148 NOTES TO CHAPTER 3
thetic experiences, they depict neurobiology as the basic, fundamental, and uni-
versal architect of aesthetic experience that is indifferent to the mediating effects
of culture. In Gallese and Freedberg’s view, “historical and cultural or contextual
factors do not contradict the importance of considering the neural processes
that arise in the empathetic understanding of visual works of art” (2007, 202).
But perhaps this strategy allows neurobiological research to proceed in isola-
tion from social and cultural analysis, even while it claims authority on cultural
matters. It also affirms a biological version of what Pierre Bourdieu calls a “pure
gaze,” a naive perception that is uninflected by the social position of the per-
ceiver. By contrast, Bourdieu insists that perception of the aesthetic is generated
in a social field: “This historical culture functions as a principle of pertinence
which enables one to identify, among the elements offered to the gaze, all the dis-
tinctive features and only these, by referring them, consciously or unconsciously,
to the universe of possible alternatives” (1984, 4).
8 For the response, see Gallese and Sinigaglia 2014.
9 Seeing itself is a social phenomenon. Attention to the physiology of visual per-
ception contests its independence from sociality. Anne Jaap Jacobson (2012)
describes how vision involves the binding of elements from early vision, such
as color and shape, as well as amodal completion, or the consolidation of “short
takes,” to produce selective versions of visual imagery. Vision also requires the
transition from saccades to objects, which is potentially modulated by attention,
which can vary according to interest or expectation, positive and negative va-
lences, and action- relevant factors. Further, visual schemas are elaborated by a
learned ability to classify objects and grasp the predictability of their persistence
as kinds, conceptualizations based on learned information and social data, and
activities of adding- in or filling gaps in what we see; these may depend on vari-
ous resources such as proprioception, memory, cultural conventions, and other
sensory data. Jacobson argues that the need to bind, complete, and bridge gaps in
visual input shows how the “community is involved in an individual’s knowledge
all the way down” (219).
10 Other studies enact mirroring differentially based on the subject position of the
observer (such as economic or gender status), learned attributes of the observed
(such as their likability), and the appraisal of a situation (Hein and Singer 2008;
Singer et al. 2006; Singer and Lamm 2009).
11 The situatedness of mirroring — its material- discursive specificity — ultimately
strains its equivalence with simulation. Other models argue that instead of in-
dependently achieving simulation, mirror neurons are participants in broader,
multimodal processes such as enactive perception (Gallagher 2007; Gallagher
and Zahavi 2008; Slaby 2013). Enactive perception, as Gallagher describes it, is
an automatic bodily register, but it is skillful; that is, it is developed through the
experience of directly engaging and interacting with others. Using an interac-
tionist framework, Jan Slaby argues that mirroring alone does not amount to
intersubjective understanding; instead, mirroring is part of a broader event of