Are we social beings? A dialogue between neuroscience and philosophy

"Put yourself in my shoes!”, “What would you do in my position?” We have all been asked these questions by someone who wants our advice. What we have perhaps never imagined is that this appeal is addressed to a huge number of areas in our brain, with extremely different functions and characteristics. Almost 30 years after their discovery, today we know that mirror neurons are not just a peculiarity in a small part of the cortex, they actually reflect a mechanism fundamental to the working of the brain. They actually form the basis of our ability to understand the actions and emotions of other people. This is a specific kind of understanding, which comes from within. In some ways, the experience we have when watching other people act or feel an emotion is no different to when we ourselves act or feel an emotion first hand. A neuroscientist and a philosopher talk about our nature as “social beings”.