Shaun Gallagher presents a ground-breaking interdisciplinary account of human action, bringing out its essentially social dimension. He explores and synthesizes the different approaches of action theory, social cognition, and critical social theory. He shows that in order to understand human agency and the aspects of mind that are associated with it, we need to grasp the crucial role of context or circumstance in action, and the normative constraints of social and cultural practices. He also investigates issues concerning social cognition and embodied intersubjective interaction, including direct social perception and the role of narrative and communicative practices from an interdisciplinary perspective. Gallagher thereby brings together embodied and enactive approaches to action for the first time in this book and, in developing an alternative to standard conceptions of understanding others, he bridges social cognition and critical social theory, drawing out the implications for recognition, autonomy, and justice.

Shaun Gallagher is the Lillian and Morrie Moss Professor of Excellence in Philosophy at the University of Memphis, and Professorial Fellow at the University of Wollongong. He has held visiting positions in Cambridge, Copenhagen, Paris, Lyon, Berlin, Oxford, and Rome. His research areas include phenomenology and philosophy of mind, embodied cognition, theories of self, intersubjectivity, and social cognition. Gallagher held the Humboldt Foundation's Anneliese Maier Research Award (2012-18). He is a founding editor and co-editor-in-chief of the journal Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences. His previous publications include How the Body Shapes the Mind (Oxford 2005), The Phenomenological Mind (Routledge 2012), and Enactivist Interventions: Rethinking the Mind (Oxford 2017).