Mandelbrot sets - worlds withinw orlds. So I hope you'll excuse my laziness if I instead just quote from other sources for now.Upgrading this website is a huge task. I'm faced with a project rather like those old computer generated Mandelbrot sets - worlds withinw orlds. So I hope you'll excuse my laziness if I instead just quote from other sources for now.
First is the definition of Intersubjectivity from Wikipedia's still arher minimal page, referring to teh conect as developed in psychology and phenomenology:
Intersubjectivity is "The sharing of subjective states by two or more individuals." [1]
The term is used in three ways:
Firstly, in its weakest sense it is used to refer to agreement. There is said to be intersubjectivity between people if they agree on a given set of meanings or definition of the situation.
Secondly, and somewhat more subtly it has been used to refer to the "common-sense," shared meanings constructed by people in their interactions with each other and used as an everyday resource to interpret the meaning of elements of social and cultural life. If people share common sense, then they share a definition of the situation. [2]
Thirdly, the term has been used to refer to shared (or partially shared) divergences of meaning. Self-presentation, lying, practical jokes, and social emotions, for example, all entail not a shared definition of the situation, but partially shared divergences of meaning. Someone who is telling a lie is engaged in an intersubjective act because they are working with two different definitions of the situation. Lying is thus genuinely inter-subjective (in the sense of operating between two subjective definitions of reality).
Intersubjectivity emphasizes that shared cognition and consensus is essential in the shaping of our ideas and relations. Language is viewed as communal rather than private. Hence it is problematic to view the individual as partaking in a private world, which is once and for all defined.
Intersubjectivity is today an important concept in modern schools of psychoanalysis, where it has found application to the theory of the interrelations between analyst and analysand.
References
[1] Scheff, Thomas et al. (2006). Goffman Unbound!: A New Paradigm for Social Science (The Sociological Imagination), Paradigm Publishers (ISBN 978-1594511967)
[2] Clive Seale. Glossary, Researching Society and Culture
Christian de Quincey, who provides a definition of 
describes three possible forms of intersubjectivity. His first definition is given here:
"Intersubjectivity-1: This standard meaning derives from Cartesian subjectivity (isolated, independent subjects). Here, individual subjectivity ontologically precedes intersubjectivity. Individual, isolated subjects come first, and then through communication of signals arrive at consensual agreement. Here, the "inter" in intersubjectivity refers to agreement "between" subjects about so-called objective facts-and the subjects don't even have to interact (their agreement could be validated by a third party, as indeed is often the case in science)."
In Intersubjectivity and Humanities-Based Psychology: Some Thoughts on Cleaning Up Our Language, Arthur Warmoth provides the following diagram and makes the following observations regarding a more accurate phenomenological understanding of the domains of human experience:
- All human experience is existentially subjective.
- All human knowledge is essentially intersubjective.
- Some human knowledge is objective, including our most reliable scientific knowledge about natural phenomena.
Within this framework, intersubjective knowledge is based on the possibility of effective symbolic communication. Objective knowledge is based on methods that permit all observers to take essentially the same point of view in relation to the phemonema in question. This is presented graphically in Figure 1. (above)
The article looks interesting, and I should try to find time to read it properly. For now I am attracted to the diagram, which provides a very good overview, lacking only the esoteric and higher dimensions of insight, which perhaps can be considered as further rings even beyond or outside the exoteric subjective.
There is more material that needs to be added here, and perhaps two additional categories mentioned on Wikipedia, the psycho-analytical and the phenomenological. Hopefully I'll be able to get to them another time soon.
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Interchange in education - Shareen Abramson (originally published as Abramson, S. (Summer , 2006). Interchange in education. Co-Inquiry Journal, 1(2).) - deals with education in the context of intersubjectivity and semiotics. Describes among other things a continuum of four types of interchange: no change, exchange, interchange, group interchange and the network of interchange.
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