Interest in joint action—activities where two or more people coordinate to achieve a common goal—has grown across psychology, sociology, cognitive science, and philosophy. This chapter reviews recent philosophical and empirical work, highlighting embedded, embodied, extended, and enactive perspectives that challenge traditional accounts. The authors argue for an ecumenical approach, integrating high-level and low-level explanations from multiple disciplines. They conclude that no single theory can fully capture joint action's complexity; instead, researchers should seek a tapestry of complementary explanatory tools.
Conscious experience and selfhood depend on many mechanisms operating at different levels of space, time, and complexity. These include the global workspace for conscious information, the role of action in self-awareness, and social and narrative influences. The authors argue that phenomenal experience likely relies on all these levels simultaneously. They propose two challenges: investigating the sustained dynamics of phenomenal experience and understanding how multi-scale cognitive processes interact to produce its richness. They do not aim to solve the hard problem of consciousness but contend that any solution must account for this pluralistic nature.
During deep conversations, pairs of strangers feel more socially connected than during shallow ones, and this feeling is linked to increased synchrony in the default mode network (DMN) of their brains, especially in the right temporoparietal junction (TPJ). The study measured brain activity with functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) in 70 stranger dyads. DMN synchrony, particularly in the TPJ, appears to help strangers 'see eye-to-eye' and feel connected during face-to-face interactions.