Embodiment, Enaction, and Culture

Description

The first interdisciplinary investigation of the cultural context of enactive embodiment, offering perspectives that range from the neurophilosophical to the anthropological.

Recent accounts of cognition attempt to overcome the limitations of traditional cognitive science by reconceiving cognition as enactive and the cognizer as an embodied being who is embedded in biological, psychological, and cultural contexts. Cultural forms of sense-making constitute the shared world, which in turn is the origin and place of cognition. This volume is the first interdisciplinary collection on the cultural context of embodiment, offering perspectives that range from the neurophilosophical to the anthropological.

The book brings together new contributions by some of the most renowned scholars in the field and the latest results from up-and-coming researchers. The contributors explore conceptual foundations, drawing on work by Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, and Sartre, and respond to recent critiques. They consider whether there is something in the self that precedes intersubjectivity and inquire into the relation between culture and consciousness, the nature of shared meaning and social understanding, the social dimension of shame, and the nature of joint affordances. They apply the notion of radical enactive cognition to evolutionary anthropology, and examine the concept of the body in relation to culture in light of studies in such fields as phenomenology, cognitive neuroscience, psychology, and psychopathology. Through such investigations, the book breaks ground for the study of the interplay of embodiment, enaction, and culture.

Contributors
Mark Bickhard, Ingar Brinck, Anna Ciaunica, Hanne De Jaegher, Nicolas de Warren, Ezequiel Di Paolo, Christoph Durt, John Z. Elias, Joerg Fingerhut, Aikaterini Fotopoulou, Thomas Fuchs, Shaun Gallagher, Vittorio Gallese, Duilio Garofoli, Katrin Heimann, Peter Henningsen, Daniel D. Hutto, Laurence J. Kirmayer, Alba Montes Sánchez, Dermot Moran, Maxwell J. D. Ramstead, Matthew Ratcliffe, Vasudevi Reddy, Zuzanna Rucińska, Alessandro Salice, Glenda Satne, Heribert Sattel, Christian Tewes, Dan ZahaviIntroduction: The Interplay of Embodiment, Enaction, and Culture 1
Christian Tewes, Christoph Durt, and Thomas Fuchs
I Phenomenological and Enactive Accounts of the Constitution of Culture 23
1 Intercorporeality and Intersubjectivity: A Phenomenological Exploration of Embodiment 25 Dermot Moran
2 We Are, Therefore I Am—I Am, Therefore We Are: The Third in Sartre’s Social Ontology 47
Nicolas de Warren
3 Consciousness, Culture, and Significance 65
Christoph Durt
4 Neither Individualistic nor Interactionist 87
Ezequiel Di Paolo and Hanne De Jaegher
5 Continuity Skepticism in Doubt: A Radically Enactive Take 107
Daniel D. Hutto and Glenda Satne
II Intersubjectivity, Selfhood, and Persons 129
6 The Primacy of the “We”? 131
Ingar Brinck, Vasudevi Reddy, and Dan Zahavi
7 Selfhood, Schizophrenia, and the Interpersonal Regulation of Experience 149
Matthew Ratcliffe
8 The Touched Self: Psychological and Philosophical Perspectives on Proximal Intersubjectivity and the Self 173
Anna Ciaunica and Aikaterini Fotopoulou
9 Thin, Thinner, Thinnest: Defining the Minimal Self 193
Dan Zahavi
10 The Emergence of Persons 201
Mark H. Bickhard
III Cultural Affordances and Social Understanding 215
11 The Significance and Meaning of Others 217
Shaun Gallagher
12 Feeling Ashamed of Myself Because of You 229
Alba Montes Sánchez and Alessandro Salice
13 The Extent of Our Abilities: The Presence, Salience, and Sociality of Affordances 245
John Z. Elias
14 The Role of Affordances in Pretend Play 257
Zuzanna Ruci ńska
15 Ornamental Feathers without Mentalism: A Radical Enactive View on Neanderthal Body Adornment 279
Duilio Garofoli
IV Embodiment and Its Cultural Significance 307
16 Neoteny and Social Cognition: A Neuroscientific Perspective on Embodiment 309
Vittorio Gallese
17 Collective Body Memories 333 Thomas Fuchs
18 Movies and the Mind: On Our Filmic Body 353
Joerg Fingerhut and Katrin Heimann
19 Painful Bodies at Work: Stress and Culture? 379
Peter Henningsen and Heribert Sattel
20 Embodiment and Enactment in Cultural Psychiatry 397
Laurence J. Kirmayer and Maxwell J. D. Ramstead
Contributors 423
Index 425Christoph Durt is Marie Skłodowska Curie Researcher at the University of Vienna.

Thomas Fuchs is Karl Jaspers Professor of Philosophy and Psychiatry at the University of Heidelberg.

Christian Tewes is a project manager and coordinator of the research group Embodiment as a Paradigm of Evolutionary Anthropology at the University of Heidelberg.US

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