I FEEL YOUR PAIN 73patterns are thought to generate an experience in one’s own body of what
another is feeling or doing.
Because of the neurons’ ostensible role in action understanding and em-
pathy, proponents of a strong view of mirroring argue that it provides the
neural basis of intersubjectivity (Gallese 2009, 2014; Gallese et al. 2004;
Gallese and Lakoff 2005; Iacoboni 2009, 2011). But critics complain that
the empirical evidence for links between mirror neurons and meaning-
ful intersubjective understanding are weak (Caramazza et al. 2014; Green
2009; Heyes 2010a, 2010b; Hickok 2009, 2014; Jacob 2009; Leys 2011, 2012;
Saxe 2009; Wahman 2008), and they worry about extreme reductionism.
As Cecilia Heyes warns, “mirror neurons are at risk of being viewed as
atoms — primitive entities whose very existence explains a range of cogni-
tive and behavioural phenomena” (2010a, 789). The embodied simulation
model of mirroring, which was adopted early on by Gallese and his collab-
orators and is by far the most influential account, has generated some of
the most expansive (and reductionist) claims about mirror neurons. The
model draws from a particular tradition in philosophy of mind and a ver-
sion of embodied realism to depict mirroring as a set of automatic and
possibly hardwired processes, which are responsible for a set of basic social
functions and also play a role in more complex ones. I describe some of
the details below; later I argue that Gallese naturalizes a conservative view
of somatic sociality, one that ignores conflict and empathic failure in ev-
eryday life.
Mind Reading without Words
How do I know what another person intends to do? To hypothesize the
functions of mirror neurons, Gallese and others draw from debates in phi-
losophy and psychology over theory of mind or mind reading, the ability
of one person to understand the perspective of another without explicit
communication. In other words, how one can know what another person
is feeling or intends to do? On the classical cognitive view, mind reading
is a higher- order process of intentionalist cognition. It is executed through
the mental application of behavioral principles or folk theories about how
other people think and feel to third- person observation. (Thus this expla-
nation is called “theory theory.”) For example, I know that the man I see