In Defense of the Human Being with Thomas Fuchs

  Exploring Human Embodiment and Conviviality with Thomas Fuchs, the Karl Jaspers Professor of Philosophy and Psychiatry, Heidelberg University, Germany

Join Andrea for an insightful conversation with Thomas Fuchs, a philosopher and psychiatrist at Universität Heidelberg, as they delve into his book, 'In Defense of the Human Being.' Explore the profound questions about our distinctiveness from machines, the concept of 'conviviality,' and the essence of human embodiment. They discuss the oscillation between self-aggrandizement and self-contempt and how intersubjectivity and embodied experiences are central to understanding what it means to be human. Discover how modern technology impacts our self-perception and the importance of regaining a balanced relationship with our body and others. This episode is a deep dive into the notions of self-awareness, bodily presence, and the interrelation of life, mind, and technology.

00:00 Introduction: Are We Distinct from Machines?
01:32 Welcome to Love and Philosophy
01:36 Introducing Thomas Fuchs and His Work
02:15 Conviviality and Intersubjectivity
03:51 The Theory of Mind and Human Experience
07:56 The Defense of the Human Being
08:51 The Impact of Technology and Transhumanism
18:18 Embodiment and the Human Condition
24:23 The Illusion of Mind-Body Separation
40:29 The Role of Intersubjectivity
57:53 Concluding Thoughts and Reflections

In Defense of the Human Body
Thomas Fuchs, Karl Jaspers Professor of Philosophy and Psychiatry, Heidelberg University, Germany

Transcript

Life nested within life: In defense of being human with Thomas Fuchs on Love and Philosophy

 [00:00:00] 

Thomas Fuchs: the question arises, are we really distinct from the machines that we create ourselves? 

 we are full fully embodied beings. Everything that is visible and that is movable and that is sensible in our experience is the living body. So it's not something that we can separate from. To a certain extent a book is a kind of detachment of thought, of thinking and and an externalization and sedimentation into some written text printed text. You could get the idea that the mind is something external because it can be In a sedimented form and symbolized form, it can be externalized.

Thomas Fuchs: Progress replaces the ancient history of [00:01:00] salvation. And we are constantly switching between a a narcissistic grandiosity on the one hand, And a self contempt, a self disdain, even on the other hand. 

So we are constantly, switching, oscillating and this instability is visible in our relation to aI. We identify with the thoughts because we forget that in order to think, we first have to be alive. 

 Hello everyone. Welcome to Love and Philosophy. I'm so glad you're here. This is a conversation with Thomas Fuchs, who is a philosopher and a psychiatrist at the Universität Heidelberg in Germany. This university which is in this fairytale looking town you may recognize with the castles and the water and the beautiful colors and it's a place of famous philosophers And a famous [00:02:00] scientist so he's following in that tradition. He's a Carl Jaspers professor there. And he's written a lot of very interesting books. The one we're going to talk about today is In Defense of the Human Being. And there's a word I want to highlight from the beginning, which we discussed. This is a very beautiful move that Thomas makes in his writing, where he talks about intersubjectivity as conviviality. Which is what we're going to talk about as kind of the cure to the oscillation, or the even rather bipolar swing between self hate and self transcendence, or self aggrandizement that seems to happen in our lives more and more. at least in our societies and the way that we're interacting with one another. But I want to bring up this word conviviality because it's actually easy to not hear it, what it really means, but con means with or together, c o n the root of it. So it's with life, with living, with one [00:03:00] another. It's a way of thinking about life as shared and the body has a particular sensing of shared living. It's conviviality, it's coming into awareness of the withness of our living that's different than, than there's this life and there's this life and there's this life and all these lives and they're trapped and they have to somehow come get to know each other. Instead this is life which is Complex, multidimensional, but continuous. And these sensory bodies that we are in it's a way of being with that life, and coming into it, and coming to know it. It's our sensory body that allows us to be with life. 

Thomas Fuchs: The conviviality, the inner subjectivity. 

Andrea Hiott: Another interesting point in this conversation is the theory of mind is not what we think it is. What Thomas says is really quite interesting,

Thomas Fuchs: and it's kind of his [00:04:00] answer, in a way, to a lot of the binary polarized decisions or dichotomies that we get sort of oscillated between these days. Not that either one of those are not real, but that we feel pulled in directions that don't allow us to appreciate what it actually means to be a human being. This incredible, wonderful experience we're having doesn't actually get fully experienced because we are confused by the oscillation of hating what it means to be human or being rather repulsed or disgusted by what humans do or by our own inability to live up to certain kind of imagined standards as a body or the opposite of that, we get a bit carried away in the aggrandizement or narcissistic [00:05:00] side of life whereby there's a power to be felt in connecting with life and feeling as if we are ourselves responsible for that wonder and, wanting to take all of that power as if it belongs to our body So, there's an oscillation between wanting to rule the world and wanting to escape it. 

The conviviality, maybe you can hear it in a different way, because when I hear that word as an American, I sort of listen over it. It sounds like, oh, a little happy word. But if you really look into the roots of it, viv, vivality, this living life, and con, with, and it already has an inner subjectivity to it, so We are a certain sensory form of life and consciousness and Wow, I mean, isn't that amazing that we are that that we are Coming into awareness of that that we are with life in that way that's [00:06:00] The heart of inner subjectivity, although of course there's many academic and much drier ways of talking about it that are also good to explore, but I want to start with that feeling and the livingness and being with the livingness and Appreciating the story of self, but realizing it's perhaps like training wills towards understanding that we're experiencing the presence of life as ourselves. And that that is our connection with all that is living. We are with it. We are with the living. We are convivial. So that's just to take us into this conversation with Thomas Fuchs, who is a philosopher who works with embodied cognition, and he's also a psychiatrist. He is wearing a lot of hats and we talk about how that itself is A bit of a practice of this conviviality and intersubjectivity, which is not something I'm saying is easy, by the way, but certainly a source of meaning and wonder and [00:07:00] the kind of transcendence that doesn't require one to reject or escape from the body. And this conversation is about thinking of a new kind of embodied understanding of what it means to be human. If you want to hear the rest of the thoughts about all these issues that just came impromptu, then you can check out the research diaries on the YouTube. But for now, let's go into the conversation with Thomas. I do want to say thank you to everyone who has sent emails or support. Thank you for signing up for the Substack, the Love and Philosophy Substack and anyone who's listening who hasn't signed up for the Substack or gone to the YouTube, I hope you will now. And I love that we get to connect.

So I'm sending you a lot of love and philosophy.

Thomas Fuchs: Hi Thomas. Thank you so much for doing this. It's great to see you. 

Hi Andrea 

Andrea Hiott: today we're gonna talk about your book in [00:08:00] Defense of the Human Being which I just love there's so much in here I want to talk to you about but for the general audience just to start why does the human being need to be defended?

Thomas Fuchs: Well, the idea of the book is that a defense of the human being is necessary in several respects, which have to do with the current development of of technology and science and communication. So there are various, fields in society where, um, the traditional image of the human being as an, embodied, being in the world.

with others is questioned. 

Andrea Hiott: That was kind of a big question for me to ask you right off.

Thomas Fuchs: Yeah, that's really a big question. Because it, it opens up all kinds of of fields that are touched in the book, of course. Well, the first field is, the development of artificial intelligence, where the question arises, are we [00:09:00] really distinct from the machines that we create ourselves? And are we kind of machines ourselves with which run by algorithms?

And that's at least what we find in ideas of um, digitalization proponents and some, for example, in ideas of Yuval Harari, the historian with his book Homo Deus. The second field is, um, Transhumanism, the idea that we can transform our own bodies into some kind of cyborgs or other kinds of machines and that we can ultimately upload our minds onto digital computers and and, and gain immortality through this.

Um, this is of course an extreme position, but on the way to this goal, there are many, um, possibilities of optimizing. the human [00:10:00] being, of enhancement, of changing the human nature into something new, into something similar to a cyborg. And then there is the development of virtualization in society, so the increasing disembodiment of communication, the increasing, um, Um, leveling of the difference between reality and virtuality so that people can no longer distinguish between, um, well, reality and simulation or between truth and fake, between appearance and the real communication and the real, um, encounter with the other.

So all these developments question the, um, the image of man that was based on the idea that that he that the human being is a person. A person means an embodied [00:11:00] being that is related to others through his or her body, and that is not located somewhere in the brain. And that is not equal to some neuronal algorithms that run through the brain.

So this traditional image of man is something I want to defend. But not only in the traditional sense, but in the, of an, of a traditional humanism, which was rather anthropocentric, but in the sense of a new humanism, an embodied humanism, that sees the human being in, um, constitutive relation to the environment, in relation to other living beings, and, um, in relation to the ecological environment.

So that would be a new kind of humanism, but it is still based on embodiment. 

Andrea Hiott: I started with a really big question [00:12:00] because it seems almost obvious that we would defend what it means to be alive, even, and to be, and human.

To be honest, your work is one of the only ones I've seen that actually notices this, and takes a position of life being something wonderful, which sounds almost hard to believe, or too simplistic, but what happens, it seems, and what you show in the book, it goes to two extremes, where either the human is Something we're contemptible of, either through our own feelings personal feelings of contempt or through what we see that the human has done to the natural world, for example.

And then on the other side, there's this glorification or almost as if we could be omnipotent or powerful usually through technology as you were just expressing so and you go into so many examples you talk about for example Greek tragedy or Dostoevsky or Nietzsche, all these philosophers dealing with this feeling that we have of either contempt for [00:13:00] ourselves or wanting to be overpowerful or feeling how powerful life is, but we can't sit with it in the moment as you're suggesting we do in the book with life and with presence, but instead we must somehow through technology make it perfect.

 Do you see this as a theme that's been around as long as humans is it part of us, or what's going on there with this seeming dichotomy?

Thomas Fuchs: To a certain extent, it may be part of us, because we are beings that have an inbuilt instability, so to speak. Being human means to have an eccentric position, so to speak.

That's what the German philosopher Helmut Plessner called it. Eccentric means out of the center. Being able to decenter oneself and seeing oneself from the other, from outside, so to speak. This makes us able to to transcend ourselves and to um, to enter gen into subjectivity. On the other hand, it also enables us to imagine ourselves in [00:14:00] all kinds of ways and, um, greater than we are.

to transcend ourselves towards superior power and superior possibilities that, um, well, obviously fuels human broke, human and technological progress over over the last centuries. But in my view, um, this development has has really gained an an impact since modernity.

Um, and since modernity, we have kind of lost our center our centeredness in the world, and have become homeless, metaphysically homeless beings, so to speak, with the, increasing retreat of God into some into some outer world, so to speak and the increasing loss of religious background, we have become metaphysically homeless, And we try to compensate for this through [00:15:00] our own empowerment, through our, um, constant striving for more progress, more growth, um, more, more wealth.

Um, so the earthly, well, progress replaces the ancient um, history of salvation. And since then, we are constantly switching between a grandiose image of ourselves, a narcissistic grandiosity on the one hand, And a self contempt, a self disdain, even on the other hand. That's what you pointed out before.

So we are constantly, um, well, switching, oscillating between the grandiosity on the one hand and the self contempt and self insufficiency on the other hand. And this instability is visible in our relation to AI. AI is, on the one hand, [00:16:00] something which we think think of as the ultimate progress, the ultimate godlike power that we that we acquire through creating something like superior intelligence, even superior to ourselves, creating conscious beings somehow.

That's at least the idea. On the, on the other hand it puts us into into a relation of, um, of inferiority. It leads to a shame of ourselves because we are only earthly bodily beings that are not that, that are not, um, able to compete with our own creations. And in this, narcissistic instability between self grandiosity on the one hand and self inferiority on the other hand, we are constantly oscillating and trying to cope with this instability.

And I [00:17:00] think we have to overcome this narcissistic image of the human being and and acquire something a modest. Um, self image that on the other hand doesn't lead to the idea that we would have to well, that Earth would be better off without us. So we have to abdicate our own rule and we should rather, um, well, be replaced by a superior intelligence.

That is, of course, the the depressive view, the pessimistic view that is somehow represented by post humanism, for example. And we have to find a new equilibrium, a more modest position, a more modest image of ourselves as human beings in relation to the world, to the environment. That is what the book, um, aims for.

Andrea Hiott: Yes. I think a lot of us can understand contempt for [00:18:00] the body in a sense, or that the body doesn't do what you want it to do or look how you want it to look or compare well with others around you from your perspective. And so you want to escape it. And there is something about technology that feels inviting in that way. I think on a basic level people can understand that. But what I feel in your book and in a lot of your other work is this, what I think you talk about it as inner bodily resonance in some places, life itself as being the experience and really being in the body and realizing this amazing Sense of the body How could we really think about?

Embodiment in in terms of what we've opened up so far about the body itself as maybe the center Of these different problems or beginnings of this or the place where it will be resolved 

Thomas Fuchs: Yeah, embodiment has a manifold meaning. And we should distinguish first between two ways of thinking of the body. The usual [00:19:00] one is a more or less dualistic way of thinking of the body as something that we have, and that that we kind of as an object, as an instrument. So we think of ourselves as somehow in being located in the brain or being a kind of, a soul like consciousness that is located in the body and uses it as an instrument and tries to modify it, to optimize it to have to change the body image.

So everything external that the body, Um, Well, the body can show to others and can show. So that would be the more or less dualistic way of thinking of the body. But what is before that is, of course, that we are living bodies that we are embodied. And that is, um, experience that is not easy to, um, to grasp because it doesn't mean that we are in our body, [00:20:00] rather that we inhabit our whole body, that we are our whole body, and that every experience is based on this very vital feeling that emerges from our whole body.

The vital feeling means feeling of being alive. That accompanies all our actions, perceptions, thoughts and feelings, but that is deeper um, deeper Well embodied, ingrained, so to speak, in our body because it emerges from the con cons from the constant interaction between the brain and the body as a whole.

So this vital feeling, which also, continues in certain drive states like hunger authors or other. Strivings which also manifests itself in basic moods that we are [00:21:00] in the basic moods that we ask for when we ask, well, how are you at the moment? Then we look at kind of express our constant arm, momentary mood and say, well, I'm fine.

I'm on. That's okay. So we express, um, an overall state that is. in fact, our own bodily state. And this very basic feeling of being alive is what fuels every other well, expression of ourselves, that what fuels every other experience and action. And it is deeply immersed in the body. So that is something that we usually are not aware of, because it's always in the background of our experience.

Andrea Hiott: Can we say it is the body? Is it in the body or is it the body? Because 

Thomas Fuchs: no, it is the body. Okay. It is the body as a [00:22:00] living body. So, it is not something that we, that we are. Within the body. There is no, we are not existing two times, so to speak. We are not double persons.

So the ones that are visible and then there is another person within the visible body, no, we are full fully embodied beings. Everything that is visible and that is movable and that is sensible in our experience is the living body. So it's not something that we can separate from. 

Andrea Hiott: And yet with our language and the way that we come to as that lived body, that whole living experience, we become more and more aware of that experience, which is ourselves.

And there's something about that, which you've already [00:23:00] talked about a bit, this almost, it's not that we've got two of us, but we are in a way setting ourself against ourself as subject and object in a kind of pattern, even though we're always this whole lived body. I find this very hard to talk about, which is why I'm going into it because It gets very confusing, but I think what you're showing in your work is this is a wholeness, a continuity of living and experience, even though we might not have full awareness of that, that ability to sit and realize the feeling of being alive is quite spectacular and we're not often doing that, are we? 

Thomas Fuchs: Yeah, no, certainly not. We are usually, um, well, um, immersed in the environment, um, engaged in our thoughts and our projects, um, or in interaction with others or with, with the world outside.

That is all fine, but we lose. In this involvement, in this engagement, we sometimes lose the anchoring in our lived body, which nevertheless is, of course, [00:24:00] always the basis for this engagement. And we think that we are kind of, be of mental, spiritual, or other kinds of beings, which can exist even outside or without the body.

But that is obviously not possible, um, because our feeling of being alive is based in the organism as a whole. The idea that we are somehow different from our body is the product of our capacity for reflection, and that is, of course, something particularly human as well.

We are able, as I said before, to kind of step out of our embodied center virtually and and think and see ourselves as As if from the outside, which is the possibility that opens up the understanding of others. Understanding others means stepping outside of my own center [00:25:00] virtually and taking the perspective and the view of the other.

And this is what enables the the young child at about, at around eight or nine months of life. to take the perspective of others in joint attention. And gradually, the child realizes that it is also seen by others, addressed by others, from their point of view. And if the child realizes that, then it can kind of internalize this external perspective to look at, to look at itself from the outside, so to speak, and to address itself, to gain a relation to itself.

And this is the basis for for the development of reflective self consciousness. And this, um, reflection creates the appearance that we are somehow That we could somehow detach [00:26:00] ourselves from our embodied center because we're thinking and thinking, imagine in where we are moving in imaginary worlds, we can imagine all kinds of places that we are at, that we are.

at without without changing our location as, as living bodies. And that creates the idea we could somehow detach ourselves from the body. We could be even souls or other kinds of mental beings that could leave the body. This was, um, development, um, since, antiquity. You find it in Plato. You find it, of course, in the Um, a development of Christianity, and it had, it has reached a certain climax in Descartes, which is famously the climax of thinking of the, of the human being in two kinds of substances.

Um, we have overcome this dualism to a certain extent, but we still think [00:27:00] we could be kind of, um, detached subjects where the the body is only an object of our of our interests, of our aims, of our goals, and that we could use this, use it as a kind of instrument. And it's hard to overcome this dualistic preconcept, um, completely.

We are very much shaped by it in West, in the Western world. 

Andrea Hiott: Even our language, the way we talk to one another, it's rutted in that mindset that it's hard to realize you're using that mindset as you're using, at least in my experience in English, so There's the added complication, which you've talked about in other books, where it feels like it's in our head, which we then associate with the brain.

And then we think, okay, everything is in the brain, which also isn't true but it is easy to do because we've, this process itself gets us to identify with our thoughts as if we are our thoughts. Is [00:28:00] that, does that make sense? Do you, does it, do you find that? Yeah. 

Thomas Fuchs: That makes sense, yes. We identify with the thoughts because we forget that in order to think, we first have to be alive. That's of course a reason why we shouldn't um, we shouldn't remain in the field of thoughts for too long time.

That's even what Descartes recommended to Elizabeth of Palatine. When she asked him about the, the mind body problem he recommended not to think too much about the question of how the mind could be related to the body because it's a very complicated, um, question. And he recommended that you, that you should rather, um, well, rely on the process of life, rely on everyday living.

And that shows the unity of mind and body because it's hard to conceive. Well, I [00:29:00] think it's impossible to conceive if we take a Cartesian basis, a Cartesian presupposition for it, but at least he was quite clear that about the need to, um, come back from the region and the realm of thought into embodied life, because otherwise we do not experience the unity.

The unity is the primary experience, but it can only be lived in the everyday interaction with things, with the world, with others. And I think the more we use, um, our embodied capacities, um, for example, for playing instruments, for singing, for dancing, for Um, interacting with objects in a, um, in a skillful way, the more we do that and come back from the region, from the region of thought into [00:30:00] real life the less are we.

Um, are we in danger of, um, well, getting in, getting track getting trapped in the mind, so to speak. 

Andrea Hiott: I think a lot of people understand that if you have a certain thought process and it, you get stuck in it, especially if it's one that's negative about yourself, if someone says something negative or if we can't do something or because we've taken this thought to be ourselves, that then we do get into that state of what Dostoyevsky writes about, where there is a kind of burden, a burdensomeness to being present to your thoughts in that way, or we just want to escape into something that's body less, which we associate with our technology, because it's almost as if we create these models that are the perfections of us that actually don't work or have any use unless we are using them, but then we Associate our perfection state with that use of that technology, so, this looping that we've been [00:31:00] describing starts to get very confusing, doesn't it? Because then we think somehow that we can get out of our body and become this distilled perfection that we've put into our technology, which requires our body to even make sense, but it starts to get very confusing,

Thomas Fuchs: yeah, I do. The burden of the body that you address is, of course, that is vulnerable, that as bodily beings, we know that we are, um, that we are vulnerable, that we are, um, um, exposed to possible health dangers, and that we are, of course, exposed to the ultimate danger and the ultimate certainty, namely to die.

Um, and mortality is something that is, um, well, that is that becomes clear to us through reflection. It's not the immediate feeling because the immediate feeling of being a body is the vital feeling of life. And there is nothing mortal in it as such, but the [00:32:00] mortality is, of course, part of the, of our fate as organisms, as living organisms.

And since we know that the organism is vulnerable and mortal this is the, well, obviously greatest burden that our bodily existence, um, brings to us. Um, I think transhumanism and Striving for technological progress and self optimization of the human body is ultimately aimed at somehow overcoming the the mortality, um, of the body that fuels the this constant pro, um, well, striving for technological progress in the end.

And um, a certain humility. towards our embodiment would also be a kind of remedy against this constant overburdening of ourselves in the, with the aim of, of getting rid [00:33:00] of the body. Um, I think that's an useless and illusionary endeavor. And we should rather be, um, well content with our body, with our bodily existence, because it is the one.

that makes us well, that, that creates the freedom of human life and also the richness and the wealth of human life. 

Andrea Hiott: And you show that we've maybe tricked ourselves a little bit too. That we feel so almost disgusted with, with our vulnerability or the fact that we lose someone or that death exists, that we become afraid these, these things, and then we. I'm trying to escape it into technology by becoming the technology but you show that's a bit of a trick because in the same way we've gotten caught up thinking we are our thoughts when actually we are embodied you're not going to download your mind into something that's emerged out of your interaction with the mind, so to speak.

Thomas Fuchs: Yes, absolutely. [00:34:00] Because the technology, creates the impression that our mind and our, um, well, our experience is ultimately something like information processing, uh, kind of, combined algorithm, um, process, algorithmic process, And that we could that we could exist without the living body, just as information and artificial intelligence with all its fascinating progress has also created the idea that the, the impression that mental processes could be just purely information processing.

But that is obviously wrong because what AI uses and ChantGPT uses is our already, um, well performed and experienced thinking. So we, our thinking is is sedimented in all kinds of electronic and and, and paper [00:35:00] copies. So in all kinds of, um, data of written language. This is the sedimentation of our lived experience, and AI kind of, um, um, well, lives from this, or, or gains from this sedimented basis of our thoughts.

And the thoughts that we find in AI agents such as chat GPT are only meaningful for us and not for the systems. But we tend to forget that all meaningfulness of these um, well, thoughts or sentences or texts is created fine primarily Through our own embodied being, where everything that is meaningful is related to the well, to the organism for whom there is something like good or bad attractive or repulsive or At one and an [00:36:00] advantage or disadvantage.

So the basic meaning of all these texts is ultimately related to our own embodied sense of life, although there is no other. source of meaningfulness in the world. And then when we understand the texts that AI systems produce, then again, they become only meaningful for us, because we have certain interests in our lives, because we have certain goals, we have problems, we have, um, all kinds of, um, Um, things that we have to solve and that we want to know, but all these interests, all this striving, all these goals are ultimately related to our own living embodiment, because only from there do the values, the goals, the wishes, the interests arise from which, [00:37:00] um, which lend meaning to texts.

Andrea Hiott: Exactly. Meaningfulness. The same way we confuse our thoughts with being us, that we think we are our thoughts. it's a similar pattern I think that you show that we then confuse our technology as ourselves as if they're all nested in to one another and you can't take them apart However, it doesn't feel that way in the same way that it feels like we are our thoughts and we forget our body Now it's becoming we feel like we are going to become our technology and forget the body 

Thomas Fuchs: Yes in both in both cases.

There's the similar well, there are similar illusions that are created through the Thought processes and through the externalized thought processes what, well, all these kind of books here behind me, of course, are externalized thought processes of people. 

Andrea Hiott: It's almost like trying to download ourselves into a book, right?

We can't, it's no different, is it really? I mean, it's really the same kind of thing of thinking we can download ourselves into other technology, isn't it? Absolutely. 

Thomas Fuchs: [00:38:00] Absolutely. There's no principal difference and it can create the impression that mind is something that is external and detachable from embodied experience because to a certain extent a book is a kind of detachment of of thought, of thinking and and an externalization and sedimentation into some some written text and, and and printed text.

And then you could create you could get the idea that the mind is something external because it can be In a sedimented form can and, and symbolized form, it can be externalized. But this is of course wrong because this book, without any human beings on earth, doesn't have any meaningfulness.

It, it, it as a book, it doesn't really exist. It's just a, an object an physical object that has no meaning whatsoever. [00:39:00] So only in the context of human beings that can. Well, take this book, read it, and lend meaningfulness to it. It become, can become real meaning whereas before it is at most a potential meaning.

I 

Andrea Hiott: think this is wonderful because the book itself is very potent. When we have these human bodies because in a way the books that you've written will be read on and on and there is a transmission there that's going on, but it's very much nested in that body lived bodily experience.

So I can see how confusing it can get that we think we've put something into the book, and that the book itself now has your thoughts in it. But I think what you do and where you answer this for people is with the idea in your book, you lay it out in a particular way and through inner subjectivity and second person, so maybe we could try to unpack that a [00:40:00] bit for people. I guess what we've been talking about is more, so first person is like the lived experience, how we feel when I'm, if I identify with my thoughts. And then we create this other world we've been talking about, like the books and so on, which is a more third person shared world.

And they're not distinct, but we talk about them like that. And we often forget there's another. There's something else in there too, right? And what is that? 

Thomas Fuchs: That is the second person perspective, yeah. We haven't talked about that so far in more detail. Well, of course first person perspective and subjectivity wouldn't be wouldn't be able to develop into our human existence without the other, without, um, early interaction between bodies that, um, Melo Ponte has called intercorporeality.

And we do not talk here about language already, but we talk about the very basic interaction with [00:41:00] others that gives us and gives the baby a sense of of being open to others, of being with others, of being in a constant resonant relationship with them. So resonance means that the bodies interact with each other in a way where expression and impression constantly transition into each other and where I feel the other's body with my own body in bodily resonance.

And this is the basis for empathy for early bonding with others. And for all processes that we have already addressed before, like joint attention acquiring acquiring the upright gait, acquiring language, for all these socialization processes, intercorporeality is the crucial basis because without this there would be no.

No capacity of [00:42:00] imitating others, of empathizing with others, of understanding others, and ultimately understanding their language um, and gradually. So intercorporeality is the basis for our sociality. And the second person perspective is precisely the one in which we experience each other. As embodied living beings with their particular expressiveness.

So we don't look at others from a third person point of view as bodies in the sense of the physical body, the physiological body, in the way it is. Okay. The doctor does it, or a physiologist, or a neuroscientist. These are, third person views on the body as an organism that can be, um, that can be investigated in all kinds of ways, but that is not the attitude that we have when [00:43:00] we experience and encounter each other in the second person perspective, where the other is not somehow behind his gaze or behind his face somehow inside the body, but the other is, of course, the full bodily being that we are, that we also experience ourselves to be.

So, also for you, I'm not somehow behind or in my body. But my gestures, my speaking, my voice, my gaze, all that is me and I'm not somehow a second person inside. In this attitude experience, we experience each other, and this is the intercorporeal or second person perspective, where the other is a you as a full bodily being, and where I experience myself as the other's you, um, in, as a full bodily being.

So, this is the [00:44:00] crucial basis of all kinds of intersubjectivity, even though basis for, um, well, virtual digitalized intersubjectivity, which gains increasing um, well, increasing importance, of course, today, and which somehow more or less replaces our embodied interactions to a, well, sometimes problematic extent.

But even then, even if we interact with each other only by by written text or by email, then we ultimately rely upon the possibility of meeting and countering the other as the full embodied being, at least once in a relationship. One at least once at the end. Because otherwise we wouldn't, we wouldn't rely on the written text.

We, we imagine and we anticipate the other as the full person behind the [00:45:00] text. 

Andrea Hiott: It's that nestedness again that we take for granted in the same way our thoughts don't make sense if we're not the body having them, but we forget the body. In the same way we Confuse ourselves to thinking we are our thoughts and then we can confuse that with images or technologies and how that's almost Taking us out of our actual capacity.

And this reminds me of your from lecture. You won this really prestigious prize in Europe, the Eric from Eric Fromm prize, and you talked about these issues in a different way. That we've identified with our images or we've started to glorify the images or this technology and we've lost touch with our own basic humanity 

 I think you almost compare it to a kind of narcissistic state that we've somehow fallen into.  These tendencies of us to mistake ourselves for our thoughts, ourselves for our technology. When we start doing that to one another, it, it seems to become even more, what's the word, numbing or [00:46:00] something?

Thomas Fuchs: Numbing. At least we tend to to miss the other in its in his bodily presence, and the, um, the current concepts of intersubjectivity, which we find in social science, social psychology, also in neuroscience, are, um, based on the idea that the other is not accessible to us, That the other is somehow a being that we have to, or a process that we have to infer from external science.

That is the well known concept of theory of mind, which is pervasive in the social sciences. That is the idea that we have to have a theory of how others function, of how others think, of how others work, so to speak. Because there is no way of, of access to the other, um, as he, because he is a [00:47:00] mind in this concept, he is behind the body, he is, or he or she is inaccessible to us, and therefore we need to develop a kind of concept of what others really are behind their visible behavior. That is the concept of theory of mind. And this is, of course, a very strange concept because it puts us into a position of a scientist who has to kind of detect a foreign species and to make and to make sense of what this species does. As if we would hypothesize and put and, and experiment with other people and find out what they really think and what they really feel.

And this is obviously not our primary relation to others. It can be the case, and it can be helpful in the case of, for example, a lack of immediate communication, as for example in a [00:48:00] poker game, in a poker game where everybody tries to, um, to hide as much as possible, every feeling, every expression, which is a very artificial situation, of course, and there you can Of course, use something like a inference based approach.

What, what could he have in mind? What is his strategy? And so on. But that is a very artificial and special situation. In everyday contact, you don't need such an, um, a science, a stance of an observer or a scientist. or a poker player to kind of make find out and infer what is going on in the other. Our primary relation to others is always intercorporeal.

And we couldn't live with each other if we wouldn't experience each other primarily as living beings. Or as I also call it in conviviality, [00:49:00] conviviality means that we are living beings like other living beings that we share basic experiences of embodiment of feelings of how it feels to move how it feels to to be tired, to fall asleep, to wake up again, of how it is to to, to feel hunger, to have a need for, um, for nourishment, of even how it feels to be vulnerable, um, and, um, and, and even how it is to be mortal.

All this is what we share with each other and with other living beings. And this is our primary. Attitude towards others. We do not experience others or other living beings as strange objects that we have to make sense of, and that we have to find out about what they, what they what is going on in them.

We are in [00:50:00] conviviality with each other. That is our primary. Relation, our primary attitude. 

Andrea Hiott: This is a powerful thing. If you, if we can come into our body and realize there's another living body present with us, it's amazing how it changes how it feels to be alive, that we are life nested within life. And so taking another body seriously as real is kind of part of that same process of not doing what you just described of, um, thinking it's all hallucination or thinking we're all stuck inside of our bodies. I guess it goes kind of both ways.

It reminds me of something you say in one, I think in the book of how right now we regard like our third person models or the books we were talking about or something as real or the electron is real. And maybe sometimes we also think our own experiences. As an I, the subjective experience is real, but we forget that this sec, this what's what we're doing now?

What life is this relation, [00:51:00] conviviality is just as real, right? We don't even think about it. Or put a focus on it, do we? Mm-Hmm. . Is that the answer you're offering, Thomas, in a way, in the book? Is, first of all, to notice this and then noticing it, we have to kind of come back into our body? Is that kind of the portal through which we can maybe realize we're not our thoughts, to stick with the theme of what we were talking about?

Thomas Fuchs: Yes, that's the solution that I, that I propose to many problems that we experience and that we encounter, um, in current society. Um, I develop this in more detail, of course, but the solution would be that coming back to bodily presence with ourselves and coming back to bodily presence with others.

Thank you. is the ultimate um, well, ground of an experience of reality. And this experience of reality is kind of threatened through many developments, through the idea [00:52:00] that we are our thoughts. through the idea that we are our brains, or through the idea that we are ultimately algorithms, um, and could be uploaded onto other substrates and so on.

So, this ultimate reality of immediate bodily presence is a solution to, I think, to many problems that we encounter in current society. 

Andrea Hiott: I agree, but it's hard too, isn't it? I don't want it to seem like this is easy. It is hard to come into awareness of yourself. This isn't the easiest process to become aware of yourself It can be overwhelming. It can be very hard to know how to deal with the fact that you now are aware of your body so How do you see? Ways we can help each other do this in the book you say we're You know, all these problems we face in terms of environment or mental mental states, they're gonna have to start with us inhabiting our bodies.

So this is the kind of the hard work that we're going to [00:53:00] do, but how do you see the ways we can help each other in that second? First,

Thomas Fuchs: we have to, um, to create enough options for being together which is not a matter of course today, um, because people become increasingly lonely, uh, development we observe in most Western societies, an epidemic of loneliness was the.

The title of a book that was edited by the general surgeon of the US and last year, our epidemic of loneliness. That means we are losing the embodied experience. experience of being with others in a shared space, in a group doing things together um, um, experiencing joy together in exchange, in immediate, um, contact, in shared practice.

But we are [00:54:00] increasingly moving into some kind of virtual interactions and virtual spaces where the other is not present in the. In the immediate, in the atmospheric sense of what it means to be together in a shared room, in a shared environment. Um, and this loneliness is increasing, and what we need is the constant experience or a repeating experience of being together in a shared, A space where we can touch each other, um, feel each other that would be a first, um, well, requirement.

And then what we have to kind of cultivate again is the experience of how it feels to be bodily, the experience of being bodily in all kinds of sensual ways, or feeling your embodiment in the live presence of [00:55:00] meditation, for example, or feeling your embodiment in contact with nature, where you, um, mindfully Experience or how nature is related to your own body, because that is one of the most basic ways of embeddedness in the world.

Feeling the similarity and feeling the the embeddedness in nature. The conviviality, exactly. So this is something that we lose, that we often lose in our constant constantly accelerating society, and the constant striving for self optimization. And we can ourselves and make um, us mutually attentive to how it feels and how it feels like to be really present. That is what we could help each other to regain. [00:56:00] Regain the feeling of regain the feeling of really being really present. But that is, of course, something that is in contrast and in opposition to the constantly accelerating speed of communication, of mobility, of economic processes, of technological progress that, um, that characterizes our Western society.

So we need something like a. Balance between the two principles of time, so to speak, the linear principle of constant acceleration of the linear flight of time, so to speak, on the one hand and the more cyclical, repetitive, rhythmic and present forms of experience of time that are more adequate to our basic living pro pro to our basic processes of life.

And this balance is something that we can, um, well, help each other to acquire in, in, [00:57:00] in our interaction with others. I 

Andrea Hiott: like the idea of time in this nestedness that we've been talking about, this getting away from linearity. You also talk about that in terms of time, and that can be helpful for us to also locate ourselves as part of life in a continuity of life. and as I was reading your book, I was thinking Realizing the second person stance, which I don't think is a public kind of idea, but starting to take that in a public sort of way that that's real, that interrelation is real, trying to talk about that in an everyday way also helps us not to confuse our algorithms and our models and our technology with ourselves in the way we were talking about before, because then we can see that those are like the books, right? They're ways we're trying to share our experience with one another in that. in that relation.

Thomas Fuchs: Absolutely. 

Andrea Hiott: Before we go, I have to bring up the word love. So I don't know how all this relates to trying to understand these themes and, how have you how has, how is this [00:58:00] theme related to your own path in life, and how have you kept yourself aware of that second person interrelation in a world where you could have gone either way because you're in philosophy, you're in medicine, and there's always the pull to, yeah, take the third person or the first person rather than the second person perspective.

Thomas Fuchs: Absolutely, yes. Being, precisely being in the interdisciplinary field kind of a living bridge between philosophical, um, more reflective stands our attitude towards the world on the one hand, and being a psychiatrist and, um, and psychotherapist, um, with a, an attitude of a second person, togetherness.

Andrea Hiott: A lot of people talk, praise your work to me because they know that I know you and they often say that it has, that they're, they really respect that you've [00:59:00] stayed in a lot of different fields and tried to maintain that is that part of how you've been able to. Yeah. Maintain that position. Yeah, 

Thomas Fuchs: precisely. I would, I would say, um, despite the difficulties that you, um, encounter, of course, with, with such a, well, in a, in a way, ambivalent path through life precisely through that you, of course, gain the best of both fields, so to speak, and can combine it can combine both fields in a new way.

Thank you. And I always realized that, um, that there is a danger in in losing one pole of my existence. So I always try to, um, well, to balance these two poles, um, because well, um.

I realized that I'm, I'm, I don't feel well with either of them [01:00:00] alone and that they both are fruitful for each other. So I, um, I gained so much for the psychiatric work for psychopathology for psychotherapy. Through thinking about the about the human being and very basic and in a very foundational sense, I gained so much and understanding and being able to help people understand themselves better than they do.

And I gained so much the other way around for philosophical thinking about the human being through the experiences of of, um, suffering people. How is it to suffer from? Depersonalization being feeling alien to the world. How is it to suffer from depression feeling constant rigidity in your body and the embodied relation to the world is somehow interrupted because the body becomes, um, and, and a rigid, [01:01:00] constricted object. So how does it feel then to experience the lack of attunement to others? All this helps you to better understand our basic condition as human beings. And this is how the psych, psychiatry influences, impacts on my philosophical thought. So there's such a rich mutual, um, well, advantage, so to speak, you know, there's such a rich fruitful exchange between the two poles that I would never have liked to miss one of them.

Andrea Hiott: As you were talking, I realized that's that's actually an example of the practice, of this in practice, because it can be so easy to go into your thoughts if you're just studying philosophy in the way that you brought up with the Descartes analogy. But then similarly, if you're only dealing with the subjectivity of it, this can also become something like the burden, of the [01:02:00] Dostoevsky. So thank you for that. And I guess just last question, this is love and philosophy. So we've been talking about it the whole time in a way, but, and but love, what, is this second person interrelation a kind of expression of what we try to point at with that word, would you say?

Thomas Fuchs: Um, the word love relates to this attitude of an engaged kind of science, so to speak, because it views, um, science as not something which can be done From a detached and unengaged point of view, but it looks at science as something, which changes our, um, our knowledge of the world through engagement, through the traditional view of science, um, even of philosophy, was to, um, to bring the subject into a position of autonomy, [01:03:00] of independence, of detachment from its object.

So the object could be, that was the idea recognized and, and, um, investigated. All the better, the more I, the observer, the more the scientist is detached from it. So all the engagement, all emotional involvement should be should be overcome. And there is another Um, notion off knowledge off recognition.

And that is the one that we need in contact with nature. That is what I called conviviality. But all the more we needed in contact with other with other human beings. So, recognizing, understanding the other is only possible in a relationship of loving engagement. Um, it's where the [01:04:00] other shows him or herself to you as an well, um, convivial, convivial being as a co human being, and thus becomes, um, understandable, becomes visible, becomes accessible to you in his, in, in his or her core.

That is kind, that is a completely different notion of of knowledge. So the knowledge theory of embodied, of an embodied view of science, of psychiatry, of course, as well would the knowledge theory would be a loving knowledge theory. Maybe I can just leave it at that. 

Andrea Hiott: Yeah, that's perfect. And I think that's what people pick up on in your practice of the way you're coming at your work as You're approaching it from that point of view, which is not always easy, but I think something I want to say thank you for, and that I know a lot of [01:05:00] other people really appreciate about, the way that you've made through all these different subjects. Is there anything we need to touch on before we go that we didn't talk about that you want to be sure we say or that gets in here? Okay. No, 

Thomas Fuchs: I'm fine with that. I'm fine. We touched upon many very deep issues, but There might be others, but nothing that immediately comes to my mind. 

Andrea Hiott: Yeah. I think that's good for today. I just want to say thank you, Thomas. And, You're welcome. Yeah. I really appreciate your book and I'll definitely be recommending it, of course. And 

Thomas Fuchs: thank you. 

Andrea Hiott: All right. Have hope you have a good day there. 

Thomas Fuchs: Yeah. Thanks. Thanks. And when will you be back in?