Área total de la planta

In this chapter, several preparatory steps have been taken to claims that will be made later in the thesis about human existence (specifically when interacting with others). In reverse order, the key points that have been elucidated can be summarised as follows: (a). there is a normative social dimension to all human activity, (b). we are not isolated subjects, but are meaningfully in-the-world in such a way that there is complementarity between our existence and features of our environmental surroundings, (c). our everyday behaviour is dominated by smooth and unreflective engagement with the world, which, although non- deliberative, is still partially mindful, and (d). all of these preceding claims are underpinned by the turn towards Heideggerian cognitive science.

With these foundational points established, we can now progress to considering the social nature of our existence in more detail.

31

Chapter 2 – Encountering

33

Encountering Others

1. Introduction

In the previous chapter, I outlined the recent ‘Heideggerian turn’ in cognitive science and how this paradigm shift has impacted on our understanding of how cognitive subjects engage with the everyday world. For the most part, the theoretical and practical progress that has been made through (broadly) ‘Heideggerian’ approaches to cognitive science has been impressive (see Arkin (1998), Brooks (1991), Colombetti (2014), Clark (1997, 2008), Damasio (1994, 2010), Gallagher (2005), Haugeland (1998), Varela et al. (1991) and Wheeler (2005) for a variety of positive steps in this regard). Yet there remains a relatively under- developed cavity in this otherwise strengthening field; namely, how does this paradigm shift impinge on the social world?

There are two perspectives from which I will address this question during the remainder of this thesis, each of which gravitates towards the other in a pincer-like movement. Firstly, in this chapter, I will look at a key feature of the human social world – how we encounter others – from a predominantly phenomenological perspective, which will also yield a better understanding of our ontological nature. In chapters 3 and 4, I will then look at the predominantly scientific field of social cognition and how current theories of social cognition lack a true appreciation of the consequences of the ongoing shift in cognitive science. The remaining chapters will combine preceding phenomenological and scientific insights in order to shed further light on the nature of human existence.

The first step for this chapter will be to consider the straightforward sense in which humans encountering other humans differs from humans encountering non-human entities. The straightforward difference will then be refined across sections 3 and 4, considering the

re-configuring capacity of others (section 3) and the capacity of others to reify one’s self

(section 4). Section 5 will then build on the earlier sections to elucidate the manner in which human existence is fundamentally intertwined with the lives of others.

2. The Relevance of Others

One of the claims of the previous chapter was that in many everyday situations we engage with worldly entities in a smooth and unreflective, yet still partially mindful manner. The ease and smoothness of such engagements are largely due to an agent’s contextual expertise in coping with what certain entities are for; that is, what they afford (Gibson, 1979; Dreyfus, 2007a; Rietveld, 2008a, 2008b). As an agent encounters some worldly entity, the entity will offer up specific action possibilities in accordance with the agent’s expertise, needs and present disposition. If an agent wishes to build a shelter, for example, a hammer (or even just a hammer-esque object) will be encountered as a manipulable entity with the present functional purpose of being ‘for hammering’. The agent’s act of hammering is thus an

34

uncovering of the hammer’s “specific ‘manipulability’” (Heidegger, 1927/1962, p. 98), as well as uncovering the agent’s present disposition and desire to hammer. The entity and agent achieve a kind of existential harmony through the hammer’s suitability to satisfying the agent’s present task-directedness (Rietveld, 2008a, p. 342) and, reciprocally, the agent’s suitability to acting on what the hammer affords. What we find in such a scenario is that the ‘harmony’ between agent and worldly entity is entirely straightforward: the agent wants to hammer in order to build a shelter, and the hammer affords hammering. Notably, a comparable harmony can be achieved in instances where the hammer’s manipulability is distanced from its socially determined role as a ‘thing for hammering’. Given the appropriate situational circumstances, incorporating both the environmental context and the given subject’s present needs and disposition, a hammer could be harmoniously engaged with through any number of instrumental roles within various pragmatic activities. Although the hammer can be said to have a specific manipulability (as ‘a thing for hammering’), it can also be put to a vast array of further functional uses, and these further uses can be accommodated in skilled and unreflective activity with an ease that is comparable to that of the typically expected purpose of hammering. In other words, in spite of its socially accepted name and ‘specific manipulability’, a hammer doesn’t only afford hammering. Nor is any other entity limited to a single action. A book, for example, is generally considered to afford ‘reading’, but given the appropriate circumstances it could also be used (in a skilled, smooth and unreflective manner) as a paperweight, a cushion, a building block, or a door-stop, amongst many other things. What we find, then, is that even the simplest entities, with seemingly straightforward instrumental roles, can in fact be highly variable in the manner and number of ways in which they can be manipulated. If we find this inherent complexity with basic everyday items such as hammers and books, what exactly do we encounter with the emotional and functional supernovae that are other people?

The first thing to point out is that other people do not have a straightforward ‘specific manipulability’ in the same way that most non-human entities do. Unlike objects such as hammers or books, we are never able to truly engage with other people as some sort of functional tool; instead, we are always latently aware of their being another person and therein being more than an inanimate and lifeless ‘thing’. To quickly exemplify this, consider ordering a meal in a restaurant. As I place my order with the waiter, I maintain an awareness that she is not just a ‘tool’ for taking my order, but also has the potential to afford a plethora of intricate and varied actions. If I start to choke, I am aware that the waiter could potentially help me, or, if I need directions, she could provide them. If I need comforting or feel the need to vent a build-up of anger at someone, then my expert knowledge of human capacities means that I am aware of the waiter being a potential candidate, alongside an awareness that I can offer the same possibilities for her. Thus, even if the waiter is fulfilling the socially

35

determined functional role of a waiter, and I am treating her as such, there remains an awareness that she is not just a waiter in an exhaustive sense, but is also (simply in virtue of being a fellow human being) a potential profusion of further action possibilities. This is not to say that humans are unique in moving beyond a purely functional role – a sentimental object such as a family heirloom or gift from one’s partner can obviously be more than functional too. The point is that although non-human entities are sometimes more than functional, humans cannot be anything but more than functional. As Sartre puts it, the waiter can never be a waiter in the sense that an inkwell is an inkwell, or a glass is a glass (1943/1984, p. 59).[8]

When an agent encounters another, we thus find that an unrivalled degree of potential complexity is imported to the situation. Non-human objects, such as smartphones, laptops or pets, have the potential to afford a great many actions, but even these will pale in comparison to those afforded by another person. Encountering another person within some situational context is, from a functional perspective, akin to encountering a highly developed Swiss army knife of practicality; and alongside this, we have the emotional perspective from which another person can offer up “possibilities such as conversation, companionship, consolation, love, humiliation, pride and shame” (Ratcliffe, 2013a, p. 159). A person, then, simply does not have a specific socially determined and accepted ‘manipulability’. Rather, other people are highly manipulable (and, as we shall see shortly, manipulating) smörgåsboards of action possibilities. Any situation in which another person is present brings with it a potential for variability and complexity that simply isn’t attained with non- human worldly entities.

To put this in a little more detail, recall the “mutual relationship” that is established between a smoothly coping agent and her environment (Gallese and Sinigaglia, 2011; p. 122; Rietveld, 2012a). The environment ‘opens up’ in an accommodating manner towards the present needs and disposition of the agent, such that there is a purposive tendency towards entities that matter to the agent (Rietveld, 2012a, p. 212). When this idea is applied to other humans, I believe the unsurprising outcome is that the presence of (an)other human(s) within a given phenomenological context will always be relevant to the present needs, interests and disposition of an agent. Others always impinge, at least in some minimal way, on an agent’s present worldly engagement (there will be more on this throughout the subsequent sections). It is thus not only that other humans embody an unrivalled level of complexity, but that they are also uniquely relevant to our everyday existence. Moreover,

[8] _{In Sartrean terms, the waiter is primarily a ‘being-for-itself’ (pour soi) while the inkwell is a ‘being-in-itself’ (en soi) (Sartre, 1943/1984).} The idea here is that objects such as the inkwell simply are – they are passive, inanimate and determinate. Sartre describes such entities as descriptively exhaustible through their facticity; that is, their determinate characteristics. Entities such as humans, however, transcend such facticity in virtue of being descriptively inexhaustible through their determinate characteristics (although facticity remains an important feature of our existence) (ibid.). As the chapter progresses, this distinction will be seen to meld nicely with features of human existence that become evident in our encounters with others.

36

there is the crucial fact that other people are subject to their own needs, interests, dispositions, and capacity to manipulate the environment. Whereas my encountering a hammer, book or inkwell is predominantly one-sided, in that the objects themselves have no ‘choice’ in how they are engaged with, the same cannot be said of my encountering another person. Other persons have their own autonomy[9] _{and can thus influence and adapt to}

situations on their own terms. This autonomous nature of other people means that an element of unpredictability enters the situation when agents encounter one another, as the environment can be subject to either (or both) agent’s manipulations. In terms of affordances, the “permanent features” of inanimate entities will flow in and out of relevance in accordance with a subject’s needs and disposition, but the autonomous “temporary state[s]” (Gibson, 1979, p. 42) of other individuals are something that an agent will always be potentiated to respond to. That is, one’s understanding of others includes an awareness of their autonomous capacities that one may potentially act on, or have to react to. This awareness of others’ autonomy can be captured through the notion that others always have the potential to solicit[10] _{one’s attention, such that another’s presence is always a relevant}

intrusion into the phenomenological scene (with the nature of this intrusion being elucidated in the subsequent sections).

When considering the encountering of others, we thus have to step away from the basic conceptual descriptions that can be applied to our encountering of non-human entities, simply because human autonomy brings with it complexity and relevance that non-human entities do not currently achieve. A quick scan across cognitive-scientific literature wholeheartedly endorses such a view. Evolutionary psychologists, for example, would be swift to point out that our attunement to the relevance and complexity of others is to be expected “because we have adapted, over generations and within our lifetimes, to be sensitive to each others’ smell, sight, behaviors, creations, emotions, and thoughts” (Theiner, Allen and Goldstone, 2010, p. 380). At a neurobiological level, there is evidence that the release of specific hormones such as oxytocin will increase trust between humans (Kosfeld, Heinrichs, Zak, Fischbacher and Fehr, 2005; Theodoridou, Rowe, Penton-Voak and Rogers, 2009), suggesting that the relevance attached to the perceived presence of another can be

[9]

‘Autonomy’ is a contentious term as it is so closely tied to the notion of freedom and thus encroaches upon the ‘free will debate’ (see Bratman (1979), Frankfurt (1988), Van Inwagen (1983) and Wolf (1990) for a range of views). In chapter 4, autonomy will be given a technical definition in accordance with the theory of enactivism. Here, however, I am using it in the straightforward sense of agents (seemingly) displaying free will and self-governance, thereby being capable of making their own decisions and acting on the world of their own volition.

[10]

Solicitations are affordances that complete an active process by drawing forth a response from an agent (see Dreyfus & Kelly (2007, p.52) for an excellent explanation). They are not merely affordances which we are poised to respond to, but actually result in an alteration to active behaviour. To say that an entity has “the potential to solicit one’s attention” is to classify it as an affordance which is “on the horizon of my experience summoning my attention as potentially (not merely possibly) relevant to the current situation” (Dreyfus, 2007a, p. 28).

Whilst solicitations are not unique to responding to the other persons – for example, Merleau-Ponty (1964), Rietveld (2012b) and Dreyfus & Kelly (2007) employ the term to describe how inanimate entities call forth appropriate actions from us – it is a useful concept for capturing the fact that other persons are always relevant to a given situation.

37

influenced intranasally, as well as through the more standard phenomenological routes of sight, touch and hearing. Furthermore, recent studies have shown that we (as humans) are keenly attuned to the dynamics of biological motion, in that we can pick it out from other motion types (Scholl and Tremoulet, 2000), and we can even decipher gender and emotion purely from motion dynamics (Kozlowski and Cutting, 1977; Dittrich, Troscianko, Lea and Morgan, 1996). Such keen attunement suggests that we can be readied for more trait-specific activities (related to another’s gender, emotional state or physical capacity) within our awareness of others’ holistic relevance, courtesy of something as basic as another’s movement. Forays such as these into other disciplines are clearly worthy of detailed discussion themselves. For present purposes, however, their significance is simply to add weight to the idea that the phenomenological relevance of others can not only be vastly varied, but we can also be attuned (and potentiated to respond) to their presence through various fine-grained perceptual means.

Across the next two sections, I will unpack this straightforward notion of humans being more complex and relevant than non-human entities through more detailed phenomenological analyses, focusing on the (re-)configuring and reifying impacts of others.

3. The (Re-)Configuring Presence of Others

As noted in the previous section, part of the reason that humans stand out in terms of what they afford is that they are always more than mere functional tools. Encapsulated within this notion of being ‘more than mere functionality’ are two key features of human ontology:

autonomy (as previously mentioned) and affectivity (having moods and emotions such that

one can affect others and be affected oneself (Deleuze and Guattari, 1980/1987)). These two features are inherently interrelated in that one’s autonomous behaviour and affective disposition are reciprocally dependent on one another, in the sense that a human could not be non-affectively autonomous. However, when considered one at a time, each of these ontological features can shed light on how the presence of others induces a (re-

)configuration of a given agent’s phenomenological landscape.

Firstly, consider that as an agent engages with some worldly entity, there are always other entities on the ‘horizon’ of the agent’s experience that have the potential to solicit one’s attention and produce other action possibilities (Cappuccio & Wheeler, 2012; Dreyfus & Kelly, 2007; Rietveld, 2008a, 2012a, 2012b). For example, as I am stood in my kitchen reading a cookery book, I am still aware of the kettle affording ‘boiling water’. That is, the kettle still offers a relevant possibility for action, even though I am not currently responding to it and, indeed, may not respond to it at any point in the near future. A simple way of putting this is that I am potentiated to respond to the kettle’s affordance (Rietveld, 2012a), with such potentiation involving a readiness to act (Wrathall, 2000; Dreyfus, 2000;

38

Rietveld, 2008b, 2012b).Dreyfus (2000) describes this readiness as “something that is not an activity but is more active than a capacity” (p. 339). In other words, whilst I am reading a cookery book in my kitchen, my relationship to the kettle is more than a mere dormant capacity – in that my worldly expertise endows me with an awareness of the kettle’s possibilities for action – but less than actual activity – in that I am not presently acting on it. Instead, I am somewhere between these two poles: beyond being merely capable of responding to the kettle’s affordances and yet not sufficiently drawn by its ‘allure’ to presently respond to it. I am in some sense poised to respond to the kettle should circumstances change in a way that results in it aligning with my present needs and disposition. Now, when it comes to other humans, our affective nature means that I am not only potentiated to respond to pragmatic possibilities for overt action (in the simple way that I am potentiated towards an ordinary kettle), but I am also potentiated towards the affective

possibilities offered by another. That is, the possibilities brought forth (or potentially brought forth) by another person will permanently have an intensified dimension to their ‘allure’ because a given agent will always be affectively potentiated to respond to them. Of course, one could claim that human agents are always affectively potentiated to non-human objects as well as other persons (e.g. Damasio, 1994, 2010; Colombetti, 2014), in the sense that human autonomy is always affectively laden (as I noted at the outset of this section). However, the affective potentiation towards other persons differs in kind from potentiation towards non-human entities for reasons that will be accumulatively developed throughout the remainder of the chapter.

Initially, there are two ways to view this affective potentiation towards others. In a straightforward sense that aligns with the considerations of the previous section, we can say that the presence of another in the phenomenological scene can affect us in a greater variety