ANALISIS DE SENSIBILIDAD

The cognitive we-mode emerges from the view that shared intentionality – the capacity to share the mental states of others – is a unique human characteristic that explains our sociality (Gallotti & Frith, 2013a).[16] _{Although we are given no detailed definition of this}

capacity, we can take the sharing of a mental state to occur when two (or more) individuals

[16] _{For Gallotti and Frith (2013a), shared intentionality entails the sharing of mental states, and shared mental states permit reference to} the presence of ‘shared minds’. To speak of minds as ‘shared’, on their view, is thus to consider the intentional activity of agents as directed at some action that will be tackled collectively (as a ‘we’), with each agent accounting for the other’s perspective and possibilities for action along with her own (ibid.). Accordingly, I will refer to shared intentionality, shared mental states and shared minds as entailing one another.

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share a common goal (qua intention) and have coordinated action roles if this goal is to be pursued together. Rather than pursuing the shared goal from a strictly individual perspective, the mental content of each involved individual will include the intention(s) of the other participant, such that an ‘I’ is committed to a plan that a ‘we’ is executing. For present purposes, this ‘we-ness’ should not be taken to implicate a division of mental content between participants in action, such that the overall goal of some cognitive task is distributed across participants, with each tackling a specific part. It should be taken to suggest, however, that the participants intend some joint action collectively (in a we-mode), such that a goal is achieved through non-aggregative mutual collaboration, rather than each participant individually intending their own contribution to a joint action. When two subjects intend to jointly pursue some action together, the claim is that they enter into a mode of co-

representation, so that aspects of the world are ‘shared’; that is, each subject takes into account the other’s perspective and potential for joint action along with one’s own, in a manner that would not arise if each subject were to individually represent only their own contribution. Another way of putting this is that each individual’s cognitive state must realise a ‘we-intention’, in which the individuals collectively will the shared activity and therein distinguish their action-with-others from their individual actions (Roth, 2010). As we shall come to see, proponents of we-mode cognition contend that sharing mental states through

co-representation amounts to positing mental states of a uniquely collective variety.

The central claim for Gallotti & Frith (2013a) is that the sharing of mental states “can take place in an irreducibly collective mode called the ‘we-mode’” (p. 160), which “captures the viewpoint of individuals engaged in social interactions and thereby expands each individual’s potential for social understanding and action” (ibid.). Or, as they put it later on:

the we-mode [...]captures the role of interaction for expanding the social-cognitive resources of individuals. Our proposal is that individuals engaged in joint action have a broader understanding of the behaviour of their partners, and thus of the options available for action, by representing aspects of the interactive scene in the we-mode. (ibid., p. 161)

Their assertion is thus that mental states are not invariably confined to an individualistic perspective, but that individual minds can in fact be enriched by involvement in the interactive domain of collective behaviour.

To be more specific, Gallotti & Frith argue that shared mental states can be formed and sustained through individuals adopting a “first-person plural perspective” (ibid., p. 160) of the interactive scene. Such a perspective requires each individual mind to be enabled by another, so that there is an “irreducibly collective” (ibid.) quality to the cognitive we-mode – a quality that will be scrutinised throughout section 4. For an explanation of how the first- person plural cognitive mechanism functions in a satisfactory manner, we are provided with

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a description of “what a we-mode process is and how it works” (ibid., p. 163). This description rests on the notion of individuals representing their role in some joint action as collaborative “contributions to something that they are going to pursue together, as a ‘we’” (ibid.). In so doing, each interacting subject enables the other to represent “aspects of the interactive scene in a distinct psychological attitude of intending-together, believing- together, desiring-together” (ibid.; my italics). This psychological attitude that drives acting together is thus reciprocally enabled and held by the involved individuals, with it being unique to their interactive domain.

To exemplify this ‘we-ness’, which involves co-representing aspects of the interactive scene, Gallotti & Frith provide the following illustration:

imagine that Mary and John come across a friend in difficulty and offer help. It seems plausible that whatever they mean to do in order to bring about joint assistance, they do it together. In other words, it is because Mary and John see each other as being part of the same ‘group’ that Mary understands John doing his part, and herself doing hers, as contributions to something that they are doing together, rather than just as the result of individual tasks undertaken simultaneously. (2013a, p. 162)

Here, we find that each of the subjects – Mary and John – are considering the interactive scene from a we-perspective, representing what their joint contributions to action can be, and therein enhancing their individual understanding of the social situation. If they were not able to see one another “as being part of the same ‘group’” then Mary and John simply would not find themselves disposed towards thinking about their situation in the cognitive we- mode. Its manifestation relies on their engaging together in joint action.

To consolidate this first-person-yet-shared approach, Gallotti & Frith give a further example that aims to elucidate the concept of subjects ‘co-representing’ the potential actions of their interacting partners. In this example, a subject – Mr. Blue – is sat at a square table which has four mugs on it. Each of these mugs has an ‘affordance salience’ according to how available they each are for action, which in this case we can assume means how comfortably grasp-able they are. If a potential collaborator – Mr. Red – is to sit on a different side of the table then he will elicit co-representations “by inducing Mr. Blue to take into account the perspective of Mr. Red” (ibid., p. 163). This ‘I-and-another’ co-perspective will then change the affordance salience of the mugs accordingly. So, for example, the affordance salience (i.e. the ‘grasp-ability’) of a mug that is on the opposite side of the table to Mr. Blue will be increased (i.e. it will be encountered as ‘more graspable’) once Mr. Red’s perspective is taken into account. The potentially collaborative and interactive presence of Mr. Red results in Mr. Blue no longer thinking purely as an ‘I’; instead, he is poised to think and act in the we-mode by co-representing a situation – such as the grasping of a mug on the opposite side of the table – that may be prone to full-blown “reasoning-as-a-we” (ibid., p. 164). This example

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relies on the collaboration of Mr. Red, or at least the genuine potential for it. Once, however, this collaboration is taken for granted, Mr. Blue and Mr. Red are poised to think of their actions as playing a role in “something that they are doing together” (ibid.; my italics) so that the scene of action is interactively framed by the we-mode process of co-representing the other’s perspective.

This example is noteworthy for clarifying the notion of co-representation. However, as we shall see in section 5, it also highlights two pressing problems for the theory of we-mode cognition: firstly, it is unclear exactly how Mr. Red and Mr. Blue achieve further we-mode processes (and what these processes are), besides co-representation, that Gallotti & Frith (2013a) contend are required for full-blown we-mode cognition; secondly, it is unclear why Mr. Red’s involvement differs from that of a non-human entity (thus justifying we-mode cognition as a uniquely social activity).

What we can assert at this stage is that with the manifestation of co-representations by those engaged in joint action (howsoever this is precisely achieved), Gallotti & Frith claim that each subject is no longer cognitively limited by their restrictive individual perspective, but has a collective notion of what can be done together as a ‘we’. As such, “cognition is enriched” (ibid.) so that novel possibilities for action become available to the ‘we’ – possibilities that would be unavailable to each individual on their own. In the above example, the collaborative introduction of Mr. Red opens up new possibilities for action to Mr. Blue, as long as Mr. Blue sees the two of them as (at least potentially) jointly engaged in some task (which in this case is the picking up of a mug). Similarly, in the previous example, Mary and John individually would have been unable to offer help to their friend in the same way that they offer it together because without one another, they simply would not be able to think about their possibilities for action in the same way (i.e. in the cognitive we-mode).

With the cognitive we-mode, we are thus provided with a theory of cognising with others that requires social interaction to enable and incite specific psychological capacities and mechanisms (those that manifest co-representations of the interactive scene). When qualifying this theory of social cognition, Gallotti & Frith (2013b) give us the following conclusion:

The we-mode comprises no more than a set of psychological propensities and dispositions, described in terms of one’s taking into account the perspective of others, which remain latent until individuals engage in interaction. (p. 304)

As we have seen, these propensities and dispositions can enhance one’s isolated, individual perspective so that new possibilities for thought and action become available to subjects engaged in some interaction as a ‘we’. Gallotti & Frith also claim that this engagement in interaction provides a route to explaining how subjects can have their understanding of one

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another and their situation enhanced without relying on theoretical or simulative ascriptions of ‘hidden’ cognitive states (as is generally considered necessary for classical theories of social cognition (see earlier)). The we-mode facilitates a kind of attachment to another person, with the co-representation of this other’s viewpoint resulting in “a ‘meeting’ of minds” (Gallotti & Frith, 2013a, p. 164), instead of solitary minds that have to rely on the back-and-forth interplay of individualistic inferences. When engaged in some action together, subjects are thus able to think differently by taking into account one another’s perspective and therefore moving away from cognition as an isolated ‘I’.

4. The Enactive Response to the Cognitive We-mode

4.1. Individual or Collective?

The cognitive we-mode undoubtedly has numerous positive attributes. It should be commended for addressing the interactive aspect of social cognition and for attempting to capture and explain the phenomenon of subjects in groups thinking differently to isolated individuals. However, there are some immediate issues to consider.

First and foremost is the issue of coherence. Although I have avoided discussing it thus far, one of the central features of the cognitive we-mode for Gallotti & Frith is their claim that it is a non-reductionist account of social cognition. The motivation behind this claim is that “spectatorial” individualism, in which an agent must observationally theorise about the intentional behaviour of another, is deemed an “unsatisfactory” approach for social psychological research (Gallotti & Frith, 2013a, p. 162). Gallotti & Frith define individualism as the theory “that all sorts of complex behaviours entail properties of the individual as distinct from other levels of functional organization” (ibid., p. 160; Glossary). They contend that any individualistic reliance on the internalised cognition of isolated observers is insufficient for explaining the unique cognitive mechanisms that seem to emerge when subjects are engaged in some forms of group or interactive behaviour. Such insufficiency arises from the fact that most individualistic accounts of social cognition tend to consider interacting agents to have “the perspective of an observer qua theorist, who represents the decision problem faced by the [other] agents as it appears to him” (ibid., p. 162). In other words, individualistic theories generally suggest that mental states belong exclusively to individuals who can, at best, make third-person theoretical or simulative predictions regarding the internal cognition that motivates the external behaviour of others. Gallotti & Frith consequently deliver we-mode cognition as a non-reductionist alternative to such observational individualistic theories, in that individuals who are poised to interact with others in some collective behaviour actually unveil “novel routes to knowledge of other minds” (ibid.) by cognising from a first-person plural, we-perspective, which is irreducible to the first-person singular perspective of non-we-mode (or ‘I-mode’) cognition. Once in the

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we-mode, with its unique we-perspective, individuals are no longer mere observers or third- person parties to some event (and some other individual(s)), but are participants in a genuinely collective act.

It is therefore not only the fact that engaging with others in certain joint actions can lead to an enriched understanding of said others that is important for Gallotti & Frith; there is also the fact that the theoretical framework of this enriched understanding is allegedly non- reductionist. Yet the cognitive we-mode is also meant to be “consistent with individualism” (ibid., p. 163). Such consistency with individualism is supposed to rest on the idea that the psychology of an individual who is cognising in the we-mode can be studied and understood by investigating this individual’s capacities and internal mechanisms. Simultaneously, the non-reductionist nature of the theory is said to persist in virtue of requiring social interaction to enable these distinct psychological capacities and mechanisms.

4.2. A Subtle Balance or Paradoxical Nonsense?

Gallotti & Frith’s attempted balance of a theory that is non-reductionist yet consistent with individualism is summed up by the problematic description of ‘first-person plural’ cognition. As Di Paolo et al. (2013) point out, there is something intuitively perplexing about the psychology of we-mode cognition being “paradoxically[...] both irreducibly collective and belonging to the individual” (p. 303). If the functionality of a psychological mode can be explained through the representations and mechanisms within each involved subject, then surely the psychological attitudes in question are reducible to the individuals? Indeed, for Di Paolo et al. (2013) the only reasonable explanation is that “the we-mode is definitely not collective (much less irreducibly so)” and, at best, it can carry “trans-individual content, like most intentional attitudes, social or non-social” (p. 303). It must be assumed here that Di Paolo et al. are using ‘trans-individual content’ to convey the straightforward idea that some aspect of the world can be contemplated by two individuals simultaneously. So, for example, if two individuals are looking at the same tree, they could both agree that its leaves are green, resulting in their mental content (regarding the greenness of the leaves) being alike. The relevant mental content would hence be trans-individual (i.e. consistent across the two individuals). Di Paolo et al.’s criticism is thus presumably that we-mode cognition simply describes two disparate individuals attending to the same aspect of the world (in virtue of an action plan), with their resultant mental states being trans-individual. This trans- individuality merely indicates individual sameness, rather than genuine collectiveness. In responding to Di Paolo et al., Gallotti & Frith (2013b) aim to strengthen their stance by putting forward the claim that

64 it takes two individuals to tango, so whatever is involved in group behaviour must include, amongst other things, individuals with mental states that are causally connected with their actions in ways that enable them to act together – as a group. (p. 304)

The causal connectivity between individuals’ mental states and their (joint) actions is intended to suggest that we-mode cognition involves more than just trans-individual content. It would seem that the fact that the individuals are acting together holds the key for Gallotti & Frith: in so doing, the individuals are not mere passive observers on the outside of the unfolding event; they are in the interaction, collaboratively deciding how the event will unfold from the inside.[17] _{Rather than abstracting themselves from the situation as isolated}

observers, individuals in the cognitive we-mode are seen to take on participatory roles towards some activity that they intend to execute together. This active togetherness is what purportedly gives we-mode cognition its irreducibly collective character; the novel we-mode mechanisms simply wouldn’t come into play without the presence of one individual interacting (or at least being seemingly poised to interact) with another.We-mode cognition is, on Gallotti & Frith’s view, thus undoubtedly “a claim about properties of individual minds being truly collective in that they need group environments to work” (ibid., p. 305). It is this enabling role of the individuals involved in some joint action, and the resultant novelty of the psychological states that are enabled, that is deemed sufficient for endowing the psychological states with a ‘truly collective’ character. The theory thus purports to provide a subtle balance between individual psychology and its social conditioning.

For the likes of Di Paolo et al., on the other hand, it is simply paradoxical to posit an ‘irreducibly collective’ quality to individual psychological states – the fact that the individuals are supposed to be engaged in acting together does not satisfactorily explain how their mental states become ‘irreducibly collective’. For instance, even if one were to accept that the notion of causally connected mental states moves we-mode cognition beyond the simple concept of trans-individual mental content, it is unlikely that a participatory sense-making supporter would accept this as a complete story (see section 4.3 and, in particular, the next chapter for an exposition of participatory sense-making). It remains to be shown how the

dynamics of persons (inter)acting together leads to a genuine progression from

individualism. That is, how are individual (we-mode) psychological states “novel” and “distinct” from individual (I-mode) psychological states? Whilst the theory undoubtedly

[17] _{Being in an interaction is also the reason why Gallotti & Frith believe the cognitive we-mode is incompatible with classical theories of} mindreading. They believe that mindreading theories are “the outcome of cognitive processing that occurs in an individual’s mind in abstraction from, and as a precondition for, interaction with others” (2013a, p. 160). In comparison, we-mode cognition relies on the ongoing interactive involvement of another individual, such that holding a we-mode perspective is a relationalprocess of cognitive enabling.

It is worth noting, however, that as long as the cognitive we-mode endorses individual (co-)representations, then it seems to require