Feeling good vibrations in dialogical relations Beata Stawarska Published online: 3 July 2008 Ó Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2008 Abstract I engage phenomenological and empirical perspectives on dialogical relations in infancy in a mutually enlightening and challenging relation. On the one hand, the empirical contributions provide evidence for the primacy of first-to-second person interrelatedness in human sociality, as opposed to the claim of primary syncretism heralded by Merleau-Ponty, and also in distinction from the ego-alter ego model routinely used in phenomenology. On the other hand, phenomenological considerations regarding the lived affective experience of dialogical relatedness enrich and render intelligible the psychological accounts of dialogue in terms of observable behavior. Phenomenological and empirical perspectives on dialogical relatedness thus combine to offer an affectively charged and conversationally pat- terned notion of primary intersubjectivity in the I-you mode. Keywords Conversational patterns Á Infancy Á I-you relations Á Language 1 Introduction The interdisciplinary ambitions of phenomenology and the cognitive sciences are probably best pursued within the context of Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy. Throughout his investigations into the embodied, situated existence, Merleau-Ponty adopted a deliberately multidisciplinary perspective that anticipated the recent scholarly trends to combine reflective and empirical approaches. I believe that Merleau-Ponty would be pleased to witness this recent revival of research at the interface of phenomenology and the cognitive sciences, because it testifies to the philosopher’s own commitment to engaging first- and third-person perspectives on human being in a mutually B. Stawarska (&) Department of Philosophy, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR 97403, USA e-mail: stawarsk@uoregon.edu 123 Cont Philos Rev (2008) 41:217–236 DOI 10.1007/s11007-008-9079-4