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Chapter 2 examines the resonance between feminism and naturalized (and neuro-) philosophy in theories of the embodied mind. Both literatures challenge dominant accounts of neurocognition as disembodied and abstract, and draw from pragmatist and phenomenological ideas of engaged, practical experience as the basis for perception and knowledge. By insisting upon the epistemic significance of embodiment, they each treat cognition (or the mind) as situated. But in naturalized philosophy, theories of embodied cognition often try to account for epistemic universals. This focus ignores the ways in which—as writings in feminism, queer, disability, and postcolonial scholarship attest—social differences can generate cognitive and affective dissonance. These critical literatures have openly wrestled with the problem of essentialism while insisting on the inadequacy of universalized epistemic claims. The chapter argues for recognition of embodied multiplicity, including cognitive and affective “misfittings” of body-minds and worlds.

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