Joint and Individual Intentionality: A Genetic, Phenomenological Approach

Abstract

There has been an extensive debate about we-intentionality, with some positions demonstrating how it is derived from individual intentionality or others arguing that it precedes and takes priority over individual intentionality. Recent contributions have come to recognize that the theoretical discussions of we-intentionality depend upon pre-theoretical, pre-analytic, and commonsense experiences of joint intentionality, the description of which might avoid some of the polarizations that the theoretical discussions cannot escape. One needs to consider the spectrum of positions from the more individualistically inclined treatments (Bratman, Tuomela) to those attempting to establish the irreducibility of we-intentionality (Searle, Gilbert) to those de-emphasizing individual intentionality (Baier) or striving for a more refined balance (Schmid). In the end, Alfred Schutz’s genetic phenomenology, capturing pretheoretical, commonsense experience, can show how we-intentionality is a primitive experience in which individual consciousness is at the same time historically and biographically shaped. Schutz’s account holds in tension the individual and social dimensions of experience and avoids reducing we-intentionality to individual intentionality.