TY - JOUR
T1 - Homuncular mirrors
T2 - Misunderstanding causality in embodied cognition
AU - Mikulan, Ezequiel P.
AU - Reynaldo, Lucila
AU - Ibáñez, Agustín
PY - 2014/5/13
Y1 - 2014/5/13
N2 - Emerging theories on embodied cognition have caused high expectations, ambitious promises, and strong controversies. Several criticisms have been explained elsewhere (Mahon and Caramazza, 2008; Cardona et al., 2014) and will not be discussed further here. In this paper, we will focus on a specific explanatory strategy frequently assessed by the radical embodied cognition approaches: the use of homuncular explanations for the explicit (or implicit) attribution of causal roles in the comprehension of language understanding. We first present this criticism regarding a prototypical example: the mirror neuron system (MNS) (Rizzolatti and Craighero, 2004; Iacoboni and Dapretto, 2006) in the field of language understanding and then extend our conclusions to other programs of embodied cognition. Here we discuss the radical claims that propose the MNS as the putative mechanism for multiple cognitive and social psychology constructs (e.g., Gallese, 2008; Cattaneo and Rizzolatti, 2009; Iacoboni, 2009) and the critical role of the MNS in language understanding (Heyes, 2010a; Hickok, 2013).
AB - Emerging theories on embodied cognition have caused high expectations, ambitious promises, and strong controversies. Several criticisms have been explained elsewhere (Mahon and Caramazza, 2008; Cardona et al., 2014) and will not be discussed further here. In this paper, we will focus on a specific explanatory strategy frequently assessed by the radical embodied cognition approaches: the use of homuncular explanations for the explicit (or implicit) attribution of causal roles in the comprehension of language understanding. We first present this criticism regarding a prototypical example: the mirror neuron system (MNS) (Rizzolatti and Craighero, 2004; Iacoboni and Dapretto, 2006) in the field of language understanding and then extend our conclusions to other programs of embodied cognition. Here we discuss the radical claims that propose the MNS as the putative mechanism for multiple cognitive and social psychology constructs (e.g., Gallese, 2008; Cattaneo and Rizzolatti, 2009; Iacoboni, 2009) and the critical role of the MNS in language understanding (Heyes, 2010a; Hickok, 2013).
KW - Causality
KW - Embodied cognition
KW - Language understanding
KW - Mirror neuron system
KW - Networks
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84901338128&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.3389/fnhum.2014.00299
DO - 10.3389/fnhum.2014.00299
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84901338128
SN - 1662-5161
VL - 8
JO - Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
JF - Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
IS - MAY
M1 - 299
ER -