The paper focuses on the complex relations between aesthetics and phenomenology as they show themselves within the core locus of their interplay—the realm of the visible and the invisible. To do so, the paper examines a specific case study, a Rembrandt painting—A Woman Bathing in a Stream (1654)—through which the discussion illuminates the interconnected and inseparable relationship between aesthetics and phenomenology in relation to Merleau-Ponty’s ontology of the visible and the invisible. The reading addresses both dimensions of the visible: the (...) essential intersubjective aspect of life and its complex visual representation in art. To achieve this, the paper first explores Merleau-Ponty’s late aesthetic ontology—a phenomenology that perceives the aesthetic realm, particularly the visible domain, as originating from human corporeal existence, thereby redefining the act of seeing and the concepts of the visible and the invisible; I show the manner in which invisible elements permeate our visual experience in the Rembrandt painting and in seeing as such. The paper also reveals the unique ontological role of painting and the painter in unveiling the aesthetic world, and in guiding the philosopher toward a vision that true philosophy—phenomenology—must embrace. The paper concludes by rethinking the significance of aesthetics, and especially, the arts, to phenomenological thought, and the necessity of phenomenology to aesthetic thought. (shrink)

This book extends philosophy's engagement with the double beyond hierarchized binary oppositions. Brian Seitz explores the double as a necessary ontological condition or figure that gets represented, enacted, and performed repeatedly and in a myriad of configurations. Seitz suggests that the double in all of its forms is simultaneously philosophy's shadow, its nemesis, and the condition of its possibility. This book expands definitions and investigations of the double beyond the confines of philosophy, suggesting that the concept is at work in (...) many other fields including politics, cultural narratives, literature, mythology, and psychology. Seitz approaches the double by means of a series of case studies and by engaging loosely in eidetic variation, a methodological maneuver borrowed from phenomenology. The book explores the ways in which wide-ranging instances of the double are connected by the dynamics of intersubjectivity. (shrink)

Articulate and perceptive, Intersubjectivity is a text that explains the notions of intersubjectivity as a central concern of philosophy, sociology, psychology, and politics. Going beyond this broad-ranging introduction and explication, author Nick Crossley provides a critical discussion of intersubjectivity as an interdisciplinary concept to shed light on our understanding of selfhood, communication, citizenship, power, and community. The volume traces the contributions of key thinkers engaged within the intersubjectivist tradition, including Husserl, Buber, Kojeve, Merlau-Ponty, Mead, Wittgenstein, Schutz, and (...) Habermas. A clear, concise introduction to a range of difficult concepts and thinkers, Intersubjectivity demystifies this very interdisciplinary subject for advanced and graduate-level students of philosophy, sociology, social psychology, and social and political theory. (shrink)

Current theories of social cognition are mainly based on a representationalist view. Moreover, they focus on a rather sophisticated and limited aspect of understanding others, i.e. on how we predict and explain others’ behaviours through representing their mental states. Research into the ‘social brain’ has also favoured a third-person paradigm of social cognition as a passive observation of others’ behaviour, attributing it to an inferential, simulative or projective process in the individual brain. In this paper, we present a concept of (...) social understanding as an ongoing, dynamical process of participatory sense-making and mutual incorporation. This process may be described (1) from a dynamical agentive systems point of view as an interaction and coordination of two embodied agents; (2) from a phenomenological approach as a mutual incorporation, i.e. a process in which the lived bodies of both participants extend and form a common intercorporality. Intersubjectivity, it is argued, is not a solitary task of deciphering or simulating the movements of others but means entering a process of embodied interaction and generating common meaning through it. This approach will be further illustrated by an analysis of primary dyadic interaction in early childhood. (shrink)

Intersubjectivity refers to the variety of possible relations between perspectives. It is indispensable for understanding human social behaviour. While theoretical work on intersubjectivity is relatively sophisticated, methodological approaches to studying intersubjectivity lag behind. Most methodologies assume that individuals are the unit of analysis. In order to research intersubjectivity, however, methodologies are needed that take relationships as the unit of analysis. The first aim of this article is to review existing methodologies for studying intersubjectivity. Four methodological (...) approaches are reviewed: comparative self-report, observing behaviour, analysing talk and ethnographic engagement. The second aim of the article is to introduce and contribute to the development of a dialogical method of analysis. The dialogical approach enables the study of intersubjectivity at different levels, as both implicit and explicit, and both within and between individuals and groups. The article concludes with suggestions for using the proposed method for researching intersubjectivity both within individuals and between individuals and groups. (shrink)

This paper aims to clarify how, as Fichte himself claims in a 1800 letter draft, the theory of intersubjectivity he presents in the 1800 Vocation of Man marks an improvement over the theory he presents in the 1798 System of Ethics. Taking my departure from Marco Ivaldo’s suggestion that Fichte ceases to rely on the “good” but still “rather dogmatic” Leibnizian hypothesis of preestablished harmony in the former work in the way that he does in the latter, I argue (...) that the difference lies in his no longer counting on the hypothesis to secure the agreement of each of our worlds and our perception of each other’s actions in it. Fichte attempts to dispense with this last vestige of dogmatism in the Vocation of Man by employing the ethical drive in its material determinateness (in other words, each of our final end) as a transcendental ground for the agreement of our worlds, and thereby the possibility of intersubjectivity. The communal conception of our final end which Fichte develops in the last part of the System of Ethics prepares it for its role as such a ground. For it is in the demand of the “voice of conscience” in us to co-operate with others to bring about “one great free moral community” that he finds in the Vocation of Man a transcendental source and basis for our conviction that the worlds of others’ perceptions agree with the world of our perception. (shrink)

The intentions of others often enter into your practical reasoning, even when you’re acting on your own. Given all the agents around you, you’ll come to grief if what they’re up to is never a consideration in what you decide to do and how you do it. There are occasions, however, when the intentions of another figure in your practical reasoning in a particularly intimate and decisive fashion. I will speak of there being on such occasions a practical intersubjectivity (...) of intentions holding between you and the other individual. I will try to identify this practical intersubjectivity, and to take some preliminary steps toward giving a philosophical account of it. Occasions of practical intersubjectivity are usually those where individuals share agency, or do things jointly, such as when they walk together, kiss, or paint a house together. I will not assume that all instances of practical intersubjectivity are instances of shared agency. But the converse is true: any instance of shared agency involves a practical intersubjectivity holding between the participants. An account of shared agency is inadequate if it fails to handle practical intersubjectivity. The paper is structured as follows. In section 1, I present an example to illustrate this idea of practical intersubjectivity, at least as it appears in the context of shared agency. Practical intersubjectivity is a normative phenomenon, and it is on this basis that in section 2 I distinguish it from the mere coordination of intentions some have recognized as essential for shared activity. The task of section 3 is to show how practical intersubjectivity cannot be adequately described in terms of ordinary intentions familiar from the study of individual agency. Such approaches fail to handle the rational dynamics of intention revision when practical.. (shrink)

In this study, the author develops an original reading of the Fifth Cartesian Meditation. This text, far from giving rise to a “transcendental solipsism”, as classical commentators claim, leads to a constitution of intersubjectivity on various levels . In its center, a “phenomenological construction” operates, i.e. a methodological piece that masters the genetic approach of intersubjectivity. Closely following the “almost mathematical” rigour of this crucial text of Husserl’s phenomenology, the author equally tackles the issue of the constitution of (...) the experience of the other and the truly intersubjective structure of transcendental subjectivity. The article concludes with the metaphysical results of the analysis of the experience of the other. (shrink)

This essay discusses an alternative interpretation of the term “Dasein” as Heidegger uses it in Being and Time and, in particular, the possibility that Dasein is meant to contain an inherent form of intersubjectivity to which we must “return” in order to achieve authenticity. In doing so, I build on the work of John Haugeland and his interpretation of Dasein as a mass term, while exploring the implications such an interpretation has on Heidegger’s conception of “authenticity”. Ultimately, this paper (...) aims to take seriously Heidegger’s claim to be moving past the isolated Cartesian subject and towards a view of authentic human existence that is cognizant of the way our identities are always formed within a pre-existing community. In addition, since many interpretations of Heidegger have argued that “the Anyone” is representative of all possible forms of community, I consider how this alternative understanding of Dasein as intersubjective can shed new light on critical remarks Heidegger makes about “the Anyone”. Thus, I argue that by reinterpreting Dasein as community, we can find more coherence between Heidegger’s otherwise conflicting conceptions of authenticity and “the Anyone”. (shrink)

Intersubjectivity is one of the most important concepts of the phenomenological school of thought. The approach assumes that our being in the world is based on relations with Others. The idea has a central role not only in the philosophy of perception but in psy-sciences as well. Mostly all branches of psychology agree that the self is constituted by its relations. However, there is much less consensus on how decisive these relations are. Therefore, the question of intersubjectivity has (...) become the question of how we perceive human beings: as biological or social entities. Psy-sciences have never had one coherent and consensual paradigm, although nowadays the natural scientific standards are the most prevailing in the field, which prioritizes biological explanations over socio-cultural aspects. The study attempts to connect the phenomenological approach to intersubjectivity to the psychological approach to embodiment. For this, first, it elaborates on an essential problem of psy-sciences, transmitted by classical philosophy, namely the mind-body dualism, which implicitly establishes the current paradigm. Then, it aims to describe how the phenomenological approach, especially the philosophy of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, could dissolve the classical dualism through the assumption of the body-mind-world unity. Merleau-Ponty was one of those thinkers of the 20th century who laid down the foundations of the scientific paradigm of embodiment. Afterward, I illustrate the phenomenological concept above through Ben Rumble’s psychological approach, which applies the embodiment paradigm for the therapeutic process as a professional. The final part of the study attempts to establish a relation between the psychological attitude based on embodiment and the psychoanalytic theory of Sándor Ferenczi, the Hungarian psychoanalyst. (shrink)

The arguments advanced in this paper are the following. Firstly, that just as Trevarthen’s three subjective/intersubjective levels, primary, secondary, and tertiary, mapped out different modes of access, so too response is similarly structured, from direct primordial responsiveness, to that informed by shared pragmatic concerns and narrative contexts, to that which demands the distantiation afforded by representation. Secondly, I propose that empathy is an essential mode of intentionality, integral to the primary level of subjectivity/intersubjectivity, which is crucial to our survival (...) as individuals and as a species. Further to this last point, I argue that empathy is not derived on the basis of intersubjectivity, nor does it merely disclose intersubjectivity, rather it is constitutive of intersubjectivity at the primary level. Empathy is a direct, irreducible intentionality separable in thought from the other primary intentional modes of perception, rationality, memory and imagination, but co-arising with these. In regard to the inter-personal level, the concrete relations with others, primary empathy is both the ground for the possibility of the secondary manifestations—pity, sympathy, perspective taking, etc., and motivates them. Thirdly, it is the movement in the core of subjectivity initially generated by shifting attention between the ‘I’ and ‘we’ perspectives and later ‘solidified’ through affect to become shifting identification, which opens up the intersubjective domain. So we can affirm that we are not only born into sociality but our sociality goes to the roots of our being as Husserl, Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty have claimed. (shrink)

The embodied, embedded, enactive, and extended approaches to cognition explicate many important details for a phenomenology of perception, and are consistent with some of the traditional phenomenological analyses. Theorists working in these areas, however, often fail to provide an account of how intersubjectivity might relate to perception. This paper suggests some ways in which intersubjectivity is important for an adequate account of perception.

RESUMEN La reconstrucción realizada en el presente artículo parte de la hipótesis de que pueden diferenciarse dos tipos de objeciones schützianas al texto canónico de Husserl, a saber: inmanentes y fundamentales. Las primeras remarcan las dificultades subyacentes en los pasos tomados por Husserl para resolver el problema de la intersubjetividad trascendental, mientras que las segundas cuestionan la pertinencia filosófica del problema mismo. ABSTRACT The hypothesis underlying the reconstruction set forth in the article is that Schütz's objections to Husserl's canonical text (...) are of two types: immanent and fundamental. The former underline the difficulties inherent to Husserl's steps in trying to solve the problem of transcendental intersubjectivity, while the latter question the philosophical pertinence of the issue itself. (shrink)

The present work explores interspecies intersubjectivity, including its content and limitations, through the paradigmatic instances of such relationships that are present among companion species. I aim to defend the claim that meaningful relationships are possible and do in fact occur between humans and nonhuman animals by appealing to both philosophical and empirical literature. I will also begin to delineate the content and limitations of these interspecies relationships.

Annotation "Subjective, Intersubjective, Objective is the third volume of philosophical writings by Donald Davidson, whose influence on philosophy since the 1960s has been deep and broad. His first two collections, published by OUP in the early 1980s, are recognized as contemporary classics." "Now Davidson presents a selection of his work on knowledge, mind, and language from the 1980s and the 1990s. We all have knowledge of our own minds, knowledge of the contents of other minds, and knowledge of the shared (...) environment. Davidson examines the nature and status of each of these three sorts of knowledge, and the connections and differences among them. Along the way he has illuminating things to say about truth, human rationality, and the relations among language, thought, and the world." "This new volume offers a rich and rewarding feast for anyone interested in philosophy today, and is essential reading for anyone working on its central topics."--BOOK JACKET. Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved. (shrink)

__Husserl and Transcendental Intersubjectivity __analyzes the transcendental relevance of intersubjectivity and argues that an intersubjective transformation of transcendental philosophy can already be found in phenomenology, especially in Husserl. Husserl eventually came to believe that an analysis of transcendental intersubjectivity was a _conditio sine qua non_ for a phenomenological philosophy. Drawing on both published and unpublished manuscripts, Dan Zahavi examines Husserl's reasons for this conviction and delivers a detailed analysis of his radical and complex concept of intersubjectivity, (...) showing that precisely his reflections on transcendental intersubjectivity are capable of clarifying the core-concepts of phenomenology, thus making possible a new understanding of Husserl’s philosophy. Against this background the book compares his view with the approaches to intersubjectivity found in Heidegger, Sartre, and Merleau-Ponty, and it then attempts to establish to what extent the phenomenological approach can contribute to the current discussion of intersubjectivity. This is achieved through a systematic confrontation with the language-pragmatical positions of Apel and Habermas. (shrink)

The Gathas, a corpus of seventeen poems in Old Avestan composed by the ancient Iranian poet-priest Zarathushtra (Zoroaster) ca. 1200 B.C.E., is the foundation document of Zoroastrian religion. Even though the dualistic axiology of the Gathas has been widely noted, it has proved very difficult to understand the meaning and genre of the corpus or the position of Zarathushtra’s ideas with regard to other religious philosophies. Relying on recent advances in translation and decryptions of Gathic poetry, I shall here develop (...) a philosophical interpretation of the Gathas, including, as shall be discussed here in detail, explication of the revelation he reports in the poem known as Yasna 30. I argue that, similarly to Marx, Henry, and Schutz, Zarathushtra connects social criticism with an original philosophy of (inter)subjectivity and existential reflection, placing his account in the context of a fully developed metaphysics which includes the human-divine sharing of mental properties. I show that in order to accommodate this complicated problematic, Zarathushtra uses the vehicle of multiple realities. Reflecting the spontaneity of life, the dynamics of various ontological modes in the text create a reference to subjectivity. A description of the dream in Yasna 30 is sufficiently within the limits of possibility for a dream experience, and thereby delivers three original phenomenological reductions. The reductions initiate a genetic account of the phenomenalization of invisible impulses which give rise to moral choices, and define the human-divine relationship. The opposing moral choices open into a reverse axiological intentionality in the sphere of intersubjectivity, and are said to plot life for the rightful and lifelessness for the wrongful. It can be concluded that Zarathushtra’s theism and views of the social world are “the first philosophy”, with a unique and original phenomenological ontology of intersubjectivity at its core. (shrink)

This is the long-awaited third volume of philosophical writings by Davidson, whose influence on philosophy since the 1960s has been deep and broad. His first two collections, published by Oxford in the early 1980s, are recognized as contemporary classics. His ideas have continued to flow; now, in this new work, he presents a selection of his best work on knowledge, mind, and language from the last two decades. It is a rich and rewarding feast for anyone interested in philosophy, and (...) essential reading for anyone working on these topics. (shrink)

In this article I argue for increased attention to the supernatural as a site for inquiry into, and elaboration of, affect. In attending to how and when people encounter ghosts in Thailand, affect is approached as a moving, interpersonal field of wishes and desires. These wishes and desires circulate within intersubjective spaces, and are sometimes experienced as coalesced, embodied emotions. In highlighting such an orientation, affect can be understood as not just an intersubjective project but also a spiritual one. I (...) suggest that we pay special attention to this quality of the supernatural as an affective force and to the intersubjective, affective currents of emotion. (shrink)

The study of consciousness in modern science is hampered by deeply ingrained, dualist presuppositions about the nature of consciousness. In particular, conscious experiences are thought to be private and subjective, contrasting with physical phenomena which are public and objective. In the present article, I argue that all observed phenomena are, in a sense, private to a given observer, although there are some events to which there is public access. Phenomena can be objective in the sense of intersubjective, investigators can be (...) objective in the sense of truthful or dispassionate, and procedures can be objective in being well-specified, but observed phenomena cannot be objective in the sense of being observer-free. Phenomena are only repeatable in the sense that they are judged by a community of observers to be tokens of the same type. Stripped of its dualist trappings the empirical method becomes if you carry out these procedures you will observe or experience these results -- which applies as much to a science of consciousness as it does to physics. (shrink)

This book is a major early work of Japanese philosopher Wataru Hiromatsu (1933-1994). Originally published in 1972, the primary theme is overcoming the subject-object schema of modern philosophy. Hiromatsu seeks to replace this subject-object schema with what he calls the intersubjective fourfold structure, in which "the given is valid as something more to someone as someone more." This fourfold structure is not a sum of four independent elements, but exists only as a functional relationship. From this relationist point of view, (...) Hiromatsu develops his philosophical theory as a systematic critique of "reification," defined as the hypostatizing misconception of a functional relation. (shrink)

As Husserl argues in the fifth Cartesian Meditation, the similarity of my Body (Leib) with the body (Körper) of another person is the founding moment of the experience of the other. This similarity is based on the previous objectivation of my Body. Husserl continuously worried to explicate this similarity-premise and by doing so, it appeared that this objectivation already presupposes intersubjectivity. By running into this problem, the Meditation actually fulfils its program by showing that the other is co-constitutive of (...) the world and more precisely of my existence as a worldly human being. At the same time he developed an alternative approach by identifying the original experience of the other as an expressive unity (Ausdruckseinheit) as the condition of possibility of intersubjective experience. By drawing on the relevant Forschungsmanuskripte in the volumes on Intersubjectivity and on Ideas II, it appears that the Meditation offers a naturalistic theory of intersubjectivity that results from the introduction of the reduction to primordiality. When one takes into account Husserl's analysis of the experience of an expressive unity, that is a defining characteristic of the personalistic attitude, one can clarify the derivative nature of this naturalistic approach. (shrink)

The author provides an original reflection on the notion of selfhood as intersubjective, taking the form of phenomenological reflections on the building blocks of the perennial philosophy, recasting Aristotelian-Thomistic metaphysics from the perspective of a phenomenology.

Underlying the recent focus on embodied and interactive aspects of social understanding are several intuitions about what roles the body, interaction processes, and interpersonal experience play. In this paper, we introduce a systematic, hands-on method for investigating the experience of interacting and its role in intersubjectivity. Special about this method is that it starts from the idea that researchers of social understanding are themselves one of the best tools for their own investigations. The method provides ways for researchers to (...) calibrate and to trust themselves as sophisticated instruments to help generate novel insights into human interactive experience. We present the basics of the method, and two empirical studies. The first is a video-study on autism, which shows greater refinement in the way people with autism embody their social interactions than previously thought. The second is a study of thinking in live interactions, which provides insight into the common feeling that too much thinking can hamper interaction, and into how this kind of interactional awkwardness might be unblocked. (shrink)

Consider the claims that representations of physical laws are intersubjective, and that they ultimately provide the foundation for all other intersubjective knowledge. Those claims, as well as the deeper philosophical commitments that justify them, constitute rare points of agreement between the Marburg School neo-Kantians Paul Natorp and Ernst Cassirer and their positivist rival, Ernst Mach. This is surprising, since Natorp and Cassirer are both often at pains to distinguish their theories of natural scientific knowledge from positivist views like Mach’s, and (...) often from Mach’s views in particular. Thus the very fact of this agreement between the Marburg School neo-Kantians and their positivist stalking horse points to a deep current of ideas that runs beneath the whole of the post-Kantian intellectual context they shared. (shrink)

The distinction between propositional and doxastic justification is well-known among epistemologists. Propositional justification is often conceived as fundamental and characterized in an entirely apsychological way. In this chapter, I focus on beliefs based on deductive arguments. I argue that such an apsychological notion of propositional justification can hardly be reconciled with the idea that justification is a central component of knowledge. In order to propose an alternative notion, I start with the analysis of doxastic justification. I then offer a notion (...) of propositional justification, intersubjective propositional justification, that is neither entirely apsychological nor idiosyncratic. To do so, I argue that to be able to attribute propositional justification to a subject, we have to consider her social context as well as broad features of our human cognitive architecture. (shrink)

Transcendental Ego is the principle of principles that philosophization of great philosophers such as Husserl has been based upon it. Husserl, too, as a follower of Descartes meditations and philosophy with attemption in intentionality of transcendental ego accepts it as the base of principles of philosophization and declares himself as a New Cartesian. In this study, the author develops an original reading of the Cartesian Meditation. This text, far from giving rise to a “Transcendental solipsism”, leads to a constitution of (...) intersubjectivity on various levels (“primordial”, “Intersubjective” et “Objective”). In its center, a “Phenomenological Construction” operates, i.e. a methodological piece that masters the genetic approach of intersubjectivity. Closely following the “almost mathematical” rigour of this crucial text of Husserl’s phenomenology, in this way equally tackles the issue of the constitution of the experience of the other and the truly intersubjective structure of transcendental subjectivity. This study concludes with the metaphysical results of the analysis of the experience of the other. (shrink)

Sartre’s analysis of intersubjectivity in the third part of Being and Nothingness is guided by two main motives1. First of all, Sartre is simply expanding his ontological investigation of the essential structure of and relation between the for-itself (pour-soi) and the in-itself (en-soi). For as he points out, I need the Other in order fully to understand the structure of my own being, since the for-itself refers to the for-others (EN 267/303, 260/298); moreover, as he later adds, a treatment (...) of the relation to the in-itself must necessarily include an analysis of the Other precisely because this relation is played out in the presence of the Other (EN 410/472). Secondly, Sartre wants to supply a concrete solution to the problem of solipsism (EN 289/329, 296/337). This problem was already preoccupying him in The Transcendence of the Ego, but at that time, Sartre argued that solipsism could be avoided by means of a non-egological theory of consciousness, since such a theory—which sees the transcendental field of consciousness as non-personal and the I as a product of reflection (TE 36/52-53, 63/80- 81)—would no longer confer a privileged status to the I vis-à-vis the Other (TE 85/104). In Being and Nothingness, however, Sartre concedes that this renunciation of the transcendental I has in fact been of no help in overcoming solipsism (EN 280/318). The problem remains and has to be solved. As he is quick to add, however, a proper solution will not involve any proof of the existence of Others; rather, it will be a question of revealing the foundation of our “pre-ontological” certainty with regard to the existence of the Other (EN.. (shrink)

An exhaustive look at Levinas's primary texts, both his philosophical writings and writings on Judaism, that brings together Levinas's various perspectives on time; concludes that we can extract a coherent and consistent conception of time from Levinas's thought, one that is distinctly political. Thus, this study elucidates Levinas's claim that time is actually constituted via social relationships"--Provided by publisher.

All aesthetic judgements, whether descriptive, evaluative or some combination of the two, and whatever they might be about, whether works of art, artefacts of other kinds, or natural things, declare themselves to be, not mere announcements or expressions of personal responses to the objects of judgement, but claims meriting the agreement of others. Despite the frequent appeal in everyday life to the nihilistic interpretation of the saying ‘It's all a matter of taste’, the doctrine of aesthetic nihilism—the view that such (...) claims are never warranted—does not merit serious attention. What is needed is an articulation of the various kinds of content of aesthetic judgements, one that will reveal what their claim to intersubjective validity amounts to and enable an assessment of what the proper limits of the claim might be. This clarification is what I attempt to provide. After some introductory definitions and classifications, the principal focus of the first part of the paper is descriptive aesthetic judgements, and one issue that figures large is the proper understanding of those judgements of this kind which are expressed in sentences that are intended to be understood metaphorically. A short bridge passage identifies an aesthetic judgement whose content is indicative of the content of evaluative aesthetic judgements of all kinds, and in particular evaluative aesthetic judgements about works of art, which the second part of the paper focuses on. Real illumination of these requires an identification of the aim of art (as such): I offer an account of this aim, which I defend against certain objections that it is liable to attract, and I use it to throw light not just on singular but also on comparative judgements of artistic value. I conclude with some remarks about purely aesthetic value and specifically artistic value and about similarities and differences between evaluative aesthetic judgements of works of art and evaluative aesthetic judgements of works of nature. (shrink)

Psychology has been a deductive science where theory and hypotheses precede investigation of new knowledge. Data inform theory which then leads to more refined hypotheses. The recent move toward a cultural psychology calls for an unfurling of this perspective. This involves consideration of an epistemology at the core of anthropology, a shift toward first-person points of view, where ethnography is the inductive method based on a practical philosophy. This paper examines what is at stake for psychology to enter the interpretive (...) social sciences where culturally-constituted subjectivity and intersubjectivity are the objects of investigation. An anthropological imagination is a critical supplement to a multi-method approach in psychology, or an alternative epistemology, that augments knowledge of cultural persons. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

This paper examines how specific concepts of the self shape discussions about the ethics of changing sex. Specifically, it argues that much of the debate surrounding sex change has assumed a model of the self as authentic and/or atomistic, as demonstrated by both contemporary medical discourses and the recent work of Rubin (2003). This leads to a problematic account of important ethical issues that arise from the desire and decision to change sex. It is suggested that by shifting to a (...) properly intersubjective and performative model of the self, we can better understand (1) the diagnosis of transsexuality; and (2) issues of success, failure and regret with regard to changing sex. The paper also reveals the important implications this shift has for how the relationship between medical practitioners and transindividuals is understood. The paper concludes by showing how the model of the self as authentic can individualise identity and thus downplay or overlook the tight intertwinement between self and other. A properly intersubjective, performative concept of the gendered self places other people at the centre of both an individual’s attempt at self-transformation and the ethical issues that arise during this process. (shrink)

This paper introduces what is called the intersubjective interpretation of the probability calculus. Intersubjective probabilities are related to subjective probabilities, and the paper begins with a particular formulation of the familiar Dutch Book argument. This argument is then extended, in Section 3, to social groups, and this enables the concept of intersubjective probability to be introduced in Section 4. It is then argued that the intersubjective interpretation is the appropriate one for the probabilities which appear in confirmation theory whether of (...) a Bayesian or a Popperian variety. The final section of the paper states and tries to answer an objection due to Putnam. (shrink)

How are we to understand the use of probability in corroboration functions? Popper says logically, but does not show we could have access to, or even calculate, probability values in a logical sense. This makes the logical interpretation untenable, as Ramsey and van Fraassen have argued. -/- If corroboration functions only make sense when the probabilities employed therein are subjective, however, then what counts as impressive evidence for a theory might be a matter of convention, or even whim. So isn’t (...) so-called ‘corroboration’ just a matter of psychology? -/- In this paper, I argue that we can go some way towards addressing this objection by adopting an intersubjective interpretation, of the form advocated by Gillies, with respect to corroboration. I show why intersubjective probabilities are preferable to subjective ones when it comes to decision making in science: why group decisions are liable to be superior to individual ones, given a number of plausible conditions. I then argue that intersubjective corroboration is preferable to intersubjective confirmation of a Bayesian variety, because there is greater opportunity for principled agreement concerning the factors involved in the former. (shrink)

This paper defends the idea that alterations in social perception of people with epilepsy may be crucial in the development of co-morbidities, involving a circular and mutual relationship between the person and her/his social environment, between the self and the world. We aim at exploring the role of these processes in psychopathological phenomena in people with epilepsy. Through a phenomenological and enactive account of intersubjectivity and the model of circular causality, enriched with interviews conducted with people with epilepsy, we (...) develop the hypothesis that the originary domain of a person’s experience with epilepsy expands and modifies the fundamental interrogation of the sense of self. Furthermore, we observe how disturbances in the dynamical coupling and coordination among agents may contribute to psychopathological phenomena, and to changes in intersubjectivity and social perception. (shrink)

On the distinction between static and genetic phenomenologies -- On time consciousness and its relationship to intersubjectivity -- On the question of intersubjectivity -- The Husserlian account of ethics -- Conclusion: The impact of genetic phenomenology.

Vittorio Hösle is internationally highly regarded for his attempt to revive objective idealism – the philosophical line along which he situates the positions of Plato, Aristotle, most medieval philosophers, Spinoza, Leibniz, Schelling, Hegel, but also Peirce and Whitehead – as a philosophical system capable of holding together the transcendental dimension of synthetic a priori judgments with the intelligibility and objectivity of being. In this interview, he discusses his work over the past decades, starting from the “Philosophische Lehrjahre” (“years of philosophical (...) apprenticeship”) between Regensburg, Tübingen, Bochum and Freiburg and from the meetings with masters and significant interlocutors (such as Tóth, Thieme, Wandschneider, Beierwaldes, Lohr, Böckenförde, without forgetting Apel and Jonas). Multiple themes dot the path of thought retraced in this dialogue: from the rethematization of Hegel’s (and Vico’s) objective idealism through transcendental pragmatics to the delineation of the relationship between ethics and politics via a theory of the social and the intent of a normative foundation; from the need for a thought that faces the ecological crisis to the reinterpretation of sociobiology; and finally, from the project of an intersubjectively valid understanding to the importance of a theory of comedy. What emerges is the philosophical self-portrait of a cosmopolitan intellectual who was able to grasp the best from inherited and acquired cultural traditions: German culture, inherited from his father; Italian culture, inherited from his mother; and American culture, acquired by moving to the USA. The interview was realised on 17 April 2024 at the University of Trento, as part of the second series of lectures “Voices from Contemporary Philosophy”. (shrink)

The article attempts to consider the phenomenon of madness from the point of view of the problem of intersubjectivity. Ludwig Binswanger’s phenomenological approach to work with schizophrenia, which is a synthesis of phenomenology, ontology and psychoanalysis, was used as a methodological basis. The trend in philosophy and psychological sciences of the 20th – 21st centuries of the transition from intrapsychic to intersubjective study of psychopathology is outlined. The concept of L. Binswanger’s pathological world-project is presented and L. Binswanger’s concept (...) of intersubjectivity is formulated. Madness is defined as the loss of the ability, to a greater or lesser extent, to realize ontological intentionality in intersubjective contact, where the Other appears not as an object, but as a subject. The We-space of intersubjective interaction, is the third entity, constantly formed by the subject and the Other, and also influencing them. This approach forms the basis of L. Binswanger’s psychiatric method, where the possibility of healing madness can arise precisely through the restoration of the ability to subject-subject relationships in intersubjective contact with a therapist. (shrink)

Can we have objective knowledge of the world? Can we understand what is morally right or wrong? Yes, to some extent. This is the answer given by Adam Smith and Edmund Husserl. Both rejected David Hume’s skeptical account of what we can hope to understand. But they held his empirical method in high regard, inquiring into the way we perceive and emotionally experience the world, into the nature and function of human empathy and sympathy and the role of the imagination (...) in processes of intersubjective understanding. The challenge is to overcome the natural constraints of perceptual and emotional experience and reach an agreement that is informed by the facts in the world and the nature of morality. This collection of philosophical essays addresses an audience of Smith- and Husserl scholars as well as everybody interested in theories of objective knowledge and proper morality which are informed by the way we perceive and think and communicate. (shrink)

Anthropology of Consciousness, EarlyView.

This essay focuses on the theme of intersubjectivity, which is central to the entire Indo-Tibetan Buddhist tradition. It addresses the following five themes pertaining to Buddhist concepts of intersubjectivity: the Buddhist practice of the cultivation of meditative quiescence challenges the hypothesis that individual human consciousness emerges solely from the dynamic interrelation of self and other; the central Buddhist insight practice of the four applications of mindfulness is a means for gaining insight into the nature of oneself, others and (...) the relation between oneself and the rest of the world, which provides a basis for cultivating a deep sense of empathy; the Buddhist cultivation of the four immeasurables is expressly designed to arouse a rich sense of empathy with others; the meditative practice of dream yoga, which illuminates the dream-like nature of waking reality is shown to have deep implications regarding the nature of intersubjectivity; the theory and practice of Dzogchen, the 'great perfection' system of meditation, challenges the assertion of the existence of an inherently real, localized, ego-centred mind, as well as the dichotomy of objective space as opposed to perceptual space. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to present the principles of intersubjectivity as a second-person relational account of mind, set against individualist first- and third-person accounts of the sharing of mental representations. I will set out a summary of these positions and defend the claim that understanding proto-conversations as “expressive communications” allows one to understand them as genuine communications, as in, mutually manifest communications that entail intersubjectivity. To support this interpretation, I will propose a novel explanation of expression, (...) understood as constitutive of the mental state. (shrink)

This article addresses the question how educational theory can overcome the assumptions of the tradition of the philosophy of consciousness, a tradition which can be seen as the foundation of the modern project of education. While twentieth century philosophy has seen several attempts to make a shift from consciousness to intersubjectivity (Dewey, Wittgenstein, Habermas) it is argued that this shift still remains within the humanistic tradition of modern thought in that it still tries to define, still tries to develop (...) a theory about the human subject. Foucault's thesis of the end of man is interpreted as an attempt to move beyond humanism, an attempt motivated by a sincere concern for the humanity of the subject. Starting from the question as to who comes after the subject, several answers to this question, which all share an interest in the question as to where the subject comes into presence, are discussed (referring to the writings of Tschumi, Arendt and Levinas). In the concluding section it is argued that one way to move beyond the humanistic tradition of modern thought is to conceive of the subject in terms of responsibility and ethics (Levinas) and to conceive of the very task of theory in terms of justice, and not in terms of truth. This, so it is argued, should be the final concern for educational theory and curriculum theory. (shrink)

The paper aims to show that scepticism concerning the status of first-person reports of mental states and their use as evidence in scientific cognitive research is unfounded. Rather, principled arguments suggest that the conditions for the intersubjectivity of cognition and description of publicly observable things apply equally for our cognition and description of our mental or internal states. It is argued that on these conditions relies the possibility of developing well-defined scientific criteria for distinguishing between first-person and third-person cognition (...) and description. The paper concludes by outlining the consequences for cognitive research and for functional theories of mind. (shrink)

Intentionality — the orientation of mental states to objects (things, properties, states of things, events) — has been considered a hallmark of the psyche since Brentano’s time. In this article, we consider the problem of intentionality from the second-person approach, or the standpoint of intersubjectivity. Our analysis shows that intentionality is intrinsically projective. The projective nature of intentionality is related to internal objects that play a crucial role in fixing the person’s subjective experience and serve as a fulcrum in (...) the development of the person. The internal object can be treated as a set of properties and tropes. The logic of intentionality proposed by Graham Priest and the theory of primary (that is, belonging to the Freudian system «unconscious») psychological attitudes developed by Linda Brakel created the preconditions for seman- tical analysis of projective intentionality. In the article, we rely on the logic of projective intentionality that reorients the resources of modal logics and semantics of possible worlds to the investigation and formalization of primary thinking. Considering the problem of mental existence within the framework of the second-person approach, we show that Wittgenstein’s reasoning about the «beetle in a box» does not refute the thesis of the privacy of mental meanings. Finally, involving the possible world semantics, we develop a neo-Aristotelian approach to the ontology of mental objects. (shrink)