I introduced the concept of intersubjectivity in 2010 in Can we reach our consciousness. After the next two posts in 2011, Why Tolerance is not so Easy and Responsibility, I was somehow sure that the concept is so self-explanatory that it needs no further clarification. As a concept of how our memetic reality is constructed, it seemed so evident to me that I was surprised each time it was not accepted. For that reason, I went further and, in 2018, I prepared a paper titled “No Fake No Trust” for the Bledcom conference, where the most prominent public relations scholars meet regularly for 28 years. As professionals of communication and relations, if they do not grasp intersubjectivity as a key concept of how truth emerges, who would? 

And they did not.

Let me confess that I’m more than bewildered by the general reluctance to consider the role of intersubjectivity in human culture. So I kept asking myself what could be the cause of the absolute silence about intersubjectivity. And here is a personal story that might have some validity, why these days only a few take into account intersubjectivity. But I am writing this story also to underline once again why intersubjectivity is such a crucial concept.

Edmund Husserl

When I introduced intersubjectivity, I did not consider Edmund Husserl and his phenomenology to go directly to the point. Intersubjectivity was conceptualised for the first time by Edmund Husserl as one of the phenomenology’s key concepts. 

During my studies, I was never much inclined to subjectivism. Although Husserl’s phenomenology is not strictly speaking subjectivist, most of us skipped Husserl and went directly to Heidegger and Lacan, who were much more famous in the late ’70s and early ’80s. As intersubjectivity ceased to play any role in philosophy and even in psychology, I did not pay any attention to the fact that, nevertheless, the memetic relics of Husserl’s conception of intersubjectivity still play a role in our culture. And since my memes could never achieve the fertility and fecundity of Husserl’s, I cannot win my conception of intersubjectivity against his.

Intersubjectivity is not a bridge.

As I conceptualise it, intersubjectivity has nothing to do with the bridge between subjects, nor is it a bridge between subjects and objects. Intersubjectivity has less to do with epistemology, nature, and validity of knowledge than ontology and metaphysics as an explanation of reality and existence. Intersubjectivity does not create a bridge but creates reality itself. Reality emerges from intersubjectivity. Reality is intersubjective.

While Husserl even managed to avoid the metaphor of intersubjectivity as a bridge, as in Cartesian Meditations, he positions it in the transcendental domain as real; his followers, and especially psychologists, softened intersubjectivity towards empathy, the theory of mind, and language as a communication tool.

As I clearly proved in No Fake, No Trust, intersubjectivity creates 100% of specific human reality. Intersubjectivity does not deny objective reality as much as humans live in an objective world. There is nothing intersubjective in the water, whether you drink it or not. But when we come to the meaning of water, it is 100% intersubjective. As an entity resulting from thousands of years of human sensemaking about water, the water as the memetic entity is 100% intersubjective.

I did not take my own theory seriously.

My carelessness about the sense of intersubjectivity created by Husserl proved my inability to consider the intersubjective nature of intersubjectivity. Intersubjectivity itself is, namely, construed intersubjectively as any other memetic artefact. Intersubjectivity’s present reality is still closer to the one co-constructed by Husserl’s followers than to mine. 

Nevertheless, I stay at my conception of intersubjectivity now even more than before I wrote this post, for there are so many proofs around us that I am even more bewildered by the blindness of my fellow humans than I was in 2018. 

Democracy and elections as proof of intersubjectivity

Take, for instance, democracy. Elections are one of the institutions of intersubjectivity. We, as voters, co-create a new political reality with each election. We co-create the future (truth), at least the political and state governance truth. Truth co-created by-elections cannot go against physical reality. Still, on the other side, physical reality and scientific truth cannot go against the political/memetic co-creation of human reality.

If scientific reality explains physical reality, then it has no word in memetic reality. But science (and physical reality) resulting from sensemaking activity, thus memetic activity, has no advantage over any other memetic agency. As in elections, so in memetic co-construction of reality, each agent has an equal voice. 

Ontology of intersubjectivity

This explains why science cannot have any primacy in memetic reality (in principle) and why democracy and elections perfectly explain human civilisation’s intersubjective reality. Intersubjectivity is at the core of memetic ontology.

Such an explanation of memetic ontology also provides a perfect framework for understanding the co-evolution of physical and memetic reality. As Immanuel Kant perfectly explained the dual nature of reality and proved the inaccessibility of »thing per se«, he could not grasp a peculiar co-relation between »thing per se« and »thing for us«, physical and memetic reality. One cannot make sense of another, but that does not mean that they do not correlate. 

Co-evolution of genes and memes is contemporary metaphysics, and intersubjectivity remains a core concept of human reality.

More about the co-evolution of memes and genes related to intersubjectivity in Memes Beyond Genes, The Hidden Code of Culture.