Abstract
When you and I share an experience, each of us lives through a we-experience. The paper claims that we-experiences have unique phenomenality and structure. First, we-experiences’ phenomenality is characterised by the fact that they feel like ours to their subject. This specific phenomenality is contended to derive from the way these experiences self-represent: a we-experience exemplifies us-ness or togetherness because it self-represents as mine qua ours. Second, living through a we-experience together with somebody else is not to have this experience in parallel with the experience of the other. Rather, the paper argues that a we-experience is partly co-constituted by the experience of the other. After offering an account of the phenomenality and constitution of we-experiences, which traces these two elements back to the subject’s self-understanding as a group member, the paper argues for the claim that an experience’s for-us-ness is committal to this experience being co-constituted by another we-experience.
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Notes
Common knowledge has been spelled out here as a set of recursive beliefs ranging over others’ beliefs. This is the standard understanding of common knowledge, which is not the only one possible account of this notion, though (see Vanderschraaf and Sillari 2014).
One should be reminded of the paper’s narrow scope, which constrains how ψ is to be understood here (see introduction and conclusion).
Note that Clark and Chalmers are reluctant to make extendedness claims about “experiences” by even suggesting that consciousness is internal (Clark & Chalmers 1998: 10, but see Ward 2012, Krueger 2014 for a different take). Although these considerations could be taken to support the view that the notion of constitution in the debate about the Extended Mind is different from the one at stake in experiential sharing, I sidestep these issues and, for the sake of the argument, accept the possibility for phenomenally conscious states to be extended. (I am thankful to Joel Walmsley for pushing me on this point.)
This is too quick, though: individual experiences like (1) or (3) do not differ from we-experiences like (4) or (5) exclusively in their subjective character as, typically, the qualitative character, too, will be different. On the one hand, my awareness of your experience of the movie, even though it won’t contribute to an analysis or (4) (or of (5)), presumably has an impact on the qualitative character of (4) (or of (5)). On the other, (4) and (5) can be accompanied by a specific hedonic valence, which (1) and (3) lack. Sometimes, this valence is positive (Salmela and Nagatsu 2017), but it can also be negative. This indicates that factors incl. the kind of shared experience, the kind of intentional object, and several circumstantial factors, can account for variations in the qualitative character of we-experiences.
Is this the only way in which the difference between these experiences can be cashed out? No. At least three other options offer themselves. First, one could aim at analysing (4) by sophisticating the strategy dismissed in the previous subsection: (4) could be a matter of experiences with individual subjective character, common knowledge, and some other relevant relations between the experiences of the individuals. Second, one could claim that (1) and (4) differ in their psychological mode. Third, (1) and (4) could be contended to have different subjects: an individual subject in (1) and a group subject in (4). All these different approaches have been defended esp. in the debate about shared intentions, where, e.g., Bratman (2014) exemplifies the first approach, Searle (1990) the second, and List & Pettit (2011) the third. This is not the place to address these theories, but discussions (and critiques) of these approaches can be found in Overgaard/Salice 2019, Salice/Miyazono 2019, Salice 2015b.
This is not to suggest that individuals have only one social self or that the social self corresponds to a particularly solidified social identity: it can, but does not have to. As social psychology has ascertained, many of our social identities constantly wax and wane, and have therefore only ephemeral existence. This consideration also indicates that the kind of group and group memberships under discussion is subjective or psychological, not objective: one can be objectively member of several groups without identifying with these groups as a member and, vice versa, one can identify with one group without being an objective member of it.
The example is not meant to reflect Brentano’s view about emotions.
Within social psychology, the psychological process that generates a social identity is usually referred to as “group identification.” What stimulates group identification and, therefore, what factors lead to the activation of a social identity, is a matter of debate. It is generally assumed that these factors are numerous and variegated. Using we-language, being confronted to an outgroup, share the same destiny, sharing preferences, etc., are all factors that can increase the likelihood of group identification (Bacharach 2006: 69–94). Importantly, these factors may be quite minimal and, apparently, irrelevant: for instance, sharing aesthetic preferences (like preferring Paul Klee to Vassilij Kandinsky) has been identified as a circumstance able to trigger group identification (Tajfel et al. 1970).
To be sure, the conditions for group identification are so minimal that a conversation is not even required for an understanding as a group member to be generated. If parallel laughing is taken by you and me to be revelatory of a shared background (say, the fact that we are both fans of a particular actor or that we both appreciate the kind of humour displayed at the scenes), then parallel laughing can turn into a we-experience. (I am grateful to a reviewer for drawing my attention to this point.).
Suppose that for-me-ness and mineness fall apart. This would open up logical space for two different hypotheses: either for-us-ness is a modification of for-me-ness or it is a modification of mineness.
Accordingly, subjective or psychological groups are “mind-dependent entities and fictitious in the mind-dependence sense” (Tuomela 2013: 47): a group exists contingent on individuals understanding themselves as group members in a good case. Note that, even though they are mind-dependent (or fictitious), this notion of a group is explanatory relevant for it is required to understand we-experiences (and actions motivated by we-experiences).
All this takes for granted that one subject is aware that the other is undergoing an experience (and vice versa), which indicates that the social self is one—but also only one—pre-condition of we-experiences. Other conditions are equally important and social cognition is one among them. The examples discussed in this paper implicitly introduce social cognition in the account insofar as they all involve face-to-face encounters, which makes them fulfil the condition that the two subjects are in each other’s perceptual fields. More should be said about cases in which this condition is relaxed and on how experiential sharing relates to various forms of social cognition.
From the subject’s perspective, the experience in the bad case is at least in principle indiscernible from the one she has in the good case. How can one know to be in the good or in the bad case? It exceeds the purposes of this paper to address this question, but it can be argued that socio-cognitive abilities are able to provide an answer to this question: mutual gaze exchange, tracking facial expressions, etc. help the subject determine in which of the two scenarios she happens to be in.
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Acknowledgements
I am thankful to Danny Forde, Kengo Miyazono, Jamie Murphy, Donnachadh O’Connaill, Felipe León, Glenda Satne, Genki Uemura, Joel Walmsley, and Dan Zahavi for their comments and feedback on this project. I have presented previous versions of this paper in Cork, Fribourg, Fukuoka, Hagen, Neuchâtel, The Hague, and Würzburg, where I received much appreciated feedback from the audience. Finally, I acknowledge, with gratitude, the support of the Suntory Foundation (2016, 2017).
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Salice, A. The Phenomenality and Intentional Structure of We-Experiences. Topoi 41, 195–205 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-020-09727-w
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-020-09727-w