Anna Ciaunica
Fribourg University
Jill and Jack Strike Back! – the Relevance of the Second Person Perspective
This paper comments on Spaulding’s Jill & Jack scenario (2010) and proposes a “remake” of it. Imagine that you are reading the following dialogue on a computer screen:
– Jack : Are you a student?
– Jill: Yes.
– Jack: What is your major?
– Jill: Philosophy.
– Jack: Philosophy? I bet you’re really deep.
– Jill: Sure.
– “Jack: Are you up for a drink after classes?
– Jill: Yes, sure!”
–
….
Suppose you are a secret agent and your task is to interpret the “yes sure” reply which could
a) “yes, sure, you wish!” (irony)
b) “of course!” (interest)
c) “yes, sure, whatever”(indifference), etc.
If you were actually at the scene hidden behind a newspaper say, and spying them, clearly, you would obtained a different kind of information, namely situated information. You can hear Jill’s voice, you can see that she turns her back on him, etc. Building upon this contrast, I distinguish two models in exploring human cognition in general and social cognition in particular:
a Schlick-based foundational model aiming to establish the basis of cognition and its explanatory building blocks;
a Neurath-based dynamical model according to which our cognitive situation is similar to that of a sailor who has to rebuild its ship “on the open sea, without ever being able to dismount it in dry-dock and reconstruct it from the best components.” I argue that standard cognitivist models fail to take into consideration the ontologically already there “sea” of social cognition. Then I present recent empirical findings which seem to suggest that the so-called “social brain” is, to some extent, both a product and a process of social interaction and that the development of the mirror system depends on sensorimotor learning. (Catmur et al. 2008)