CFP: Debates on Embodied Social Cognition

PHENOMENOLOGY AND THE COGNITIVE SCIENCES

CALL FOR PAPERS

SPECIAL ISSUE: DEBATES ON EMBODIED SOCIAL COGNITION

SPECIAL EDITOR: SHANNON SPAULDING

Rationale:
Embodied Cognition (EC) is a research program that challenges the basic tenets of Cognitivism, the standard position in philosophy of mind and psychology. EC rejects the view that cognition consists in computational, representational symbol manipulation. EC’s account of cognition emphasizes the embodiment of organisms as opposed to abstract symbol manipulation. Of particular interest here is the domain of social cognition, our ability to understand and interact with others. EC accounts of social cognition aim to explicate how our embodiment shapes our knowledge of others, and in what this knowledge of others consists. Although numerous diverse accounts fly under the EC banner, common to these accounts is the idea that our normal everyday interactions consist in non-mentalistic embodied engagements.

In recent years, several EC theorists have developed and defended innovative and controversial accounts of social cognition. These accounts challenge, and offer deflationary alternatives to, the standard cognitivist accounts of social cognition. As embodied social cognition accounts grow in number and prominence, the time has come for a dedicated, sustained debate on the contentious elements of EC accounts of social cognition.

The goal of this special issue is to host such a debate with the aim of bringing clarity to the discussion of social cognition. We welcome papers that explicate and evaluate embodied cognition’s innovative and controversial claims about social cognition. Topics of interest include (but are not limited to) phenomenology-inspired accounts of social cognition, non-mentalistic accounts of intersubjectivity, the role of narratives in coming to understand others, and the claim that natural language is necessary for thinking about others’ mental states. We encourage both critical and favorable papers on any of the above topics, or other related topics.

All submissions should be made directly to the journal's online submission website at www.editorialmanager.com/phen.   Authors will be asked to indicate type of submission; they should indicate Special Issue – Embodied Social Cognition
   
Practical information:

•    Word limit: 8,000 words (about 25 doubled-spaced pages)
•    Deadline for submissions: March 1, 2011
•    Publication: early 2012