Variations on Embodied Cognition

2020

The aim of this article is to discuss three challenges to the so-called “strong” versions of embodiment. The strong versions of embodied cognition (SVEC) have been successful in explaining how concrete concepts (e.g., pencil) may be understood based on sensory processes, yet they have failed to offer a comprehensive understanding of abstract concepts (e.g., freedom). In this regard, this article pinpoints three areas where the SVEC face limitations. First, the SVEC fail to fully support the active or passive perspective that an agent may assume when processing abstract concepts via embodied metaphorical representations. Second, the SVEC do not offer a compelling explanation for three different types of mental simulation proposed for the representation of non-actual motion semantics: enactive perception, perceptual scanning, and imagination. Third, the SVEC fail to account for inter-individual, cross-cultural, and context-dependency in the representation of abstract concepts. To summ...

Frontiers in psychology, 2012

Recent years have seen a large amount of empirical studies related to "embodied cognition." While interesting and valuable, there is something dissatisfying with the current state of affairs in this research domain. Hypotheses tend to be underspecified, testing in general terms for embodied versus disembodied processing. The lack of specificity of current hypotheses can easily lead to an erosion of the embodiment concept, and result in a situation in which essentially any effect is taken as positive evidence. Such erosion is not helpful to the field and does not do justice to the importance of embodiment. Here we want to take stock, and formulate directions for how it can be studied in a more fruitful fashion. As an example we will describe few example studies that have investigated the role of sensori-motor systems in the coding of meaning ("embodied semantics"). Instead of focusing on the dichotomy between embodied and disembodied theories, we suggest that the field move forward and ask how and when sensori-motor systems and behavior are involved in cognition.

Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 2010

Embodied cognition is sweeping the planet. On a non-embodied approach, the sensory system informs the cognitive system and the motor system does the cognitive system's bidding. There are causal relations between the systems but the sensory and motor systems are not constitutive of cognition. For embodied views, the relation to the sensori-motor system to cognition is constitutive, not just causal. This paper examines some recent empirical evidence used to support the view that cognition is embodied and raises questions about some of the claims being made by supporters.

International Journal of Language and Linguistics, 2014

This paper aimed at providing an overview on the post-cognitivist approach of embodiment theory. In the first section, a summary of the main tenets of the traditional cognitive theory are provided. Following the pros and cons of traditional cognitive theory, section two introduces the new trend in the field of cognitive science, i.e. the embodied cognitive approach. Then the main features and claims of embodiment theory are presented in section three. In sections four and five the confusions over the issue of embodiment and different types of embodiment are presented correspondingly, following a final conclusion section.

The concept of embodied cognition (EC) is not a settled one. A variety of theorists have attempted to outline different approaches and meanings related to this concept. They range from radical embodiment to minimal embodiment, and a number of positions in between. In addition, a variety of approaches to the study of cognition have been closely associated with the notion of embodiment–including enactive, embedded, and extended or distributed cognition approaches.

2023

This book (a Cambridge Element) discusses contemporary theories of embodied cognition, including what has been termed the “4Es” (embodied, embedded, extended, and enactive cognition). It examines diverse approaches to questions about the nature of the mind, the mind’s relation to the brain, perceptual experience, mental representation, sensemaking, the role of the environment, and social cognition, and it considers the strengths and weaknesses of the theories in question. It contrasts embodied and enactive views with classic cognitivism, and discusses major criticisms and their possible resolutions. The bok also provides a strong focus on enactive theory and the prospects for integrating enactive approaches with other embodied and extended theories, mediated through recent developments in predictive processing and the free-energy principle. It concludes with a brief discussion of the practical applications of embodied cognition.

Frontiers in Psychology, 2013

The most exciting hypothesis in cognitive science right now is the theory that cognition is embodied. Like all good ideas in cognitive science, however, embodiment immediately came to mean six different things. The most common definitions involve the straightforward claim that "states of the body modify states of the mind." However, the implications of embodiment are actually much more radical than this. If cognition can span the brain, body, and the environment, then the "states of mind" of disembodied cognitive science won't exist to be modified. Cognition will instead be an extended system assembled from a broad array of resources. Taking embodiment seriously therefore requires both new methods and theory. Here we outline four key steps that research programs should follow in order to fully engage with the implications of embodiment. The first step is to conduct a task analysis, which characterizes from a first person perspective the specific task that a perceiving-acting cognitive agent is faced with. The second step is to identify the taskrelevant resources the agent has access to in order to solve the task. These resources can span brain, body, and environment.The third step is to identify how the agent can assemble these resources into a system capable of solving the problem at hand. The last step is to test the agent's performance to confirm that agent is actually using the solution identified in step 3. We explore these steps in more detail with reference to two useful examples (the outfielder problem and the A-not-B error), and introduce how to apply this analysis to the thorny question of language use. Embodied cognition is more than we think it is, and we have the tools we need to realize its full potential.

Hybris, 2017

The body is a highly complex, coordinated system engaged in coping with many environmental problems. It can be considered as some sort of opportunity or obstacle, with which internal processing must deal. Internal processing must take into account the possibilities and limitations of the particular body. In other words, even if the body is not involved in the realization of some cognitive explicit task, it is not a neutral factor of our understanding of why a system solves a task in one way or another. Therefore, when conducting research on embodiment and the body’s cognitive system we should not neglect internal, cognitive processing. I appeal to Goldman’s research on embodied cognition to sketch the broader framework for internal processing in embodied cognition. I believe that even if we don’t accept Goldman’s approach as the viable proposal for embodied cognition in general, it’s a quite natural starting point for our analysis. Goldman (2012; 2014, and with de Vignemont 2009) argue for the essential role of the bodily formats or bodily codes (respectively: B-formats and B-codes) in embodied cognition. B-codes are here described as the processing of regions or sub-regions of the central nervous system. They are primarily employed for body control or monitoring, and reused for cognitive tasks. Beyond doubt, this conception provides an excellent starting point for analyzing the internal (mostly neural) processing in cases of embodied cognition. At the end of this paper, I will argue that the embodiment of cognition needs a conceptual twist. Following Keijzer’s (2015) interest in the evolution of the nervous system, and the minimal forms of cognition, I argue that in investigating embodied cognition, we should investigate the role played by cognitive processing for specific kinds of organisms, meaning organisms with a body of a particular morphology (size, shape, kinds, and distribution of sensors and effectors). Doing that, I refer to some conceptual and empirical considerations. I will also try to show that research on embodied cognition is still not sufficiently anchored in evolutionary and comparative studies on cognition, nor on the nervous system and body morphology. Bigger reliance on these kinds of studies, will make it make possible to gain a deeper understanding of internal processing in embodied cognition.

2023

This Element discusses contemporary theories of embodied cognition, including what has been termed the "4Es" (embodied, embedded, extended, and enactive cognition). It examines diverse approaches to questions about the nature of the mind, the mind's relation to the brain, perceptual experience, mental representation, sensemaking, the role of the environment, and social cognition, and it considers the strengths and weaknesses of the theories in question. It contrasts embodied and enactive views with classic cognitivism, and discusses major criticisms and their possible resolutions. This Element also provides a strong focus on enactive theory and the prospects for integrating enactive approaches with other embodied and extended theories, mediated through recent developments in predictive processing and the free-energy principle. It concludes with a brief discussion of the practical applications of embodied cognition. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, 2014

It is currently debated whether the meanings of words and objects are represented, in whole or in part, in a modality-specific formatthe embodied cognition hypothesis. I argue that the embodied/disembodied cognition debate is either largely resolved in favour of the view that concepts are represented in an amodal format, or at a point where the embodied and disembodied approaches are no longer coherently distinct theories. This merits reconsideration of what the available evidence can tell us about the structure of the conceptual system. We know that the conceptual system engages, online, with sensory and motor content. This frames a new question: How is it that the human conceptual system is able to disengage from the sensorimotor system? Answering this question would say something about how the human mind is able to detach from the present and extrapolate from finite experience to hypothetical states of how the world could be. It is the independence of thought from perception and action that makes human cognition specialand that independence is guaranteed by the representational distinction between concepts and sensorimotor representations.