Social Theory as a Cognitive Neuroscience

Datos Bibliográficos

ID2397773
AutoresStephen Turner (0000-0002-7538-0533, University of South Florida, Tampa, USA,, autor de correspondencia)
Año2007
Volumen10
Número3
Páginas357-374
Fecha de publicación2007-08-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaEuropean Journal of Social Theory (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 1368-4310 • E-ISSN: 1461-7137
EditorialSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/1368431007080700
OpenAlexW1977883914
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas36
Referencias citadas30

In the nineteenth century, there was substantial and sophisticated interest in neuroscience on the part of social theorists, including Comte and Spencer, and later Simon Patten and Charles Ellwood. This body of thinking faced a dead end: it could do little more than identify highly general mechanisms, and could not provide accounts of such questions as 'why was there no proletarian revolution?' Psychologically dubious explanations, relying on neo-Kantian views of the mind, replaced them. With the rise of neuroscience, however, some of the problems of concern to earlier thinkers, such as imitation, have revived because of the discovery of neuronal mechanisms, or through fMRI studies. The article reviews the history and discusses the implications of current work for the reconsideration of traditional social theory concepts. It is suggested that certain kinds of bridging work with neuroscience would enable us to answer many questions in social theory that empirical sociology has failed to answer

Cognition · Cognitive science · Cultural neuroscience · Epistemology · Imitation · Proletariat · Social cognition · Social neuroscience · Sociology · Action Observation and Synchronization · Cognitive Neuroscience · Contemporary Sociological Theory and Practice · Neuroscience · Philosophy · Psychology · Social and Cultural Dynamics