The Necessity of Personhood as Embodied Being

Abstract

The ontology presupposed in discursive psychology takes persons to be originating centres of activity. Since they are ontologically elementary they have no internal psychological complexity. As with the elementary charges and poles that ground the ontology of physics, they are specified wholly in terms of their dispositions and powers. A second important feature of the social constructionist strain in discursive psychology is the thesis that cognitive processes are properties of discourses, and hence have their primary mode of being in interpersonal symbolic interactions. Persons are singularities and each has its unique attributes. Singularity of personhood is tied up with singularity of embodiment, deeply involved in the human sense of self. In a similar manner the discursive thesis that emotion displays are embodied expressions of judgements also brings the fact of embodiment to the centre of psychological theory. These considerations dispose of the greater part of Fisher's (1995) criticisms of the discursive/constructionist position. We are embodied beings and the rules of discourses are not arbitrary.