Naturalizing the Tacit

The key question for attempts at applying neuroscience results to social topics is finding neural correlates: what is the relation between ordinary social and social science concepts and their physical realizations in brain processes? Answering this question depends on what is available on each side to match. In the earlier period, sociologists and social theorists were concerned with issues raised by Darwin and animal studies of cooperation. The standard social science model, in contrast, used a presupposition-like notion of culture which has poor brain matches. The theoretical ideas of this earlier generation, including Franklin Giddings on consciousness of kind, C.H. Cooley on the looking-glass self, Max Weber on empathy, and the pervasive concern with imitation (Tarde, Baldwin) as well as interest in the child’s socialization, all prove to be better matches to current neuroscience. There are, however, many puzzles about this matching process which arise in part from the discrepancy between brain data and subjective experience, a problem that may be more important for social theory than it is in other domains and more difficult to solve. One issue bears on phenomenology: the evidence that the gap between bodily and brain processes and consciousness itself is large and can be produced by tacit social learning.