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I Feel Your Pain: Embodied Knowledges and Situated Neurons

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 March 2020

Victoria Pitts‐Taylor
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Abstract

The widely touted discovery of mirror neurons has generated intense scientific interest in the neurobiology of intersubjectivity. Social neuroscientists have claimed that mirror neurons, located in brain regions associated with motor action, facial recognition, and somatosensory processing, allow us to automatically grasp other people's intentions and emotions. Despite controversies, mirror neuron research is animating materialist, affective, and embodied accounts of intersubjectivity. My view is that mirror neurons raise issues that are directly relevant to feminism and cultural studies, but interventions are needed for the work to be compatible with nonreductionist critical thought. In this article I critique the dominant neuroscientific account of mirror neurons, called embodied simulation theory. I draw from feminist epistemologies as well as alternative interpretations of mirror neurons in cognitive science and philosophy of mind to consider mirroring as situated, embodied perception.

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Open Issue Content
Information
Hypatia , Volume 28 , Issue 4 , Fall 2013 , pp. 852 - 869
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Copyright © 2013 by Hypatia, Inc.

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Footnotes

Please see the online version of this article for supplementary notes. These offer more expansive discussion of many of the points made here.

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