Cont Philos Rev (2008) 41:163178

DOI 10.1007/s11007-008-9075-8

Intersubjectivity in perception

Shaun Gallagher

Published online: 3 July 2008

Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2008

Abstract The embodied, embedded, enactive, and extended approaches to cog-

nition explicate many important details for a phenomenology of perception, and are
consistent with some of the traditional phenomenological analyses. Theorists
working in these areas, however, often fail to provide an account of how inter-
subjectivity might relate to perception. This paper suggests some ways in which
intersubjectivity is important for an adequate account of perception.

Keywords Embodied cognition
Extended mind
Enactive perception

Intersubjectivity
Object perception

1 Introduction

Perception, and cognition more generally, clearly are embodied processes. When
theorists of embodied cognition say that perception is embodied, they mean that it
involves more than brain processes, although, of course, the brain is part of the
perceiving body and plays an important role. There are different ways to explain the
role of such extra-neural contributions to perception. For example, in the
contemporary parlance, there are the four Es, i.e., cognition (the mind,
perception, and so on) is embodied, embedded, extended, and enactive. In this
paper I review these different ways of talking about cognition, and specifically
about perception, in order to show that it is quite possible to develop an extremely
rich and fruitful description of perception along these lines, but also that some of
these approaches miss or downplay the role of intersubjectivity.

S. Gallagher (&)
Department of Philosophy, University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL 32816, USA
e-mail: gallaghr@mail.ucf.edu

123
164 S. Gallagher

2 Perception is embodied

Specifically, the idea that perception, and more generally cognition, is embodied
means, in part, that the structural and functional design of the body shapes the way
that we experience the world. One can take seriously Erwin Strauss remarks on the
upright posture, that is, that the shape and function of the human body are
determined in almost every detail by, and for, the upright posture.1 Thus, for
example, the shape, structure and proportions of the foot, ankle, knee, hip, limbs,
and vertebral column, require a specific musculature and nervous system design,
which in turn permits the specifically human development of shoulders, arms,
hands, skull and face. These physical facts, which we live as we live our body,
constrain what counts as affordances2 and thereby what counts as the world. The
postural possibilities that come with standing and walking affect what we can see
and to what we can attend. In standing, for example, the range of vision is extended,
the environmental horizon is widened and distanced, the spatial frame of reference
for perception and action is redefined. Standing frees the hands for gnostic touching,
manipulation, carrying things, and tool use, all of which build upon and transcend
grasping. At the same time, these functional contingencies come with complexities
in brain structure that enable rational thought.3 Bodily shape, then, is not neutral
with respect to how we perceive the world or how we act in it.
To think of perception as something that happens only in the brain, is to ignore
the contribution of embodiment to sensory pre-processing. In the case of auditory
sensation, for example, the shape and location of the ears determine directional
information by amplifying or filtering specific inputs.4 Bodily movement also is not
fully determined at brain-level, but is constrained and enabled by the design of
muscle and tendons, their degrees of flexibility, their geometric relationships to
other muscles and joints, and their prior history of activation.5 Thus, as Andy Clark
points out, movement is based on a whole bodily system that modulates parameters
like limb or joint stiffness.6 The body imposes such soft constraints on the
nervous system and the way it works, so that the nervous system cannot process
information that is not mediated by the form and material of the body, nor can it
command movements that are physically impossible for that body.7
Many aspects of embodiment are thus prenoetic, that is, they operate below
the threshold of conscious perception, in an automatic way that is not irrelevant to
perception.8 Even the most recessed of prenoetic processes are not inefficacious
with regard to behavior and perception. Internal autonomic adjustments that
regulate metabolism, heart rate, blood pressure, respiratory volume, adrenalin
1
Straus (1966, p. 138).
2
Gibson (1979).
3
Paillard (2000).
4
Chiel and Beer (1997).
5
Zajac (1993).
6
Clark (1997).
7
Chiel and Beer (1997, p. 554).
8
Gallagher (2005a).

123
Intersubjectivity in perception 165

levels, etc., as well as the integration of bodily posture, muscle tension, corporeal
tonicities, movements, and emotions, all play a role in the perceivers ability to
attend to or concentrate on perceived objects without the distraction caused by
changing environmental conditions.9

3 Perception is embedded

Cognition is also embedded or situated in the environment. The concept of situated

cognition extends back at least to the pragmatists and to phenomenologists like
Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty.10 As Dewey puts it: The idea of environment is a
necessity to the idea of organism, and with the conception of environment comes the
impossibility of considering psychical life as an individual, isolated thing
developing in a vacuum.11 Experience is thus situated, so that in experience,
there is never any such isolated singular object or event; an object or event is
always a special part, phase, or aspect, of an environing experienced worlda
situation.12 For Heidegger too, the kind of being that is capable of having an
intentional relation to the world, is a being who is already in the world in a way that
is more basic than being simply a matter of location. To adapt the Heideggerian
analysis to embodied cognition, one could say that the organism doesnt simply find
itself deeply situated in an environment presented as one possibility rather than
another. Rather, it is part of the very nature of human existence that being in the
environment is one of its necessary, existential characteristics.13
The world, in this sense, is not a collection of objects to be observed or
contemplated by the mind. Rather, in a primary way, we have our hands in it. The
world is at hand (Heidegger of course uses the term Zuhandensein). Things are
not only available for our manipulationwe find ourselves already immersed in
such manipulations or dealings, and the possibilities of such dealings shape our
perceptions and actions. The kind of dealing which is closest to us is not a bare
perceptual cognition, but rather that kind of concern which manipulates things and
puts them to use; and this has its own kind of knowledge14a kind of knowledge
that Heidegger calls circumspection (Umsicht). To use Gibsons term, the
affordances offered by the world are implicit in the way that I interact with them,
and this interaction is shaped by the kind of body that I have. Cognition is a
founded mode of Being-in-the-world which depends on our primary, pragmatic
interaction with things. By the time we think about things, or explicitly perceive
them as what they are, we have already been immersed in their pragmatic
meaning.15
9
Buytendijk (1974); Sandman (1986); Sheets-Johnstone (1999a).
10
See Gallagher (in press), for a fuller account of the philosophical roots of the situated cognition idea.
11
Dewey (1884, p. 280).
12
Dewey (1938, p. 67).
13
Wheeler (2005) gives a good account of Heidegger in this context.
14
Heidegger (1968, p. 95).
15
Ibid., pp. 8690.

123
166 S. Gallagher

What finds itself already at work in the world is not the Cartesian cogito; rather,
as Merleau-Ponty puts it, my body, in a familiar surrounding, finds its orientation
and makes its way among objects without my needing to have them expressly in
mind.16 It is not a matter of an I standing back as an observer of the things
located around me; rather it is that my consciousness takes flight from itself and, in
them, is unaware of itself,17 and it does this in perception as in action. I do not first
conceive of a space through which I need to guide my hand as it reaches to grasp
something; nor is the shape of my grasp some kind of representation of the object
that I intend to grasp. Grasping would not be possible if my hand was not already
situated on a path of action.18 Accordingly, the situation, per se, is not laid out
before me, as an object of consciousness; it is a tergo. I am in it and it is affecting
me before I know it. Furthermore, even if, as Merleau-Ponty suggests, there is no
reflective awareness of myself, or my body, when I am engaged in my everyday
projects, we should also point out that if in fact we take a reflective regard on what
we are doing, or on what we plan to do, reflection itself tends to be embedded or
situated rather than a matter of abstract introspection.19

4 The extended mind

One might think that the extended mind hypothesis as it is explicated by Clark and
Chalmersthe idea that the environment participates in the cognitive process
applies more to higher orders of cognition than to perception.20 But as much as it is
clearly consistent with the perspective of what I would call a healthy externalism in
regard to perception, it would surely appear contentious to some internalists about
perception (those who say that everything important about perception is explainable
in terms of neuronal processes or mental states) to claim that the world contributes
something important to perceptual experience.
The extended mind hypothesis is, in some regards, an extension of the idea of
embedded or situated cognition, and is certainly based on an embodied view. It calls
upon the concept of non-trivial causal spread,21 i.e., something that occurs when
factors or forces not normally considered part of a well-circumscribed causal system
are in fact (and perhaps unexpectedly) causal contributors to the phenomenon under
consideration. In regard to cognition, the claim is simply (but also controversially22)
that cognitive processes extend into the environment in the sense that we exploit
certain aspects of the environment to help us think and make decisions. In this
context it means that the world itself is a causal factor in cognition (and, as Ive

16
Merleau-Ponty (1962, p. 369).
17
Ibid., p. 369.
18
Ibid., p. 370.
19
See Gallagher and Marcel (1999).
20
Clark and Chalmers (1998). Also see Clark (in press).
21
Clark (1998); Wheeler (2005); Wheeler and Clark (1999).
22
See Adams and Aizawa (2001).

123
Intersubjectivity in perception 167

suggested, for many people, but not all, this is an obvious claim to make about
perception).
For example, when a surgeon enters the operating room, the room itself and the
equipment in the room, and the way it is all set up, assist the cognitive processes that
are involved in doing the surgery. The way the instruments are laid out, their order
and position on the table, allow the surgeon to concentrate more on what she is
doing than on trying to think about what the next step in the procedure is. These
environmental arrangements allow the surgeon to proceed in an expert and intuitive
fashion (as Dreyfus defines such things, for example23) without having to stop to
reflect on precisely what the next step is. In this sense, expertise, and the cognitive
and perceptual know-how of the surgeon are constituted in part by the environment
that she works in. The surgeon is better able to perceive precisely what needs to be
done, because the room and the instruments are set out in specific arrangements.
The world itself is always available as an unmediated arena for cognition as well
as for embodied action. Instruments and things encountered in the environment
become problem-solving resources that enter into and help to shape the cognitive
processes that characterize our everyday experience. We exploit the environment in
all kinds of ways, to think, to decide, to judge, to buoy up our beliefs, to define our
desires, to formulate our feelings. These things happen, not simply in the head,
but in a way that extends into the world.

5 Perception is enactive

Perception, as Merleau-Ponty realized, is not simply based on the processing of

sensory information, or on the construction of internal representations. Rather, it is
fundamentally shaped by the motor possibilities of the perceiving body. As John
Dewey put it,
we begin in perception not with a sensory stimulus, but with a sensorimotor
coordination it is the movement which is primary, and the sensation which
is secondary, the movement of body, head and eye muscles determining the
quality of what is experienced . [In audition] the sound is not a mere
stimulus, or mere sensation; it again is an act . It is just as true to say that the
sensation of sound arises from a motor response as that the running away is a
response to the sound.24
A more contemporary statement of the enactive approach to perception, fully
informed by Merleau-Pontys phenomenology of embodiment, is found in the work
of Francisco Varela and Evan Thompson who introduced the term enactive in this
context.25 According to Merleau-Ponty, and Alva Noes most recent statement of
this position in Action in Perception,26 perception is action; it is essentially linked
23
Dreyfus and Dreyfus (1985, 1986).
24
Dewey (1896).
25
Varela et al. (1991); Thompson and Varela (2001).
26
Noe (2004).

123
168 S. Gallagher

to what we do, and what we are capable of doingour action possibilities and the
embodied sensory-motor contingencies that govern those possibilities. Experience is
not determined simply by neuronal states that are activated by sensory input; it
depends on the sensorimotor skills of the perceiver.
The idea of enactive perception puts the brain back into the body, and the body
back into the world, and is therefore part of the same fabric with embodied and
embedded cognition. Perception, on this account, is a way of coping with the
environment. As Noe puts it, perceiving is a way of acting. Perception is not
something that happens to us, or in us. It is something we do.27 The action, for
enactive theorists, is not in the brain; rather, the perceiving unit is the organism as a
whole acting in the environment. Accordingly, vision is not a representation that
emerges in a network of neurons, it is rather a mode of exploration of the
environment drawing on implicit understanding of sensorimotor regularities,
where understanding means know-how and practical skill.28
The enactive approach to perception shares with the embodied, embedded, and
extended cognition approaches, a minority stance on the currently pervasive concept
of representation in the cognitive sciences. On the representationalist view, mental
states involve internal vehicles that represent contententities (ideas, symbols,
images, neuronal states) that stand in for the perceived world. In contrast, the non-
(or minimal) representationalist view contends that if we are in the world and we
can access the environmental detail relevant to our needs, there seems no need to
create an internal representation of that detail. Just as it would be odd to call or text
my friend on her cell phone when she is standing right in front of me, so it would be
odd to think that although the world is immediately present, we need an internal
representation of it in order to perceive it.

6 On how much I miss others

So far I have simply provided a summary of the embodied-embedded-extended-

enactive perspectives. There is much more to be said, and many more detailed
analyses to be found in both the less recent and more recent statements of these
positions. Together they form a relatively consistent and convincing alternative to
reductionist, functionalist, computationalist, and otherwise Cartesian approaches to
the philosophy of mind and cognitive sciences. Furthermore, judging from all kinds
of recent publications, there is every reason to think that these embodied-embedded-
extended-enactive approaches are in the ascendancy.29 This is all so far so good,
at least in my view. Still, however, I do want to call attention to what I take to be a
serious deficiency in a number of authors who are proponents of such approaches.
27
Ibid., p. 1.
28
Ibid., p. 73.
29
This is certainly the case across a number of disciplines that in the past have been highly influenced by
cognitivist-computationalist approaches. See, e.g., Brooks (1991); Gallese (2000); Clancey (1991). The
phenomenology of Husserl, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty has informed most of the philosophical
accounts. See, e.g., Clark (1997); Dreyfus (1992); Gallagher (2005a); Gallagher and Varela (2003); Noe
(2004); Sheets-Johnstone (1999b); Todes (2001); Varela et al. (1991); Wheeler (2005).

123
Intersubjectivity in perception 169

This deficiency is by no means pervasive, yet it is something that manifests itself in

several important texts that define this approach. I want to argue that this is not
simply a matter of setting aside an issue that could be treated separately, but rather
is something that directly pertains to the adequacy of the accounts themselves. Some
theorists of perception fail to take the issue of intersubjectivity into account. I find
this deficiency in several texts, but I will focus on two recent publications.30
Let me start, however, with a passing mention of the paper that initiated the
extended mind discussion, Andy Clark and David Chalmers The extended
mind.31 I want to mention this paper simply because it presents an example of a
similar problem, but one that is not as serious. In this paper we find an innovative,
and relatively detailed explication of the idea of extended cognition. We learn that
as cognizers we employ aspects of the environment, worldly things, as coordination
devices, not simply to get things done, but to gain or retain knowledge. We learn
that the cognitive system is composed of a situated actor together with its goals,
tools, and other resources for interaction and task performance. Cognition involves
the manipulation of information-bearing elements within the system, part of which
is out there, in the worldso it doesnt happen merely in the head. Clark and
Chalmers write that the idea of the extended mind involves
the general tendency of human reasoners to lean heavily on environmental
supports. Thus consider the use of pen and paper to perform long
multiplication, the use of physical re-arrangements of letter tiles to prompt
word recall in Scrabble, the use of instruments such as the nautical slide rule,
and the general paraphernalia of language, books, diagrams, and culture. In all
these cases the individual brain performs some operations, while others [i.e.,
other operations] are delegated to manipulations of external media.32
This is an exemplary passage in more ways than one. The curious thing about this
paper is that it almost completely ignores the idea of embodiment; that is, the
authors hardly make any mention of the body per se. Perhaps the rhetorical context
motivated them to focus on the contrast between what happens in the brain versus
what happens in the environment, but, in between, nothing at all is said about the
role played by the body. Thus, for example, they suggest that epistemic actions
(e.g., manipulating shapes to understand their difference) are actions that assist the
cognitive processbut the idea that such actions are done by epistemic hands is left
unremarked.
Epistemic action, we suggest, demands spread of epistemic credit. If, as we
confront some task, a part of the world functions as a process which, were it
done in the head, we would have no hesitation in recognizing as part of the
cognitive process, then that part of the world is (so we claim) part of the
cognitive process. Cognitive processes aint (all) in the head!33

30
Todes (2001); Noe (2004).
31
Clark and Chalmers (1998).
32
Ibid., p. 7 (my emphasis).
33
Ibid., p. 8.

123
170 S. Gallagher

The extended mind includes what is in the head plus what is beyond the
skin. But the hands (which are not mentioned), and more generally, the body, as it
is portrayed in embodied cognition approaches, are neither in the head nor part of
the manipulated world. At best, Clark and Chalmers mention the organism and
describe it as coupled to the environmentbut all of the explanatory power is given
to the brain and to the things in the environment.
As I have indicated, however, this is not a serious problem, first, because the role of
embodiment is implicit in their analysis (and in this regard my complaint would
simply be that they failed to make it explicit), and second, because elsewhere Clark
himself does not ignore embodiment, and nicely combines an enactive embodied
approach with an analysis of situated, distributed cognition. For example, pointing to
insights exploited by the theorists of enactive perception, Clark endorses the idea that
differences in what we perceptually experience correspond to differences in
sensorimotor signatures (patterns of association between movements and the
sensory effects of movement). If two things look different, they do so because,
as we engage them in space and time, we bring to bear (rightly or wrongly)
different sets of sensorimotor expectations.34
At best, if I took him to court on a charge of ignoring embodiment, Clark could
easily have the charges dismissed as a nuisance complaint. I think that the case is
different, however, in regard to the question of intersubjectivity in either Todes or
Noe.
Todes35 asks: Is it possible to provide an account of our cognitive experience of
the world without providing an account of the body? His answer, of course, is No.
He develops this answer through a phenomenological analysis of how the body does
in fact generate mental experience. He champions realism and shows how cognition
is the result of the perceptual experience of a bodily percipient. The general sense of
his analysis is phenomenological and full of descriptive detail familiar to anyone
who has read Merleau-Ponty. Husserl and Heidegger also inform Todes analysis,
but the work of these earlier phenomenologists stay very much in the background.
He sets out to show how objects come into our experience, how that experience is
the bodys experience, and is shaped by the bodys capacity for movement through
the physical environment. His descriptions are enriched with examples from sports,
dance, and ordinary motor responses like turning. Todes also takes up questions
about how we experience time and space, how within temporal and spatial
frameworks objects appear constituted as objects, and how perception and
imagination are generated within the matrix of these non-conceptual worldly
frameworks. The more abstract accomplishments of thinking and conceptualization
he shows to be based on the fundamental motor and perceptual accomplishments of
the body.
34
Clark (1997, in press).
35
Todes (2001). Todes book is actually his 1963 Harvard dissertation originally titled The Human
Body as Material Subject of the World. In 1990 it was published for the first time, under its original title,
as part of the Garland Press series of Harvard dissertations, which included the dissertations of Davidson,
Goodman, Putnam, and Quine. In 2001 it was republished as Body and world, with a Foreword and
Introduction by Hubert Dreyfus, and a second Introduction by Piotr Hoffman.

123
Intersubjectivity in perception 171

Todes analysis is limited to how we perceive and make sense of objects. It is

focused on object perception, and to be sure he seems to leave no stone unturned in
seeking out the details of such perception. In all of this he acknowledges that his aim
is not to explain how we perceive other persons.36 Furthermore, he admits that
experience is simplified in just this way, for purposes of his analysis.
The discerning reader will want to know: if, considered as alone in the world,
our experience of objects is centered in our own body, how, when confronted
by other persons, do we gain knowledge of them as equally, centers of
experience in their own right; and how do we know that our knowledge of
objects agrees with theirs. Throughout this book I assume that this question is
answerable, without giving the answer or claiming to do so.37
His assumption, however, is even stronger than this explicit statement would
indicate, for this assumption not only helps to define the focus of his analysis
object perceptionbut it also suggests that object perception can be analyzed
separately from person perception. On the one hand, that may seem justified insofar
as there are important differences between perceiving an object and perceiving a
person. On the other hand, however, one is motivated to ask whether, even in an
analysis of object perception, one can afford to leave out considerations about
interaction with others. That is, is it possible to provide an adequate account of
object perception without taking intersubjectivity into account?
Consider two issues, the first involving development; the second, the normal
phenomenology of object perception. Concerning development, there is good
evidence from developmental psychology that we gain access to a meaningful world
through our interactions with others. Our primary relations with others, which are,
from birth through the first year of life, the dominant and most central experiences
that we have, gradually prepare us for secondary intersubjectivity at around 1-year
of age.38 Secondary intersubjectivity is characterized by shared attention; we start to
learn about the world by seeing how others relate to objects in that world. Objects take
on meaning in the pragmatic contexts within which we see and imitate the actions of
others. The Lockean idea that we learn to perceive is at least in part correct. We learn
to perceptually distinguish objects, and to attend to certain ones over others, on the
basis of seeing how others relate to them. At least in developmental terms, the
analysis of object perception seems to be directly tied to intersubjective relations.
Second, those familiar with Husserls analysis of object perception know that,
especially in his later texts he finds an essential place for intersubjectivity. At the
very least, in attempting to explain how it is possible for us to perceive something as
a complete object rather than as simply the present profile that we currently sense,
one needs to consider the possibility of an implicit intersubjectivity built into the
perceptual experience. The occluded sides of the object that I do not currently see
are in some way included in my current perception since I perceive the object to be

36
Ibid., p. 2.
37
Ibid., p. 3.
38
Trevarthen and Hubley (1978). [Editors note: See also Beata Stawarskas article, Feeling good
vibrations in dialogical relations, in this issue.]

123
172 S. Gallagher

determinately more than what I can see of it. On one account, taken up by Husserl in
his early texts,39 and, as we shall see below, by both Todes and Noe, the co-intended
profiles are correlated with possible perceptions; I have the possibility of moving
around to see the other sides of things. I could, for example, imagine myself moving
around the object and seeing the other sides of it. But this implies that the object is
perceived as a unity in a series of temporally separated profiles, which doesnt
match with our experience. When I perceive an object the present front is not a front
with respect to a past or future back, but is determined through its reference to a
present co-existing back. The object is perceived at any given moment as possessing
a plurality of co-existing profiles. So the problem with this account is that the
profiles that were previously seen, or anticipated, or imagined, lack the required
actuality. Husserl thus comes to an alternative account: if the absent profiles cannot
be correlated with my possible but non-actualized perceptions, then the absent
profiles may be correlated with the possible perceptions that others could currently
have. As Sartre writes, summing up Husserls view: [E]ach object, far from being
constituted, as for Kant, by a simple relation to the subject, appears in my concrete
experience as polyvalent; it is given originally as possessing systems of reference to
an indefinite plurality of consciousnesses.40 The basic idea is that an analysis of
object perception immanently refers us to the possible perceptions of a plurality of
possible subjects, or as Husserl calls it, to an open intersubjectivity.
Thus everything objective that stands before me in experience and primarily in
perception has an apperceptive horizon of possible experiences, my own and
those of others. Ontologically speaking, every appearance that I have is from
the very beginning a part of an open endless, but not explicitly realized totality
of possible appearances of the same, and the subjectivity belonging to this
appearance is open intersubjectivity.41
In Todes account of object perception, one can find the familiar phenomeno-
logical discussion of this problem of perceptual incompleteness. His solution
suggests that we perceive the object as a wholethat is, that perception somehow
includes not just an immediate sense of the object profile that presents itself, but also
a sense of those that are occluded or hiddenon the basis of an anticipation of our
possible movements (our ability to move around the object, or to manipulate it) and
our possible uses of the object. Part of what Todes takes to be important in this
processi.e. the temporality implied by these anticipationsitself points to the
logical problem that motivates Husserls consideration of open intersubjectivity.
That is, anticipated experiences of an object lack the present actuality that seems to
characterize the perceived object as a whole. Now whether or not this should be
considered an important objection to Todes account, and whether or not the
introduction of the concept of open intersubjectivity is a good solution to this issue,
one could certainly argue that the role of intersubjectivity should not be left out of
these considerations.
39
E.g., Husserl (1966).
40
Sartre (1956, p. 229).
41
Husserl (1973a, p. 289). Cf. also Husserl (1968, p. 394; 1973b, p. 497).

123
Intersubjectivity in perception 173

Let me note that there are at least two attitudes toward intersubjectivity one could
take as motivated by an analysis of object perception. The first attitude, exemplified
by Husserls idea of open intersubjectivity, suggests that to get an adequate account
of object perception one needs to say something about the fact that the environment
is not only physical but also social, and that the social aspects of experience actually
condition the way that we perceive objects. Sartre provides a dramatic formulation
of this idea when he writes that my relationship to things undergoes a fundamental
change when I experience somebody else observing these very same things. When
another person walks into the park where I am sitting,
[] suddenly an object has appeared which has stolen the world from me.
Everything [remains] in place; everything still exists for me; but everything is
traversed by an invisible flight and fixed in the direction of a new object. The
appearance of the Other in the world corresponds therefore to a fixed sliding of
the whole universe, to a decentralization of the world which undermines the
centralization which I am simultaneously effecting.42
A second attitude toward intersubjectivity that could inform an analysis of object
perception would put intersubjectivity in second place and suggest that our
encounters with others are on the horizons of our dealings with objects. There is a
well-developed line in phenomenological analysis that takes this second route,
starting with Heideggers analysis of Zuhandenheit, which defines our primary
encounter with the world as a circumspective encounter with equipment in
pragmatic contexts, within which we start to recognize other persons as such. Aron
Gurwitsch takes up this Heideggerian view in his analysis of the social world,
placing primacy on pragmatic contexts and the way that such contexts frame our
encounters with others. He argues that from the very beginning our primary
conviction, that we live with others, is mediated by the surrounding world in which
we are circumspectively involved.
Prior to all specific cognition, and independent of it, we are concerned with
other people in our natural living of daily life; we encounter them in the
world in which our daily life occurs . We do not meet other people
alongside of but rather directly in the concrete sector in which we always stand
. our comportment toward the other is codetermined by our entire situational
comportment.43
Our originary encounters with others, then, are not perceptually immediate, as
Husserl and Sartre would have it; they are mediated by determined horizons of
pragmatic and culturally defined tasks.
I mention Gurwitsch here precisely because, as Dreyfus indicates clearly in his
introduction, Gurwitsch had an influence on Todes.44 And Todes, following
42
Sartre (1956, p. 255).
43
Gurwitsch (1931/1978, pp. 3536).
44
Let me note here that Dreyfus himself has been influenced by Todes and Gurwitsch on these issues.
Indeed, the same question about intersubjectivity that I am raising here can be raised in regard to
Dreyfuss account of expertise, an account which downplays the role of others. Harry Collins, for
example, makes this critique. See Collins (1996, 2004). Also see Gallagher (2007); and Selinger (2003).

123
174 S. Gallagher

Heidegger and Gurwitsch, clearly takes this second route. Indeed, an analysis of
intersubjectivity, according to Todes, presupposes the analysis of object perception.
On Todes strategy, we would come to understand the fullness and complexity of
human experience by first understanding how an isolated body, moving alone in the
world, perceives inanimate objects, and then adding to this an analysis of how others
enter into the picture. Although Todes admits that the way I know persons differs
from the way I know objects,45 on his view neither this fact, nor the facts of social
interaction that characterize human existence at least from birth, have anything to
do with the way we perceive objects.
My intention here is not to deny that this second route to intersubjectivity,
which takes intersubjectivity to be secondary to object perception and pragmatic
interactions, offers important insights into the constitution of the social world.46
Nor is my intention to argue that there is a more primary intersubjectivity that
conditions object perception and pragmatic interactions, as suggested by
developmental psychology, and reflected in Husserls analysisalthough, in fact,
I do defend this view as more consistent with embodied cognition.47 Rather, my
intention is to strongly disagree with the idea that even this second route to
intersubjectivity is irrelevant to the analysis of object perception. The fact that
object perception is different from person perceptiona difference that Todes is
right to notedoes not mean that the difference is something to be ignored in an
adequate account of object perception, or that this difference justifies two separate
and independent accounts of these experiences. And of course, on the stronger
claim exemplified by the developmental analysis and Husserls concept of open
intersubjectivity, the account of object perception provided by Todes is
inadequate.

7 The lonely world of the enactive perceiver

I find the same kind of problem in Alva Noes recent account of enactive
perception.48 Noe provides detailed discussions of vision, causation and content,
consciousness and qualia, perceptual perspective, constancy and presence, as well as
critiques of computational theories of cognition and sense-data theories. He shows
why the recent skepticism about perception bestowing a richly detailed visual field,
and thus the thesis that the world that we think we see is an illusion, is wrong.
Vision does not deliver a snapshot of the world, since vision is never momentary.
But the fact that we can move our eyes, our heads, our bodies, and that we can adjust
our attention means that we have access to a richly detailed world. A momentary
45
Todes (2001, p. 2).
46
See, e.g., Wheeler (2005). Wheeler makes good use of Heideggers concept of Mitsein to suggest that
a human being is world embedded only to the extent that she has been socialized into the set of practices
and customs that define her culture . Any talk of an individuals subjective world can refer only to a
secondary phenomenon, one that is dependent on a more fundamental, inherently social condition of
cultural coembeddedness (p. 149).
47
See Gallagher (2005b).
48
Noe (2004).

123
Intersubjectivity in perception 175

snapshot of our experience would not be richly detailed, but since we do not
experience a snapshotbecause of the temporally structured nature of perception
and our embodied ability to look aroundthis is not a problem.
Accordingly, Noes analysis of perception as enactive leads him to a solution to
the problem of perceptual incompleteness (or what he calls the problem of
perceptual presence) similar to the one we find in Todes. This is the problem of
having a [perceptual] sense of the presence of that which, strictly speaking, we do
not perceive.49 Noe takes this not simply as a problem of perceiving an object as a
whole, given that we are unable to see all of its profiles in a single momentary act of
perception. Similar considerations hold for cases of visual illusions, the visual
experience of voluminousness and color constancy, as well as the fact that we seem
to experience the environment as fully detailed even though we do not attend to or
literally see the details. He rejects a representationalist explanation (i.e., that we
build up an internal model of the world which we consult to complete our
perception). The enactive approach suggests that things appear to us as complete, or
whole, because they are accessible, and this accessibility is built into perceptual
experience. What accessibility means is simply that we have the capacity to move
around to view the hidden profiles.
The ground of this accessibility is our possession of sensorimotor skills . In
particular, the basis of perceptual presence is to be found in those skills whose
possession is constitutive of sensory perception. My sense of the
perceptual presence, now, of that which is hidden consists in my
expectation that by moving my body [I can get it in view].50
The same question I raised in regard to Todes solution can be raised here since
this proposal also conceives of the object as a unity across a series of temporally
separated profiles. But is this the right way to describe our experience of an object?
When I perceive a tomato (to take one of Noes favorite examples), I am not
perceiving something which at that very moment possesses one actual profile, and
which previously possessed and will subsequently possess various others. The side
that is perceptually present is not one side with respect to a past or future side, but is
determined through its reference to a present set of co-existing profiles.
Consequently, it belongs to the very notion of the transcendence of the object
that, at any given moment, it possesses a plurality of co-existing profiles, and this
should be distinguished from the sense that I would see each profile in turn if I,
through time, moved around the object. Again, this kind of consideration is what
motivated Husserls proposal that the sense of simultaneously actualizable, co-
existing profiles requires an open intersubjectivity.
More generally, however, Noe fails to make any mention of intersubjectivity, or
social perception, or to make any acknowledgement that object perception is
different from person perception, or that our encounters with others might contribute
to the sensory-motor capacities that are so important for enactive perception. Is
there not an important sense in which we learn from others what to look for and how

49
Ibid., p. 60.
50
Ibid., p. 63.

123
176 S. Gallagher

to manipulate and understand things? And dont these intersubjective processes

shape the way that we perceive the world? Noe fails to address these issues, and his
account of perception is focused on what we might call the mechanical dynamics
of object-perceptionhow we experience constancies of color, shape, distance, and
so on. In regard to these dynamics, issues of intersubjectivity seemingly dont enter
into it.
Indeed, this is so much the case that one can read through Noes book without
bumping into anyone else (with the exception of referenced scholars and
researchers, of course). The idea that there are other people in the world is almost
completely absent from the analysis of perception. A simple example of this can be
found in his discussion of representations and animate vision, and his considerations
of various solutions to a practical problem of finding ones way around a strange
city.51 For example, Noe is trying to get to a castle (perhaps he is in Edinburgh). He
considers two solutions. The first solution is to employ a map. He simply plots his
position on the map, locates the castle on the same document, and sets off, guided
by the map. The second solution is to look around, and conveniently, if he can see
the castle up on the hill, he could start walking toward it, trying to keep it in view,
until he gets there. As an enactivist, Noe prefers the second solution. But there is no
consideration of a third solutionapparently real men dont even think about asking
directions. Edinburgh, for example, is full of people who know where the castle is.
Surely Alvas friend Andy Clark at Edinburgh University, with whom he expresses
some theoretical agreement (Ibid., 220ff.), could also offer some practical help in
this regard.

8 Conclusion

When I perceive something in a meaningful way, when I recognize a certain object

for what it is or for what it can do or facilitate, my perception is not a simple
processing of sensory information; nor is it merely a more complex sensory-motor
process. As the enactive approach rightly contends, I perceive not just in terms of
actualities, but also in terms of motor potentialities. As Wheeler puts it, how the
world is is itself encoded in terms of possibilities for action.52 But in every case the
possibilities for action are always already predelineated by others. I see something
as something to be used, as others have used it or have failed to use it, and often in a
context that includes others. I see it as meaningfully useful because it involves
others, whether directly (as it may involve my co-workers) or indirectly (because
certain cultural meanings and norms are part of its meaning). More generally, my
perception of things and instruments, but also of contexts and places, and the world
as such, is significantly invested with meanings and values that derive from others.
It is not simply that I encounter others within a horizon defined by my involvement
with objects or instruments; I also come into contact with things in a meaningful
way, and the ready-to-hand world opens up around me, only because it is already

51
Ibid., p. 23.
52
Wheeler (2005, p. 197).

123
Intersubjectivity in perception 177

there for others who have shown me how to perceive the world and do things in it.53
My perception of objects is shaped not simply by sensory-motor contingencies, but
in addition by the intercorporeal contingencies that define primary and secondary
intersubjectivity.
The way these intersubjective significations work should not be excluded from
any account of object perception that claims to be adequate to the phenomenon.
Embodied, embedded, enactive, and extended accounts of perception are surely
right to emphasize the role of bodily shape, movement, sensory-motor contingen-
cies, environmental causal spread, and so forth. I am suggesting that we also need to
consider the importance of intersubjectivity to gain a fuller understanding of
perception.

References

Adams, Frederick, and Kenneth Aizawa. 2001. The bounds of cognition. Philosophical Psychology 14(1):
4364.
Brooks, Rodney. 1991. New approaches to robotics. Science 253: 12271232.
Buytendijk, F.J.J. 1974. Prolegomena to an anthropological physiology (trans: A.I. Orr). Pittsburgh:
Duquesne University Press.
Chiel, Hillel J., and Randall D. Beer. 1997. The brain has a body: Adaptive behavior emerges from
interactions of nervous system, body and environment. Trends in Neurosciences 20: 553557.
Clancey, William J. 1991. Situated cognition: Stepping out of representational flatland. AI Communi-
cationsThe European Journal on Artificial Intelligence 4(2/3): 109112.
Clark, Andy. 1997. Being there: Putting brain, body, and world together again. Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press.
Clark, Andy. in press. Supersizing the mind: Reflections on embodiment, action, and cognitive extension.
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Clark, Andy. 1998. Twisted tales: Causal complexity and cognitive scientific explanation. Minds and
Machines 8: 7999.
Clark, Andy, and David Chalmers. 1998. The extended mind. Analysis 58(1): 719.
Collins, Harry M. 1996. Embedded or embodied: H. Dreyfuss what computers still cant do. Artificial
Intelligence 80(1): 99117.
Collins, Harry M. 2004. Interactional expertise as a third kind of knowledge. Phenomenology and the
Cognitive Sciences 3(2): 125143.
Dewey, John. 1884. The new psychology. Andover Review 2: 278289.
Dewey, John. 1896. The reflex arc concept in psychology. Psychological Review 3: 357370.
Dewey, John. 1938. Logic: The theory of Inquiry. New York: Holt.
Dreyfus, Hubert L. 1992. What computers still cant do: A critique of artificial reason. Cambridge: MIT
Press.
Dreyfus, Hubert L., and Stuart Dreyfus. 1985. From Socrates to expert systems: The limits of calculative
rationality. In Philosophy and technology II: Information technology and computers in theory and
practice, ed. Carl Mitcham and Alois Huning, 111130. Boston: D. Reidel Pub. Co.
Dreyfus, Hubert L., and Stuart Dreyfus. 1986. Mind over machine: The power of human intuition and
expertise in the era of the computer. New York: Free Press.
Gallagher, Shaun. in press. Philosophical antecedents to situated cognition. In Cambridge handbook of
situated cognition, ed. Philip Robbins and Murat Aydede. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

53
For that reason we sometimes experience what I would call Proustian effects of intersubjectivity
which may be deeply recessive in our perception of certain aspects of the world. It doesnt happen all the
time, but when I see the hammer (or some set of tools) the memory of my father may come explicitly to
mind (because he and I built some things together many years ago). When it does not come explicitly to
mind, however, that doesnt mean that it is not there, with a certain emotional valence, working below the
threshold, informing the perceptual significance of that hammer.

123
178 S. Gallagher

Gallagher, Shaun. 2005a. How the body shapes the mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Gallagher, Shaun. 2005b. Phenomenological contributions to a theory of social cognition. Husserl Studies
21: 95110.
Gallagher, Shaun. 2007. Moral agency, self-consciousness, and practical wisdom. Journal of
Consciousness Studies 14(56): 199223.
Gallagher, Shaun, and Anthony J. Marcel. 1999. The self in contextualized action. Journal of
Consciousness Studies 6(4): 430.
Gallagher, Shaun, and Francisco J. Varela. 2003. Redrawing the map and resetting the time:
Phenomenology and the cognitive sciences. Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Supplementary
Volume 29: 93132.
Gallese, Vittorio. 2000. The acting subject: Towards the neural basis of social cognition. In Neural
correlates of consciousness: Empirical and conceptual questions, ed. Thomas Metzinger, 325333.
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Gibson, J.J. 1979. The ecological approach to visual perception. Boston: Houghton-Mifflin.
Gurwitsch, Aron. 1931/1978. Human encounters in the social world. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University
Press.
Heidegger, Martin. 1968. Being and time (trans: John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson). New York:
Harper & Row.
Husserl, Edmund. 1966. Analysen zur passiven Synthesis. Husserliana XI. Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff.
Husserl, Edmund. 1968. Phanomenologische Psychologie. Vorlesungen Sommersemester. 1925, ed.
Walter Biemel. The Hague, Netherlands: Martinus Nijhoff.
Husserl, Edmund. 1973a. Zur Phanomenologie der Intersubjektivitat. Texte aus dem Nachlass. Zweiter
Teil. 192128, ed. Iso Kern. The Hague, Netherlands: Martinus Nijhoff.
Husserl, Edmund. 1973b. Zur Phanomenologie der Intersubjektivitat. Texte aus dem Nachlass. Dritter
Teil. 192935, ed. Iso Kern. The Hague, Netherlands: Martinus Nijhoff.
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. 1962. Phenomenology of perception (trans: Colin Smith). London: Routledge &
Kegan Paul.
Noe, Alva. 2004. Action in perception. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Paillard, Jacques. 2000. The neurobiological roots of rational thinking. In Prerational intelligence:
Adaptive behavior and intelligent systems without symbols and logic, vol. I, ed. Holk Cruse, Jeffrey
Dean, and Helge Ritter, 343355. Dordrecht: Kluwer.
Sandman, C.A. 1986. Cardiac afferent influences on consciousness. In Consciousness and self-regulation:
Advances in research and theory, vol. 1, ed. Richard J. Davidson, Gary E. Schwartz and David
Shapiro, 5585. New York: Plenum Press.
Sartre, Jean-Paul. 1956. Being and nothingness: An essay on phenomenological ontology (trans: H.E.
Barnes). NY: Philosophical Library.
Selinger, Evan. 2003. The necessity of embodiment: The DreyfusCollins debate. Philosophy Today
47(3): 266279.
Sheets-Johnstone, Maxine. 1999a. Emotion and movement: A beginning empirical-phenomenological
analysis of their relationship. Journal of Consciousness Studies 6(1112): 259277.
Sheets-Johnstone, Maxine. 1999b. The primacy of movement. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Straus, Erwin. 1966. Philosophical psychology. New York: Basic Books.
Thompson, Evan, and Francisco J. Varela. 2001. Radical embodiment: Neural dynamics and
consciousness. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 5(10): 418425.
Todes, Samuel. 2001. Body and world. Cambridge MA: MIT Press.
Trevarthen, Colwyn, and Penny Hubley. 1978. Secondary intersubjectivity: Confidence, confiding and
acts of meaning in the first year. In Action, gesture and symbol: The emergence of language, ed.
Andrew Lock, 183229. London: Academic Press.
Varela, Francisco J., Evan Thompson, and Eleanor Rosch. 1991. The embodied mind: Cognitive science
and human experience. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Wheeler, Michael. 2005. Reconstructing the cognitive world. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Wheeler, Michael, and Andy Clark. 1999. Genetic representation: Reconciling content and causal
complexity. British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 50(1): 103135.
Zajac, Felix E. 1993. Muscle coordination of movement: A perspective. Journal of Biomechanics
26(suppl 1): 109124.

123