Project

Project data

Being Addressed as You: Conceptual and Empirical Investigations of a Second-Person Approach to Other Minds

Initiative: European Platform
Allocation: Apr 1, 2010
Period of funding: 3 Years

Project information

How we understand other minds remains controversial. This interdisciplinary project at the intersections of psychiatry, cognitive psychology, social neuroscience and philosophy attempts to explore a new and radically different approach to the 'problem' of other minds. The project is based on the assumption that social cognition is fundamentally different when we are actively engaged with others in online interaction, entertaining a second-person perspective, rather than merely observing them from a first- or third-person point of view. By extending the enactive account of cognition to the social domain, the project intends to provide the first comprehensive account of a second-person approach to other minds, based on a constructive engagement of the participating disciplines. The results of these conceptual and empirical investigations are likely to call into question major recent findings related to the problem of others minds and will shape future discussions in the disciplines by providing evidence for an interactive account of consciousness that emphasizes the formative role of participating in the social world.

Project participants

  • Dr. Leonhard Schilbach

    Max-Planck-Institut für neurologische
    Forschung
    mit Klaus-Joachim-Zülch-Laboratorien der
    Max-Planck-Gesellschaft und der medizinischen
    Fakultät der Universität zu Köln
    Köln

  • Prof. Dr. Tobias Schlicht

    Universität Tübingen
    Centre for Integrative Neuroscience
    Tübingen

  • Bert Timmermans, Ph. D.

    Universität Köln
    Klinik und Poliklinik für Psychiatrie
    und Psychotherapie
    Köln

  • Dr. Nikolaus Steinbeis

    Universität Zürich
    Laboratory for Social and Neural Systems Research
    Zürich
    Switzerland