The double empathy problem and the problem of empathy: neurodiversifying phenomenology

Abstract

The notion that autistic individuals suffer from empathy deficiencies continues to be a widespread assumption, including in many areas of philosophy and cognitive science. In response to this, Damian Milton has proposed an interactional approach to empathy, namely the theory of the double empathy problem. According to this theory, empathy is fundamentally dependent on mutual reciprocity or salience rather than individual, cognitive faculties like theory of mind. However, the theory leaves open the question of what makes any salient interaction empathic in the first place. The aim of this paper is to integrate core tenets of the theory of the double empathy problem specifically with classical, phenomenological descriptions of empathy. Such an integration provides further conceptual refinement to the theory of the double empathy problem while recognizing its core tenets, but it also introduces important considerations of neurodiversity to classic, phenomenological descriptions of empathy.

Points of interest

• Dominant autism research continues to claim that autistic individuals lack empathy in some form or other.

• Critics of such claims argue that empathy is a two-way street where problems can emerge because of different people’s social experiences and expectations.

• In philosophy, the tradition known as phenomenology has long studied empathy by examining how empathy is experienced.

• Insights from phenomenology further clarify when and how empathy can break down between autistic and non-autistic people.

• By including autistic and other diverse perspectives, phenomenological studies of empathy stand to benefit significantly in nuance and depth.

Keywords:

• Autism
• empathy
• phenomenology
• neurodiversity
• embodiment

Introduction

Since the early days of its identification, autism has been framed by a medical model of disability (Chapple et al. 2021; Waltz 2013), especially in the context of social understanding. Hans Asperger thus differentiated autistic existence from allistic (i.e. non-autistic) existence in relation to a supposed absent social dimension altogether on the side of the autistic person.

The autist is only himself […] and is not an active member of a greater organism which he is influenced by and which he influences constantly (Asperger 1991; as cited in Milton 2014).

On Asperger’s account, the autistic individual is a solipsistic individual, cut off from a social sphere otherwise accessible to allistic existence. Similar claims that autistic individuals suffer from impaired social understanding persist today (American Psychiatric Association 2013; Baron-Cohen 2002; Baron-Cohen, Leslie, and Frith 1985; 1986), increasingly correlated with the claim that autistic individuals are in some form or other empathy deficient compared to allistic individuals (Baron-Cohen et al. 1996, 2001, Baron-Cohen, Cosmides, et al. 1997; Baron-Cohen and Wheelwright 2004; Haker, Schneebeli, and Stephan 2016; Quinde-Zlibut et al. 2021; Sevgi et al. 2020).

In contrast to such deficiency accounts of autism and empathy, Milton (2012; Milton, Heasman, and Sheppard 2018) develops the theory of the double empathy problem (from here on abbreviated as ‘the theory of double empathy’). Building on a growing amount of research on autistic and allistic interactions, the theory proposes we stop treating empathy as an individual, cognitive ability and start treating it as something necessarily interactional; as something dependent on a degree of reciprocity or salience between a plurality of interlocutors (Milton 2017). In relation to the mismatches of salience or reciprocity that occur between autistic and allistic interlocutor, the theory proposes we consider these as interactional breakdowns related to differences in social contexts and expectations between autistic and allistic interlocutor, rather than a consequence of any one interlocutor’s individual lack of empathy (Milton 2012; Milton, Heasman, and Sheppard 2018; Milton 2017). Similarly, the theory emphasizes that purely autistic interactions like purely allistic interactions are not marred by the same kinds of disjunctures that can arise within allistic-autistic interactions. In this way, a significant consequence of the theory of double empathy is that interactional disjunctures between autistic and allistic individuals are appreciated as expressions of empathy differences and not empathy deficiencies.

The aim of this paper is to compare and incorporate the theory of double empathy with insights on the nature of empathy specifically as they are found in the phenomenological tradition. The reason for doing so is two-fold. For one, the theory of double empathy in its original formulation, while introducing to the discussion of empathy important considerations of difference or heterogeneity, nevertheless intriguingly steers clear of defining empathy much further. In turning to phenomenology, and especially its descriptions of empathy’s embodied constitution, the open definition of empathy found in the theory of double empathy can be further specified, especially in relation to the experienced, empathetic interactions themselves.

A challenge in doing so is that more recent phenomenological accounts of autism and empathy have, like many cognitive approaches, repeatedly failed to steer clear of deficiency models of autism (cf. Haney 2013; Zahavi and Parnas 2003). With this in mind, the second reason for exploring the overlap between phenomenology and the theory of double empathy is that doing so emphasizes how classical, phenomenological descriptions of empathy stand to gain further depth and nuance from core tenets of the theory of double empathy.

The rest of this contribution proceeds in five sections. First, dominant cognitivist approaches to social understanding and autism are introduced, with a focus especially on so-called theory of mind approaches to autism. This is followed by further introduction to the theory of double empathy as a response to these. Third, the notion of empathy as it has been described and discussed in the phenomenological tradition is presented. Fourth, mutual lessons between the theory of double empathy and the phenomenological approach to empathy are discussed, with a focus especially on the relevance of incorporating tenets of diversity instead of deficiency, as expressed by the theory of double empathy, into phenomenological approaches to empathy. Lastly, some thoughts concerning future directions and challenges are considered.

Theory of mind, cognitive empathy and autism

From the 1990s and onwards, three major theories of autism have dominated the landscape of autism research, all of which attempt to provide a unifying account of the various traits often associated with autism (De Jaegher 2013). These approaches are known as the executive function approach (Russell 1998), the weak central coherence approach (Fletcher-Watson and Happé 2019; Frith 2003; Shah and Frith 1993), and, lastly, the theory of mind approach (Baron-Cohen, Leslie, and Frith 1985). In brief, the executive function approach proposes that autistic individuals lack control of their own attention and actions, commonly related to frontal lobe activity. In contrast, the weak central coherence approach proposes that autistic individuals suffer difficulties at multiple levels, particularly with contextual and integrative perception. This view has notably been adjusted over time by some of its early proponents, who have moved towards favoring an account of autism as more clearly involving ‘superiority in relation to local processing’ rather than a ‘deficit in global processing’ (Happé and Frith 2006). Lastly, the theory of mind approach to autism focuses specifically on social cognition, proposing that the cognitive mechanisms needed to infer mental states of others are what is missing or impaired for autistic individuals. It should be added that other unifying accounts of autism, developed by autistic researchers, have also begun receiving increased attention (e.g. Murray, Lesser, and Lawson 2005).

However, as the theory of double empathy is most clearly developed and presented as a response and an alternative specifically to theory of mind accounts of autism (cf. Milton, Gurbuz, and López 2022), this is the framework that will for now be focused on and further presented. It is, in this context, important to note that theory of mind researchers are manifold, and at least three different accounts for how it is we supposedly come to infer the mental states of other people have been suggested by theory of mind researchers, including in the context of autism research: theory-theory, simulation theory and modular theory.

Succinctly put, according to theory-theory, social understanding is fundamentally a question of possessing a higher-order theory of others’ mental lives inferred from otherwise non-mental phenomena, such as their behavior (Gopnik and Wellman 1994). In contrast, simulation theory, proposes that when a subject attributes any mental feature to a target, the subject must themselves undergo a simulation of that feature ascribed to the target (Goldman 2008). Lastly, building on the notion of the modularity of mind (Fodor 1983), modular theory proposes a specific theory of mind-mechanism, namely a module of mind that ‘spontaneously and post-perceptually’ infers the mental states of others (Scholl and Leslie 1999, see also Carruthers 2011).

In philosophy and cognitive science, what unifies all of these theory of mind-oriented frameworks is the ambition to account for how social understanding comes about altogether; how a subject, supposedly with no direct access to the experiential lives of anyone but themselves, can come to recognize and understand the inner, hidden-away ‘beliefs, intentions and desires’ of other subjects (Spaulding 2014, 197). In this way, a core assumption of theory of mind-oriented approaches, as emphasized by critics (Hipólito, Hutto, and Chown 2020), is that the mental phenomena of others are by their very nature unobservable. This assumption of the unobservability of mental phenomena notably continues to be held by more modern, prediction-based reformulations of theory of mind (Hohwy and Palmer 2014). More recently, this unobservability assumption has received significant criticism from researchers advocating for more enactive and embodied approaches to cognition (Fenici 2015; Hutto 2017; Overgaard 2017), and, as will become clear, the thesis also departs fundamentally from classical phenomenological approaches to intersubjectivity.

In the context of autism research, theory of mind researchers have argued that autistic people suffer from impaired higher-order theories of others’ minds (Baron-Cohen, Leslie, and Frith 1985); that autistic individuals possess dysfunctional simulation mechanisms (Oberman and Ramachandran 2007); and that autism is best explained with reference to a deficit theory of mind module (Adams 2011). Some of these claims have led autism researchers to argue that autistic people are ‘mind-blind’ (Baron-Cohen, Cosmides, et al. 1997). The notion of a supposed autistic mind-blindness has even been expanded to include autistic self-reflection, with some arguing that autistic individuals, while possessing mental states, lack the overall ability to relate to or reflect upon these mental states, and for this reason can be said to lack self-consciousness (Frith and Happé 1999). Claims that autistic individuals suffer from an impaired theory of mind, as well as the research these claims build upon, have sparked much criticism (de Gelder 1987; Eisenmajer and Prior 1991; Happé 1994; Milton 2017; Zahavi and Parnas 2003).

The assumed theory of mind-related deficiencies for autistic individuals have subsequently been explored in relation to empathy, and specifically in relation to so-called cognitive and affective empathy (Baron-Cohen 2013; Baron-Cohen and Wheelwright 2004). Cognitive empathy, it is argued, pertains to the recognition part of empathy, which is, somewhat ambiguously, defined as the ability to understand, imagine or otherwise ‘put oneself’ in the other’s shoes. Affective empathy, in contrast, is seen as the ability to respond to others’ thoughts and feelings with appropriate emotions. Within this framework, it is argued that, while autistic individuals do not suffer from affective empathy deficiencies, they do suffer from impaired cognitive empathy (Baron-Cohen 2013). In other words, the claim is that autistic people struggle to understand the minds of others.

The double empathy problem

In recent years, a growing amount of non-pathologizing approaches to autism, often championed by autistic researchers themselves (e.g. Arnold 2020; Milton & Bracher 2013; Murray 2018; Murray, Lesser, and Lawson 2005; Yergeau 2013), have gradually begun receiving more attention. One such approach is the theory of double empathy, a novel approach to autism and empathy first proposed and developed by Milton (2012, 2014). Drawing on a wider suite of literature (Hacking 1995; Mead 1934), as well as a growing amount of empirical research exploring gaps and overlaps in autistic and allistic social understanding (Chown 2014; Crompton et al. 2020; Heasman and Gillespie 2019; Morrison et al. 2020), the theory proposes that the social difficulties that can arise in autistic-allistic interactions be recognized as a two-way problem; that breakdowns in empathy between allistic and autistic individuals can and do go both ways. The theory of double empathy therefore discards a prevailing assumption found in theory of mind approaches, namely that allistic individuals hold sway to an original kind of (cognitive) empathy which is deficient or absent for autistic individuals.

Instead, questions of empathy and empathy problems are reframed as questions of reciprocity; as something that arises out of the interactions themselves depending on the degree of salience between the interlocutors (Milton 2017). A double empathy problem, in Milton’s words:

[…] refers to a ‘disjuncture in reciprocity between two differently disposed social actors’ who hold different norms and expectations of each other, such as it is common in autistic to non-autistic social interactions (Milton, Heasman, and Sheppard 2018, 1509, citing Milton 2012, 884).

On the theory of double empathy, breakdowns in empathy between allistic and autistic individuals are treated as a product of a disjuncture arising from within the very intersubjective relation between the diverging interlocutors, and therefore not as problems ‘in’ any singular interlocutor. Instead, these breakdowns can involve a wide array of interactional hindrances, e.g. allistic individuals’ ‘difficulties in reading autistic facial expressions’, ‘interpreting autistic perspectives’, ‘overgeneralizing attribution of blame’, allistic individuals’ ‘reduced tendency to reflect critically on one’s own role in contributing to misunderstandings’, as well as allistic individuals ‘underestimating autistic social ability because it may manifest unpredictably’ (Milton, Heasman, and Sheppard 2018, 1509). On the side of the autistic individual, the difficulties emphasized pertain to ‘increased social anxiety about interactional outcomes’, ‘increased frustration’ as well as ‘lower self-esteem, which can in turn have a potentially cascading effect on future mental health, economic prospects, and accessing supports and services’ (ibid., 1509).

In contrast, due to stronger overlaps in the social backgrounds and expectations for purely autistic and purely allistic interactions, the theory of double empathy predicts that these will not be marred by the same social disjunctures as can characterize autistic-allistic interactions. The theory further highlights that double empathy problems between autistic and allistic individuals generally transpire in a neurotypical context and society, and, because of this, these disjunctures are typically given as much more severe in the eyes of allistic interlocutors as the disjunctures are experienced as deviating from a supposed normality (Milton 2012). In contrast to the struggle autistic individuals experience having to navigate and make sense of neurotypical sociality, the allistic person in their everyday existence has, as Milton (ibid., 886) notes, very little personal need to ‘understand the mind of the autistic person’. Instead, it is the autistic person that typically must self-reflect and evaluate their interactions and experiences in order to navigate allistic sociality (cf. the claim that autistic individuals lack the ability to self-reflect (Frith and Happé 1999)).

Core tenets of the theory of double empathy notably align with those of the neurodiversity movement. While the concept of neurodiversity can mean different things to different people (Chapman 2020, 218), a central assumption of the overall neurodiversity movement is that fundamental (e.g. neurological) differences in how individuals make sense of the world and each other beyond the norm, beyond ‘neurotypicality’, are, as the name suggests, expressions of diversity as opposed to deficiency. On the perspective of neurodiversity, such expressions are to be treated with compassion, respect and the relevant support needed, rather than something to be cured or guided back into a neurotypical fold. In this way, neurodiversity, as Chapman (2020, 220) argues, is in part a call to alter how we have so far failed to empathize with neurological others, as well as how to design public spaces and scientific experiments. The theory of double empathy can be seen to align with these tenets, raising a criticism from the perspective of neurodiversity specifically in relation to how society and researchers have so far approached autism and empathy.

And yet, while the theory of double empathy makes it clear how the double empathy problem is a double problem by emphasizing the significance of reciprocity or salience to social understanding, it is less clear how the double empathy problem is specifically an empathy problem. In prioritizing an emphasis on the interactional and neurodiverse nature of empathy, the theory of double empathy does not explicitly align itself with any one definition of empathy. Thus, Milton notes as part of an expert conversation on autism and empathy that

[d]espite using “empathy” myself, in the “double empathy problem” theory, I do have some difficulty with what that concept is really referring to. It seems to mean different things to different people (Nicolaidis et al. 2019, 5).

Given that the meaning of empathy can vary drastically in research contexts, (cf. Darwall 1998; Decety, Michalska, and Akitsuki 2008; Eisenberg 2014; Gordon 1995), this problematic relativism surrounding the concept has also been stressed by others (Zahavi 2014, 146). Nevertheless, the deference to an open understanding of empathy leaves it unclear what more specifically makes an interaction characterized by sufficient salience or reciprocity empathetic in the first place, as described in the theory of double empathy. Even turning to a general or folk-psychological definition of empathy, such as simply ‘understanding’ the other, still, arguably, leaves it unclear what kind of understanding this is, how it might differ from other kinds of understanding, and what it is that breaks down in double empathy problems.

To be clear, the theory of double empathy’s open approach to empathy is understandable. By avoiding a strict definition of empathy, the theory of double empathy avoids succumbing to cognitivist and individualistic accounts of social understanding such they are as expressed in theory of mind approaches. In this way, the theory of double empathy’s focus on the reciprocal and salient dimensions of empathetic interactions allows the theory to avoid putting the onus for the social breakdowns that can occur in autistic-allistic interactions on any one interlocutor’s supposed individual empathy deficiencies.

However, this caution is premised on the supposition that accounting more specifically for empathy, especially as something with subjective, experienced meaning, necessarily entails a return to treating empathy as something that might be absent on the side of one interlocutor or the other. To avoid this supposition becoming actualized, a fuller account of empathy that simultaneously aims to align with the core tenets of the theory of double empathy must be able to navigate this balance of defining empathy more clearly while also respecting the different or heterogeneous expressions of empathy emphasized by the theory of double empathy. Such an account must, in other words, be able to capture what it means for any subject to empathize with another subject in a neurodiverse world. This is where looking to the philosophical tradition of phenomenology is especially relevant.

In the parlance of Maurice Merleau-Ponty (2013, lxx), phenomenology is defined as a transcendental practice that seeks to illuminate and describe the structures of subjectivity in its correlation with the world and others. In this context, the phenomenological tradition has a century-long history of producing insights on the structures of empathy and intersubjectivity. These are insights that, as will be shown, break with core cognitivist assumptions about social understanding while aspiring to make clear what makes any empathetic relation or interaction empathetic in the first place. In this way, the phenomenological tradition’s account of empathy, and especially its subjective significance, stands in a position to further enrich the theory of double empathy as well as the growing amount of research emerging from it.

However, for these descriptions of empathy to carry this significance, they must at the same time be made to align with the theory of double empathy’s tenets of neurodiversity. Yet, as critics have emphasized, philosophical phenomenology has historically not been formulated from an especially (neuro)diverse perspective (Ahmed 2006; Marder 2014; Young 1980), and phenomenological insights on empathy and autism have notably been deployed in pathologizing manners (Haney 2013; Zahavi and Parnas 2003). For this reason, it will not suffice to introduce the phenomenological account of empathy as a working definition to be neatly transposed onto the theory of double empathy. Rather, the phenomenological descriptions must themselves be integrated with and expanded by the theory of double empathy’s core tenets of neurodiversity.

The problem of empathy

Phenomenologists have since the beginning of the twentieth century examined the phenomenon of empathy. Because numerous descriptions emerged from these efforts, it is admittedly difficult – if not impossible – to provide a single, unified account of empathy that accords with the entire phenomenological tradition. While many prominent phenomenologists considered the problem of empathy a cornerstone of phenomenology (Gurwitsch 1978; Husserl 1977; Scheler 2008; Stein 1989), other phenomenologists like Heidegger (2001, 145) opted for steering clear of the problem of empathy altogether, arguing that it was a fundamentally misguided endeavor. Nevertheless, across the range of phenomenological writings, and despite their internal differences, one finds insights on the nature of empathy and intersubjectivity that, arguably, have enough overlap to merit a cohesive presentation (Zahavi 2014, 147–152).

To begin with, phenomenological accounts of empathy distance themselves from the often-held assumption that empathy fundamentally involves a sharing in mental states (ibid., 150). Rather, empathy in its most basic sense has to do with awareness of others as minded or experiencing, which need not involve sharing, and can thus be one-sided, such as in the case of observing someone without them noticing they are being observed. In this way, the phenomenological account of empathy at first glance seem to align with the notion of ‘cognitive empathy’ proposed by Baron-Cohen (2013); it seems to concern our ability to understand or imagine the minds of others. However, phenomenologists broadly reject the core assumption of cognitive approaches to empathy that understanding of others is fundamentally inferential; that empathy is a matter of deducing or comprehending the inner, mental states of people behind the non-mental veneers of their physical bodies. For phenomenologists, people are not, contrary to everyday Cartesian metaphors (Lakoff and Johnson 2003), containers of consciousness.

Admittedly, this can at first seem like a mere conceptual dispute. However, understanding the reason for this dispute is important because it emphasizes phenomenologists’ distinctive understanding of mind and body – including in social contexts. To phenomenologists, the experience of, e.g. profound happiness is never a purely mental, inner process that might cause us to move our bodies in a particular way. Rather, it is a profoundly embodied phenomenon; with the body itself being constitutive of the experience (Merleau-Ponty 2013; Scheler 2008; see also Colombetti 2017). In the same way, to perceive another person act with intent or to experience them be in an affective state does not entail a process of inferring invisible mental phenomena (e.g. intentions or affective states) from visible bodily action (Krueger and Overgaard 2013; Krueger 2009). To resist the idea that the mental states of others are fundamentally unobservable, we must, Merleau-Ponty argues,

[r]eject that prejudice which makes “inner realities” out of love, hate, or anger, leaving them accessible to one single witness: the person who feels them. Anger, shame, hate, and love are not psychic facts hidden at the bottom of another’s consciousness: they are types of behavior or styles of conduct which are visible from the outside. They exist on this face or in those gestures, not hidden behind them (Merleau-Ponty 1964b, 52-53).

To phenomenologists, we do not merely have bodies, we are bodies: ‘I must be my exterior, and the other’s body must be the other person himself’ (Merleau-Ponty 2013, lxxvi). This is similarly stressed by Stein (1989) and Husserl (1990) who emphasize that the relationship between body and mind is not causal, but expressive (cf. Jardine 2022 78). In social contexts, this is what allows for a form of non-inferential access to the mind of the other as expressed through their lived body (Krueger and Overgaard 2013). All this is to say, for phenomenologists, because each of us are through-and-through embodied minds, we already possess some degree of non-inferential access to the lives of the minds of each other.

On the phenomenological account, empathy is thus not inferential, but can be described as perceptual or ‘perceptual-like’ because body and mind are correlated from the outset – including in social contexts (Jardine 2022, 76). Consequently, for phenomenologists, empathy is not about inferring or imagining what it is like to be in another’s shoes, as proponents of cognitive empathy might argue (Baron-Cohen 2013). To empathetically perceive the life of the mind of others is phenomenologically different from thinking about these or imagining them (Zahavi 2014, 150). Even though thought or imagination can play a central role in social understanding, like when a child is encouraged to imagine how their actions made someone else feel, this process of imagination is not by itself an expression of empathy on the phenomenological account, but something that itself already presupposes empathic awareness.

Empathy in this way differs both from the kind of introspective experience we have of ourselves and of the kind of perceptual experiences we have of objects around us. Unlike introspection, empathetic experience of others lack the kind of originality our subjective experiences have of and for ourselves (Husserl 1990, 98; 2011, 27; 2012, 107). Unlike our perception of objects in the world, which allow for an engagement from any and all kinds of perspectives, empathetic experiences of others necessarily involve an irreducible dimension of difference or otherness. For this reason, empathy is treated by phenomenologists as a special form of perceptual other-directedness, with Stein referring to empathy as a sui generis way of relating to the mental lives of others (Stein 1989, 10). Without an irreducible element of difference in empathetic contexts, phenomenologists note, there would be no distinction between the other’s experiences and my own, and thus there would be no plurality of selves to empathetically engage with each other in the first place. A similar emphasis is found in enactivist literature, here with specific reference to the necessary autonomy of the disparate interlocutors for any social interaction (De Jaegher and Di Paolo 2012).

In addition, because our experience of the other is the experience of a different experiencing subject with their own perspective, empathy entails more than the experience of a bodily encapsulated series of expressions. As Husserl notes, to experience another subject is also to experience another subjective engagement with the same world that oneself is engaged with (Husserl 1973, 140; 1990, p 168; see also Zahavi 2014, 139).

Adding to this, phenomenologists stress that for different subjects to empathize with one another iteratively, a degree of reciprocity between the interlocutors is also necessary; an overlapping or meshing sense of experiencing another similarly embodied self that likewise experiences oneself as similarly embodied. This is expressed clearly in Merleau-Ponty’s (1964a, 170–172) notion of intercorporeality, developed to highlight precisely the reciprocal, embodied familiarity needed for intersubjective understanding at the most basic level (Merleau-Ponty 1983, 370), sometimes referred to as ‘primary empathetic understanding’ (Fuchs 2017, 4; see also Fuchs and Koch 2014).

Phenomenologists have also explored the relationship between interbodily difference and its relation to empathy. Stein, in exploring various ‘grades of empathy’, thus argues that, while the human body provides the richest opportunities for ‘empathetic fulfilment’, it is still possible to empathize in emptier grades with non-human bodies (Stein 1989, 66). Foreboding the problematic neurotypical tendencies to be discussed, Stein concludes that the further we move from ‘normal’ human embodiment, the less the opportunity for empathetic fulfilment (ibid., 66).

In sum, on the phenomenological account presented here, empathy in its most basic and primary sense is a special, perceptual form of directedness towards the life of the mind of the other, in iterative contexts dependent fundamentally on bodily reciprocity and familiarity for mutual empathetic fulfillment or salience.

Neurodiversifying phenomenology

Where the theory of double empathy breaks with cognitive approaches to empathy and empathy problems by stressing the interactional, social and often neurodiverse context of empathy, phenomenology does this by rejecting the fundamental assumption that mental states are something hidden behind the body to be inferred. Instead, phenomenology stresses the fundamental significance of the personal encounter with the other as something expressively embodied in and through the actual interaction. In situations of iterative empathy, phenomenology, like the theory of double empathy, emphasizes the reciprocity necessary between self and other for empathy, especially the overlaps in embodiment for the constitution of empathetic fulfilment.

And yet, while phenomenology provides a nuanced and structured account of empathy at a primary or basic level of embodiment with significant resonance and relevance to the theory of double empathy, it is not entirely straight-forward to integrate phenomenological descriptions of empathy with the theory of double empathy, including the tenets of neurodiversity with which it aligns. For one, due to obvious historical reasons, classical phenomenological contributors of the early twentieth century did not engage with autism as an expression of diversity. In other words, classical phenomenological approaches to empathy have generally not been written with neurodiversity in mind. It is not very difficult to go through the classical phenomenological manuscripts on empathy and add ‘neurotypical’ as an implied adjective to the many descriptions provided in this body of literature.

Fast-forward to the twenty first century: How have contemporary phenomenological contributions approached the topic of autism and empathy? At times, it has simply been assumed prima facie that autistic individuals lack empathy, and that the potential of phenomenology in this context is that it provides a framework for capturing more precisely the nature of this supposed one-sided deficiency. It has, as an example, been proposed that Stein’s phenomenology allows for a clearer recognition of the inability of autistic individuals in entering into and living in ‘personalistic worlds, as one among others’ since autistic individuals ‘lack empathy’ (Haney 2013, 35). Even when phenomenological contributions have explicitly criticized theory of mind deficiency accounts in relation to autism and empathy, it has then been concluded that autistic individuals in actuality suffer from a supposedly more fundamental empathy deficiency in the perceptual and embodied sense described above (Zahavi and Parnas 2003). Autistic individuals, the claim goes, simply lack the ‘immediate, pre-reflective, or implicit understanding of the meaning of social interaction’ (ibid, 67). Approaches to autism and social understanding such as these continue to view neurotypical, embodied (inter)subjectivity as more structurally intact and functional than autistic embodied (inter)subjectivity. Once more, the strength of phenomenology is taken to be its ability to show more clearly or structurally what is deficient with rather than different about autistic individuals’ capacity for intersubjectivity.

Pathologizing approaches, however, are not the only way in which phenomenological insights can nor have been used to explore autism. Phenomenological researchers have thus explored, e.g. the bodily-affective manners in which neurotypical spaces can hinder autistic social orientation (Krueger 2021b), as well as the impact that autistic forms of sensoriality can have for autistic individuals in social contexts (Boldsen 2022). What is significant about these contributions in this context is that they strive to respect the structural ambitions of phenomenology while deploying its insights in ways that aim to explore what it means to be autistic absent assumptions about, e.g. cognitive deficiencies. In this way, these phenomenological accounts more clearly align with core tenets of neurodiversity and might consequently serve as inspiration when turning to autism and empathy. In this context, it is worthwhile to revisit the phenomenological notion of the place and role of embodiment to empathy and intersubjectivity, this time keeping the theory of double empathy in mind, including the tenets of neurodiversity with which it is aligned.

One central feature of the phenomenological account of empathy is the necessity of bodily familiarity. Thus, even when discussing the most basic layer of empathy or the ‘experience of animality’ as a pre-cognitive or ‘passive’ recognition of the other as minded, Husserl (2011, 455, 475-476) continues to stress the importance of bodily similarity between the interlocutors for this to occur. This is echoed by Merleau-Ponty, who remarks that

[…] it is precisely my body that perceives the other’s body and finds there something of a miraculous extension of its own intentions, a familiar manner of handling the world (ibid., 370).

From the perspective of neurodiversity, the fact that this description of intercorporeal ‘familiarity’ in the perception of the other might not ring as true for autistic-allistic interactions is importantly distinct from the claim that autistic individuals lack the capacity for embodied familiarity altogether. Rather than relying on these phenomenological descriptions to maintain a pathologizing lens towards autistic individuals’ capacity for empathy, the descriptions might instead lead us to a more complex inquiry once we consider the tenets of the theory of double empathy.

For example, accepting the existence of autistic styles of embodiment, also emphasized in enactivist literature (De Jaegher 2013; Krueger 2021a, 2021b), means it is possible to approach the question of bodily familiarity from a perspective of diversity rather than deficiency. In this light, empathy disjunctures in the phenomenological sense in autistic-allistic interactions occur not because of autistic individuals’ lack of empathy, but because of basic differences in embodiment styles between autistic and allistic individuals.

With this in mind, it is from the outset phenomenologically misleading to say that either autistic or allistic individual ever suffer from a complete absence of empathy due to intercorporeal unfamiliarity. It is true that bodily unfamiliarity might well in this way leave indeterminate the life of the mind of the other. Yet, indeterminacy, as noted by Merleau-Ponty, is not the same as absence, but a positive, perceptual phenomenon (Merleau-Ponty 2013, 12, 22, 31, 51; cf. Somers-Hall 2022). In the case of autistic-allistic interactions, the life of the mind of the other can positively be given as something indeterminate. The conclusion drawn is that both autistic and allistic interlocutor in situations of double empathy problems can be perfectly capable of empathy yet struggle empathizing more determinately with the life of the minds of each other because of differences in embodiment styles.

In further integrating perspectives of neurodiversity into the phenomenological picture of empathy, certain classical phenomenological contentions, including that empathy breakdowns are a result of deviance from ‘normal’ human embodiment (cf. Stein 1989, 66), must be put aside. Keeping a perspective of neurodiversity in mind instead allows one to phenomenologically appreciate the impaired empathetic fulfilment that can characterize autistic-allistic interactions as resulting from the diversity of human embodiment. Adding to the many interactional hindrances between autistic and allistic interlocutor emphasized by Milton, Heasman, and Sheppard (2018, 1509), what becomes especially significant phenomenologically once this perspective is adopted, are the more precise qualities of the differences in styles of embodiment between allistic and autistic persons, as well as the neurotypically normative contexts wherein these styles might clash.

These elements are important to consider since, for phenomenologists, empathizing with the other depends on some degree of bodily co-apprehension of the way the other experiences and navigates the world. One central issue in this regard, also indicated by Milton, Heasman, and Sheppard (2018, 1509), is that allistic individuals often struggle co-apprehending the autistic sensory world, including in social contexts. Consider the often differently embodied significance of eye contact for autistic individuals compared to allistic individuals. To autistic individuals, eye contact can be a source of great discomfort and attention disruption (Trevisan et al. 2017), whereas to allistic individuals, eye contact in social settings is generally associated with positive engagement or interest. Eye contact has even been used as a metric for measuring empathy (Baron-Cohen et al. 2001). With the theory of double empathy in mind, we can approach the conflicting significance of eye contact for allistic and autistic individuals as, at least in part, expressions of phenomenological differences in bodily significance. For example, autistic author Higadasha clarifies his personal preference for gaze avoidance with particular reference to elements of intersensorality and monotropic attention:

Then, where exactly am I looking? You might well suppose that we’re just looking down, or at the general background. But you’d be wrong. What we’re actually looking at is the other person’s voice. Voices may not be visible things, but we’re trying to listen to the other person with all of our sense organs (Higashida 2014; see also Boldsen 2022; Murray, Lesser, and Lawson 2005).

And yet, such nuances in bodily significance are lost when autistic individuals’ discomforts with eye contact are interpreted through neurotypical styles of embodiment, or as indicators of impaired empathy, rather than co-apprehended in their actual embodied significance to the autistic person. Moreover, not all embodied differences between allistic and autistic interlocutors might be as apparent as gaze avoidance. For example, an autistic individual might well feel pressure to maintain eye-contact during a conversation whilst finding such eye contact interactionally and bodily disruptive.

With the theory of double empathy in mind, basic empathy problems in autistic-allistic interactions can thus be spelled out phenomenologically as difficulties co-apprehending the other’s embodied way of experiencing and engaging with the world, whether visible or not, leading to difficulties arriving at deeper empathetic fulfillment or accomplishment (Stein 1989, 19). Following this line of inquiry not only aligns with and enriches the theory of double empathy, but it also introduces an important dimension of diversity to the phenomenological picture. At the same time, it strives to respect the phenomenological ambition of striking at something essential or structural about what it means to be human, in this context that embodiment always plays a necessary (but possibly stylistically varied and unfamiliarizing) role for empathic fulfilment.

In sum, by integrating core tenets of the theory of double empathy with phenomenological insights on empathy, it is possible to arrive at a heteronomous rather than homogenous (and pathologizing) understanding of empathy, and thus a more nuanced, phenomenological picture altogether.

Future considerations

Phenomenology has explored numerous problems beyond that of empathy alone, many of which can profit from integrating perspectives of neurodiversity. This is so not only because the tenets of neurodiversity add further complexity and nuance to phenomenological descriptions, but also because they allow phenomenological descriptions and research to engage more fully with its own ambitions.

As more researchers as well as autistic groups and institutions continue to push for the integration of tenets of neurodiversity in autism research, so too phenomenological researchers hoping to engage with this paradigm in their descriptions must avoid starting out from neurotypical, normative assumptions. To incorporate perspectives of neurodiversity, phenomenological researchers must acquire sufficient expertise in what it means to be autistic (cf. Collins and Evans 2009; Milton 2014). This can entail engaging with and prioritizing autistic perspectives and voices, as well as immersing oneself in autistic culture and communities. Given the insights produced here, another important avenue for acquiring such expertise is for phenomenological researchers to engage at a personal level with the diverse meaning of autistic embodiment – something that has similarly been stressed by Milton (ibid.). Moreover, Milton has proposed that autism researchers might be evaluated on their ability to imitate or reproduce autistic embodied, styles of communication (ibid., 795-796). Doing so, Milton suggests, would help give an indication as to whether sufficient ‘interactional expertise [has been] gained, and whether interpretations by said researcher are likely to be relevant and accurate’ (ibid., 795).

This latter proposal has, notably, been received with some skepticism. Enactivist researcher De Jaegher (2021, 2) thus argues that, because interactions at their core presuppose a separation between self and other, ‘[i]f we were to become so much like the other, to the point of becoming them, we would coincide with them’, which, it is argued, would make the interaction, and thus social understanding, itself an impossibility. This is, however, not persuasive from a phenomenological perspective. While phenomenological accounts of empathy, as has been shown, do stress the necessity of difference between self and other, it is not clear from a phenomenological perspective how reproducing or embodying autistic styles of communication amounts to becoming the other (nor how this would even be possible). If embodying another’s style of communication meant becoming them, we should likewise have to conclude that autistic individuals who mask their autistic styles of communication to temporality adopt neurotypical ones (often to great personal taxation and discomfort) also become neurotypical, which is plainly not true.

Beyond acquiring expertise in what it means to be autistic, another future avenue for neurodiversified phenomenological research on social understanding and autism concerns the place and role of the neurotypical spaces themselves, and whether other forms of social spaces might afford novel and possibly more salient forms of embodied and empathetic interactions (cf. Krueger & Maiese 2018). With an eye towards technology, one obvious example pertains to the growing number of virtual and online spaces that exist today, the significance of which to autistic individuals have repeatedly been emphasized (Davidson 2008; Davidson et al. 2013; Milton 2017; Murray and Lawson 2006), and which researchers have already explored both as novel places of empathy (Osler 2021) as well as of intercorporeality (Ekdahl and Ravn 2022).

Conclusion

Exploring the mutually beneficial relationship between the theory of double empathy and the phenomenological account of empathy has been the aim of this paper. After presenting cognitivist approaches to autism and empathy, the theory of double empathy and the phenomenological approach to empathy have been introduced – both being approaches to empathy that stand in opposition to cognitivist accounts such as theory of mind. Following this, the relevance of phenomenology’s descriptions of empathy for the theory of double empathy has been stressed. No less importantly, the significance of the theory of double empathy with its tenets of diversity to phenomenological descriptions of empathy have been emphasized, and the importance of incorporating neurodivergent perspectives into phenomenological descriptions have been highlighted.

In sum, when accounting for the empathy difficulties that can arise within autistic-allistic interactions, researchers aiming to adopt a neurodiversified phenomenology must be mindful of the ways in which such difficulties express difference and not deficiency, as well as the dangers of failing to acknowledge this. Echoing similar objections raised by critical and feminist phenomenologists (Ahmed 2006; Butler 1988; Fisher 2010; Marder 2014; Young 1980), phenomenology must cultivate an awareness of its own assumptions of normativity in its transcendental or structural ambitions. A neurodiversified phenomenology is a phenomenology that keeps the structural or eidetic ambitions of the philosophical movement; it aims to elucidate what it means to be a subject, but it does so while avoiding assumptions of neurotypical normativity. The theory of double empathy and the research it builds upon makes clear that there is still much work to be done phenomenologically in illuminating what it can mean to be human in a neurodiverse world, and how or where we might come to understand each other better.

Disclosure statement

The author reports there are no competing interests to declare.

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by Carlsbergfondet’s Internationalisation Fellowship (grant number: CF21 0287).