Understanding Others in Social Interactions

This paper deals with what Shaun Gallagher and Dan Zahavi call “the social cognition” from the chapter How we know others in their book The Phenomenological Mind (Gallagher, Zahavi 2008), and what Adolf Reinach calls the “extraneous perception” in his university course Einleitung in die Philosophie (Reinach 1913) – that is, the possibility of intersubjectivity, according to these authors. My objective is to show how Gallagher and Zahavi’s analyses could profit from that of Reinach. I find that Reinach’s study could provide a particular heuristic value to Gallagher and Zahavi’s work, by furnishing it with a useful tool to clear up some issues which, in my opinion, remain rather vague. The first part of this article is devoted to outlining Gallagher and Zahavi’s thesis about how we know others, clarifying which points of their analyses could be cleared up by Reinach’s study; the second part presents Reinach’s arguments concerning the perception of the other subject; and finally, I will explain how Reinach’s analysis contributes to that of Gallagher and Zahavi’s work and remark on what accessing to others’ mental state from the second-person perspective by combining the two positions means.

Daimon, 2018

In this paper, we will address the question of the impact of the second person perspective of psychological attribution on the traditional problem of knowing other minds. With that purpose in mind, we will introduce the notion of a second-personal perspective of mental attribution within the context of the classical problem of other minds, and discuss the epistemic and ontological implications that follow once the second person perspective is honored. In particular, we will examine how its recognition transforms the traditional problem of other minds, both in its epistemological, ontological and semantical dimensions, and offers a way to go beyond the objective/subjective dichotomy of Modern Philosophy. A proper notion of intersubjectivity, we will argue, is not a simple addition to this dichotomy, but it offers the way to get over the traditional philosophical problems that follow from this modern philosophical paradigm.

Daímon

In this paper, we will address the question of the impact of the second person perspective of psychological attribution on the traditional problem of knowing other minds. With that purpose in mind, we will introduce the notion of a second-personal perspective of mental attribution within the context of the classical problem of other minds, and discuss the epistemic and ontological implications that follow once the second person perspective is honored. In particular, we will examine how its recognition transforms the traditional problem of other minds, both in its epistemological, ontological and semantical dimensions, and offers a way to go beyond the objective/subjective dichotomy of Modern Philosophy. A proper notion of intersubjectivity, we will argue, is not a simple addition to this dichotomy, but it offers the way to get over the traditional philosophical problems that follow from this modern philosophical paradigm.

In opposition to mainstream theory of mind approaches, some contemporary perceptual accounts of social cognition do not consider the central question of social cognition to be the problem of access to other minds. These perceptual accounts draw heavily on phenomenological philosophy and propose that others' mental states are “directly” given in the perception of the others' expressive behavior. Furthermore, these accounts contend that phenomenological insights into the nature of social perception lead to the dissolution of the access problem. We argue, on the contrary, that the access problem is a genuine problem that must be addressed by any account of social cognition, perceptual or non-perceptual, because we cannot cast the access problem as a false problem without violating certain fundamental intuitions about other minds. We elaborate the fundamental intuitions as three constraints on any theory of social perception: the Immediacy constraint; the Transcendence constraint; and the Accessibility constraint. We conclude with an outline of an account of perceiving other minds that meets the three constraints.

Cosmos and history: the journal of natural and social philosophy, 2020

At the very moment a person wonders about: "What is the other thinking about?", with this remark, he/she becomes, implicitly, implicated in the field of social cognition. It is axiomatic for people to be concerned and curious about the mental states of others for various reasons: (i) defending and controlling the self-image with regard to others' judgments, or (ii) controlling and manipulating the others, driven by selfish interests and Machiavellian intelligence. In a nutshell, this article deals with the topic of "mind-reading" from an integrative and pluralistic perspective in that we opted for a tripartite levels of analysis: (1) the first level is concerned with behavior-reading which is identified, according to the embedded cognition, as an external manifestation of mind-reading which depends on the visible function of the human body in its environment, (2) the second one is concerned with mind-reading as a cognitive faculty which requires two appropria...

European Journal for Philosophy of Religion

This article takes up the proposal that action and expression enable perceptual knowledge of other minds, a proposal that runs counter to a tradition of thinking that other minds are special in that they are essentially unobservable. I argue that even if we accept this proposal regarding perceptual knowledge, there is still a difference between knowing another person and knowing other things. I articulate this difference by pointing out that I can know another person by sharing knowledge with her. Such sharing is expressed in the use of the second-person pronoun. Thus, I argue, other minds are indeed special as objects of knowledge, but not in the way the tradition has supposed.

Husserl Studies, 2005

Husserl, in a number of texts, suggests a theory of intersubjectivity or social cognition based on an embodied, intermodal perception. This perceptual experience of the other person involves a kinaesthetic reverberation of the perceived action of the other in our own sensory-motor system. This Husserlian analysis explicates certain aspects of a theory that on the surface is close to Scheler’s, but is offered in details that not only went beyond Scheler, but that find support in contemporary scientific evidence, and specifically the neuroscience of mirror neurons. This constitutes an important but only partial explanation of social cognition – specifically the part that directly contributes to what developmental psychologists term primary intersubjectivity. Aron Gurwitsch develops, within a Heideggerian framework, another important aspect of what would be a fuller explanation – specifically he emphasizes the contribution of our involvement in pragmatic contexts to gain more sophisticated understandings of others. Unfortunately he does this at the expense of giving up Husserl’s insights into the perceptual processes that allow us to key into others in the first place.

This paper argues that Mind-Reading Hypotheses (MRHs), of any kind, are not needed to best describe or best explain basic acts of social cognition. It considers the two most popular MRHs: One-ToM and Two-ToM theories. These MRHs face competition in the form of Complementary Behaviour Reading Hypotheses (CBRHs). Following Buckner (2014), it is argued that the best strategy for putting CBRHs out of play is to appeal to theoretical considerations about the psychosemantics of basic acts of social cognition. In particular, need-based accounts that satisfy a teleological criterion have the ability to put CBRHs out of play. Yet, against this backdrop, a new competitor for MRHs is revealed: Mind Minding Hypothesis (MMHs). MMHs are capable of explaining all the known facts about basic forms of social cognition and they also satisfy the teleological criterion. In conclusion, some objections concerning the theoretical tenability of MMHs are addressed and prospects for further research are canvassed.

2012

It has become increasingly common to talk about the second person in the theory of mind debate. While theory theory and simulation theory are described as third person and first person accounts respectively, a second person account suggests itself as a viable, though wrongfully neglected third option.

Journal of Consciousness Studies, 8 (5-7): 83-107. , 2001

Theory of mind explanations of how we know other minds are limited in several ways. First, they construe intersubjective relations too narrowly in terms of the specialized cognitive abilities of explaining and predicting another person’s mental states and behaviours. Second, they sometimes draw conclusions about second-person interaction from experiments designed to test third-person observation of another’s behaviour. As a result, the larger claims that are sometimes made for theory of mind, namely that theory of mind is our primary and pervasive means for understanding other persons, go beyond both the phenomenological and the scientific evidence. I argue that the interpretation of ‘primary intersubjectivity’ as merely precursory to theory of mind is inadequate. Rather, primary intersubjectivity, understood as a set of embodied practices and capabilities, is not only primary in a developmental sense, but is the primary way we continue to understand others in second-person interactions.