Intersubjectivity and egocentrism: Insights from the relational perspectives of Piaget, Mead, and Wittgenstein

Beginning with Piaget’s concept of egocentrism, we explicate a view of differentiating and coordination perspectives on which language and cognition are based by also drawing on insights from Mead and Wittgenstein. The concept of egocentrism is linked to Piaget’s view of knowledge and development. In overcoming egocentrism, infants differentiate the world from their action. We extend a Piagetian approach to overcoming egocentrism with regard to children’s social knowledge by drawing on Mead’s view that minds and selves emerge from the social process. Children must take the role of others for selves to emerge, a process that is rooted in interaction, requiring sufficient experience with others to be able to anticipate others’ response or attitude to their act. Then the self can respond to one’s own act as the other would. From Piaget’s perspective, these are schemes or patterns of action that develop with repeated experience. From Wittgenstein’s perspective, these patterns are embedded in forms of life; natural ways of reacting to and interacting with others that are characteristic of our species. Overcoming egocentrism or developing perspective taking is required for understanding and for human forms of cognition. 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. The ability to understand and coordinate perspectives with others is a foundational skill on which language and culture are based; thus, it is an essential aspect of what it means to be human. This raises the question of how human infants come to understand that they have a perspective that differs from * Corresponding author. Tel.: þ1 604 291 5483. E-mail address: [email protected] (J.I.M. Carpendale).