The 'meeting of bodies': empathy and basic forms of shared experiences

Abstract

In recent years there has been an increasing focus on a crucial aspect of the 'meeting of minds' problem (Gallotti and Frith, Trends Cogn Sci 17(4):160-165, 2013), namely the ability that human beings have for sharing different types of mental states such as emotions, intentions, and perceptual experiences. In this paper I examine what counts as basic forms of 'shared experiences' and focus on a relatively overlooked aspect of human embodiment, namely the fact that we start our journey into our experiential life within the experiencing body of a second person, i.e. our mothers. For example, Zahavi and Rochat (Consciousness Cogn 36:543-553, 2015) recently draw on phenomenological insights and developmental studies in order to support the idea that empathy (with its preservation of self-other differentiation) must be considered a central precondition for experiential sharing. Here I suggest that the defence of the primacy of empathy over experiential sharing might reveal how we are often mislead in our understanding of more basic forms of shared experiences. I argue that while previous approaches mainly defined experiential sharing by using the case of visual experience as a paradigmatic example of 'togetherness' (e.g. face-to-face encounters, watching a movie together (Zahavi, Self and other: exploring subjectivity, empathy and shame, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2014), it is fruitful to consider the case of pregnancy and intersubjective touch in early infancy (skin-to-skin encounters) as a more basic model of experiential sharing in general. I conclude that shared experiences are phenomena emerging first and foremost from a 'meeting of bodies' rather than of minds and as such they precede rather than presuppose empathetic abilities.