Intersubjectivity

The term intersubjectivity is used in three ways. Firstly, in its weakest sense it is used to refer to agreement. There is said to be intersubjectivity between people if they agree on a given set of meanings or definition of the situation. Secondly, and somewhat more subtly it has been used to refer to the "common-sense," shared meanings constructed by people in their interactions with each other and used as an everyday resource to interpret the meaning of elements of social and cultural life. If people share common sense, then they share a definition of the situation[1]. Thirdly, the term has been used to refer to shared (or partially shared) divergences of meaning. Self-presentation, lying, practical jokes, and social emotions, for example, all entail not a shared definition of the situation, but partially shared divergences of meaning. Someone who is telling a lie is engaged in an intersubjective act because they are working with two different definitions of the situation. Lying is thus genuinely inter-subjective (in the sense of operating between two subjective definitions of reality).

Intersubjectivity emphasizes that shared cognition and consensus is essential in the shaping of our ideas and relations. Language is viewed as communal rather than private. Hence it is problematic to view the individual as partaking in a private world, which is once and for all defined.

Intersubjectivity is today an important concept in modern schools of psychotherapy, where it has found application to the theory of the interrelations between analyst and analysand.

Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersubjectivity



Notes:

Citation:
Butte, George. “I know that you know that I know, narrating subjects from Moll Flanders to Marnie”. Ohio State University. 2004.