Intersubjectivity 1
Intersubjectivity 1
Intersubjectivity 1
INTERSUBJECTIVITY
• Intersubjectivity is a term used in philosophy, psychology, sociology,
and anthropology to represent the psychological relation between
people. It is usually used in contrast to solipsistic individual
experience, emphasizing our inherently social being.
The German term Intersubjektivität made
its first sporadic appearance in 1885 in a
work by Johannes Volkelt. It was picked
up by James Ward and first used in English
in 1896.
Johannes Volkelt
The first systematic and extensive
philosophical discussion and treatment of
the notion of intersubjectivity can,
however, be found in the work of the
German philosopher Edmund Husserl, the
founder of phenomenology.
Johannes Volkelt
Intersubjectivity in the
Phenomenological
Tradition
The classical argument, which was first formulated by John Stuart Mill, runs as
follows:
“In my own case, I can observe that I have experiences when my body is causally
influenced, and that these experiences frequently bring about certain actions.
I observe that other bodies are influenced and act in similar manners and I therefore
infer by analogy that the behavior of foreign bodies is associated with experiences
similar to those I have myself.”
As phenomenologists have pointed out, however, the argument
presupposes what it is meant to explain. “In order for the argument from
analogy to succeed, it has to rely on a similarity between the way in which
my own body is given to me and the way in which the body of the other is
given to me.”
They have argued that we should not fail to acknowledge the embodied
and embedded nature of self-experience and that we should not ignore
what can be directly perceived by others.
Theory of Mind &
The Simulation Theory
of Mind
● Both accounts share the view that the minds of others are hidden,
and they consider one of the main challenges facing a theory of
social cognition to be the question of how and why we start
ascribing such hidden mental entities or processes to certain
publicly observable bodies.
But it is no coincidence that we use psychological terms
to describe behavior; indeed, we would be hard pressed to
describe it in terms of bare movements. Affective and
emotional states are not simply qualities of subjective
experience; rather, they are given in expressive phenomena,
that is, they are expressed in bodily gestures and actions, and
they thereby become visible to others.
There is, in short, something highly problematic
about claiming that intersubjective understanding is a
two-stage process of which the first stage is the
perception of meaningless behavior and the second an
intellectually based attribution of psychological
meaning.
In the majority of cases, it is quite difficult (and
artificial) to divide a phenomenon neatly into a
psychological aspect and a behavioral aspect – think
merely of a groan of pain, a handshake, an embrace. In the
face-to-face encounter, we are confronted neither with a
mere body nor with a hidden psyche but with a unified
whole.
Scheler termed this whole an “expressive unity.” It is
only subsequently, through a process of abstraction, that this
unity can be divided and our interest then proceed “inwards”
or “outwards” (Scheler 1973: 255).
Phenomenologists have tended to take an embodied perceptual approach to
the questions of understanding others and the problem of intersubjectivity.
phenomenological approaches
They reciprocally illuminate one another, and can only be fully understood in
their interconnection. Much of what phenomenologists have had to say on the issue
of intersubjectivity is of obvious relevance, not only for related discussions in
analytical philosophy of mind, but also for empirical disciplines, such as
Developmental Psychology Sociology, Anthropology, Social neuroscience, and
Psychiatry.