togetherness or feeling of togetherness.

She also talks about different types of wes because that's of course also a thing that has to be emphasized. I mean, just as I was previously saying, we need to distinguish different dimensions of the self and not just talk about it as if it's one thing the same hosts true for we, there are many different forms, and the main distinction that Walther makes is basically between a we that is established in a true social interaction and the here and now.

And another form of we that to a large extent is basically based on habitualize, sedimented patterns. The way I read it, what Walther is pointing to is something that is very similar to what Heidegger would later pick up with the notion of Das man, because Walther is saying that as a result precisely of enculturation, I might come to think and feel and act like other.

I mean, and the others in question are precisely others belonging to my community, and she talks about how that might also provide me with a certain well habitualized we-ness, which again, is something we need to accommodate and not just focus on the kind of we that is established in the face-to-face relationship, which clearly I think is very important.

But there is more to that we can act as a group member even when we are physically defacto alone. I think this is something that Walther says very, very clear about. And then perhaps just one final distinction that she also introduced. So she makes it clear that when talking about the we and about we experiences, we also need to distinguish between pre reflexive forms of those and reflective forms of we.

So I mean, a certain community might even certain say external circumstances suddenly come to the thematic realization that they do constitute a community. But even prior to that thematic realization. The way that they have been interacting together might very well exemplify, I mean, forms of we, and I think again, she's discussing that in great detail.

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Ellie: Yeah, and the way that, you know, we're all sort of living in this we soup where social norms that we've adopted from others, ideas of what might be acceptable are existing, even as you said, when we're alone, I think is so important to draw out as well as the fact that, yeah, I think what we see as you're describing it is already long before some of the major insights into sociality from later in the 20th century around perhaps implicit bias or the ways that we tend to adopt ingroup, outgroup norms are theorized by early phenomenologists, in this case, like a largely overlooked early woman phenomenologist.

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Dan: Yeah. Yeah, and I mean, I guess that's of course one, I mean, historical factor that I think is not completely irrelevant for this early phenomenological work on community. And I mean, that is of course World War I. I mean, I think the fact that existed made people focus much more on the we and communities that they had done prior to the war.

And I mean, one of the factors that Walther explicitly refers to when discussing what might occasion this transition from a pre reflexive to a reflexive we is precisely conflict. And of course, that's is obviously also something that we are seeing still today. I mean, that external threat can, in all kinds of ways change once self understanding and, you know, highlight the role of the community.

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David: And maybe we can take this discussion to a political register at this point. Not too long ago in the podcast, in a recent episode, for example, we talked about the philosophy of Hannah Arendt and the notion of togetherness and the crowd and how one can be isolated even when one is in the presence of others.

And I think that's something that we are seeing in the present. A lot of people are extremely concerned about the decline of social bonds in political life. And those of us, especially in the United States, were thinking about the political crisis, are worried about political polarization, about the lack of solidarity that we see among ourselves, but also all around us.

So my question for you here is how might Phenomenologists views of communal togetherness, here you were talking specifically about Walther, how might they encourage us to think about what it means to be together in a new way, perhaps?

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Dan: As I make clear in the book, I mean, I'm in the introduction to the book. I mean, I'm not primarily a political philosopher, and I also kind of try to to avoid raising people's expectations that I should somehow be able to offer some kind of positive contribution to normative political theory. So it's a little bit, you know, outside my comfort zone, but I have thought a little bit about, and I think one thing that, that I think my book or some of the topics that I'm discussing my book could highlight primarily has to do with the role of typification and stewards typing.

One thing that, for instance, Alfred Schütz, the phenomenological sociologist were highlighting, I mean, is this, is the fact that our social life, to a large extent, implores process of typication, and I mean, this is not, per se a bad thing. It is to a large extent also what allows us to navigate that social world in a fairly effortless manner.

And I mean, you know, to give an example, I sometimes mention, I mean, if you want to go to the grocery and, and buy some items. I mean, your social interaction with the cashier is very much facilitated by you having certain expectations regarding what the typical tech cashier is doing and vice versa.

I mean, so he or she would have certain expectations to what you are supposed to do as a customer. So I don't need to think about this specific individual with his or her special preferences and so on in order to kind of complete my task. And so I think it's, kind of all pervasive with, these, certifications.

But I also think that the problem, of course, is at the moment we then start to operate with two strong limitations between us and them and start to think about all the members of us, I mean all the in-group members as more or less alike. We also start to think about all the Outgroup members that are more or less alike.

And I mean those kinds of conceptions, I don't think, it's not particularly conducive to breaking down prejudices. And I think one of the things that I think phenomenology would highlight is the importance of face-to-face relationships.

Because when one is kind of meeting members from other groups members, I mean outgroup members, when you are meeting them in person, I mean you will typically start to also recognize that they are of course, individuals like yourself and like all the other in-group members you have, they are not just substitutable representatives of a specific class and category. So there's this idea that face-to-face interaction or direct contact with others can actually start to break down and, and complexify our understanding of, other groups. And I mean, I would say that, I mean, if that process could happen, I mean I think that would be beneficial for political reasons as well.

[00:35:14]

Ellie: Yeah. And that also brings to mind to me some of what you talk about in terms of national identity. And so with respect to what you just said, I mean, one thing that we're definitely seeing in the US right now is a hugely divided understanding of the role of immigration and the status of immigrants, both morally and nationally.

And I know, you know, in Scandinavia you have dealt with this in your own ways and still are in in ongoing ways as well. And with respect to what you just said, living in Los Angeles, people tend to be like much more pro immigration than maybe in some of the places where people just aren't interacting with immigrants.

Right. And I think in addition to that. You see what you describe in your chapter on communal bonds as a distinction between an ethnic and a civic understanding of national identity. Where I think in the US there's been a huge rise in recent years of the ethnic conception of identity as opposed to a more civic conception.

[00:36:16]

Dan: When we are talking about a national community, and that comes back also to this point I made earlier about the necessity for distinguishing between different types of wes. I think one of the. Features one of the distinctive features of a natural national community, I mean, is this transgenerational character.

I mean, it typically has a history. There's a reference back to a more or less indeterminate past. It's also reference to, you know, hope, common shared hopes for the future. I think one of the insights that a philosophical analysis can contribute with here is to understand how, to some extent, how fragile and well multifaceted the construction of a national identity really is.

And I think the model that I think we have to abandon is really this idea that a national community is a very finite list of properties that then is passed down from one generation to the next with absolutely no transformation. I mean, I think, I think this is a complete. You know, artifact, I don't think it has any kind of historical veracity or validity.

And I think the character of one's national identity, something that constantly has to be negotiated both between current members of that community in a constant also dialogue with the past, because we are, we have so many links to the past and it's not as if there's only just one highway that kind of leads to the present.

So I think what I'm trying to say is that, again, national, I mean, a national identity is really not set in stone. It is something that by necessity historically changing and one has to be open to that fact as well. And so I think what, what I would very much warn against is really this idea of having the aspiration that what the future should bring us is the restoration of the past.

I mean, so we want to return to the past because that somehow is supposed to be a very neat, clearly understood package. And I mean, again, I think perhaps I can see why it might be tempting in an age with all kinds of confusion and on uncertainty, but I really don't think it has much to do with lived human reality.

And I think the sooner people realize that, I mean, I think the better.

[00:38:45]

David: Yeah. Well, I wanna connect this back to the concept of empathy. You mentioned empathy in connection to Edith Stein, who wrote a very influential text in the phenomenological tradition about the concept of empathy. But I also wanna make that link because when we're thinking about when politics, including the politics of immigration and nationalism and various forms of political identities.

Empathy sometimes is the language that people on the left use calling for being empathetic, right, towards those who are otherized or not represented in our political life. And it seems to me like there is a big difference between the conceptions of empathy that we find in politics and the way in which phenomenologists have understood that concept.

And in your book, you point out that if you were to ask a phenomenologist to talk about what empathy is, you say that empathy is, quote, the term of choice for our perceptually based experience of foreign consciousness. In other words, it's not as if we perceive other people and then we either experience or don't experience empathy in relation to them.

Rather, empathy is the form that our perception of other minds takes from the very beginning. So that's very different from how we speak about empathy, you know, outside of this philosophical tradition. And the difference I think, is that in the phenomenological tradition, it's less explicitly, morally latent.

And also because the concept of empathy is tied to perception, empathy is how we perceive one another. So I want you to say a little bit more about this view of empathy.

[00:40:28]

Dan: One place to start is really by, you know, recognizing or, and acknowledging that empathy is a very recent term. It's not merely the fact that there's a difference between how the phenomenologists are talking about empathy and how people today are talking about empathy. I mean, people today, depending on what the discipline is, we talk about empathy in all kinds of various ways.

I mean, so it's a very confusing concept. I mean, sometimes people are using the term synonymously with sympathy, with compassion, emotional sharing, imaginative perspective taking. I mean four things, which on my account are actually very different things, and so there is a lot of confusion here. I have long given up, you know, the hope that one could somehow, you know, dictate what is the proper way of using the term, I think that battle is somehow lost. I don't think we can say we need just to go back to look at how technologists were using the term and then that's the right way of doing it. But I do think that there is something to learn from what the phenomenologists are talking about.

The basic idea that they want to emphasize is basically the following. We can come to understand others in many different ways. I can try to put myself in the other's shoes by using my imagination. I might, you know, theorize about people's motivation in general and reach some kind of conclusion about what is probably goin on in your minds. But in addition to those types of understanding, the  phenomenologists would argue that there's also more primitive and more basic, and a more fundamental way of coming to understand others. And that is basically one that proceeds through and focuses on expressions. So again, one way of understanding what they have in mind with the term empathy is a kind of expressive understanding.

I mean, understanding the psychological significance of facial expressions, you know, the tonality of my voice, my gestures my bodily comportment in general. And they would say this constitutes a certain form of other experience. It's not infallible, but it does have a kind of immediacy, which is very different from, say again, me trying to put myself in somebody's shoes or me thinking about what whoever far away from me might currently be doing.

[00:43:00]

Ellie: I love this idea that empathy is not necessarily like a good or bad thing, but it's actually just the way that we experience other people. And I've been really influenced by Stein and other phenomenologists on this point. And I just think there's a lot of richness in the phenomenological insight into the role that empathy plays in our experience of others, largely because it also disrupts the dualism between mind and body. So phenomenology really wants to focus on the way that the other's body itself is expressive. We don't need to simulate what's going on in the other's mind in order to have a direct experience of them, or rather to have an experience at all. I guess if we are simulating it, it would be indirect, rather the idea is that we are directly experiencing their consciousness itself through the expression of their body.

One thing that we've talked a bit about is the communal bonds and the sort of togetherness that we can conceive of in terms of national identity or in terms of group sociality. Another dimension of social life that you focus on quite a bit is dyadic relationships such as romantic love and friendship, and these kinds of relationships, as you point out, involve a deep intertwining of lives.

But phenomenologists also warn against thinking of this intertwining in terms of a union. Romantic love and friendship are not about the union of consciousnesses. I think this pulls on your earlier point about the first person perspective being in a sense irreducible. And so I guess I'm curious to hear more about the way that you think that these dyadic relationships shape our identities while still involving a respect for the otherness of the other person.

[00:44:38]

Dan: Yeah, I mean, so just to quickly come back to this issue about the need for differentiating different types of Wes, there's a certain fundamentality to the dyads that I established in and through face-to-face relationships, and I say developmental psychology would likewise emphasize clearly that a dyadic we is prior to me constituting a, we, I mean, as part of a national community, because it's, that's just a much more demanding type of we. But I mean, between the dyadic we and the we of the national community, again, there's a lot of different variations. I mean that triads, formal, informal groups, et cetera, et cetera.

Now, when it comes to dyads, I mean, I also want to emphasize that a dyad is not just one thing because a diet can also take different forms. They can be short-lived, they can have longer durations, they can be more or less profound or deep seeded. And it is precisely, in order to exemplify, I mean, one of the most profound forms of diadic relations that I then focus on, on love relationships or, or intimate friendships.

I mean, love is also a topic that philosophers have engaged with. And I mean, there are some prominent love philosophers, so to speak, who are very attracted to this idea. As I also point out in the book, I mean, there's this old story that the Plato recounts about the creation of love. I mean that that original human beings had two heads and fall arms and legs, and then they were punished by Zeus and was split into two like apples.

And that the whole of human existence since then has basically been concerned with trying to find one missing half so that one could become whole again. And of course, this becoming whole again, I mean again, plays into this fusional metaphor that somehow. It's about absorbing the author or infusing with, with the author.

And I mean, I certainly do not want to contest that there is something, very profound about, love and intimate relationships and that they can transform and change our identity by modifying again, our commitments, our goals, our preferences, you know, our sedimentations and habits. We have, I think that is all something that a dyad can do.

But I think that the idea of viewing that as a fusion, I think is just doing violence to the very idea of a diet and offer a love relationship. I mean, to have fusion is of course to eliminate difference. It is to eliminate plurality. It's basically a way of expanding myself. I mean, and I think that. I really find, I find it problematic on, on so many levels.

So, so I'm much more attracted, I mean, rather than kind of opting for the fusion account, I'm much more attracted to this idea that would say that what love is most fundamentally about is really about this respect and appreciation of the autonomy and specificity of the author and that has to be preserved in a proper love relationship.

[00:47:57]

David: And I wanna ask a follow up about this because. I get the suspicion of fusion. It's something that has never jived with me. It also seems very scary, honestly, to me, the idea of fusing with somebody else and losing who you are. Something that does happen in some very fusional relationships. But if we move away from the fusional metaphor, you said perhaps the notion of respect for the autonomy of the other is a way to think about it.

But of course, respect and autonomy are also terms that we use, in moral theory generally, and also in political theory generally, to talk about our relationship. To others independently of how close our relationships are to them. So I'm wondering what makes the kind of respect for autonomy that we ought to cultivate in an intimate relationship, like a friendship or a romantic partnership, different from these other relationships that we, of course, value.

I value my relationship to my neighbors, to my co citizens, but I do not have the same relationships with them that I have with, you know, the person that I've chosen to share my life with. So what picks out the intimate and the romantic?

[00:49:08]

Dan: Perhaps one way to put it is to say that the respect for the otheress of the author, I mean, is a necessary condition. I don't think it's sufficient. And so it was just to highlight it, just to make it clear why I think there's something fundamentally wrong about the Fusional account, but of course you are perfectly right and say, well, what is it then that, that makes the difference?

I mean, one consideration, and I guess anybody who has been in love would, I think would resonate with that concerns the question of to what extent is the other considered a fundamental element in me having meaningful life? and vice versa. To what extent would I view the death of my beloved as somehow crushing or destroying my prospects for meaningful life?

So it's, I mean, again, depending on where one is, if one's not relationship, one might, you know, resonate differently with, with these ideas, but it's, but they're probably ideas that most of us would be able to recognize. And I think that might again, make it clear to what extent the intertwinement or the way in which our lives are interweaved.

I mean, why that is a proper description of what happens in a love relationship. I mean, but I do want to insist that we preserve our autonomy, but there's of course also a kind of a ling or a kind of constitutional interrelation that will change us. We will not remain unaffected by those kinds of relationships.

And which is also why if a beloved dies, it's a bit as if one has lost a part of oneself again. Then one has to be careful in exactly how to understand that. But this reference to intertwinement that this reference to a kind of mutual shaping for me, those notions do make good sense also when trying to capture what is distinct or how those relationships might differ from the kind of relationships we are having to all kinds of other people.

[00:51:14]

David: Yeah, and I guess the task then for us is to think about the difference of all these different types of relationships that we have as part of who we are, but Dan, this has been a wonderful conversation. We are extremely thankful for your insight, your wisdom, and your time, and we recommend your book, Being We to all of our listeners and our viewers.

And thank you for being on overthink.

[00:51:36]

Ellie: Thank you

[00:51:37]

Dan:  Thank you so much.

[00:51:43]

Ellie: David, it's such a joy to interview Dan. I have worked with Dan very closely over the years. I spent my sabbatical at the University of Copenhagen at the Center for Subjectivity Research, which was an amazing time. I've been reading his work for a really long time, so I could say a lot, but this was delightful.

I wanna hear what your observations are after the interview, what do you wanna quickly wrap up about?

[00:52:06]

David: Well, I just wanna point out that when you were in Copenhagen, I was supposed to visit you to be together, and you disinvited me because you were too busy. So I'm still holding onto that grudge, 'cause because of you. I have never been to Copenhagen.

[00:52:18]

Ellie: I know, I am so sorry. I mean, I don't think I fully disinvited you. I think I just said like, look, I am extremely stressed out. It was my last couple weeks there and I was traveling a lot and yeah, I was, but I did have a pretty sweet Airbnb, so I'm sorry you didn't experience that. We will go another time.

[00:52:35]

David: And get an Airbnb together. So back to, Zahavi, I've also been reading his work for a while and did a reading group actually on I think his last book where he talks about that analogy that I alluded to in the interview with the experience of the self as the kind of water and then cultural language and other things as the dye that shape this primary form of experience.

Either way, I wanna touch a little bit on the notion of collective intentionality that was touched upon in the interview because there are a lot of instances where we orchestrate, or harmonize or synchronize our behavior with others in ways that bring about a significant shift in how we experience ourselves, right? So think about when you're dancing with other people, you almost feel like the boundary between self and others is getting very blurry. Think about collective sports, right? Where we talk about the emergence of a collective self or a collective subject. And in this regard, I've shifted my view a little bit.

In the past I would speak about there being collective selves, these supra individual formations that really are a self. And more recently I've come to suspect that that's an imprecise way of speaking. So now I think that the term self really should be reserved for individual, for individuals, I was gonna say individual organisms, but maybe just individuals.

And when we're thinking about situations where there is a kind of blending of multiple selves into a larger formation, then maybe we can talk about there being a collective agent or there being a form of collective intentionality, but not quite a collective self. And so my view about the boundaries or the scope of the self has shifted in recent time.

[00:54:29]

Ellie: Yeah, and I mean, I'm very much on the side too that we should reserve the notion of the self for, I would maybe say individual organisms is actually okay. But I think the idea that really comes across in the first few chapters of this book being we, is that although it's very trendy to talk about the self as this recent invention, as we discussed with Dan in the interview, really the condition for the possibility of togetherness is there being different selves to begin with.

And so that doesn't mean that we can't have a multiplicitous notion of the self. We can have interesting debates about what we mean by individual here. But I do think the idea that collective self, if we're thinking about, you know, the experience of playing sports is not really what we are describing when we use that term.

And that term is very likely a misnomer. So I like this idea that there's a collective intentionality or agency. There may also very well be collective identity, but that's different from saying there's, let's say a collective subjectivity. Maybe we could say that if we wanna leave aside the term self even.

[00:55:32]

David: Yeah, and I like also thinking about waves that sort of move individuals into collective movements. So think about waves of contagion, like a contagion of laughter or like a contagion of some other affect. Those are not quite the same as a collective intentionality because it's not individuals sort of orchestrating or emerging their behavior toward a shared goal, but they are nonetheless being moved together by this other force that can be political, it can be something physiological like laughter, for example. And so it's another example of a collective phenomenon. But then again, I think it would be a mistake to say that we are oneself when we're all laughing together at a really funny joke.

[00:56:15]

Ellie: Yeah, and there's a lot of work in early phenomenology on the experience of emotional contagion and what that means for selfhood. There's also some really interesting work in Teresa Brennan's writings on this too. Contagion, of course, does depend on the idea of there being different organisms that are being infected.

[00:56:34]

David: No, that's correct. And so independently of whether we think that we begin as individuals and then we join others in, experiences or of together, or whether we begin originally as constitutive inter subjects who then get individuated, it's pretty clear, I think, from an analysis of human experience that the old myth of the self as an individual cut off from others, that Hobbesian image of, you know, humans are born as mushrooms out of the ground and we're all separate without any meaningful connections, is unsustainable. And yet that view has been so influential throughout the history of philosophy, right?

The idea that we are fundamentally separate individuals. And I think various traditions, especially phenomenology, put pressure on that view in a way that is productive.

[00:57:25]

Ellie: And now we've reached the end of our main episode, but David, in the bonus segment, I want to get your thoughts on experiences that make you feel a sense of togetherness versus aloneness. So if you subscribe to us on substack, stay tuned for that. Thank you so much for your parasocial togetherness with us today. Wherever, wherever you're joining us from.

We hope you enjoyed today's episode.

[00:57:51]

David: Please consider subscribing to our substack for extended episodes, community chats, and other additional overthink content.

[00:57:58]

Ellie: To connect with us, find episode transcripts and make one-time tax deductible donations to our student workers. Please check out our website, overthink podcast.com.

[00:58:06]

David: You can also check us out on YouTube as well as our TikTok, Instagram and Twitter accounts at overthink underscore pod.

[00:58:13]

Ellie: like to thank our student employees, Aaron Morgan, Kristen Taylor, Bayarmaa Bat-Erdene and Yuhang Xie, and Samuel PK Smith for the original music.

[00:58:22]

David: And to our listeners, thank you so much for overthinking with us.