ABSTRACT
Neural hermeneutics is a concept developed by the neuropsychologist Chris Frith. Frith works out this concept in terms of predictive coding models of brain function and a simulationist approach to social cognition. This chapter summarizes the idea of neural hermeneutics and offers a critique from the phenomenologically informed perspective of embodied cognition. An alternative, enactive hermeneutics is proposed with a focus on social interaction, including the concept of natural pedagogy developed by Csibra and Gergely. Enactive hermeneutics productively allows more adequate understanding of the relations among embodied cognition, neuroscience, and education. The enactive processes of embodied interaction are important for learning in educational contexts. Fitting closely with the IT approach to social cognition, the concept of natural pedagogy provides an account of how to gain generalizable, conceptual knowledge. One can point to the relevant phenomenon in natural pedagogy, the ostensive address that makes it a specific type of interaction rather than a passive observation.
