VI.

From Subjectivity to
Intersubjectivity
Philosophy 157
G. J. Mattey
©2002
 The Problem of Other Minds
• How can one human mind know that
another exists?
• Descartes (Meditation II): I judge there to
be men when all I see are hats and coats
that could conceal an automaton
• Naturalistic response: if there is a brain,
there is a mind
• But what if bodies depend on minds?
 Monadology
• Leibniz held that human minds are
“monads,” simple substances
• Monads are “worlds unto themselves”
• Physical objects are harmoniously related
perceptions
• The perceptions of monads proceed in
synchrony with one another, so it is as if
there were a common world of objects
 Husserl’s Problem
• I am a monad, an “Ego”
• My world is “constituted” by the activity of
the ego
• I cannot verify the existence of another ego
through a constituting activity of my ego
• It seems that I cannot constitute another
ego, which would constitute its own world
 Phenomenological Solution
• We must not try to solve the problem
metaphysically ( as did Leibniz)
• We must instead look to the synthesizing
activities of our own ego
• The key is to discover the “sense” “other
ego” which the ego intends
 The Experienced Other
• There is a straightforward way that another
mind is given
• Another organism is found in my world
• This organism is taken as being “governed
psychically” by a mind
• The other mind experiences the same world
as I do
 The Noematic Other
• If I exclude actuality from my experience, I
consider a “reduced” object that I
synthesize
• The exclusion does not make the object
something “private” for me
• I am there for the other
• This must be explained through a theory of
“empathy”
 Ownness
• The explanation of the other and a public
world cannot suppose their existence
• So, their existence must be put aside
• I merely consider things as being “my own”
• But this requires a contrasting conception of
an “alter-ego,” for whom things are not “my
own”
• How does it make an appearance?
 The Reduced World
• We must begin with a world which excludes
everything mental that is not my own
• We have a “Nature” that is the most basic
level of noema
• Nature contains my body, which I rule
• I have kinesthetic sensations of the actions
of my body
• They reveal that I govern my body
 The Pure Ego
• Myself and my body are given as united in
the reduced world
• But I can make a further reduction, by
putting aside the “physical world”
• I am left with a pure ego, which is the
“pole” of my intentional activity
• The world is “inside” this ego, so how
could the ego be in it?
 Constituting Myself
• The pure ego is related to the ego found in
the world by constituting it
• An analogy with the constitution of a
“physical” object: most of it is not given
• We project more features in space and time
• So we project more features on ourselves as
given, and we count them as our own
 Transcendence
• The reduced world is constituted harmoniously by
me
• That world is other than my self-in-the world
(transcendent), but it constituted by myself
(immanent): an “immanent transcendency”
• We are looking for an absolute transcendency: an
ego not at all my own that constitutes its world
 Objectivity
• The key is to recognize that the sense of the
reduced world is that of an objective world
• An objective world is an inter-subjective
world, accessible to other egos
• Each ego constitutes a world in a way that
is harmonious with my constituting activity
• This is not a metaphysical hypothesis, but
rather explains the sense of my world
 Access to Other Minds
• Nothing belonging to the essence of the other is
given in experience (or it would be of my essence)
• Instead, it is “appresented” as accompanying a
perceived body
• An analogy: when an object is viewed from the
front, the back is presumed to exist
• A disanalogy: the existence of the back can be
verified, but that of an ego cannot
 Pairing
• We pair up the perceived organism and a
governing ego
• This is not an analogical inference
• Instead, it is a mental transfer of sense
• An analogy: we make sense of ourselves
only by synthesizing a harmonious stream
of recollections
 Intersubjectivity
• My body is located at a central “here”
• I take the other body to have its own “here”
• I can think of myself in the other body’s
“here,” which is now “there” for me
• So I can think of the other body as having a
“here” such that my body’s position is a
“there” for it
 Community of Monads
• Monadic egos seem not to be capable of
assimilation by reference to the organism
• The other monadic ego constitutes its world
• I can analogically give sense to that ego as
constituting as I constitute
• It then constitutes what I perceive
• This yields an “objectivating equalization”
and a community of monads