This is a pre-copyedited, author-produced version of an article accepted for publication in Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume following peer review. The version of record Zahavi, D. (2023). Observation, Interaction, Communication: The Role of the Second Person. Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume, 97(1), 82–103 is available online at https://doi.org/10.1093/arisup/akad001
Abstract
(English)
Recent years have seen an upsurge of interest in the second-person perspective, not only in philosophy of mind, language, law and ethics, but also in various empirical disciplines such as cognitive neuroscience and developmental psychology. A distinctive and perhaps also slightly puzzling feature of this ongoing discussion is that whereas many contributors insist that a proper consideration of the second-person perspective will have an impact on our understanding of social cognition, joint action, communication, self-consciousness, morality, and so on, there remains considerable disagreement about what exactly a second-person perspective amounts to (see Eilan 2014; Conant and Rödl 2014). What is the difference between adopting a second-person and a third-person perspective on another? How does one relate to another as a you and how does that differ from relating to another as a he, she or they? In the following, I will consider three different proposals and argue that a promising but somewhat overlooked account can be found in the work of Husserl.
Files
Observation, Interaction, Communication The Role of the Second Person.pdf
