  Primary intersubjectivity is the pre-theoretical, non-conceptual, embodied understanding of others that underlies and supports the higher-level cognitive skills involved in mentalizing. It is “the innate or early developing capacity to interact with others manifested at the level of perceptual experience—we see or more generally perceive in the other person’s bodily movements, facial gestures, eye direction, and so on, what they intend and what they feel” (Gallagher 2005, 204). Primary intersubjectivity is present from birth, but it continues to serve as the basis for our social cognition in adulthood. It manifests as the capacity for facial imitation, the capacity to detect and track eye movement, detect intentional behavior, and “read” emotions from actions and expressive movements of others. Primary intersubjectivity consists in informational sensitivity and appropriate responsiveness to specific features of one’s environment. It does not, embodied cognition theorists argue, involve representing and theorizing about those features. It simply requires certain practical abilities that have been shaped by selective pressures, e.g., sensitivity to certain bodily cues and facial expressions.