The Depth of Intersubjectivity

Joona Taipale (Universify of Jyväskylä, Finland), Joona Taipale

May 4, 2017, 9-11 AM PDT, SOPHERE webinar

The Depth of Intersubjectivity, Joona Taipale

Husserl’s concept of “open intersubjectivity” expresses the peculiarity that the environment appears as being there for “anyone”. The possible co-perceivers structurally implicated have been considered as anonymous, unspecified, which is another way of saying that the horizontally implicated “anyone” refers to no one in particular, but to “any alter egos whatever”. I will focus on this tacit structural referencing of potential others and challenge the claim of anonymity. What I have in mind is not merely that the potential others implicated in our experience of the cultural world are particularized as co-members of one’s community or “homecomrades”. Instead, my point is that the implicated others (be it co-perceivers or co-members) are specified associatively in the light of our earlier interactive experiences. Differently put, I want to show how the “co-positing” of others necessarily “echoes”, and is “colored” by, our earlier intersubjective experiences (and the ensuing introjections). The way in which we tacitly implicate anyone (i.e., typical co-perceivers and fellow humans) is influenced by the way in which we have interacted with particular others (i.e., particular tokens), whom serve as the primal institutors of the idea of “a typical perceiver”. Importing insights from phenomenology and psychoanalysis, I will discuss the asymmetric structure of social perception and the sedimentation of experience, and challenge the assumption of the anonymity of the “anyone”.

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About Joona

Joona Taipale is Adjunct Professor in philosophy, and a Kone Foundation Experienced Researcher. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Helsinki in 2009 with a thesis on Husserlian phenomenology. Since then, Taipale has been employed at the Center for Subjectivity Research (University of Copenhagen, Denmark). Currently, he is affiliated to the University of Jyväskylä (Finland). Taipale is the author of Phenomenology and Embodiment (Northwestern University Press 2014), and he has published several articles in philosophy and psychology, on topics ranging from empathy, social cognition, and interpersonal understanding, to psychopathology, intersubjectivity and selfhood. His most recent publications include “Beyond Cartesianism. Body-perception and the immediacy of empathy” (Continental Philosophy Review 2015), “Self-regulation and beyond. Affect regulation and the infant-caregiver dyad” (Frontiers in Psychology 2016), and “The structure of group identification” (Topoi 2017).”