Second-person Perspective inInterdisciplinary Research: A Cognitive Approach for Understanding and Improving the Dynamics ofCollaborative Research Teams

Abstract

In this paper, we argue that to reverse the excess of specialization and to create room for interdisciplinary crossfertilization, it seems necessary to move the existing epistemic plurality towards acollaborative process of social cognition. In order to achieve this, we propose to extend the psychological notion of joint attention towards what we call joint intellectual attention. This special kind of joint attention involves ashared awareness of sharing the cognitive process of knowledge. We claim that if an interdisciplinary research team aspires to work collaboratively, it is essential for the researchers to jointly focus their attention towards acommon object and establish asecondperson relatedness among them. We consider some of the intellectual dispositions or virtues fostered by joint intellectual attention that facilitate interdisciplinary exchange and explore some of the practical consequences of this cognitive approach to interdisciplinarity for education and research.