From mirror neurons to embodied simulation: A new neuroscientific perspective on intersubjectivity

2011 ◽  
Vol 26 (S2) ◽  
pp. 2127-2127
Author(s):  
V. Gallese
Keyword(s):  
Folk Psychology ◽  
Mirror Neurons ◽  
Social World ◽  
Other Minds ◽  
Body System ◽  
Functional Level ◽  
Mind Reading ◽  
Embodied Simulation ◽  
The World ◽  
Motor Representations

Our seemingly effortless capacity of conceiving of the acting bodies inhabiting our social world as goal-oriented individuals like us depends on the constitution of a shared “we-centric” space. I have proposed that this shared manifold space can be characterized at the functional level as embodied simulation, a basic functional mechanism by means of which our brain/body system models its interactions with the world.The mirroring mechanism for action and other mirroring mechanisms in our brain represent sub-personal instantiations of embodied simulation. Embodied simulation provides a new empirically based notion of intersubjectivity, viewed first and foremost as intercorporeity. Embodied simulation challenges the notion that Folk-psychology is the sole account of interpersonal understanding. Before and below mind reading is intercorporeity as the main source of knowledge we directly gather about others.By means of embodied simulation we can map others’ actions onto our own motor representations, as well as others’ emotions and sensations onto our own viscero-motor and somatosensory representations. “Representation”, as used here, refers to a particular type of content, generated by the relations that our situated and inter-acting brain-body system instantiates with the world. Such content is pre-linguistic and pre-theoretical, but nevertheless has attributes normally and uniquely attributed to conceptual content.Social cognition is not only explicitly reasoning about the contents of someone else's mind. Embodied simulation, gives us a direct insight of other minds thus enabling our capacity to empathize with others.This proposal opens new perspectives on our understanding of autism and other psychopathological states such as schizophrenia.

Europa 51: The Face of the Star in Neorealisms Urban Landscape

Film Studies ◽  
2004 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-57
Author(s):  
Ora Gelley
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Difference ◽  
Urban Landscape ◽  
Social World ◽  
Female Characters ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
Roberto Rossellini ◽  
The Face ◽  
Classical Style

Although Europa 51 (1952) was the most commercially successful of the films Roberto Rossellini made with the Hollywood star, Ingrid Bergman, the reception by the Italian press was largely negative. Many critics focussed on what they saw to be the ‘unreal’ or abstract quality of the films portrayal of the postwar urban milieu and on the Bergman character‘s isolation from the social world. This article looks at how certain structures of seeing that are associated in the classical style with the woman as star or spectacle - e.g., the repetitious return to her fixed image, the resistance to pulling back from the figure of the woman in order to situate her within a determinate location and set of relationships between characters and objects - are no longer restricted to her image but in fact bleed into or “contaminate” the depiction of the world she inhabits. In other words, whereas the compulsive return to the fixed image of the woman tends to be contained or neutralised by the narrative economy and editing patterns (ordered by sexual difference) of the classical style, in Rossellini‘s work this ‘insistent’ even aberrant framing in relation to the woman becomes a part of the (female) characters and the cameras vision of the ‘pathology’ of the urban landscape in the aftermath of the war.

The Study of Hindu New Religious Movements

2011 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 6-19
Author(s):  
Gene R. Thursby
Keyword(s):  
Transcendental Meditation ◽  
Social World ◽  
Religious Movements ◽  
New Religious Movements ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Social Harmony ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The World ◽  
The Status ◽  
Arya Samaj

The category of Hindu new religious movements is conventional and useful, but has imprecise boundaries. Scholars tend to include within it some groups that have claimed they are not Hindu (Arya Samaj, Ramakrishna Mission) or not religious (Transcendental Meditation). Within its wide range are world-affirming groups dedicated to transforming the physical and social world as well as world-transcending groups that find the status of the world doubtful and their purpose at another level or in another realm. The four articles in this special issue of Nova Religio on Hindu new religious movements represent several aspects of this category, and the potential for accommodation of basic differences, social harmony, and even world-transcendence.

INCLUSION, SOCIALISATION AND INTEGRATION OF THE CHILD WITH SPECIAL NEEDS IN A KINDERGARTEN GROUP

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 382-384
Author(s):  
Rumyana Pantaleeva ◽  
Keyword(s):  
General Education ◽  
Special Needs ◽  
Social World ◽  
Educational Needs ◽  
Special Educational Needs ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
The Right

The process of socialisation and integration represents unity, and at the same time – a continuous controversy between two aspects: socialisation and individuality. Due to this, the process is a single upside stream – the entry of a child into the world of adults, in the social world. Every child is a unique personality with its individual qualities, interests, abilities and educational needs. Every child with special educational needs has the right to be taught on an individual schedule with content, matching its own necessities and capacity. The general education kindergarten, in which the authors work and teach pupils with special educational needs has established a tolerant community and guarantees schooling, tutoring and mentorship for everybody.

Embodied Resonance

2018 ◽  
pp. 416-432
Author(s):  
Vittorio Gallese ◽  
Corrado Sinigaglia
Keyword(s):  
Social Cognition ◽  
Mirror Neurons ◽  
Common Ground ◽  
Mental Simulation ◽  
Action Execution ◽  
Brain Areas ◽  
Embodied Simulation ◽  
Distinctive Features ◽  
Macaque Monkeys

Mental simulation was claimed to provide a distinctive way of gaining knowledge about others’ actions and thoughts since the late 1980s. A decade later, the discovery of mirror neurons in macaque monkeys and the evidence of mirror brain areas in humans presented a new angle on this claim, suggesting also an embodied approach to simulation. The aim of the present chapter is to introduce and discuss this embodied approach and its role in basic social cognition. In doing this, we shall start by characterizing the distinctive features of embodied simulation (ES), especially in relation to its its motor aspects. Then, we shall provide evidence for the claim that ES may be critically involved in understanding others’ actions. Finally, we shall explore the conjecture that ES might involve a common ground for action execution and observation not only at the functional but also at the phenomenological level.

scholarly journals Transforming Confirmation Bias to Generate Critical Consciousness in News/Information Literacy and Social Science Courses

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
James H. Wittebols
Keyword(s):  
Information Literacy ◽  
Flipped Classroom ◽  
Critical Consciousness ◽  
Confirmation Bias ◽  
Social World ◽  
Literacy Education ◽  
The Self ◽  
Critical Education ◽  
Science Courses ◽  
The World

This paper synthesizes theory and research on confirmation bias (CB), curiosity, and news/information literacy education with the goal of understanding how helping students critique their tendency to engage in CB spurs curiosity and critical consciousness about learning. Curiosity about the self is spurred when people realize their CB tendencies. Curiosity about the larger social world is spurred when students learn how CB affects the way they look at the world. A flipped classroom approach reflects the work of Paulo Freire, who argued critical education should be experiential with faculty playing a facilitating, rather than an “expert” role.

Abstract Right: Natural Immediacy within the Matrices of Personhood

2018 ◽  
pp. 168-188
Author(s):  
Wes Furlotte
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Social World ◽  
Acting Out ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Opening Section

Chapter ten, therefore, examines the opening section of Hegel’s Rechtphilosophie, “Abstract Right,” in order develop a ‘preliminary sketch’ of the concepts of right and juridical personhood. The chapter historically contextualizes Hegel in relation to the mechanical deterministic conception of the individual (Hobbes) and abstract, though free, conceptions (Rousseau, Kant, Fichte). The chapter then moves to point out Hegel’s uniqueness in this context. Synthesizing Hobbesian and Fichtean standpoints, Hegel argues that the natural dimension of the individual (impulse, drive, and whim) is crucial to the genesis of actual freedom in the social world. Reconstructing Hegel’s analysis, the chapter shows that freedom is not undermined by acting out on one’s desires, impulses etc. but is brought into the world by these very drives. Although these drives are historically and socially conditioned they are, nevertheless, immediate and therefore constitutive of the basal level of juridical personhood. Thereby the chapter argues that a new sense of nature arises within Hegel’s political philosophy. The task, then, is to pursue what nature must mean within the fields constituting the socio-political.

The “tedious yammering of selves”: The End of Intimacy in Spike Jonze’s Her

2019 ◽  
pp. 176-192
Author(s):  
Richard Smith
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Social World ◽  
The Body ◽  
Career Trajectory ◽  
Feature Film ◽  
Sound Image ◽  
Body Experiences ◽  
Aesthetic Form ◽  
The World

Spike Jonze’s unusual career trajectory, from the outer edges of popular culture to the center of indiewood, has resulted in a distinctive body of work that spans several genres and forms. This chapter traces Jonze’s career to ground a stylistic reading of his fourth feature film, Her (2013). Presented in three parts—Jonze’s short works, Gilles Deleuze’s “implied dream” and the “sound-image,” the lonely social world of Her—the chapter argues that Jonze’s cinematic style is an elaboration of a very simple image of a body in motion. As his style develops the relation of body and world becomes more central and more uncertain. In Her, the world is replaced by media affect and the body experiences itself as an aesthetic form. Smith explores a terrain of loneliness that sits at the center of much of Jonze’s work.

Voices on the Page

I, the Poet ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 1-37
Author(s):  
Kathleen McCarthy
Keyword(s):  
Social World ◽  
First Person ◽  
Artistic Creation ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
The World

This introductory chapter provides an overview of first-person Latin poems. It begins by studying a poem by Gaius Valerius Catullus, which yokes together the world of the characters and the world of the reader by means of the first-person speaker, who is positioned as both a character in the storyworld and the author of the text. The chapter then seeks to describe how first-person Latin poems produce their distinctive charisma by intertwining social and literary communication. Central to the effects of such poems is the fact that one can see the poem's discourse as an artistic creation designed to communicate with readers who will have no other contact with the poet. Also central to their effects, however, is the fact that this orientation toward distant or future readers is almost never registered explicitly in the poem, which instead shows an image of face-to-face communication in an intimate social world that readers can never access.

The Credulity of Conspiracy Theorists

2018 ◽  
pp. 422-431
Author(s):  
Brian L. Keeley
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Inquiry ◽  
Scientific Method ◽  
Scientific Explanation ◽  
Social World ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Conspiracy Theories ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
Rational Inquiry

Where does entertaining (or promoting) conspiracy theories stand with respect to rational inquiry? According to one view, conspiracy theorists are open-minded skeptics, being careful not to accept uncritically common wisdom, exploring alternative explanations of events no matter how unlikely they might seem at first glance. Seen this way, they are akin to scientists attempting to explain the social world. On the other hand, they are also sometimes seen as overly credulous, believing everything they read on the Internet, say. In addition to conspiracy theorists and scientists, another significant form of explanation of the events of the world can be found in religious contexts, such as when a disaster is explained as being an “act of God.” By comparing conspiratorial thinking with scientific and religious forms of explanation, features of all three are brought into clearer focus. For example, anomalies and a commitment to naturalist explanation are seen as important elements of scientific explanation, although the details are less clear. This paper uses conspiracy theories as a lens through which to investigate rational or scientific inquiry. In addition, a better understanding of the scientific method as it might be applied in the study of events of interest to conspiracy theorists can help understand their epistemic virtues and vices.

scholarly journals Divinity, Noēsis, and Aristotelian Friendship

2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 01-29
Author(s):  
John A. Houston
Keyword(s):  
Human Life ◽  
Second Order ◽  
Other Minds ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Intellectual Activity ◽  
Human Community ◽  
Rational Nature ◽  
Living Together ◽  
The World ◽  
Virtuous Activity

Aristotle's NE X claim that the best human life is one devoted to contemplation (theoria) seems in tension with his emphasis elsewhere on our essentially political nature, and more specifically, his claim that friendship is necessary for our flourishing. For, if our good can be in principle realized apart from the human community, there seems little reason to suggest we 'need' friends, as he clearly does in NE VIII & IX. I argue that central to Aristotle's NE X discussion of contemplation is the claim that our chief good accords with whatever is 'most divine' in us, viz. our rational nature (NE 1177b2-18). Thus, the best human life involves the excellent exercise of our rational capacities. I distinguish two ways in which human beings flourish through exercising their rationality. The first is in the activity of theoria. The second, I argue, can be found in the virtuous activity of complete friendship (teleia philia). For Aristotle the truest form of friendship is an expression of rationality. It is characterized not merely by our living together, but conversing, and sharing one another's thoughts (NE 1170b12-14). Examining Aristotle's notion of a friend as 'another self (alios autos), I argue that through friendship human beings come to better know themselves and the world in which they live. Complete friendship involves a (uniquely human) second-order awareness of oneself in another, and through this awareness our understanding of ourselves and the world in which we live is enriched, confirmed, and enjoyed through the presence of other minds. Thus, the highest form of Aristotelian friendship is an intellectual activity through which we attain an analogue of the divine contemplation of the unmoved mover, thereby living with respect to what is most divine in us, but doing so in accordance with our uniquely rational-political nature.

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