From the Self to the Other and Back Again: Intersubjectivity as a Perpetual Motion Around the Self

Abstract

In the methodology of science, intersubjectivity is usually associated with replicability of experimental results. A related, judicial conception of objectivity as impartiality has it that a theory or judgment is objective if it covers all the relevant angles of the object or phenomenon in question, ensuring that the latter is not ephemeral and the concepts referring to them are valid. Based on the assumption that in the social sciences, the researcher is also a participant, an alternative view was conceived, according to the notion that intersubjectivity rests on either sharing of a lifeworld and its associated practices or on empathy, or on some form of direct social cognition.

Keywords

• intersubjectivity
• objectivity
• cognitive distancing
• direct experience
• gestalt theory