Paper short abstract:

How do we account for intersubjectivities in ethnographies? Comparing writings of philosophical thought experiments about shared intentions with anthropological vignettes, I will explore the salient properties of two writing genres that both seek to capture the essence of collective intentionality.

Paper long abstract:

What it means to engage in a shared action is one of the core questions of both philosophy of action and anthropological fieldwork. Both disciplines, philosophy and anthropology, seek to provide conceptual tools and empirical insights for the phenomenon of collective intentionality and the shapes it takes in human everyday life. The creative process of ethnographic account making seeks to account for knowledge gain through shared practice, thus trying to close the epistemological gap between selves and others: In writing a vignette we attempt to capture a shared instance of clarity within the continuous flux of time. The transition from the understood to the written, however, is an underexposed aspect of ethnographies. What makes anthropologists distinguish between real intersubjectivities and mere projections from the self to the other? How can the ethnographer properly describe the experience of collective intentionality in her transcripts, field diaries and vignettes? How does one turn something shared, yet non-predicative into predication?

Turning to philosophy of action, I will expound philosophical writings of thought experiments about shared intentions (which are contrived to serve an argument) and compare their key features with those of anthropological vignettes - which are based on (bodily) experience of the author and, allegedly, non-fictional. I will explore (a) salient properties of two writing genres that both seek to capture occurrences of collective intentionality and (b) how possible gaps between vignettes, their makers, their readers, and their objects can be closed.