Lo specchio della trasparenza. La metafora come strumento concettuale tra scienza e cultura e il caso dei neuroni specchio

The author examines the visual-motor hypothesis of the ‘mirror neuron mechanisms’, and highlights how the term ‘mirror’ is metaphorically used in this field to account for an instantaneous and evident understanding of the action performed by the others. By contrast, by the analysis of the ‘culture of the mirror’– focused on the crossover between philosophy, literature and psychology – ‘understanding the other’ is shown as non-linear, discontinuous and controversial. In the analysis of the ‘metaphor of the mirror’, as an ordinary and cultural object, examples of the process of understanding the other can be found outlined in their complexity, which seemed to have been eluded in the neuroscientific account.