4 INTRODUCTION
from the brain, the embrained subject is not fully “decapitated” (E. Wilson
2004). In neurocognitive science and philosophy of mind, for example,
theories of embodied, situated cognition see the brain/mind in relation
to the body as a whole and as modified by its environment. Neurocognitive
theories of emotion argue that the body is a mediator and repository of
memory and emotional valence. Through “somatic markings” (Damasio
1994, 1996) and “embodied appraisals” (Prinz 2004), the sensory and feel-
ing body participates in the generation of meaningful experience. In the
theory of extended cognition (Clark 2001, 2008b), grounded in research on
brain – machine interfaces and prosthetics, the brain adapts and transforms
through pragmatic bodily activity in the environment, leading to multiple
brain/body/world assemblages. In the neuroscientific research on mirror
neurons the brain is depicted as inherently social, crossing the boundary
of the individual through neural processes that simulate the other, as well
as through motor schema that some propose to be collectively shared by
conspecifics.^6 These accounts have been hugely influential among social
theorists because, to varying degrees, they are seen to challenge biological
determinism and reductionism while accounting for the bodily materiality
of mind and experience.
The focus on embodiment also enables an ethical appeal, potentially ad-
dressing issues of human suffering or emphasizing the mutual interdepen-
dence and vulnerability of persons. For example, “a biological perspective
on social relations may help us to relate to people as complex living systems
influenced by other systems, rather than as disembodied Cartesian ‘minds’
cut off from the world. Perhaps this perspective gives a firmer empathetic
basis to connect with each other through our shared embodiment, with all^
that this means in terms of susceptibility to pain, hunger, stress, loss, mor-
tality, illness and joy” (Rowson 2011). By attending to the physical, neuro-
biological body, the argument goes, we can grasp a richer sense of persons,
their interconnectedness with others, and their embeddedness in the envi-
ronment. As I discuss later, the literature on embodiment in neuroscience
and naturalized philosophy even resonates to some degree with feminist
epistemologies, which argue for the significance of emotions and the “situ-
atedness” of the mind in the body and world. (There are also, I will argue,
instructive differences between and within these literatures.)
The social brain, in sum, is equated with mind and self, is understood