Cognitive neuroscience of social sensibility

Jay Schulkin

pp. 315-322

in: Babette Babich (ed), Hermeneutic philosophy of science, van Gogh's eyes, and God, Berlin, Springer, 2002

Abstract

The perception of beliefs and desires to others is a piece of cognitive and personal adaptation and a bodily event.¹ We explore the world, replete with intentional cognition² through bodily sensibility anchored to an external world of well-established practices.³ As Merleau-Ponty stated, "our body is not in space like things, it inhabits or haunts space. It applies itself to space like a hand to an instrument..."⁴ Moreover, in the everyday world of sensibility, cognition is not necessarily an alienating event. Theories pervade our interactions thereby facilitating interpersonal exchange.⁵ But the mind is only one part of the story; the other is the pervasive social structure. Both function in the context of the perception of each other.⁶

Cited authors

Merleau-Ponty Maurice