Abstract
Can phenomenological evidence play a decisive role in accepting or rejecting social cognition theories? Is it the case that a theory of social cognition ought to explain and be empirically supported by our phenomenological experience? There is serious disagreement about the answers to these questions. This paper aims to determine the methodological role of phenomenology in social cognition debates. The following three features are characteristic of evidence capable of playing a substantial methodological role: novelty, reliability, and relevance. I argue that phenomenological evidence lacks all three criteria and, consequently, should not play a substantial role in debates about social cognition.
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Notes
The focus of this paper is what I call phenomenological reports. These are first-person reports on one’s conscious experiences. Examples include reporting that I am experiencing a painful sensation, seeing a yellow patch, feeling angry, and thinking about what I had for breakfast. In each case, I am reporting what I am (or I take myself to be) consciously experiencing. Though this terminology is standard in the social cognition debates (Gallagher 2012; Herschbach 2008a; Spaulding 2010; Zahavi 2011) and more generally in empirically oriented analytic philosophy of mind (Dennett 2003; Noë 2007), continental philosophers in the phenomenological tradition would regard “phenomenological reports” as an oxymoron because to verbally express one’s phenomenology is to defeat the purpose of phenomenology. To verbalize one’s experiences is to impose a linguistic, cultural framework on the experience, which thwarts the goal of studying the experience itself. For the sake of continuity with the ongoing debate, I will continue to use the terminology “phenomenological reports.” .
The case for interactive, embodied, and enactive accounts of social cognition does not rest wholly on this phenomenological argument. Proponents of these views also claim support from developmental psychology and the alleged failure of the main alternatives, the Theory Theory and the Simulation Theory.
Another potential point of agreement is that a completed account of social cognition will explain how the sub-personal mechanisms posited enable the conscious social experiences we have. However, no theorist purports to have a completed account of social cognition yet, and phenomenologists and non-phenomenologists disagree about the methodological role of phenomenology in the current theoretical context. They even disagree about whether phenomenology is a reliable guide to the nature of social cognition, e.g., whether social cognition is perceptually based or inferentially based (Spaulding forthcoming). Thus, this point of agreement about a completed account of social cognition has little bearing on the current debate.
For a more recent defense of these claims, see Gallagher (2012).
Despite these examples, not all mindreading proponents carefully distinguish claims about cognitive mechanisms from claims about our conscious experiences. Phenomenologists’ recent critiques of mindreading have been a useful corrective to this sloppiness. Nevertheless, mindreading proponents can, should, and many do distinguish phenomenological claims from claims about cognitive architecture.
Reliability sometimes is conflated with publicity, i.e., intersubjective testability. Evidence from public methods may be validated as reliable more easily than evidence from private methods. Although I regard publicity as important—perhaps critically important—for whether evidence counts as scientific, in this context it would be question begging to require publicity because phenomenology simply is private (Dennett 2003; Goldman 1997).
Schwitzgebel reviews the literature on introspection, but there is considerable overlap between introspection and phenomenology. He concludes that the method by which we normally reach judgments about our conscious experiences typically is unreliable.
Like mindreading theorists, phenomenologists presuppose that, for most individuals, there are similar social cognitive processes operating. They argue that the phenomenological evidence suggests that the TT and the ST are incorrect theories, not that they simply fail to describe their own phenomenological experience.
Thinking about mental states is not the same as mindreading, which additionally involves the attribution of mental states. Phenomenologists argue that we are more immediately engaged in social interactions than mindreading theories indicate. We rarely take a third-person perspective on mental states, they argue. The fact that, at least in this study, 32 % of subjects’ thoughts are about mental states is in tension with this argument.
In addition to DES, think-aloud tasks, which require subjects to verbally talk through their experiences, may be a useful addition to the empirical literature on social cognition. One difficulty with directed requests for verbal reports (such as in the standard false-belief task) is that the expectation of delivering information to the experimenter alters the thought process itself, which affects the reliability of the reports. A recent meta-analysis of think-aloud studies suggests that the think-aloud protocol is not subject to this reliability-compromising effect (Fox et al. 2011). Like DES, the think-aloud protocol is incapable of directly shedding light on unconscious cognitive processes. Nevertheless, both methodologies would be welcome additions to the social cognition literature.
Phenomenology—first person reports of one’s conscious experiences—clearly is relevant for some areas of research. Phenomenology is the primary explanandum of theories of consciousness, and it is essential for investigating psychiatric conditions. For example, depression, schizophrenia, and synesthesia are defined in terms of and clinically identified by specific kinds of phenomenological reports. Theories about consciousness, depression, schizophrenia, and synesthesia make predictions about occurrent conscious experiences, and thus phenomenology is a crucial aspect of theorizing about these conditions. Theorists in these research areas must contend with the concerns about the reliability of first-person reports and work to find improved methodologies.
Conceiving of theory of mind in terms of the deductive-nomological model is specific to traditional formulations of the TT, but generally conceiving of theory of mind in terms of scientific theorizing is neutral between the TT and the ST. Both the TT and the ST employ a kind of theorizing: a systematic process that results in explanations and predictions of some target phenomenon.
In a similar vein, some theorists have urged a terminological shift to “online” and “offline” social cognition. See, e.g., Herschbach (2008a), Dumontheil et al. (2010), and Schilbach (2014). The online/offline distinction does not map exactly onto the distinction I make, though I think reconceptualizing social cognition in these terms is move in the right direction.
See Thompson (2012) for a review of this literature.
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Acknowledgments
I am grateful to Mitchell Herschbach, Michael Roche, Robert Thompson and Michael Wilby for their insightful, constructive comments on previous drafts of this paper. Thanks also to the participants at the TESIS Instituting Minds conference in London 2014, where I presented this paper. Finally, thanks to the anonymous referee at this journal. This paper benefited greatly from all the feedback I received from these people.
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Spaulding, S. Phenomenology of Social Cognition. Erkenn 80, 1069–1089 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-014-9698-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-014-9698-6