Intersubjectivity: A phenomenological contribution to collective intentionality

This project develops a phenomenological account of intersubjectivity in the spirit of Edmund Husserl. The project has two main divisions. In the first division, I critically address the idea of collective consciousness. In the second division, I examine the phenomenological analysis of plural subjects and contrast it with Margaret Gilbert's view. Throughout, I advocate for subjective individualism, the position that all intentionality and consciousness is properly understood as only being attributable to individual subjects. As with John Searle and Gilbert, I accept that this position is consistent with formal collectivism, the position that one's intentional acts can take on a plural form in a way that is non-reducible to singular intentions; i.e. there are we-intentions that cannot be adequately accounted for as the sum of I-intentions.;The first two chapters engage in phenomenologically and metaphysically motivated arguments against the possibility of collective consciousness. I organize my argumentations around Kay Mathiesen's paper, "Collective Consciousness". Mathiesen claims there is a phenomenological case to be made for collective consciousness. I clarify her argument, and show that there is no adequate phenomenological basis for collective consciousness, despite there being good evidence for collective intentions. I argue that there are not sufficient grounds to believe that plural subjects take on or participate in any consciousness beyond that which is their own. Theories of collective consciousness are often motivated either by 1) that groups or collectives can bear predicates that their individuals either do not possess or whose individual members, on their own, might affirm the contrary; or 2) the recent acceptance of a more robust role for socially conditioned beliefs. I argue that these are insufficient grounds for extending the notion of consciousness to groups or collectives, i.e. plural subjects.;The third chapter addresses an old criticism of Edmund Husserl's account of intersubjectivity that has been given new form in Robert Sokolowski's Phenomenology of the Human Person. I argue against Sokolowski's conclusions and show that the line of argument he takes runs counter to the critique of psychologism that motivated the development of phenomenology in Logical Investigations. As such, either one falls back into the possibility of psychologism, or sociologism, or one has to take an approach to intersubjectivity more closely related to that Husserl took.;Chapter four builds on David Carr's overlooked paper on plural subjects from a phenomenological perspective. I conjoin Carr's analysis with John Searle's work on collective intentionality to offer a robust outline of a phenomenological account of plural subjects. Hans Bernhard Schmid has argued for a thorough collectivism in contrast to the subjective individualism I here give articulation to. I respond to Schmid's arguments, showing that his position is unworkable and does not represent the phenomena well.;Chapter five engages in a critical appraisal of Margaret Gilbert's theory of plural subjects. In contrasting the phenomenological account developed in the previous chapter, I demonstrate problems underlying Gilbert's theory. I trace the source of these problems to lie primarily in the ambiguity latent in the English language use of "intentionality" and argue that the more basic phenomenological account of plural subjects is necessary background to Gilbert's view. I do not take issue with most of Gilbert's analyses as they function at the level of action-oriented analysis. To this chapter is appended a discussion of how Aron Gurwitsch's phenomenology of the social world can serve to supplement both the Husserlian view.;The final chapter responds to two related challenges to Husserlian phenomenological method that are motivated by realist concerns. First, Barry Smith argues that Husserl is ill equipped to answer for there being a plurality of worlds, a charge that is echoed in his criticisms of Searle's theory of collective intentionality. A world, in the phenomenological sense, is a totality of reference or meaning. As such, it is acceptable to speak of each individual or community as having its own world. A potential problem arises in that there may be disagreement across worlds. Establishing a parallel with proposals of Martha Nussbaum, and building on Carr's work, I argue that shared experiences and a shared framework for experience represent an adequate basis for plurality and that differences can largely be accounted for as unproblematic where one holds to the Aristotelian principle that particularism does not entail relativism. Smith's intuition may be correct that such a move may strengthen the case for some form of realism being wedded to phenomenological theory, though that is properly left outside strictly phenomenological concerns. Second, I respond to Han Georg Gadamer's criticisms based on the notion of intentional horizons and how to best understand the social horizons of consciousness. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)...