Mind, Body, World- Foundations of Cognitive Science, 2013a

Importantly, the combination of the mirror system and simulation theory
implies that the “mental shoes” involved in mind reading are not symbolic representations.
They are instead motor representations; they are actions-on-objects as
instantiated by the mirror system. This has huge implications for theories of social
interactions, minds, and selves:
Few great social philosophers of the past would have thought that social understanding
had anything to do with the pre-motor cortex, and that ‘motor ideas’
would play such a central role in the emergence of social understanding. Who could
have expected that shared thought would depend upon shared ‘motor representations’?
(Metzinger, 2009, p. 171)
If motor representations are the basis of social interactions, then simulation theory
becomes an account of mind reading that stands as a reaction against classical, representational
theories. Mirror neuron explanations of simulation theory replace
sense-think-act cycles with sense-act reflexes in much the same way as was the case
in behaviour-based robotics. Such a revolutionary position is becoming commonplace
for neuroscientists who study the mirror system (Metzinger, 2009).
Neuroscientist Vittorio Gallese, one of the discoverers of mirror neurons, provides
an example of this radical position:
Social cognition is not only social metacognition, that is, explicitly thinking about
the contents of some else’s mind by means of abstract representations. We can certainly
explain the behavior of others by using our complex and sophisticated mentalizing
ability. My point is that most of the time in our daily social interactions, we
do not need to do this. We have a much more direct access to the experiential world
of the other. This dimension of social cognition is embodied, in that it mediates
between our multimodal experiential knowledge of our own lived body and the way
we experience others. (Metzinger, 2009, p. 177)
Cartesian philosophy was based upon an extraordinary act of skepticism (Descartes,
1996). In his search for truth, Descartes believed that he could not rely on his knowledge
of the world, or even of his own body, because such knowledge could be illusory.
I shall think that the sky, the air, the earth, colors, shapes, sounds, and all external
things are merely the delusions of dreams which he [a malicious demon] has
devised to ensnare my judgment. I shall consider myself as not having hands or
eyes, or flesh, or blood or senses, but as falsely believing that I have all these things.
(Descartes, 1996, p. 23)
The disembodied Cartesian mind is founded on the myth of the external world.
Embodied theories of mind invert Cartesian skepticism. The body and the
world are taken as fundamental; it is the mind or the holistic self that has become
the myth. However, some have argued that our notion of a holistic internal self
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