Embodied cognition
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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"[Man is more than] a winged cherub without a body. [He] is himself rooted in that world; he finds himself in it as an individual, that is to say, his knowledge, which is the necessary supporter of the whole world as idea, is yet always given through the medium of a body." --Schopenhauer, book 2 of The World as Will and Representation If someone says, “I have a body,” he can be asked, “Who is speaking here with this mouth?” Wittgenstein, On Certainty, §244 "The statement that every organism is an embodied theory about its environment must be taken literally."--Philosophical Darwinism (1993) by Peter Munz |
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In philosophy, the embodied mind thesis holds that the nature of the human mind is largely determined by the form of the human body.
Philosophers, psychologists, cognitive scientists, and artificial intelligence researchers who study embodied cognition and the embodied mind argue that all aspects of cognition are shaped by aspects of the body. The aspects of cognition include high level mental constructs (such as concepts and categories) and human performance on various cognitive tasks (such as reasoning or judgment). The aspects of the body include the motor system, the perceptual system, the body's interactions with the environment (situatedness) and the ontological assumptions about the world that are built into the body and the brain.
The embodied mind thesis is opposed to other theories of cognition such as cognitivism, computationalism, and Cartesian dualism. The idea has roots in Kant and 20th century continental philosophy (such as Merleau-Ponty). The modern version depends on insights drawn from recent research in psychology, linguistics, cognitive science, dynamical systems, artificial intelligence, robotics and neurobiology.
Embodied cognition is a topic of research in social and cognitive psychology, covering issues such as social interaction and decision-making. Embodied cognition reflects the argument that the motor system influences our cognition, just as the mind influences bodily actions. For example, when participants hold a pencil in their teeth engaging the muscles of a smile, they comprehend pleasant sentences faster than unpleasant ones. And it works in reverse: holding a pencil in their lips to engage the muscles of a frown increases the time it takes to comprehend pleasant sentences.
George Lakoff (a cognitive scientist and linguist) and his collaborators (including Mark Johnson and Mark Turner) have written a series of books promoting and expanding the thesis based on discoveries in cognitive science, such as conceptual metaphor and image schema.
Robotics researchers have argued that true artificial intelligence can only be achieved by machines that have sensory and motor skills and are connected to the world through a body.
Neuroscientists have outlined the connection between the body, individual structures in the brain and aspects of the mind such as consciousness, emotion, self-awareness and will. Biology has also inspired Gregory Bateson to develop a closely related version of the idea, which they call enactivism.
See also
- Bodily functions
- Cognitive linguistics
- Cognitive science
- Conceptual blending
- Conceptual metaphor
- Grotesque body
- Image schema
- Philosophy of mind
- Man is more than a winged cherub without a body
See also
- Action-specific perception
- Active inference
- Blue Brain Project
- Cognitive biology
- Cognitive linguistics
- Cognitive neuropsychology
- Cognitive neuroscience
- Cognitive science
- Conceptual blending
- Conceptual metaphor
- Ecological psychology
- Embodied bilingual language
- Embodied cognitive science
- Embodied embedded cognition
- Embodied music cognition
- Embodied phenomenology
- Enactivism
- Extended cognition
- Extended mind thesis
- Externalism
- Image schema
- Moravec's paradox
- Neuroconstructivism
- Neuropsychology
- Neurophenomenology
- Philosophy of mind
- Plant cognition
- Where Mathematics Comes From
