Philosophy and Research
Gallagher's research covers a number of fields, including phenomenology, philosophy of mind, cognitive science, and hermeneutics, especially the topics of embodied cognition and intersubjectivity. In How the Body Shapes the Mind (2005), and more recent work, he draws from phenomenology and empirical cognitive sciences, to provide a detailed account of embodied cognition, developing distinctions between body image and body schema, the sense of agency and sense of ownership. In this work he explores philosophical implications of embodied cognition with respect to topics such as perception, social cognition, agency, and free will. He also develops a critique of current standard theories of social cognition (including 'theory theory' and 'simulation theory') and develops an approach (termed 'interaction theory') which emphasizes embodied interaction. Interaction theory draws on developmental studies, social psychology, neuroscience and narrative theory to develop an integrated theory that recognizes the importance of bodily movements, gesture, facial expression, action, and communicative and narrative practices for understanding other persons.
Read more about this topic: Shaun Gallagher
Famous quotes containing the words philosophy and/or research:
“A life-worshipper’s philosophy is comprehensive.... He is at one moment a positivist and at another a mystic: now haunted by the thought of death ... and now a Dionysian child of nature; now a pessimist and now, with a change of lover or liver or even the weather, an exuberant believer that God’s in his heaven and all’s right with the world.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)
“... research is never completed ... Around the corner lurks another possibility of interview, another book to read, a courthouse to explore, a document to verify.”
—Catherine Drinker Bowen (1897–1973)