Abstract
Hermeneutic phenomenology is absent in 4 EAC literature (embedded, embodied, enactive, extended and affective cognition). The aim of this article is to show that hermeneutic phenomenology as elaborated in the work of Heidegger is relevant to 4 EAC research. In the first part of the article I describe the hermeneutic turn Heidegger performs in tandem with his ontological turn of transcendental phenomenology, and the hermeneutic account of cognition resulting from it. I explicate the main thesis of the hermeneutic account, namely that cognition is interaction with the world, followed by a discussion of the modes of cognition distinguished in the hermeneutic account. In the second part of the article I discuss the implications of this account with respect to the status and meaning of first, second and third person perspective of cognition. The article concludes with the draft and discussion of an exploratory model of hermeneutic cognition.
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Notes
The act of appropriation remains implicit in Heidegger’s account of understanding. Heidegger’s student Gadamer comes close to explicating the appropriating act of understanding in the discussion of application as an essential moment of understanding (Gadamer 1999, 307–311). See also the discussion in Vasterling 2003.
The following account is based on Heidegger’s suggestive but inconclusive interpretation of transcendence in terms of time, especially in the last sections of Logic: The Question of Truth (Heidegger 2010) and Metaphysical Foundations of Logic (Heidegger 1984). One of the reasons the interpretation remains inconclusive is probably because it is in tension with the project of a fundamental ontology (Fundamentalontologie) which dominates Being and Time and The Basic Problems of Phenomenology. For further discussion, see Vasterling 2000.
I take the description ‘sense-making interaction’ from De Jaegher and Di Paolo (2007) who introduce sense-making interaction as one of the defining features of social cognition. In Heidegger’s hermeneutic ontology sense-making interaction with the world is the constitutive feature of cognition in general.
What I call narrative understanding is an adaptation of what Heidegger, in Being and Time, calls explication (Auslegung) (Heidegger 1962, § 32). Narrative understanding is an explication of direct understanding (which is not explicitly discussed in Being and Time).
See Heidegger 2010, § 12. In this section, Heidegger makes the argument that direct understanding, though phenomenally direct, has a complex structure. He analyses direct understanding in terms of the hermeneutic as-structure which he relates to the transcendental enactment of the temporal circle.
The reason for this failure is not altogether clear but it is probably connected to Heidegger’s almost exclusive discussion of propositional understanding in the context of the question of the relation between logical truth (statements) and ontological truth (being). His aim in explicating propositional understanding is to show how the truth or falsehood of statements is derived from ontological truth (alètheia ) (Heidegger 1962 § 44; Heidegger 2002 § 9; Heidegger 2010 § 13 and 14).
Again, the most pressing problem for Heidegger is that epistemological preoccupation with logical structure leads modern Cartesian-Kantian philosophy to ignore ontological questions, starting with the question of “the mode of being of the subject” (Heidegger 1988, 123). Instead of explaining the epistemic implications of representational cognition, he explicates, in great detail, how the subject-object structure derives from intentionality which, in turn, “belongs to the existence of the Dasein. (..) It belongs to the nature of the Dasein to exist in such a way that it is always already with other beings.”(Heidegger 1988, 157)
See for instance Talero (2012) who defends, correctly I think, the fundamental intersubjective character of Dasein. Interestingly, she also espouses an enactive interpretation of experience which fits well with the hermeneutic account. Gallagher and Seté Jacobson (2012) however, argue that Heidegger’s work lacks an adequate account of intersubjectivity and suffers from “philosophical autism” (Gallagher and Seté Jacobson 2012, 223). I agree that Heidegger’s account of Mit-Sein remains problematically underdetermined and that his work of the 1930-ies and 40-ies exhibits an increasing philosophical autism. However, the point of this article is to show that Heidegger’s work of the 1920-ies has a potential that can be elaborated in ways and directions Heidegger himself did not take. This is regrettable for more than only intellectual reasons. The anti-Semitic observations in the recently published Schwarze Hefte (Black Notebooks) confirm, in my view, that much of the work written between the end of the 1930-ies and 1950 is tainted, beyond repair, by Heidegger’s involvement with Nazism. The so-called Black Notebooks refer to 34 notebooks Heidegger kept between, approximately 1930 and 1970. In 2014 the publication of the notebooks in the German Gesamtausgabe of Heidegger’s work has started.
In the remainder of this article I will use ‘primary second person perspective’ and ‘extended second person perspective’ in order to distinguish the hermeneutic view from the standard view. Primary second person perspective refers to primary intersubjectivity. Extended second person perspective is defined by the interactive mode and includes all targets of interaction: other persons and creatures, things, situations and, as I argue below, oneself (self-consciousness). Interaction with other persons remains an important and maybe primary subset of extended second person interaction.
There is wide recognition that good old AI with its cognitivist paradigm of representational cognition does not work. The bottom-up approach inspired by evolution and embodied cognition is adopted instead: robots with a minimal set of “innate” rules and reflexes evolve through interaction with the environment. The idea is that at some point the dynamical complexity of the artificial mind is such that it becomes capable of consciousness, sense-making and emotion. See for instance Fleischer and Edelman 2009. For a critical discussion of Heideggerian approaches to AI, see Dreyfus 2012.
In contrast to Theory Theory’s assumption of privileged access to one’s own mind in contrast to other minds, the hermeneutic account of cognition suggests the reverse. As reflective engagement with one’s own mind self-consciousness requires pre-reflective direct understanding of states of mind which we can only acquire through the expressiveness and, hence, direct perceptibility of the states of mind of others, e.g. in crying or smiling. The toddler who has a direct understanding of the other child’s crying as sadness, becomes capable of understanding its own crying as sadness.
Awareness of one’s understanding is always limited. All hermeneutic philosophers insist on the finiteness of understanding in that understanding can never be completely transparent. (Gadamer 1999, Ricoeur 1998, Habermas 1984) As Heidegger explains, understanding is finite in that it is enabled by an embodied past (Gewesenheit) that is not recallable as such. The embodied past becomes conscious in bits and pieces, in actual understanding, but a complete and transparent overview of the embodied past is impossible.
In Arendt, the “spectator” position is, for this reason, the precondition of judgment (Arendt 1978, § 11).
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Vasterling, V. Heidegger’s hermeneutic account of cognition. Phenom Cogn Sci 14, 1145–1163 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-014-9409-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-014-9409-4