Direct Perception, Inter-subjectivity, and Social Cognition: More to the Other than Meets the Eye?

A/Prof. Jack Reynolds (La Trobe University)

In this paper I argue that many of the core phenomenological insights are a necessary but not sufficient condition for an adequate account of inter-subjectivity today. I take it that an adequate account of inter-subjectivity must involve substantial interaction with empirical studies, notwithstanding the putative methodological differences between phenomenological description and scientific explanation. As such, I will need to explicate what kind of phenomenology survives, and indeed, thrives, in a milieu that necessitates engagement with the relevant sciences, albeit not necessarily deference to them. There will be two central aims to this paper: 1. to defend the centrality and vitality of phenomenological treatments of inter-subjectivity - which I do think possess a non-trivial unity amongst the various interlocutors - and the manner in which they in fact serve to provide the basis for a better explanation of an array of empirical data than existing inferentialist or mindreading accounts of social cognition (notably Theory Theory, Simulation Theory, and hybrid versions); 2. to offer the methodological resources for renewing phenomenology in a manner that acknowledges ostensibly nonphenomenological moments in theory production - which involve explanation, inference to the best explanation, etc. - but does not abandon phenomenology for all that, allowing it tobe simply absorbed into empirical explanation or other forms of philosophical analysis without remainder.

Jack Reynolds is Deputy Dean, Associate Professor and Philosophy Program Coordinator at La Trobe University. He has written four books: Chronopathologies: The Politics of Time in Deleuze, Derrida, Analytic Philosophy and Phenomenology (Lexington Books 2012), Analytic Versus Continental: Arguments on the Methods and Value of Philosophy (Acumen 2010, with James Chase), Merleau-Ponty and Derrida: Intertwining Embodiment and Alterity (Ohio 2004), Understanding Existentialism (Acumen 2006). He has also co-edited four collections: Continuum Companion to Existentialism (2011), Postanalytic and Metacontinental: Crossing Philosophical Divides (Continuum 2010), Merleau-Ponty: Key Concepts (Acumen 2008) and Understanding Derrida (Continuum 2004). He is currently doing research on inter-subjectivity and the perception of others, drawing on the phenomenological tradition as well as findings in developmental psychology and the cognitive sciences.