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Disability & Society
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The double empathy problem and the problem of
empathy: neurodiversifying phenomenology
David Ekdahl
To cite this article: David Ekdahl (2024) The double empathy problem and the problem of
empathy: neurodiversifying phenomenology, Disability & Society, 39:10, 2588-2610, DOI:
10.1080/09687599.2023.2220180
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/09687599.2023.2220180
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DISABILITY & SOCIETY
2024, VOL. 39, NO. 10, 2588–2610
The double empathy problem and the problem of
empathy: neurodiversifying phenomenology
David Ekdahl
Department of Sociology, Philosophy and Anthropology, University of Exeter, Exeter, UK
ABSTRACT
The notion that autistic individuals suffer from empathy defi-
ciencies 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 prob-
lem. According to this theory, empathy is fundamentally
dependent on mutual reciprocity or salience rather than indi-
vidual, 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 empa-
thy 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 intro-
duces 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 dierent people’s social experiences
and expectations.
• In philosophy, the tradition known as phenomenology has long stud-
ied 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 benet signicantly in nuance and depth.
© 2023 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
CONTACT David Ekdahl mail@davidekdahl.com; d.ekdahl@exeter.ac.uk
https://doi.org/10.1080/09687599.2023.2220180
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creative-
commons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the
original work is properly cited. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted
Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent.
ARTICLE HISTORY
Received 26 September
2022
Accepted 22 May 2023
KEYWORDS
Autism; empathy;
phenomenology;
neurodiversity;
embodiment
DISABILITY & SOCIETY 2589
Introduction
Since the early days of its identification, autism has been framed by a med-
ical 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 inuenced by and which he inuences 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 etal. 1996, 2001, Baron-Cohen,
Cosmides, etal. 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 disjunc-
tures 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
2590 D. EKDAHL
introducing to the discussion of empathy important considerations of dif-
ference 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 empa-
thy 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 empa-
thy. 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 difficul-
ties at multiple levels, particularly with contextual and integrative perception.
This view has notably been adjusted over time by some of its early propo-
nents, who have moved towards favoring an account of autism as more
clearly involving ‘superiority in relation to local processing’ rather than a
DISABILITY & SOCIETY 2591
‘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 frame-
work 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 fun-
damentally 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, inten-
tions 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 phenom-
ena 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 fun-
damentally from classical phenomenological approaches to
intersubjectivity.
2592 D. EKDAHL
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, per-
tains 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 empa-
thy (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
DISABILITY & SOCIETY 2593
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 dierently disposed social
actors’ who hold dierent 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 expec-
tations for purely autistic and purely allistic interactions, the theory of double
empathy predicts that these will not be marred by the same social disjunc-
tures as can characterize autistic-allistic interactions. The theory further high-
lights 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 soci-
ality (cf. the claim that autistic individuals lack the ability to self-reflect (Frith
and Happé 1999)).
2594 D. EKDAHL
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 assump-
tion of the overall neurodiversity movement is that fundamental (e.g. neu-
rological) 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 neurodi-
versity 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 signifi-
cance of reciprocity or salience to social understanding, it is less clear how
the double empathy problem is specifically an empathy problem. In priori-
tizing 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 diculty with what that concept is really referring to. It seems to mean
dierent things to dierent people (Nicolaidis etal. 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
DISABILITY & SOCIETY 2595
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 recip-
rocal 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 assump-
tions 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 empa-
thy’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 them-
selves be integrated with and expanded by the theory of double empathy’s
core tenets of neurodiversity.
2596 D. EKDAHL
The problem of empathy
Phenomenologists have since the beginning of the twentieth century exam-
ined 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 phenom-
enological 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 them-
selves 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 infer-
ential; 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 phenom-
enon; 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. inten-
tions 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,
DISABILITY & SOCIETY 2597
[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 our-
selves (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
2598 D. EKDAHL
each other in the first place. A similar emphasis is found in enactivist liter-
ature, 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 understand-
ing 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 oppor-
tunity 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 reject-
ing the fundamental assumption that mental states are something hidden
behind the body to be inferred. Instead, phenomenology stresses the fun-
damental 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,
DISABILITY & SOCIETY 2599
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 res-
onance 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 phenom-
enological contributors of the early twentieth century did not engage with
autism as an expression of diversity. In other words, classical phenomeno-
logical approaches to empathy have generally not been written with neu-
rodiversity 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 phe-
nomenological 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 understand-
ing 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 phenome-
nology 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 phe-
nomenological 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
2600 D. EKDAHL
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 phenome-
nological accounts more clearly align with core tenets of neurodiversity and
might consequently serve as inspiration when turning to autism and empa-
thy. 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 nds there some-
thing 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,
DISABILITY & SOCIETY 2601
the life of the mind of the other can positively be given as something
indeterminate. The conclusion drawn is that both autistic and allistic inter-
locutor 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 phenome-
nological 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 per-
spective 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 embod-
iment. 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 indi-
viduals. To autistic individuals, eye contact can be a source of great discom-
fort 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 phe-
nomenological 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 indi-
viduals’ discomforts with eye contact are interpreted through neurotypical
2602 D. EKDAHL
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 inter-
locutors might be as apparent as gaze avoidance. For example, an autistic
individual might well feel pressure to maintain eye-contact during a con-
versation 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 arriv-
ing 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 heter-
onomous 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 neurodi-
versity. 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.).
DISABILITY & SOCIETY 2603
Moreover, Milton has proposed that autism researchers might be evaluated
on their ability to imitate or reproduce autistic embodied, styles of commu-
nication (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 inter-
actions 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 interac-
tion, and thus social understanding, itself an impossibility. This is, however,
not persuasive from a phenomenological perspective. While phenomenolog-
ical 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 under-
standing 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 etal. 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 empa-
thy have been introduced – both being approaches to empathy that stand
in opposition to cognitivist accounts such as theory of mind. Following this,
2604 D. EKDAHL
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 phenome-
nological descriptions of empathy have been emphasized, and the impor-
tance 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 struc-
tural 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 phe-
nomenologically in illuminating what it can mean to be human in a neuro-
diverse 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.
Funding
The work was supported by Carlsbergfondet’s Internationalisation Fellowship (grant num-
ber: CF21 0287).
ORCID
David Ekdahl http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0940-8582
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