Social cognition in the we-mode

According to many philosophers and scientists, human sociality is explained by the unique capacity to share the mental states of others. Shared intentionality has been widely debated in the past two decades in ways that also enlighten the current ‘interactive turn’ in social cognition. In this article, we examine the function and significance for interacting agents of sharing minds in an irreducibly collective mode called the ‘we-mode’. This first-person plural perspective captures the viewpoint of individuals engaged in social interactions and thus expands each individual's potential for social understanding and action. This proposal shows that a non-reductionist, interaction-based approach can be developed that nevertheless resists recent suggestions concerning the constitutive role of interaction for social cognition.