A Social Enactive Theory of Perception: Perceptual Practices, Direct Perception, and a World of Aspects

This book offers a social theory of perception in which our natural capacities are shaped by socially situated practices of interaction with perceptible material and shape our perception about other persons, among other things. Bringing social philosophy together with philosophy of mind and taking the next step in enactivist philosophy, this theory accounts for the social aspects of everyday experience. With influences from Wittgensteinian pragmatism, phenomenology, and analytic philosophy of perception, as well as engagement with social psychology, social cognition studies, and work in neuroscience, A Social Enactive Theory of Perception synthesizes different layers at work in perception, with a particular focus on non-visual senses. By addressing perceptual practices, perceptual perspectives, and the perspectives of others, it sheds light on the role of perception in the economy of social identities and thus links the individual with the social in a constitutive way.