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Cognising With Others in the We-Mode: a Defence of ‘First-Person Plural’ Social Cognition

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Abstract

The theory of we-mode cognition seeks to expand our understanding of the cognition involved in joint action, and therein claims to explain how we can have non-theoretical and non-simulative access to the minds of others (Gallotti and Frith Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 17: 160-165, 2013a, Gallotti and Frith Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 17: 304-305, 2013b). A basic tenet of this theory is that each individual jointly intends to accomplish some outcome together, requiring the adoption of a “first-person plural perspective” (Gallotti and Frith 2013a, p.160) that is neither strictly individualistic – in the sense that a we-mode state is enabled by the joint involvement of (an)other(s) – nor strictly pluralistic – in the sense that the involved individuals, rather than a ‘group’, are the bearers of the relevant joint intention(s). Whilst I concur with the idea that, in certain circumstances, we cognise from an irreducible ‘first-person plural perspective’, Gallotti & Frith’s existing proposal of we-mode cognition is in need of theoretical clarification. In this paper, I deliver such clarification so that the theory of we-mode cognition is re-defined as: (a). sensitive to the phenomenological transformation that is induced by the embodied co-presence of others, and (b). limited to cases in which one intentionally attends to the capacities of one’s co-participant in joint action.

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Notes

  1. As we will see throughout the paper, and as stated by Gallotti and Frith (2013a), the problem with most individualistic approaches to social cognition, in which cognition is reducible to individual minds “in abstraction from, and as a precondition for, interaction with others” (ibid., p.160), is that they fail to account for the empirically and theoretically supported view that individuals within interactions have enhanced access to information about the behaviour of interaction partners. In other words, individualistic accounts tend to be problematic in virtue of treating agents as isolated, disembodied minds that are neutral to social interaction.

  2. Throughout this paper, ‘pluralistic’ should be read as branching from the root ‘plural’ as employed by Gallotti and Frith (2013a) in the phrase “first-person plural”. That is, it is loosely synonymous with ‘collective’, rather than suggesting multiple theoretical principles.

  3. Gallotti and Frith (2013a) propose the cognitive we-mode as an alternative to theory theory, simulation theory and interactionist accounts of social cognition. However, the examples and mechanistic explanations that are put forward are limited to instances of joint action, rather than delineating a completely general account of social cognition. In keeping with this (and for reasons that will come to light in section 4), the re-definition of we-mode cognition that is provided is not a theoretical alternative for all instances of social cognition.

  4. Compare a case of two interns who are simultaneously asked to make a cup of tea for their new boss. These interns may encapsulate a case of shared intentionality, in that they share a common goal and may coordinate actions in pursuit of this goal, but they may equally have heavily individualised desires (e.g. ‘I want to impress my new boss’, or ‘I don’t want to be the one responsible for making a terrible cup of tea’). The we-mode goes beyond mere (shared) intentional alignment and engenders a notion of actively intending-as-a-we (i.e. what we can do). See section 5 for more on this.

  5. There will also be an important affective dimension between embodied persons. Indeed, shared affects will play a crucial role in many situations in which one is cognising in the we-mode, but they are not necessary to the notion of we-mode cognition described here. Consideration of an affective dimension is thus beyond the needs of this paper.

  6. This is a well-established notion from phenomenology. Sartre (1943/1984), for instance, talks of agents having the quality of pour soi (‘being-for-itself’), whilst non-agential entities only have the quality of en soi (‘being-in-itself’). Similarly, Heidegger (1927/1962) describes how others can never be mere agential ‘tools’.

  7. There is an overlap here with various phenomenological approaches to social cognition, which depart from the idea that others’ bodies, and one’s perceptual experiences of them, are radically different from other physical entities that we encounter (e.g. Scheler 1913/2008). A crucial part of this radical difference is that when we encounter others, the very context of the encounter is co-determined by the bodily presence of the other(s) (Sartre 1943/1984, p.356; Zahavi and Gallagher 2008, pp.183–185).

  8. As we will come to see ‘presence’, here, should be more accurately read as embodied co-presence, in that an agent must be capable of acting with the other in some way for affordances (which are possibilities for action) to be influenced. There is likely a spectrum of affordance transformation, from the likes of disembodied interaction potential with a stranger to intimate embodied interaction with a close friend or family member. However, I believe that disembodied interactions (e.g. phone calls or instant messaging) lack the subtle alliance of gestures, postures, eye movements, affectations, affections, and sensitivity to vocal tones and contextual sights, smells and sounds that tend to underlie communication between co-present bodies (see Dreyfus 2008). Lacking such subtleties and the direct perceptive potential of the other means that another’s disembodied co-presence is devoid of the re-configurative ability that is described earlier.

  9. It should be noted that Caggiano et al.’s study uses rhesus monkeys, rather than humans. Nonetheless, the consistent similarity between monkey and human brains suggests that the findings can be extrapolated from the former primate to the latter.

  10. As with footnote [6], this claim finds affinity with certain phenomenological approaches to sociality (e.g. Husserl 1913/1950; Scheler 1913/2008). The notion of empathy, for instance, is conceived as a unique form of intentionality in which another’s expressive behaviour (encompassing, in part, affective states) is the ‘object’ of one’s intention. Here, however, each co-participant is not the sole intentional focus of the other; rather, directly attending to the other is a central feature of the ongoing process of some joint action. As we will see shortly, it is, in part, this intending towards the other relative to some temporally extended task that provides the binding ‘we’-quality to performing some joint action in the we-mode.

  11. In general, intentions are taken to be action self-referential, in the sense that they involve an agential commitment to act. The idea that one can intend another’s action may thus seem problematic, in that one cannot commit another to act. However, the intentional imbrication of jointly acting individuals that is described here does not imply some kind of assurance regarding the other’s actions. The commitment to act is still individual, but what each individual commits to is dependent on the other’s (reciprocating) action. Mr. Red, for instance, commits to some action that can only be executed (in the specifically intended manner) with Mr. Blue’s involvement, and vice-versa. One could attempt to explain this by appeal to Bratman’s (1997) notion that intentions are plan-like mental states and, as such, others’ actions can be incorporated into a given agent’s plans in that the agent can intend that the other acts in a certain way by intending to engage with said other in a certain way. Such a claim rests on the idea that one can often reliably predict (i.e. plan) what another will intend in response to one’s own action. Whilst some object that Bratman’s approach renders joint action too cognitively and conceptually demanding (e.g. Tollefsen 2005), it is, here, bolstered by the various ‘we-processes’ that undergird we-mode cognising, thereby adding steel to the predictive reliability of one’s plan-like intention (that incorporates the other’s behaviour). That is, the alleged demand is, in part, offset by the embodied psychological responses that are implicitly induced by the other’s embodied co-presence.

    Enhancement of Bratman’s approach in this manner even aligns with more recent approaches to collective intentionality (e.g. Blomberg 2011) which suggest that we-intentions can obtain prior to a planning framework – within one’s immediate self-referential commitment to act – in virtue of extending one’s intentionality beyond one’s own body. Claims of this ilk rely on phenomenological transparency, in the sense that what intends is an ‘extended agent’ who transparently engages with some aspects of her environment (Blomberg 2011). Notwithstanding constitutive-causation claims of cognitive ‘extension’, there is affinity between such views and the idea of socially enabled psychology that is presented here.

  12. One may contend that such contingency only requires the potential for another’s collaborative involvement. However, as we shall see shortly, a further ‘we-mode process’ of we-mode cognition is the dynamic coupling of agents who are actually engaged in jointly acting together, rather than merely being potentiated to act together.

  13. A full treatment of this matter would take us into an in-depth analysis of the structure of intentionality. This is outside of the scope of this paper, but the ideas of this section at least touch upon the essential synthesis of propositional intentionality with non-propositional factors (see Shepherd (2017) for some ideas to this effect).

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    Joe Higgins

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Higgins, J. Cognising With Others in the We-Mode: a Defence of ‘First-Person Plural’ Social Cognition. Rev.Phil.Psych. 12, 803–824 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13164-020-00509-2

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