Corpo non mente. Le neuroscienze cognitive e la genesi di soggettività ed intersoggettività

Journal title EDUCAZIONE SENTIMENTALE
Author/s Vittorio Gallese
Publishing Year 2013 Issue 2013/20
Language Italian Pages 17 P. 8-24 File size 671 KB
DOI 10.3280/EDS2013-020002
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Body doesn’t lie. Cognitive neuroscience and the genesis of subjectivity and intersubjectivity. In this article I address the topics of subjectivity and intersubjectivity from an embodied perspective. Moving from a sub-personal neuroscientific description of the human pragmatic relation with the world, I delineate a path enabling the foundation of human subjectivity and intersubjectivity on humans’ biological nature. The discovery of mirror neurons suggests a new empirically based notion of intersubjectivity, first and foremost conceived of as intercorporeality. The functional architecture of embodied simulation seems to constitute a basic feature of our brain, enabling our intersubjective experiences, being at the basis of our capacity to empathize with others. I posit that embodied simulation can naturalize the notion of paradigm, thus naturalizing one of the processes enabling language reflexivity, which in turn "creates" the human. Finally, I discuss the hypothesis that embodied simulation through its modulations, once "liberated", might generate the different levels characterizing the way we conceive of reality, like in the case of artistic and non artistic fictional narratives.

Keywords: Art, embodied simulation, empathy, intersubjectivity, language, mirror neurons, paradigm, subjectivity.

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Vittorio Gallese, Corpo non mente. Le neuroscienze cognitive e la genesi di soggettività ed intersoggettività in "EDUCAZIONE SENTIMENTALE" 20/2013, pp 8-24, DOI: 10.3280/EDS2013-020002