Intersubjectivity 1

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INTERSUBJECTIVITY

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.”

“I need to understand their bodily gestures and behavior as


expressive phenomena, as manifestations of joy or pain, and not simply as
physical movements.  If such an understanding is required for the
argument of analogy to proceed, however, the argument presupposes
what it is supposed to establish.”
The argument from the analogy also operates with
some questionable assumptions.

First, it assumes that my point of


departure is my own
consciousness.

Second, the argument also assumes


that we never have direct access
to another person's mind.
Although both of these assumptions might seem perfectly obvious,
many phenomenologists have rejected both.

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

• The phenomenological account


differs from the accounts proposed
by the dominant positions within the
theory of mind debate.

Both of the latter positions deny that it


is possible to experience the mental
state of others.
● It is precisely because of the absence of an experiential access to
others thoughts, emotions, sensations and so on that we need to
employ either Theoretical Inferences or Internal Simulations.

● 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.

At First, We begin from the recognition that our perception of


another’s bodily presence is unlike our perception of physical
things.

The other is given in its bodily presence as a


lived body, a body that is actively
engaged in the world.
Jean Paul Sartre
a French philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer,
and literary critic.

He said that, “it is a decisive mistake to


think that my ordinary encounter with
the body of another is an encounter
with the kind of body described by
physiology. The body of another is
always given to me in a situation or
meaningful context, which is co-
determined by the action and
expression of that very body”
Some phenomenologists suggest that our understanding of others
involves a distinctive form of intentionality that they call empathy.
The phenomenological conception of empathy stands opposed to any
theory that claims that our primary mode of understanding others is by
perceiving their bodily behavior and then inferring or hypothesizing
that their behavior is caused by inner experiences similar to those that
apparently cause that kind of behavior in us.
Most phenomenologists have argued that it makes
no sense to speak of another mind unless that mind is
in some way given and accessible.
The second- (or third-) person access to
psychological states differs from the first-person
access, but this difference is not an imperfection or a
shortcoming.
Rather, the difference is constitutional. It is what
makes the experience in question an experience of
another person rather than a self-experience.
Many phenomenologists have denied that
interpersonal understanding is primarily a
question of a thematic encounter between
individuals, where one is trying to grasp the
experiential states of the other. 

On the contrary, the very attempt thematically


to grasp the experiences of others is the
exception rather than the rule.  
In contrast to mentalistic theory-
of-mind approaches
define the problem of other
minds as that of how to gain
access to the other person’s
(hidden) mind.

phenomenological approaches

more productive focus is on the


other person’s world.
we should not overlook that our
We need to remember that… perception of the other person

is never of an entity existing


outside of a situation

 but of an agent in the middle of a


pragmatic context that throws
light on the intentions of that
agent.
One of the quite crucial insights that we find in many phenomenologists is the
idea that a treatment of intersubjectivity simultaneously requires an analysis of the
relationship between subjectivity and world. It is not satisfactory simply to insert
intersubjectivity somewhere within an already established metaphysical framework;
rather, the three dimensions “self,” “others,” and “world” belong together,

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.

More importantly in the present context, some phenomenologists have also


developed accounts of intersubjectivity that have implications for ethical theory.

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