Can interactionist approaches solve the empathy-sharing conundrum?

Interactionist approaches are an alternative to standard views in social cognition (Theory Theory, Simulation Theory, and their hybrids). The empathy-sharing conundrum applies to phenomena that instantiate both empathy and sharing, and the importance ascribed to its solution is proportional to the significance one is ready to attribute to the connections between empathy and shared intentionality. Specifically, the conundrum concerns how sharing can be reconciled with the self-other differentiation implied by empathy: if I share your joy by my feeling it, then it is only my feeling and the differentiation between our emotional experiences is lost. The interactionist solution is that, just as individual experiences are unities of distinct temporal perspectives, so shared experiences are unities of distinct individual perspectives. Therefore, participating in a shared experience does not exclude, but, if anything, requires the differentiation between the perspectives of the individual participants. The author introduces the interactionist solution through David Carr’s work in phenomenological philosophy, then shows how this solution has been advocated in a recent interactionist approach and an influential developmental hypothesis. Furthermore, it is suggested that the interactionist solution is consistent with the social-psychological literature.