Social cognition in the we-mode

Phenomenology of Experiential Sharing: The Contribution of Schutz and Walther

“…Many agree that, when applied to intentions and other experiences, the talk of sharing isn't merely metaphorical, and that it involves either something more than an aggregation of individual subjects' experiences, or something altogether different from such an aggregation (for review see Tollefsen 2004;Schweikard and Schmid 2013). For instance, according to one influential approach, shared or collective intentions, although located in individual minds, are characterized by a sui generis psychological mode (Searle 1990(Searle , 1995Gallotti and Frith 2013) 1 . Other theorists have argued that shared intentions can be accounted for in terms of individuals' intentions with the form 'I intend', characterized by a common propositional content and specific interrelations (Bratman 1999(Bratman , 2014Pacherie 2007), whereas a third family of prominent proposals have suggested that shared intentions ought to be attributed to collective or plural agents (Rovane 1998;Gilbert 1989;Pettit and List 2011).…”

Mentalizing homeostasis: The social origins of interoceptive inference

“…These emphasize neither the first-nor the third-person view on understanding other minds, but instead put forward the idea that early, reciprocal interactions and emotional engagements with caregivers are fundamental to build shared 'we-experiences' that progressively form the basis of all social understanding. There are however on-going debates regarding the precise role of the so-called "we-experiences" or "plural self-awareness" and whether these we-experiences presuppose, or lead to the self-other differentiation (Reddy, 2008;Gallotti and Frith, 2013;Schmid 2014;Zahavi & Rochat, 2015).…”

Collective intentionality and socially extended minds

“…Paradigmatically, we agree with Ludwig that the features of individual-level intentionality are ontologically sufficient to account for ascriptions of group agency, but we see this in the context of individuals operating in "we-mode" cognition (Gallotti & Frith, 2013). We return to this issue in section 3.…”

“…There is overlap between this theory and a theory according to which affordances are socially shaped by enactive processes that bring the behavioral and cognitive states of multiple people into alignment "directly" through interactive dynamics (Schmidt & Richardson, 2008;Walton, Richardson, & Chemero, 2014). But recent work on the mechanics of shared intentionality, as well as reflections on the importance of sharing mental states for the development of the mind, make it possible to acknowledge the role of interactive dynamics within a more traditional approach to the ontology of the (social) mind-in part by making room for research on more basic forms of alignment (Gallotti & Frith, 2013;Tollefsen & Dale, 2012).…”