Intersubjectivity as a problem of the social group

pp. 11-30

in: Steven Vaitkus, How is society possible?, Berlin, Springer, 1991

Abstract

The problem of intersubjectivity arises in Mead's work as early as in his 1903 article entitled "The Definition of the Psychical".¹ Pursuing his previous attempts to delineate the nature of individual consciousness as the creative aspect of problem-solving conduct in the social world, Mead recognized that this creative individual consciousness stands in contrast to the empirical self and other selves of the social world insofar as it reconstructs them in its reflective activity. Thus, creative individual consciousness can be "neither me nor other".² The problem of intersubjectivity is viewed by Mead, then, as a question concerning the relationship between the creative nature of individual consciousness and the social world in which the empirical self is itself embedded.