[Research Note] Social understanding as a creation: Intercorporeality and aida Shogo Tanaka ＊1 1. Introduction The purpose of this paper is to push forward the so-called interaction theory (IT) in current social cognitive science with the aid of two notions: one is Merleau-Pontyʼs intercorporeality and the other is Kimuraʼs aida. What these two phenomenologists have in common is that both conceived that our subjectivity is basically action-oriented rather than static and epistemo- logical, and that both tackled the problem of intersubjectivity from this perspective. In this paper, I argue that their ideas are not only in accordance with IT in social cognition, but they also provide us with a better understanding of this issue than the current state. Briefly sketching the field of social cognition, the central issue has long been the theory of mind (ToM), which is generally defined as“the ability to imagine or make deductions about the mental states of other individuals”(American Psychological Association, 2009, p. 520). In addition, within the theory itself, there has been ongoing debate between proponents of the theory-theory (TT) and those supporting the simulation theory (ST), regarding the nature of our ability to understand the other mind (cf., Davies & Stone, 1995; Doherty, 2009). The TT claims that we practice our understanding of anotherʼs mind and behavior by referring to commonsensekindsoftheories,thatis,folkpsychology(e.g.,Astington, 1993;Gopnik, 2009).In contrast, the ST claims that we come to understand anotherʼs mind by self-simulating his/her situation and projecting the result (e.g., Goldman, 2006). In other words, the TT believes that we adopt objective theory, which can be equally applied to the self and another while the ST believes that we utilize subjective simulation, which is projected from the self to another. The former takes an observational, third-person point of view, whereas the latter takes an introspective, first-person point of view (Fuchs, 2013; Tanaka & Tamachi, 2013). The phenomenological approach reframes the question by going back to the basic experiences in the lifeworld, where we directly experience the other person through Vol.35（2015） 49 ＊ 1 Liberal Arts Education Center, Tokai University