Coordinating with others: Outlining a pragmatic, perspectival psychology of personhood

Abstract

In contrast to individualistic, cognitive-biological, and reductive psychologies, a pragmatic psychology of personhood takes the worldly activity of persons as its core subject matter. The pragmatic, perspectival psychology of personhood outlined herein offers theoretical frameworks for understanding the development and evolution of persons through their embodied coordination with objects and others in a world that is simultaneously biophysical and sociocultural. In both phylogenesis and ontogenesis, it is their active participation within coordinated, multi-perspectival sequences of interactive practices that constitutes human beings as psychological selves and communal agents who constantly transform the world and themselves. The constitution, emergence, and transformation of persons are accompanied and enabled by a holistic neurophysiological functioning that interacts constantly with, and owes much to, our history of interactivity within the world, especially our social participation with others and their actions and perspectives. A viable pragmatic, perspectival psychology of personhood demands the close study of our coordinated interactivity within sociocultural practices central to the life of communities and the communal agents who populate them.