Chapter 24: The Intersubjective Turn

The Intersubjective Turn , titled "The Intersubjective Turn," provides a comprehensive examination of the shift within embodied, embedded, and enactive cognitive science toward understanding social cognition not merely as observing others but as the lived experience of connecting with them,. It critiques traditional cognitivist approaches that rely on simulation or inference to predict mental states, proposing instead the theory of participatory sense-making, which posits that social interactions can acquire a form of self-organizing autonomy that regulates and modulates the individual intentions of the participants,. The text details the enactive definition of a subject as a precarious, self-organizing being for whom the world holds intrinsic significance, and explores how meaning is generated and transformed through dynamic encounters where individuals participate in each other’s sense-making processes,. Key methodological distinctions are drawn between viewing interaction as merely a contextual or enabling factor versus recognizing it as a constitutive factor in social understanding, a concept supported by empirical evidence from minimalism paradigms like the perceptual crossing experiment where interaction dynamics alone allow for the recognition of another subject,. The summary delves into the physiological and phenomenological synchronization that occurs during engagement, illustrating these concepts through the "narrow corridor" metaphor where autonomous interaction dynamics temporarily override individual goals,. Furthermore, the chapter bridges theory and practice by applying these concepts to diverse fields such as music pedagogy, where improvisation fosters embodied musical personalities, and psychopathology, specifically reframing autism spectrum conditions through the lens of sensorimotor differences and intersubjective engagement rather than purely cognitive deficits,. Finally, it addresses the ethical dimensions of this framework, suggesting that responsibility and agency are distributed within the relational context, which has profound implications for dementia care, therapy, and the societal treatment of difference, arguing that interactions themselves can be judged on ethical qualities like fairness or discrimination,.