Anonymity of the ‘Anyone’. The Associative Depths of Open Intersubjectivity

Husserl’s concept of “open intersubjectivity” expresses the peculiarity that the environment appears as being there for “anyone”. The structurally implicated, potential co-perceivers have been rendered anonymous , unspecified , which is another way of saying that the horizontally implicated “anyone” refers to no one in particular, but to “any alter egos whatever”. My article focuses on this tacit structural referencing to potential others and challenges the claim of anonymity. In the literature, it has been argued that the potential others are implicitly specified as co-members of our community, or “homecomrades”. I will push the idea of specification further, and into a new direction, by arguing that the implicated others (be it co-perceivers or co-members) are also always specified associatively , in the light of our past interactions. My aim is to show how the implicit “co-positing” of others necessarily “echoes”, and is “colored” by, our earlier intersubjective experiences. The way in which our experiences tacitly implicate anyone (i.e., typical co-perceivers) is influenced by the way in which we have interacted with particular others (i.e., particular tokens ), who serve as the primal institutors of the idea of “a typical co-perceiver”. Making use of insights from phenomenology, developmental psychology, and psychoanalysis, I will discuss the asymmetric structure of social perception and the sedimentation of experience, and thus challenge the assumption of the anonymity of the “anyone”.


Introduction
Husserl's philosophy contains various dynamically interrelated concepts of intersubjectivity.(i) Already the horizontal structure of perception tacitly, even if emptily, implicates potential other perceivers, such that the experiential environment appears as being there for "anyone".I have elsewhere called this apriori intersubjectivity (Taipale 2014).(ii) In face-to-face encounters, singular others are present concretely, in the flesh, and the environment accordingly appears as being there -not (just) for anyone -but (also) more specifically for us.(iii) Through repeated interactions, the structural intersubjectivity becomes sedimented and the implicated others are increasingly specified as co-members of a "we".The resulting intergenerational we-intersubjectivity is expressed in the fact that, not just our perceptual environment, but our familiar cultural environment appears as being there for "anyone".In comparison to the apriori intersubjectivity, here the notion of "anyone" has a more limited sense, covering not just anyone but any normal co-member of the community -"my normal 'We'," my "transcendental 'We'" (transzendentale 'Wir'), as Husserl puts it. 1In the latter, the implicated co-constituting others are not just world-constituting, but homeworld-constituting others, namely potential others capable of experiencing not just the same spatiotemporal environment (which is there for anyone in the wider sense), but also the same familiar world of historical and cultural meanings.
What Husserl calls "open intersubjectivity" (e.g., Hua XIV, 51, 289; Zahavi   2001b), covers the first and the third form -namely, both the structural experiential referencing to possible co-perceivers and the concretized experiential referencing of co-members of the respective "we" -which is another way of saying that open intersubjectivity both precedes and is transformed by relations of empathy.I have elsewhere underlined the necessity of distinguishing these two aspects of open intersubjectivity (Taipale 2014).It is worth noting that the three forms of intersubjectivity are neither mutually exclusive nor do they necessarily overlap.In face-to-face encounters others are introduced as particular and singular subjects, yet they may simultaneously (more or less tacitly) appear as exemplars or "tokens" of anyone, or as co-members of our community and tradition.When having an intimate discussion with someone, for instance, we know that the social setting is nonetheless perceivable to anybody and intelligible to our cultural peers, and for this reason we are never altogether surprised if someone tells us later on that she saw us chatting in private: the exclusive social situation might not be fully graspable from the outside, yet both the spatiotemporal setting (e.g., "there are two living beings together") and the typical-cultural indications (e.g., "they are having an intimate conversation") are still graspable to any potential passer-by.Moreover, when realizing that we ourselves are currently seen in a particular manner by this singular other, with whom we are currently conversing, at the same time we are (more or less implicitly) aware of ourselves as bodily beings perceivable by anybody and as human beings whose actions are understandable by our communal co-members and peers.We are always open to these possibilities; we know them in the back of our minds, as it were.It is always possible that further perceivers show up, and it is this openness that the concept of "open intersubjectivity" conveys.
In the present context, I won't be going into the constitutional relations between the different forms of intersubjectivity in more detail -I have done this elsewhere (see Taipale 2012, 2014, and 2016a).Instead, I will focus on the central feature of open intersubjectivity, namely the tacit referencing to potential others.More specifically, I want to challenge the idea that these potential others, "co-constitutors", are altogether anonymous and non-particularized.What I have in mind is not merely the well-documented and widely scrutinized issue that in Husserl's account the implicated others are also discussed in terms of being comembers of one's own community, "homecomrades", at different levels (see Steinbock 1995).Instead, my main point is that the implicated others -be they co-perceivers or co-members -are not altogether "faceless", as it were, but specified associatively.Differently put, I will argue that the people we have actually reciprocated and interacted with play the part of "primal institutors" of the anyone.In short, as I will claim, the way we co-posit others always echoes our past and this questions the anonymity of the anyone.
The present article is divided into three sections.First, I will outline the concept of open intersubjectivity.Second, I will examine the "specifications" of the implicated "anyone" that arise from our subjective-experiential build-up, thereby highlighting both the asymmetric and the embodied nature of open intersubjectivity.In the third section, I will outline specifications of the implicated "anyone" that arise from our previous interactive experiences.As I will show, the idea of completely anonymous co-constitutors is an idealization.My aim lies not in an attempt to refute the central transcendental nature of open intersubjectivity, but rather in revealing novel aspects of the dynamic, temporal, and sedimented nature of the latter.Importing insights from phenomenology, developmental psychology, and psychoanalysis, I will discuss the asymmetric structure of social perception and the sedimentation of experience, and challenge the assumption of the anonymity of the "anyone".I will conclude by elaborating the sense in which our concrete relationships with others, relations of empathy, amount to a fulfilment and unfulfilment of open intersubjectivity.Let me begin by outlining the sense of "open intersubjectivity".

Open intersubjectivity: structural openness to others
Already each of my perceptions constantly and inseparably includes others as co-subjects, as co-constituting (Hua Mat  VIII, 394).I do not have to search very far for others: I find them in my experience, lodged in the hollows that show what they see and what I fail to see.Our experiences thus have lateral relationships of truth: all together, each possessing clearly what is secret in the others, in our combined functioning we form a totality which moves toward enlightenment and completion (Merleau-Ponty 1973, 168-169).
Two tendencies are commonly distinguished with regard to Husserl's theory of intersubjectivity (see Merleau-Ponty 2001, 44−45; Zahavi 2001a, 155ff.;Zahavi   2001b, 52ff.).The better-known approach is explicated in the Cartesian Meditations, which, for a long time, was Husserl's only published text concerning the problem of intersubjectivity.In this approach, Husserl starts from an abstract layer of experience -the (in)famous "sphere of ownness" or Eigenheitssphäreattempting to clarify how the world thus conceived is precisely an abstraction, thus aiming to show (ex negativo as it were) how intersubjectivity is actually there already.For a long time, this approach was (mis)read as an explication of how our experience of others, empathy, temporally emerges, thereby forgetting that the sphere of ownness is an abstraction -a thought experiment designed to rule itself out, so to speak.The other approach more directly promotes the transcendental dimension of intersubjectivity, and explicitly argues that, constitutionally speaking, empathy is not the fundamental form of intersubjectivity.Pursuing this approach, Husserl sets off from the horizontal structure of experience, and views empathy -i.e., our actual experience of others -as an "disclosing accomplishment" (enthüllendes Leisten), 2 which builds upon (and reveals) the underlying open intersubjectivity.
In the present context, I will discuss the latter approach exclusively.As the above quotes illustrate, the starting point of Husserl's phenomenological examination of intersubjectivity lies in the realization of the fundamental openness of subjectivity.Instead of initially discovering others "out there", as it were, and then, ex nihilo, finding its way into their experiences, subjectivity already harbors intentional implications to possible co-perceivers.As Husserl puts it: Thus, subjectivity expands into intersubjectivity, or rather, more precisely, it does not expand, but transcendental subjectivity understands itself better.It understands itself as a primordial monad that intentionally carries within itself other monads (Hua XV, 17; cf.20, 69).
For Husserl, intersubjective self-constitution is not primarily a matter of "expanding".This would suggest that there is initially something like a nonintersubjective subjectivity that gradually expands into something more comprehensive -an interpretation that would coincide with the classical (mis)reading of the sphere of ownness.Instead, intersubjective self-constitution is a matter of enhanced self-understanding, which is to say that intentional implications to potential others are to be located within oneself.These implications provide subjectivity with an intersubjective structure regardless of the presence or absence of actual others -to quote Waldenfels, the other "appears within myself and on my side before appearing in front of me" (Waldenfels 2004, 247). 3sserl illustrates the concept of "open intersubjectivity" by noting that the world appears as "being there for anyone" (für Jedermann daseiende). 4 He introduces the idea in connection with his theory of perceptual "appresentation" or "co-presentation". 5Whenever we perceive something, like a chair for instance, certain aspects of the object gain prominence and appear in the foreground, but the intentional object also includes aspects that are currently hidden or unthematic: "While the surface is immediately given, I mean more than it offers". 6This surplus essentially pertains to the thing as intended: to see a surface or an aspect is to see a surface of something or an aspect of something.
That is to say, the perceptual object essentially has an anticipatory unity 7 which is not exhausted by any perception: "perception is a constant pretension to accomplish something that, by its very nature, it is not in a position to accomplish" (Hua XI, 3): Implied in the particular perception of the thing is a whole 'horizon' of nonactive and yet co-functioning manners of appearance and syntheses of validity […], open or implicated 'intentionalities' (Hua VI, 162-163; my italics).
The sense of surprise is illustrative here.When we move and look at the chair from another angle, or touch its surface, we are not surprised to find that there were experiential aspects to it that were not perceived from our previous standpoint.This is because we already "appresented", or "associatively anticipated", alternative appearances of the thing (see Hua XV, 26-27).To be more precise, we may be surprised about how the backside of the chair looks, or about how the chair feels when sitting on it, but we are not surprised about the fact that there was a hither side to the chair or about the fact that an object that was previously merely seen came to support our body.If we were surprised about such features, this would imply phenomenologically that we first experienced the chair as illusory (e.g., something that only appears from our present standpoint or merely visually), and then realized that it is a real object after all that can be also seen from elsewhere, touched, and so on.This, however, is not how we normally experience chairs or other perceptual objects.Rahter, to "associatively anticipate" alternative perceptions of the object pertains to experiencing the object as something real.
Moreover, we are not surprised find the chair being also perceivable to other perceivers.Quite on the contrary, this possibility, too, pertains to the sense of real objects.Experiencing something as being perceivable exclusively to me means experiencing it as an imaginary or illusory object, and not as a real, actually perceived thing.For example, when I see a chair in front of me, I do not experience it as being there only for me (only for my actual and my potential perceptions).If I did, that would again mean that I experience it as an illusion, as a hallucination, or as a figment of my imagination.To say that I experience the chair as actually being there, that I experience it as something real, implies an openness to the possibility that it could be perceived by others as well.
Importantly, this is not just a formal, and rather obvious, requirement, or a necessary condition, but something experiential.Our openness to potential coperceivers is indicated by the fact that we are never surprised to realize that others, too, are capable of seeing the chair that we see.By contrast, in general we are surprised if they do not seem to be capable of this.Our lack of surprise is owing to the fact that we already tacitly constituted the chair as being there for anyone.
The references to potential co-perceivers do not have to be explicit or thematic, however, and on most occasions, they are not.The "being there for anyone" is rather related to the sense of the object as something real, and it is mainly in unexpected cases where our tacit assumption concerning perceivability by anyone becomes prominent (and perhaps challenged).As long as we interact with people that are more or less similar to us, the object's "perceivability to anyone" is not considered as a subjective anticipation but as an objective fact, a trait of the thing itself.If we, then, enter into communication with blind persons, for instance, the tacit assumption that anyone can see the chair is compromised.
In this sense, the horizontal structure of perception involves references to an open infinity of possible co-perceptions which are not clearly divided between my perceptions and those of others.In other words, when perceiving a chair, my pre-reflective experience neither comes in the form, "I can perceive the chair from other standpoints as well", nor in the form, "others can perceive the chair from other standpoints".To be sure, the experiential process of appresenting is lived through by me -after all, "transcendental intersubjectivity is something for me" (Hua XV, 77) -but the subjectivity of the appresented appearances remains "open", "undecided".That is to say, the environment originally 8 appears neither as being there for me exclusively nor as being there for me and other(s), but as being there for anyone, without self and other being thematically separated: [E]verything object-like that stands before my eyes in experience and primarily in perception has an apperceptive horizon of possible experiences, my own and those of others.[…] Every appearance that I have is from the very beginning part of an open endless, although not explicitly realized totality of possible appearances of the same, and the subjectivity of these appearances is the open intersubjectivity (Hua XIV, 289). 9

Asymmetry and anonymity
What is valid for me is valid for anyone (Hua XLII, 132).
Despite the fact that we accept others as witnesses, that we make our views accord with theirs, we are still the ones who set the terms of the agreement: the transpersonal field remains dependent on our own (Merleau-Ponty 1973, 138-139).
Rather than designating a particular intentional relation to others, open intersubjectivity amounts to an essential feature of our intentional worldrelation. 10Using also the term "transcendental 'empathy'", 11 Husserl claims that, before emerging as objects of our intentions, others are appresented as co-constituting, "transcendental others" (transzendentalen Anderen) 12 or "'pure' others" ('puren' Anderen), namely potential others who "as yet have no worldly sense." 13Open intersubjectivity, therefore, does not imply an experience of "sharing": the environment appears as being perceivable to anyone, yet not to anyone in particular, but anonymously to "any alter egos whatever" (irgendwelche alter egos). 14In other words, the tacitly anticipated co-perceivers, or "fellow subjects" (Mitsubjekte), remain unspecified (unbestimmt), anonymous (anonym). 15wever, even if the anyone is no one in particular, certain general specifications concerning the implicated co-perceivers arise from the basis of the asymmetric structure of intersubjectivity.
(i) First of all, insofar as the perceptual environment appears as palpable, touchable, visible, audible, and olfactory, the implicated co-perceivers are specified as experiencing beings with such sensible faculties."Anyone", as Husserl notes, "is a subject of a lived-body". 16When it comes to an experience of the natural world, no matter how broad the scope of the anyone might be, it is nonetheless "limited" to as embodied, sensing subjects with a spatiotemporal location.Rather than of "anyone" it might therefore be more fitting to talk of "anybody" (see Taipale 2014).
(ii) Moreover, the asymmetric structure of open intersubjectivity gives rise to further specifications related to one's own subjective-perceptual setup.What is initially anticipated as being perceivable to anyone is the environment as it appears to me.To quote Husserl's striking words: "I am the norm for all other human beings" (Hua I, 154). 17Rather than referring to himself exclusively, Husserl is obviously here making a formal indication of the constitutive role of primordial subjectivity in intersubjective perception.As he puts it elsewhere, "what is immanently valid for me is likewise [expected to be] valid for my fellow humans (this is how I see them as others)" (Hua XLII, 111, cf.132).To illustrate, for the congenitally blind, the implicated co-perceivers of a chair do not initially include seeing subjects.The existence, and co-positing, of seeing subjects is something that must first be learned.By rule, others are initially appresented as co-perceivers to what one already perceives, which is another way of saying that open intersubjectivity is rooted in anticipations arising from the basis of one's subjective-experiential setup (see Taipale 2012, Taipale 2014).
The affective, axiological, conative, normative, and practical associations likewise carry over to our appresentations.Sensuous perceptions are permeated by various feelings and evaluations.We not only hear, but like or dislike what we hear; we not only see chairs but intend to use them; and we not only perceive actions but also evaluate and normatively assess them (see, e.g., Hua IV, 187).
The essential point here is that the co-posited others are expected to confirm the intersubjective availability of such features as well.Consider looking at a chair and feeling disgusted about its cheap 80's style look.What you posit as being there for anyone is not just a chair, but a corny chair -and you are thus surprised if someone instead judges the chair as decorative or beautiful.To use another example, consider exiting a movie theater after seeing a comedy that you liked a lot.Before reflectively distinguishing between assessments of the objective value of the movie, on the one hand, and assessments based on your personal preferences and your affective mood, on the other, you tend to simply consider the object itself (the movie) as funny and entertaining.Phenomenologically, this is another way of saying that you tacitly (and, indeed, naïvely) assume that anyone can confirm this.And hence you are initially, even if perhaps only fleetingly, surprised when overhearing some other viewers judging the movie as a boring piece of rubbish instead.What interests us here is how the sense of surprise reveals the underlying tacit anticipations: you implicitly expected that what you considered fun and entertaining would appear in this manner to anyone, and the disappointment of that expectation is what constitutes your feeling of surprise. 18 this manner, my perception of the chair, for instance, implicates not just potential co-perceivers, but also potential co-evaluators, co-users, co-judgers, and so on.To modify Merleau-Ponty's note on visibility and audibility, also the practical and aesthetic value of the object initially seems to dwell in the object itself (see Merleau-Ponty 1968, 123).And so, whenever someone does not share our affective take on the object, we initially tend to assume that the other simply does not see or judge the object correctly.Realizing the subjective nature of our assessment comes only after that; it may arrive fast, but it is not there from the outset.To implicate the anyone is to anticipate confirmation of our perception of the object, and the disappointment of that tacit anticipation motivates our occasional -and more or less extensive -feeling of surprise.
(iii) Such disappointments make us increasingly aware of the subjective nature of our anticipations, underline the self/other distinction, and effect various transformations vis-à-vis open intersubjectivity. 19For example, the perceived object is initially taken to be there for anyone -not only as a spatiotemporal, practical, and aesthetic object, but one that also incorporates tradition-bound meanings.It may then happen, as it often does, that we realize that someone else (e.g., a representative of another culture) perceives the same material entity or bodily movement, but either does not quite grasp its meaning or interprets it differently.In this case, our tacit anticipations are partly confirmed and partly disappointed: the other confirms to our expectation about the chair being visible to anyone (apriori intersubjectivity), but disappoints our expectation of the meaning of the chair being graspable to anyone (we-intersubjectivity).Through interacting with people with different perceptual-bodily setups, different aesthetic tastes, and different cultural backgrounds, an ingroup/outgroup distinction is thus introduced into the "anyone".Consequently, in Husserl's words, "not all, reduced in a transcendental manner, are co-bearers of the world that is pregiven as my world and that 'we' have as pregiven" (Hua XV, 162).In the course of time, our experiences are thus sedimented, and the tacitly implicated "anyone", the "transcendental 'we'" (transzendentale 'Wir'), 20 is specified as the open community of "homecomrades" (Heimgenossen) (see, e.g., Hua XV, 624, 629).Notably, it is still open -yet not to just anyone, but exclusively to our homecomrades.On the other hand, when such anticipations are disappointed, we refer back to the broader "anyone" of the apriori intersubjectivity.
However, these three general specifications do not really challenge the anonymity of the implicated others.Even if the latter is specified as anybody equipped with similar-enough perceptual faculties as mine (apriori intersubjectivity) or as anyone with an experiential background similar-enough to ours (we-intersubjectivity), the implicated others are nonetheless just any coperceivers or fellow subjects who satisfy these general requirements.They may remain altogether "faceless" and insignificant to me.Yet, the tacitly implicated others harbor an associative depth which motivates reconsidering the claim of anonymity.This will be clarified in the following,

The depth of the "anyone"
From the start, the grasped sense implies determinations that have not yet been experienced with this object but which nevertheless are of a known type insofar as they refer back to earlier analogous experiences concerning other objects (Husserl 1948, 143).
Anything that is concealed, each tacit validity, operates from associative and apperceptive depthsthese depths enable the Freudian method and are presupposed by it (Hua XLII, 113).
As bodily-expressive beings we also constitute ourselves as being perceivable to anyone.Having assumed to be alone we may be surprised when being told that we were in fact seen.We may be surprised about others' assessments of, and reactions to, our actions and doings.Yet, what is not surprising to us, by contrast, is the realization that we and our doings are and were perceivable.
When it comes to the claim of anonymity, the case of self-experience is particularly illuminating.Consider the case of shame.To be sure, shame is a social emotion (see, e.g., Zahavi 2014) that involves assessing one's action as being -actually or potentially -witnessed by others.It is worth noting that when being witnessed doing something disgraceful, the significance of the witness (e.g., his or her personal, social, or contextual relevance) is crucial.That is to say, it clearly matters whether the witness of one's action is a bird, a dog, an infant, a teenager, an adult, a friend, a colleague, one's own child, one's spouse, one's parent, an unknown bypasser, a person one wishes to get acquainted with, etc.
The intensity of shame correlates not just with the nature of the witnessed action, but also with the nature of the witness -the presence of certain witnesses might not inflict shame on you at all.If that is true, we can argue that the witnesses in the presence of whom you feel shame are not just anyone.Keeping this in mind, consider the case of feeling shame while being alone.Surely, you might not be explicitly thinking of anyone in particular, but the tacitly appresented co-perceivers of your doings, the implicated others in whose potential presence you feel shame, are not just anyone, but people that somehow matter to you.Here it makes all the different who the co-posited others are; they are not anonymous.
One might naturally object at this point, saying that feeling shame while being alone is just a special case.After all, shame is a social emotion, which, by definition, highlights the role and significance of particular others.While the anonymity of the anyone might be challenged in this case, in many other cases it might not be: what about the more neutral forms of experience?
On the one hand, we can reply to this by saying that while in this example the implicated anyone may be specified in detail, perhaps even personified, in other kinds of self-experience the "anyone" might remain more anonymous.The degree of anonymity is indeed case-specific.There is no denying this.
On the other hand, the idea of faceless, completely anonymous, co-perceivers seems to rely on an idealization.The notion seems to apply only to cases where the affective, axiological, and normative dimensions have been brushed aside.To be sure, co-positing the anyone relates to what we thematically posit.In the case of finding an action virtuous or disgraceful, the implicated "anyone" comprises the co-assessors who are expected to being able to confirm our assessment.In the case of perceiving material objects (like chairs), again, the implicated others are co-perceivers.The crucial question is: are they ever merely that?When a chair gains prominence in my experience, it does so for a reason.I might feel tired and the chair hence attracts me as a place to sit (practical aspect).I might be in the middle of a move to a new apartment, and the chair I see in the showcase of a department store catches my attention as something decorative (aesthetic aspect).To be sure, the chair may also gain prominence due to the perceptual setup itself, say, when I see an empty chair in the middle of an empty theater stage.And the chair can also stand out in more theoretical circumstances, like when measuring the parameters of the furniture.In cases of the latter type, the co-perceivers that we tacitly expect to confirm our perception of the chair (as an object this or that size) may remain quite neutral, faceless, and anonymousassuming, for the sake of the argument, that we then manage to keep the affective and aesthetic dimensions completely at bay.However, first of all, such cases count as exceptions rather than as the rule.Perception is only seldom affectively neutral -and, for sure, self-experiences are hardly ever of such kind.
Moreover, given that the affective, the axiological, and the normative are mostly (if not always) intertwined with the perceptual, what is clear and fairly explicit in the case of normative judgments (e.g., the case of shame), is not completely absent in external perceptual experiences either.
The way in which we co-posit the anyone is not unaffected by our past experiences.Our valuations and passions are not all inborn but "inherited".And, as for self-experience, we habituate the ways in which our spontaneous expressions, actions, reactions, evaluations, intentions, and perceptions are greeted and received in our surroundings and get used to the ways in which they are confirmed or challenged.For example, coming from an environment where we have been treated with respect and encouragement, we tend to anticipate similar manners and patterns of reacting from anyone we encounter and more easily enter into new situations with a more optimistic prospect; coming from an environment where we have been repeatedly discouraged, played down, or humiliated, we tend to anticipate similar manners of reacting from anyone we encounter, and tend to be more reserved (cf.Taipale 2016b).Our past figures in our self-experience, in our experience of things and the environment, and in our experience of other people in the form of more or less tacit anticipations.The way in which "anyone" (i.e., typical co-perceivers) is implicated is therefore dependent not just on the case but also on our earlier interactions.In other words, "anyone" comes with an associative depth.
Husserl touches upon this depth dimension in his account of typification.He argues that the ways in which we categorize things, environments, other people, situations, and actions builds on our past experiences of particular exemplars.
While accounting for the constitution of objectivity, Husserl does not discuss our experience of other people.He investigates the issue in rather general terms, without distinguishing between type-construal related to inanimate objects and type-construal related to animate objects, thus giving the impression that typification emerges similarly in both cases. 21If this was right, it would mean, for instance, that the process of learning to typify "women" and "men" is not structurally any different from the process of learning to distinguish between "plants" and "stones".Indeed, both distinctions arise from our past experiences with particular plants, stones, women, and men.Yet, here it is crucial to distinguish between objects of personal significance and objects merely observed without engagement or emotion.To put it differently, I find the assumption highly problematic that the past tokens all have an equal constitutional status, i.e., that all women and all men that I have perceived, observed, encountered, or heard about in my past equally serve as material for my typification of "women" and "men" (see Taipale 2015a).Such an assumption is misleading.To be sure, Husserl's ambitious aim is to disclose the constitution of the objective world and unite the sciences, and his analyses concerning open intersubjectivity and appresentation mainly serve this purpose.Husserl's main focus vis-à-vis open intersubjectivity understandably lies in the most general features of appresented otherness, and from the point of view of his general interests, associative specifications vis-à-vis the "anyone" may be less important.The examples that Husserl provides in this connection mainly portray an experiential relation to an object perceived or known, and even if he extensively discusses affectivity in other connections, he less to say about the affective dimensions in appresentation.If we want to employ the Husserlian concept of open intersubjectivity when descriptively theorizing our experience of others in its own right -and I think Husserl's philosophy is indeed a fruitful and operationalizable account in this respect too -we should take a closer look at the sense and degree in which the implied others are specified.
The distinction between significant and insignificant others is relevant vis-à-vis the concept of "anyone".The exemplars on the basis of which we have formed the idea of "women", "men", or "anybody" do not comprise a homogenous set of individual tokens.Instead of all having had an equal status, particular individuals have served as the "primal institutors" or archetypes for the types in question.
When it comes to the distinction between plants and stones, it presumably is not that important which stones and plants have served as the primal institutors of the respective types.By contrast, when it comes to more complex types in respect to which the emotional dimension is highlighted, the starting point -i.e., early development -matters a lot more.
While omitting this issue in his account of typification, however, in discussing normativity Husserl talks about an incorporated "ideal within me" (das Ideal in mir), and suggests that significant, "admirably beloved" (verehrungsvoll geliebte) others constitute such inner "role-models" (Volbilder) (Hua XLII, 525), and notes that the child's initial "exemplaries" are found in the parents (Hua XLII, 287).As I see it, to assume that the foundation for our understanding of "anyone" is equally comprised of experiences of personally insignificant and personally significant others is unconvincing.I consider it more plausible that the relevant instituting "material" mainly includes others that are, or have been, personally significant to us.Furthermore, if I am on the right track in this respect, it also seems convincing to assume that the temporal order vis-à-vis the significant others is important.This is because in different phases of development, certain others are more significant and prominent than the rest.
To illustrate this, let me repeat that most of our affective valuations and normative categorizations are not inborn.We have grown into liking and disliking various things, into thinking that something is shameful or forbidden, and so on.Many objects, actions, and constellations that appear desirable for the baby are repeatedly labelled by the caregivers as dangerous, forbidden, or otherwise unfitting.For example, via repetition, a toddler learns to associate the act of "playing with food" with a forbidding parent.The child incorporates and introjects the mindset of her early authorities and henceforth views the world also from their viewpoint, as it were.The child's sense of guilt when doing something forbidden might initially be rather personified in the sense of more or less explicitly linking with the blaming parent.The "anyone" gradually grows out of such significant others.The act of playing with food is grasped as something forbidden, first, in the eyes of the caregivers, and later, in the eyes of anyone.The early authorities (i.e., the caregivers) play a special role as the primal institutors of the respective affective quality, which is now assigned to the action itself: the action is now viewed generally as forbidden, i.e., as something that anyone would regard forbidden. 22When a 6-year-old child sees her little sister playing with food, she might not articulate her experience by saying that mom and dad consider that forbidden, but rather consider the forbidden quality as a characteristic of the action itself.Nonetheless, the origin of the respective quality that the child now expects anyone to being able to confirm lies in the specific other(s).Moreover, the "anyone" inherits not just the general assessment but also the tone, intensity, and strength of such early authorities.
The early authorities are thus gradually generalized into "anyone".The former serve as the primal institutors of the latter.To be sure, the personified copresence of the introjected authorities gradually fades into the background: they are veiled by anonymity and generality, and are thus present in a disguised form.
Insofar as the child interacts with many authorities in the course of her development, and does not remain fixated on the parents for instance, the sense of "anyone" develops into a rather heterogeneous, experientially less personified, and hence more flexible normative atmosphere.Normativity, of course, is only one kind of example, and the "anyone" might remain more anonymous in the case of perception.Yet, early introjections reach to the level of perceptual implications as well.As said, our perceptions are always more or less permeated by affective, axiological, practical, and normative references.Many of these remain latent, and yet maintain their effect as parts of our experience.Even if the object of perception would be rather neutral in itself, our past introduces a load of anticipations that arise, to rephrase Husserl, not from our current experience, but from our past experiences with circumstances similar to the current ones in one way or another.The italics are here meant to underline the fact that the experience of a chair on an empty theatre stage, for instance, is associatively colored not merely by our past experiences of chairs, but of our past experiences of theatres, performances, stages, etc. -to say nothing of the symbolism that functions associatively below the surface of such experiences (the chair is alone etc.).In this manner, we can see that even a simple perception tends to awaken -more or less consciously -a whole web of associations.This introduces a depth-dimension into the seemingly homogenous and anonymous anyone, whom we tacitly posit as co-witnessing the situation at hand.
Although the "anyone" is generalized and transformed in the course of time, there are often sources that can in principal be, at least up to a certain point, be tracked down -as we saw Husserl putting it, the "associative and apperceptive depths enable the Freudian method" (Hua XLII, 113).To be sure, the more neutral the experience, the more homogenous the co-posited anyone.On the other hand, experiences are hardly ever altogether neutral.Even if tacitly, the affective, axiological, and normative dimensions tend to introduce nonarticulated specifications to the "anyone", thus giving the latter a face, as it were.
The way we have witnessed our significant others to be perceiving and assessing the world, ways of life, activities, types of objects, actions, etc. figures not just in how we subjectively view the world but also in how we implicate potential cowitnesses to such experiences.This is particularly clear vis-à-vis the virtual confirmers of our self-experience, but insofar as simple perceptual experiences are never free from affective, axiological or normative associations, this holds for perception too.In this sense, more generally put, the "anyone" implicated in our experience echoes our past.And if so, the anonymity and generality of the anyone may often, at least to a large extent, be seen as a disguise.

Conclusion
I have here focused on the Husserlian notion of open intersubjectivity -more precisely on the tacit structural referencing to potential others -and challenged the related claim of anonymity.I suggested that the way in which we tacitly coposit the "anyone" grows out of, and links back to, our past interactions and object relations.Underlining the distinction between significant and insignificant others, I argued that our tacit experiential implications to co-perceivers and fellow humans are hardly ever completely neutral as they carry associative references to our past interactions with significant others.To consider the implicated "anyone" literally as just anyone accordingly seems to rely on an idealization, which hardly characterizes our everyday experiences.In this manner, I have tried to motivate reconsidering the assumption of the anonymity of the "anyone".
If true, my claim has significant implications.For one, it enables considering experiences of empathy and concrete interactions in terms of a (partial) fulfilment of the underlying intersubjectivity (see Taipale 2014, 84ff.).More generally, a phenomenological scrutiny of the asymmetric structure of intersubjectivity opens new perspectives to philosophical analyses and explications of cultural exchange, intersubjective and intercommunal conflicts, social discrimination, and racism -just to name a few topics.Moreover, furthering and consolidating the communication between phenomenology and the psychoanalytic tradition is particularly useful -for both parties.When it comes to the side of phenomenology, as I hope to have illustrated in this article, the exchange can challenge and hence motivate reconsidering certain claims and assumptions -some of which are simply owing to differing research interest, and some to more substantial disagreements and tensions.