In this paper we addressed and discussed the notions of intersubjectivity and of the self as indissolubly intertwined outcomes of the bodily and symbolic dimensions. We proposed that embodied simulation seems to be able to naturalize the notion of paradigm, thus naturalizing one of the processes that makes language reflexiveness possible, and thus contributing to “creating” the human being. Being a subject perhaps means being a body that learns to express itself and to express its world thanks to the paradigm—embodied simulation—that allows one to go beyond the body while remaining anchored to it. A new understanding of intersubjectivity can benefit from a bottom-up study and characterization of the non-declarative and non-metarepresentational aspects of social cognition (see Gallese 2003a, 2007).
One key issue of the new approach to intersubjectivity we proposed here is the investigation of the neural bases of our capacity to be attuned to the intentional relations of others. At a basic level, our interpersonal interactions do not make explicit use of propositional attitudes. This basic level consists of embodied simulation processes that enable the constitution of a shared meaningful interpersonal space. The shared intersubjective space in which we live from birth constitutes a substantial part of our semantic space. Self and other relate to each other because are opposite extensions of the same correlative and reversible we-centric space (Gallese 2003a). Observer and observed are part of a dynamic system governed by reversible rules. By means of intentional attunement, “the other” is much more than a different representational system; it becomes a bodily self, like us.
This new epistemological approach to intersubjectivity has the merit of generating predictions about the intrinsic functional nature of our social cognitive operations, cutting across, and not being subordinated to a specific ontology of mind, like that purported by the classic cognitivist approach. Open questions that need to be further investigated in the future concern the biological mechanisms underlying our species-specific forms of self-knowledge and intersubjectivity. Language will have a special role in this investigation. To what extent and how are symbolic operations constrained by biological mechanisms? Is this connection between symbolic representations and bodily mechanisms that has been responsible for our specificity? These and other questions will be object of investigation in the next years
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the EU Grant Towards an Embodied Science of InterSubjectivity (TESIS, FP7-PEOPLE-2010-ITN, 264828) and by the KOSMOS Fellowship from Humboldt University, Berlin to VG.
The authors wish to thank Anna Strasser, Michael Pauen and two anonymous reviewers for their most useful comments and criticisms on an earlier version of this article.
Although both authors discussed and designed the article together, sections 2, 3, 4, 5, and 8 were written by Vittorio Gallese, while sections 6, and 7 were written by Valentina Cuccio. Sections 1 and 9 were written jointly by both authors.