The intersubjective turn

Summary

An enactive account of intersubjectivity should meet five criteria: it must address both social interaction and subjective experience in its full bodily, existential, and sociocultural complexity; it should integrate physiological, neural, interactional, linguistic, and societal levels of explanation using cross-disciplinary concepts and methods; it ought to encourage practical applications and dialogue with teachers and therapists; it must recognize its own underlying values to foster critical awareness of its influence on and by societal institutions and norms; and, because it concerns how people understand and deal with each other, it should engage with ethical questions. The paper then evaluates current enactive intersubjectivity research against these criteria.

Study at a glance

Abstract

Abstract I outline five criteria for an enactive account of intersubjectivity. First, it should do justice to social interaction processes and to subjectivity in its experiential, bodily, existential, and historico-sociocultural complexity. Second, an integrative intersubjectivity framework should connect physiological, neural, interactional, linguistic, and societal aspects and levels of explanation. This requires concepts and methodologies that span several different disciplines. Third, it should encourage applications and dialogue with experts in other sectors, such as teachers and therapists. Fourth, it should recognize the values that underlie it, so it can serve critical awareness of how it influences and is influenced by societal institutions and norms. Finally, because its subject matter is the ways in which people understand and deal with each other, it should be prepared to deal with ethical questions and dimensions. Then, I investigate how the state of the art in enactive intersubjectivity research fares in the face of these criteria.