Chapter 8 takes up what the subjectivity of socially embedded individuals involves. On the externalist view of individual autonomy, subjectivity is an embodied subjectivity because institutions and social relationships affect people’s choices and actions. To explain this idea, the chapter reviews the situated cognition and the embodied and distributed cognition literatures in cognitive science and psychology to explain the connection between social embeddedness and subjectivity. It then returns to the capability conception of individuals and what individual and personal identity involves. Using a two-level view of people’s capabilities, it argues that socially embedded individuals develop first-order capabilities regarding specific kinds of things that they can be and do and also a second-order self-concept or self-narrative capabilities in conjunction with one another, and rely on the latter to evaluate themselves in relation to their capability development. This discussion draws on the thinking of developmental psychologist Carl Rogers. How, and the extent to which, this understanding of individuals allows us to explain them as distinct and re-identifiable individuals closes the chapter.

While psychologists agree that individuals differ from each other on a variety of traits (e.g., personality), the theoretical and methodological assumptions used to develop pen and paper psychometric tests have failed to keep pace with recent computational developments that utilise digital traces to infer information about individuals and the world around them. For example, while self-report assessments are designed to predict behaviour in the absence of any real-world measure, digital devices (e.g., smartphones) have facilitated the measurement of many real-world outcomes (Piwek et al., 2016). Even the purchase of a specific device can reveal something about the individual behind the screen (Shaw, Ellis and Ziegler, 2018). Smartphones could therefore lead to a step change in how we study and conceptualise a variety of individual differences. This is particularly pertinent when it comes to understanding personality traits (e.g., levels of extraversion – a measure of sociability) that are automatically deployed in new situations seamlessly and non-consciously (Roberts and Hill, 2017).

A number of studies using smartphones have correlated data from these devices with traditional psychometric tests. However, following a brief review of this work, this chapter will question how much progress has been made in this domain. There remains a general consensus among many social scientists that, while traditional psychometric measures are far from perfect, they are the only option available. This chapter will challenge that assumption however, data derived from smartphone sensing may ultimately support the notion that existing psychometric tools remain valuable and reinforce existing conceptualisations of standard personality models.

The second chapter distills three distinct understandings of belonging through corporal union. All are based on the biblical principle of “one flesh,” according to which corporal unification of individuals transforms them into a single entity. Two of the approaches developed during the early centuries of the ecclesial tradition, while the third appeared toward the end of the first millennium of the Common Era in Karaite circles. The ecclesial approaches understand the performance of belonging in physical terms as a fixed and irreversible unification, whereas the Karaite approach conceives it in spiritual terms as an elastic phenomenon of shared selfness. Each of the discussed readings of the biblical principle exhibits a different comprehension of the meaning of corporal union and its legal implications.