participatory sense-making

Compiled with AI assistance and selectively reviewed. Please consult the cited passages; the books remain the authoritative source. About this companion

Editorial synthesis · provisional

Definition

Participatory sense-making is the coordination of intentional activity through which interacting autonomous agents alter individual sense-making and may generate meanings unavailable in isolation. RB2 attributes the formulation to De Jaegher and Di Paolo. The process preserves individual autonomy, includes correction by others and can acquire shared norms; coordination does not by itself guarantee compassion, agreement, ethical legitimacy or a mystical collective mind.

Explanation

The direct definition makes interaction consequential for each participant’s sense-making, with the possibility of new domains emerging between them. Conversation and moving a table illustrate reciprocal timing, adjustment and meanings not fully planned in advance. Those examples describe coupling, not the disappearance of the agents into a single permanent person.

The account extends into language, shared histories and social institutions, and recognizes technical infrastructures shaping coordination. Those contributions do not automatically make a network or protocol an autonomous human participant. The source’s explicit transindividual discussion avoids both isolated individualism and an all-consuming social whole.

Empathy adds the risk of projection: another must be able to correct one’s simulation. Cognitive empathy, affective empathy and compassion remain distinct. RB3 carries this partner relation into ethical analysis, while AB warns that denser relation can also sustain domination. Shared meaning therefore needs separate evaluation of its power and consequences.

Scope and attribution

Retain the attributed definition, correction by others and separate evaluation of technical mediation and power.

RB2 — The Real Book, Volume II: Becoming Is Being

Autonomous agents co-regulate meaning while retaining difference and mutual correction.

Occurrence locators: 38, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 173.

RB3 — The Real Book, Volume III: Murmurations

The other remains a partner rather than an object of simulation.

Occurrence locators: 165, 166, 221, 222, 277.

Background used in the editorial explanation

Named theories and mechanisms are distinguished from neighboring background, homonyms and the author’s own synthesis. Reproduced AI passages retain their separate voice.