Abstract
The aim of social sciences is to understand human behavior (Taylor 1985). Whether setting out to explain an institution like marriage, an organization like a political party or a practice such as cheerleading in sport, the starting point is always the same: to understand the significance of such phenomena for the individual and how, beginning from a single action, they have been generated or could be generated through the aggregation or interaction of multiple actions.
This chapter is a new version of: Viale, R. (2009). Neurosociology, mindreading, and mindfeeling: how the social scientist explains social action. In M. Cherkaoui & P. Hamilton (Eds.), Raymond boudon: A life in sociology. Oxford: Bardwell Press. With kind permission from the Publishers; Viale, R. (2011). Brain reading social action. International Journal of Economics, Springer-Verlag. DOI: 10.1007/s12232-011-0130-0; Viale, R. Cognizione sociale e neuroni specchio. Sistemi Intelligenti, n. 2, (in corso di pubblicazione).
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Notes
- 1.
This paper uses the term understanding (Verstehen) as a synonym for explanation (Erklären) without claiming the necessity and universality typical of the analytical and neopositivist tradition (Von Wright 1971).
- 2.
The paper distinguishes between empathy (Einfühlung), a psychological process of identification with the subject’s mental states, and understanding (Verstehen), the ability to determine, through analysis of the context and empathy, the reasons that led the subject to act in a certain manner. Another German term exists, Erlebnis (sympathetic repetition of the experience); this refers more specifically to the simulation of propositional attitudes, while empathy is a more appropriate term for simulation of emotions and feelings. Another way to separate the emotional from the cognitive identification is to characterize cognitive empathy and emotional empathy. In the first the identification and simulation is about propositional attitudes whereas in the second the identification and simulation is about emotions and feelings.
- 3.
This distinction is not acceptable to advocates of Theory Theory (Gopnik and Meltzoff 1997) and others who maintain that the layman and the scientist employ the same type of deductive hypothetical activity to build theories about the world.
- 4.
This epistemic and cognitive asymmetry has nothing to do with Hempel and Popper’s philosophy of science thesis on the symmetry between explanation and prediction in both natural and social science (Hempel 1965). Epistemic asymmetry relates to context of discovery, while the asymmetry between prediction and explanation postulated by philosophy of science relates to context of justification, according to Popper and neopositivist stance.
- 5.
As Elisabeth Anscombe maintains (Anscombe 1957), this minimal pragmatic rationality principle could take us back to Aristotle’s practical syllogism, described in the Nicomachean Ethics: the starting point, or major premise, of the syllogism refers to a goal, or the purpose of an action; the minor premise links an action with this goal, more or less with a means-end relationship; the conclusion is the use of the means to achieve the end.
- 6.
This claim differentiates the hermeneutic approach from the mindreading of everyday life. Contrary to Geertz claim in everyday life people tend to predict often the third person behaviours. The theory of mind is used for mindreading in order, mainly, to make predictions more than retrodictions of third person action.
- 7.
The application of neuroscience of mindreading might be both in analyzing the social behavior (neurosociology) and in analyzing the behavior of the social scientist studying the social behavior (neuromethodology of social sciences). Data and reflections of this chapter have been applied both to neurosociology and to neuromethodology of social sciences.
- 8.
Unlike the empirical law that refers to terms and concepts denoting empirically observable or measurable entities, the theory refers to theoretical entities that may be empirically controlled not directly, but indirectly through experimental bridge laws.
- 9.
Despite the prevalence of the hybrid model in these situations, a sizeable degree of attribution ability continues to be associated with automatic empathetic simulation. Take, for example the importance of emotional factors in business negotiations (Neale and Bazerman 1991). Researchers studying these phenomena will be dealing not only with intentional non-automatic mindreading, but also with emotional and intentional automatic mindreading, or mirroring.
- 10.
Some, but not all: as Sperber points out (2005), there are many forms of social cognition that do not involve mindreading.
- 11.
There is evidence that also cerebellum is involved in inferring other’s people intentions from their actions. It monitors the correspondence between intended and achieved states (Blakemore and Decety 2001).
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Viale, R. (2012). Brain, Mind and Social Action. In: Methodological Cognitivism. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-24743-9_5
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