“Somogy Varga offers a clear and practical account of the complex ways our bodies can shape and scaffold thought and feeling. Detailed treatments of emotion regulation and of altered bodily experience anchor his rich and empirically grounded pluralist approach. It is because our mental life depends so heavily on bodily movement and on interaction with other people, Varga shows, that we are vulnerable to certain kinds of disruption or psychopathology. This book builds from a detailed critical primer on recent theories of the mechanisms and metaphysics of mind to develop suggestive new points of view on depression and autism. It makes important contributions in both philosophy and mental health.”
John Sutton, Professor of Philosophy, Macquarie University, Sydney
“In this impressively clear and persuasively argued book, Somogy Varga expertly propels the embodied mind into new and fertile territory. His trailblazing analysis of mental disorders as disruptions in embodied interactions with the environment is a rich source of insights that will be highly valued by philosophers of mind, cognitive scientists, and theoretically minded mental health professionals.”
Michael Wheeler, Professor of Philosophy, University of Stirling, UK
“In his excellent new book, Somogy Varga develops and explores the active scaffolding framework for reconsidering how embodiment can help us to understand mental disorders. He applies the framework to a range of empirical cases and shows how an embodied and extended framework can be applied fruitfully to them. The book is sure to generate debate and interest.”
Richard Menary, Professor of Philosophy, Macquarie University, Sydney
“Somogy Varga has written an agenda-setting work that, ingeniously and effectively, unites the study of the embodied mind with the study of the disordered mind. This is essential reading for anyone interested in the mind and its pathologies, and will closely shape future discussion.”
Mark Rowlands, Professor of Philosophy, University of Miami
