Asymmetric Encounters: Intersubjectivity and the Sense of Boundaries (AIS)
Main funder
Funder's project number: 348858
Funds granted by main funder (€)
- 496 355,00
Funding program
Project timetable
Project start date: 01/09/2022
Project end date: 31/08/2026
Summary
How do we experience the boundaries between ourselves and others? Most philosophical and interdisciplinary research on social interaction presupposes a clear-cut experiential distinction between individual subjects, and accordingly considers interaction as something that goes on between unambiguously differentiated individuals. On closer inspection, however, this received view proves to be misleading: the ongoing experiential processes of establishing, recognizing, negotiating, and transforming one’s self-boundaries are far more complex than is presently recognized. Thus, any research based on the received, problematically simplistic understanding of demarcation risks producing one-sided and skewed research outcomes.
To address this issue, the AIS project will deliver a systematic and comprehensive philosophical account of experiential self-demarcation. Its main objectives are: (i) to analyse the structure of experiential self-demarcation, (ii) to articulate and clarify its underlying dynamics, and (iii) to examine intersubjective boundary formation in the social domain from this new perspective. The developed account will not only integrate existing philosophical and psychological knowledge on self-demarcation but also surpass it to provide an entirely new conceptual framework. Demarcation will thus be recognized and articulated as a dynamically changing and perpetually developing process that unfolds on implicit and explicit levels of awareness and in various modes of experience simultaneously. Moreover, by innovating new conceptual tools, such as ‘multilayered and multimodal demarcation’ and ‘demarcational tensions’, the project will flesh out the complexity of self-demarcation in a way that fully appreciates its fundamental role in intersubjective relations. Overall, the project will make a ground-breaking advance in the state of the art and, as a consequence, pave the way for theoretical and empirical studies to come.
To address this issue, the AIS project will deliver a systematic and comprehensive philosophical account of experiential self-demarcation. Its main objectives are: (i) to analyse the structure of experiential self-demarcation, (ii) to articulate and clarify its underlying dynamics, and (iii) to examine intersubjective boundary formation in the social domain from this new perspective. The developed account will not only integrate existing philosophical and psychological knowledge on self-demarcation but also surpass it to provide an entirely new conceptual framework. Demarcation will thus be recognized and articulated as a dynamically changing and perpetually developing process that unfolds on implicit and explicit levels of awareness and in various modes of experience simultaneously. Moreover, by innovating new conceptual tools, such as ‘multilayered and multimodal demarcation’ and ‘demarcational tensions’, the project will flesh out the complexity of self-demarcation in a way that fully appreciates its fundamental role in intersubjective relations. Overall, the project will make a ground-breaking advance in the state of the art and, as a consequence, pave the way for theoretical and empirical studies to come.
Principal Investigator
Primary responsible unit
Follow-up groups
- Behaviour change, health, and well-being across the lifespan (University of Jyväskylä JYU) BC-Well
- Philosophy (Department of Social Sciences and Philosophy YFI) FIL
- School of Wellbeing (University of Jyväskylä JYU) JYU.Well
- Social Sustainability for Children and Families (University of Jyväskylä JYU) SOSUS