Action, Perception and the Brain Adaptation and Cephalic Expression

Theories of brain evolution stress communication and sociality are essential to our capacity to represent objects as intersubjectively accessible. How did we grow as a species to be able to recognize objects as common, as that which can also be seen in much the same way by others? Such constitution of intersubjectively accessible objects is bound up with our flexible and sophisticated capacities for social cognition understanding others and their desires, intentions, emotions, and moods which are crucial to the way human beings live. This book is about contemporary philosophical and neuroscientific perspectives on the relation of action, perception, and cognition as it is lived in embodied and socially embedded experience. This emphasis on embodiment and embeddedness is a change from traditional theories, which focused on isolated, representational, and conceptual cognition. In the new perspectives contained in our book, such 'pure' cognition is thought to be under-girded and interpenetrated by embodied and embedded processes.

Preface Notes on Contributors Introduction The Slow Process: A Hypothetical Cognitive Adaptation for Distributed Cognitive Networks; M.Donald Social Cognition and Cortical Function: An Evolutionary Perspective; S.Shultz & R.I.M.Dunbar Homo Heuristicus and the Bias-Variance Dilemma; H.Brighton & G. Gigerenzer Action, Embodied Meaning, and Thought; M.Johnson Neo-Pragmatism and Enactive Intentionality; S.Gallagher & K.Miyahara Minds, Things, and Materiality; M.Wheeler Contributions of Mirror Mechanisms to the Embodiment of Cognition; A.M.Glenberg The Neural Systems Involved in Motor Cognition and Social Contact; S.Hétu & P.L.Jackson Action and Cephalic Expression: Hermeneutical Pragmatism; J.Schulkin & P.Heelan References Index

HENRY BRIGHTON Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Germany MERLIN DONALD Department of Psychology, Queens University, Canada ROBIN I.M.DUNBAR Department of Evolutionary Anthropology, Oxford University, UK SHAUN GALLAGHER Department of Philosophy, University of South Florida, USA GERD GIGERENZER Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Germany ARTHUR M.GLENBERG Department of Psychology, University of Wisconsin, USA PATRICK HEELAN Department of Philosophy, Georgetown University, USA SÉBASTIEN HÉTU Department of Psychology, University of Laval, Canada PHILIP L.JACKSON Department of Psychology, University of Chicago, USA MARK JOHNSON Department of Philosophy, University of Oregon, USA KATSUNORI MIYAHARA Department of Philosophy, University of South Florida, USA SUSANNE SHULTZ Department of Evolutionary Anthropology, Oxford University, UK MICHAEL WHEELER Department of Philosophy, University of Stirling, UK