THE MULTIPLICITY OF EMBODIMENT 125social essence or neural identity. Rather, it is materially and discursively
performative, gaining self- identity only in its contextualized, repeated ex-
pressions of difference, which are not independent of, but affected by, their
scientific observation.
Plasticity, then, is not precisely equivalent to becoming. Similarly, “em-
bodied” does not necessarily mean situated, in the feminist understanding
of the term at least. The embodiment of cognition allows the mind to be
understood physically and materially without reducing it to neurons alone.
In the embodied mind theories I address, embodiment refers variously to
the significance of emotion and feeling, the dependence of the brain on the
rest of the body and its practical entanglements in the world, and the ac-
tive character of perception and thought. This literature is understandably
praised for contesting neuroreductionism and for opening up the brain-
mind to the vagaries of the body. In naturalized philosophy, however, ac-
counting for embodied cognition can entail a hunt for physical universals,
on the one hand, or singular epistemic outcomes, on the other. To the ques-
tion, What difference do differences in bodies and embodiments make?, the
answer can effectively be none at all. I argue that this answer holds only for
cognition that is generic, ideal, and normative. If, however, embodiment
involves particular social locations, specific histories, differing personal
and collective vulnerabilities, and varying and shifting capacities, then
the outcomes of embodied cognition must be multiple. There is no singu-
lar embodied mind, then, but only embodied minds. Such heterogeneity,
however, cannot be reduced to categories of the subject (or to discursive
differences). Nor can it be described as residing solely in biology (reduced
to morphological or brain differences). Drawing from Clark’s extended cog-
nition thesis, Haraway’s idea of situated knowledge, and Garland- Thomson’s
notion of disability as mis/fitting, I argue for an assemblage model of the
embodied mind to address the differences embodi ment might conceivably
make.
The idea that embodied minds differ and conflict also informs my read-
ing of mirror neuron research, where the ability of neurons to mirror or
simulate another’s actions and emotions allows the brain to be innately
social and intersubjective. On the view of embodied simulation theorists,
this inherently social capacity is responsible for theory of mind and empa-