In the last two centuries, our world would have been a safer place if philosophers such as Rousseau, Marx, and Nietzsche had not given intellectual encouragement to the radical ideologies of Jacobins, Stalinists, and fascists. Maybe the world would have been better off, from the standpoint of sound practice, if philosophers had engaged in only modest, decent theory, as did John Stuart Mill. Yet, as Ronald Beiner contends, the point of theory is not to think safe thoughts; the point is (...) to open intellectual horizons. In Philosophy in a Time of Lost Spirit, Beiner reflects on the dualism of theory and practice. The purpose of the theorist is not to offer sensible guidance on the conduct of social life but to test the boundaries of our vision of social order. Whereas the liberal citizen should embody the practical virtues of prudence and moderation, the theorist should be radical, probing, and immoderate. Looking back at the liberal-communitarian debate of the 1980s, Beiner recognizes that the antidote to our spiritless times lies neither in the embrace of community over individualism nor of individualism over community: both individual and community need to be submitted to radical questioning. It is by exposing ourselves to the challenge of fearless thinking encountered at the philosophical extremities that we are most likely to understand our own world at a deeper level. In this collection of essays and reviews, Ronald Beiner helps us to think critically about the thought-worlds of our foremost contemporary thinkers, including Hannah Arendt, Allan Bloom, Michel Foucault, Hans-Georg Gadamer, J¦rgen Habermas, Will Kymlicka, Christopher Lasch, Richard Rorty, Judith Shklar, Leo Strauss, Charles Taylor, and Michael Walzer. (shrink)

Is thinking necessarily linguistic? Do we _think with words_, to use Bermudez’s (2003) phrase? Or does thinking occur in some other, yet to be determined, representational format? Or again do we think in various formats, switching from one to the other as tasks demand? In virtue perhaps of the ambiguous nature of first-person introspective data on the matter, philosophers have traditionally disagreed on this question, some thinking that thought had to be pictorial, other insisting that it could not be (...) but linguistic. When any problem divides a community of otherwise intelligent rational thinkers, one suspects some deep conceptual confusion is at play. Indeed, we believe that the conceptual categories used to frame these and related questions are so hopelessly muddled that one could honestly answer “both simultaneously”, or “neither”, depending one what is meant by the alternatives. But let’s get our priorities straight. This paper first and foremost aims at defending what we believe to be a step in that direction of the proper view of thinking, a view we call the spatial-motor view. In order to do so, however, we have found it essential to start by address the conceptual confusion just alluded to. Accordingly, the paper proceeds in two steps. First a conceptual step, in which we reconsider some of the traditional categories brought into play when thinking about thinking. Then an empirical step, in which we offer empirical evidence for one of the views conceptually isolated during the first part of the work. Future version of this collaborative work will include a speculative step in which we spin out an evolutionary and developmental scenario whose function it is justify the spatial-motor view by showing how it fits into current evolutionary and developmental theories. (shrink)

Before imagination became the transcendent and creative faculty promoted by the Romantics, it was for something quite different. Not reserved to a privileged few, imagination was instead considered a universal ability that each person could direct in practical ways. To imagine something meant to form in the mind a replica of a thing—its taste, its sound, and other physical attributes. At the end of the Renaissance, there was a movement to encourage individuals to develop their ability to imagine vividly. Within (...) their private mental space, a space of embodied, sensual thought, they could meditate, pray, or philosophize. Gradually, confidence in the self-directed imagination fell out of favor and was replaced by the belief that the few—an elite of writers and teachers—should control the imagination of the many. This book seeks to understand what imagination meant in early modern Europe, particularly in early modern France, before the Romantic era gave the term its modern meaning. The author explores the themes surrounding early modern notions of imagination (including hostility to imagination) through the writings of such figures as Descartes, Montaigne, François de Sales, Pascal, the Marquise de Se;vigne;, Madame de Lafayette, and Fe;nelon. (shrink)

The relationship between intelligent systems and their environment is at the forefront of research in cognitive science. The Unexplained Intellect: Complexity, Time, and the Metaphysics of Embodied Thought shows how computational complexity theory and analytic metaphysics can together illuminate long-standing questions about the importance of that relationship. It argues that the most basic facts about a mind cannot just be facts about mental states, but must include facts about the dynamic, interactive mental occurrences that take place when a (...) creature encounters its environment. In a discussion that is organised into four clear parts, Christopher Mole begins by examining the mathematics of computational complexity, arguing that the results from complexity theory create a puzzle about how human intelligence could possibly be explained. Mole then uses the tools of analytic metaphysics to draw a distinction between mental states and dynamic mental entities, and shows that, in order to answer the complexity-theoretic puzzle, dynamic entities must be understood to be among the most basic of mental phenomena. The picture of the mind that emerges has important implications for our understanding of intelligence, of action, and of the mind’s relationship to the passage of time. The Unexplained Intellect is the first book to bring insights from the mathematics of computational complexity to bear in an enquiry into the metaphysics of the mind. It will be essential reading for scholars and researchers in the philosophy of mind and psychology, for cognitive scientists, and for those interested in the philosophical importance of complexity. (shrink)

Positively re-assesses the relationship between body and soul in Plato's later dialogues, focusing on the harmony between them.

ABSTRACT: Sellars once remarked on the “astonishing extent to which in ethics as well as in epistemology and metaphysics the fundamental themes of Kant’s philosophy contain the truth of the variations we now hear on every side” (SM x). Also astonishing was Sellars’ 1970 Presidential Address to the American Philosophical Association (APA), which borrowed its title from the phrase in Kant’s Paralogisms, “...this I or he or it (the thing) which thinks...” (B404). In its compact twenty-five pages Sellars managed to (...) sketch novel yet plausible reconstructions of central aspects of Kant’s views on self-knowledge, persons, freedom, and morality, along the way suggesting how all of those Kantian views could plausibly be rendered consistent with a naturalistic ontology. In this chapter I focus on Sellars’ APA address as an occasion for reflection on how both Kant and Sellars offer insights into how we ought best to conceive the nature of and the relationships between our thinking selves, our practical agency, and our entirely natural, material embodiment. (shrink)

ABSTRACTPrevious work has shown that a stooped posture may activate negative mood. Extending this work, the present experiments examine how stooped body posture influences recovery from pre-existing negative mood. In Experiment 1, participants were randomly assigned to receive either a negative or neutral mood induction, after which participants were instructed to take either a stooped, straight, or control posture while writing down their thoughts. Stooped posture led to less mood recovery in the negative mood condition, and more negative mood in (...) the neutral mood condition. Furthermore, stooped posture led to more negative thoughts overall compared to straight or control postures. In Experiment 2, all participants underwent a negative mood induction, after which half received cognitive reappraisal instructions and half received no instructions. Mood-congruent cognitions were assessed through autobiographical memory recall. Again, stooped position led to less mood recovery. Notably, this was independent of regulation instruction. These findings demonstrate for the first time that posture plays an important role in recovering from negative mood. (shrink)

In this book, Chad Jorgenson challenges the view that for Plato the good life is one of pure intellection, arguing that his last writings increasingly insist on the capacity of reason to impose measure on our emotions and pleasures. Starting from an account of the ontological, epistemological, and physiological foundations of the tripartition of the soul, he traces the increasing sophistication of Plato's thinking about the nature of pleasure and pain and his developing interest in sciences bearing on physical reality. (...) These theoretical shifts represent a movement away from a conception of human happiness as a purification or flight of the soul from the sensible to the intelligible, as in the Phaedo, towards a focus on the harmony of the individual as a psychosomatic whole under the hegemonic power of reason. (shrink)

This book analyses some of the seminal texts of the Chinese tradition and shows how they exemplify aspects of embodiment theory: the Analects of Confucius, the Zhuangzi, and the Treatise on Music. Margus Ott also develops far-reaching possibilities of an embodied philosophy. The embodied understanding did not go unchallenged in Ancient China. There were important counter-currents, most notably the Mohists and the so-called Legalists. By using embodiment theory Ott demonstrates how these ideas can be seen as a decontextualizing (...) tendency of thought that plays an important role in human affairs. (shrink)

Mark Johnson is widely regarded as a major figure in philosophical embodied cognition theory in the U.S., and as co-founder with George Lakoff of conceptual metaphor theory. These two theories, along with Johnson's deep rootedness in classical American Pragmatism, provide the themes for the analyses developed in both Embodied Mind, Meaning, and Reason: How our Bodies Give Rise to Understanding and The Aesthetics of Meaning and Thought: The Bodily Roots of Philosophy, Science, Morality and Art. The two (...) texts together review and expand Johnson's earlier work, in the case of the newest book by further elaborating and providing expanded empirical support for work that by necessity began as rather more speculative than... (shrink)

`The work develops and articulates a brilliant and original central thesis; namely that modern individuals are best understood as complex bodies of thought, as embodied symbolic and material beings. Future work on mind, self, body, society and culture will have to begin with Burkitt's text' - Norman K. Denzin, University of Illinois `After his excellent Social Selves, Ian Burkitt has produced a new theory of embodiment which will become required reading for those working in the areas of social (...) theory, sociology, cultural studies and social psychology. Steering between constructionist and realist theories of the social actor, Bodies of Thought provides an innovative assessment of Foucaultian, Eliasian, and feminist approaches to the body and a sustained critique of Cartesian notions of the subject' - Chris Shilling, Department of Social and Historical Studies, University of Portsmouth In this incisive and truly impressive book, Ian Burkitt critically addresses the dualism between mind and body, thought and emotion, rationality and irrationality, and the mental and the material, which haunt the post-Cartesian world. Drawing on the work of contemporary social theorists and feminist writers, he argues that thought and the sense of being a person is inseparable from bodily practices within social relations, even though such active experience may be abstracted and expanded upon through the use of symbols. Overcoming classic dualisms in social thought, Burkitt argues that bodies are not purely the constructs of discourses of power: they are also productive, communicative, and invested with powerful capacities for changing the social and natural worlds. He goes on to consider how such powers can be developed in more ethical forms of relations and activities. Bodies of Thought will be essential reading for students and academics in social theory, social psychology, cultural studies, feminist theory and the sociology of the body. (shrink)

The initiators of information theory had deliberately tried to expunge ‘meaning’ from aspects of their theory. Bateson’s ecology of mind was consistent with physical definitions of information as feedback and constraint yet tied these cybernetic mechanisms into context of messages, meta-messages, and their meaning. Thus Bateson’s cybernetic epistemology was of a most unusual type: a theory of informational constraint with no located mind, a theory of agency in which conscious purpose was no longer the guiding executor of mental activity. At (...) the same time Bateson rejected many premises of phenomenology: self-hood or body-hood could not be arbitrarily cut off from the reflexive and recursive system of communication in which human beings were always involved. Embodiment, the interactions that evoke the ‘fabric’ (Merleau-Ponty) of life, involve communicative interactions both as persons within a system of social relations and also as living organisms within a system of ecological relations. (shrink)

The article examines some of the main theses about self-awareness developed in recent analytic philosophy of mind (especially the work of Bermúdez), and points to a number of striking overlaps between these accounts and the ones to be found in phenomenology. Given the real risk of unintended repetitions, it is argued that it would be counterproductive for philosophy of mind to ignore already existing resources, and that both analytical philosophy and phenomenology would profit from a more open exchange.

Recently, there has been a great deal of interest in the idea that natural language enhances and extends our cognitive capabilities. Supporters of embodied cognition have been particularly interested in the way in which language may provide a solution to the problem of abstract concepts. Toward this end, some have emphasized the way in which language may act as form of cognitive scaffolding and others have emphasized the potential importance of language-based distributional information. This essay defends a version of (...) the cognitive enhancement thesis that integrates and builds on both of these proposals. I argue that the embodied representations associated with language processing serve as a supplementary medium for conceptual processing. The acquisition of a natural language provides a means of extending our cognitive reach by giving us access to an internalized combinatorial symbol system that augments and supports the context-sensitive embodied representational systems that exist independently of language. (shrink)

The article examines some of the main theses about self-awareness developed in recent analytic philosophy of mind (especially the work of Bermúdez), and points to a number of striking overlaps between these accounts and the ones to be found in phenomenology. Given the real risk of unintended repetitions, it is argued that it would be counterproductive for philosophy of mind to ignore already existing resources, and that both analytical philosophy and phenomenology would profit from a more open exchange.

By investigating conceptions of experience from Descartes to Kant, this book shows that one of the central questions of the early-modern period was how humans can instantiate in their actions the principles of rational moral agency, while at the same time responding with their bodies to the causal play of nature. Through the analysis of this question, the book draws attention to the bodily underpinnings of the ability to experience thoughts and feelings. It thus challenges overly subjectivist interpretations that concentrate (...) on the inner realm of the experiencing mind and because of this fail to account for the worldly dimension of being experientially responsive to the affections of the body. (shrink)

Reexamines the Western philosophical tradition, looking at the basic concepts of the mind, time, causation, morality, and the self.

기원후 7세기경에 아디셰샤가 쓴????빠라마르타 사라????(이하, PS)는 제설혼합주의의 표본 에 해당하는????바가바드 기따????를 계승하면서도 독자적인 특징을 가지는 제설혼합주의를 제 시한 문헌이다. 20세기 초반부터 21세기 초반까지 상당수의 연구자들은 PS의 사상적 정 체성을 제설혼합주의와 관련하여 다양하게 검토했고, 그 결과 PS는 대체로 ‘상크야, 아 드바이따 베단따, 베다-아베다 베단따, 바이슈나바 유신론’이라는 4가지 힌두교 사상들 의 일부나 전부가 혼합된 문헌으로 간주되었다. PS의 연구자들은 거의 예외 없이 4가지 사상들 가운데 어느 하나가 중심이 되는 ‘단일 중심적 제설혼합주의’의 견지에서 PS를 분석했다. 그러나 PS의 시대에 애당초 제설혼합 주의가 하나의 장르로서 존재했고 (...) PS가 그 제설혼합주의를 바탕으로 특정 주제마다 여러 사상들을 혼합시켰을 가능성이 크기 때문에, PS는 ‘다중심적 제설혼합주의’를 보여준다고 할 수 있다. 더 나아가, PS는 ‘사르바-아뜨마-바다’(sarva-ātma-vāda, 모든 것이 아뜨 만이라는 이론)를 통해 이 세상의 모든 사상을 일거에 통합하고자 하기 때문에, PS는 ‘사 르바-아뜨마-바다’를 특징으로 하는 제설혼합주의를 보여준다고 할 수 있다. 이로부터 PS에서 구축되는 것은 ‘독자적인 제설혼합주의 이론’과 ‘제설혼합주의적 구원론’이다. 그런데 PS의 ‘사르바-아뜨마-바다’는 보편주의의 전략을 통해 일원론적 또는 일신론 적 기획을 도모하는 까닭에 오히려 다중심적 제설혼합주의로부터 암시되는 다원적이고 다 가치적인 혼합이라는 장점을 잃어버릴 수 있다. PS의 예시처럼 제설혼합주의에서 다중심성을 더 강조할 것이냐 아니면 보편성을 더 강조할 것이냐 하는 것은 현재의 힌두교 사상이 당면한 중요한 문제이기도 하다. (shrink)

"This paper aims to impugn the magnified role of specific natural languages in structuring and shaping cognition in the context of language-thought relations. Since language-thought interactions are being increasingly explored in different kinds of empirical studies showing or attempting to show context-specific or general influences of language over thought and thinking, there is reason to tame the excesses of language-specific influences over thought, thinking and cognition. In this regard, any context-specific influences of languages over thought (...) and thinking in being grounded in certain modes/modalities of cognition must be governed by the constraints of body-world interactions that operate on modes/modalities of cognition. Thus, this paper will argue that language-specific influences over thought, thinking and cognition are possible to the extent that they are permitted by the constraints of embodiment. Keywords: language; thought; thinking; embodiment; cognition ". (shrink)

Binaries are bad: false, distorting, hierarchical—or worse. This postmodern axiom has been widely accepted in scholarship and culture, and Plato is frequently blamed for promulgating some of the most enduring binaries of thought: being and becoming, truth and illusion, and, not least, body and soul. In this book, Chad Jorgensen argues for a more integrated picture of body and soul in Plato's later dialogues than Neoplatonism has left us, especially via the doctrine of separation as seen in Phaedo. Focusing (...) especially on the first books of Republic, on Timaeus, and on Philebus, he emphasizes the "equilibrium" or "harmonious mixture" of the parts of soul in its interrelationship with the body. (shrink)

This paper attempts to clarify and critically examine Fodor's language of thought (LOT) hypothesis, focusing on his contention that the systematicity of language use provides a solid ground for the LOT hypothesis. (edited).

We offer philosophical motivations for a method we call Virtual World Cognitive Science (VW CogSci), in which researchers use virtual embodied agents that are embedded in virtual worlds to explore questions in the field of Cognitive Science. We focus on questions about mental and linguistic representation and the ways that such computational modeling can add rigor to philosophical thought experiments, as well as the terminology used in the scientific study of such representations. We find that this method forces (...) researchers to take a god’s-eye view when describing dynamical relationships between entities in minds and entities in an environment in a way that eliminates the need for problematic talk of belief and concept types, such as the belief that cats are silly, and the concept CAT, while preserving belief and concept tokens in individual cognizers’ minds. We conclude with some further key advantages of VW CogSci for the scientific study of mental and linguistic representation and for Cognitive Science more broadly. (shrink)

While philosophers of mind have been arguing over the status of mental representations in cognitive science, cognitive scientists have been quietly engaged in studying perception, action, and cognition without explaining them in terms of mental representation. In this book, Anthony Chemero describes this nonrepresentational approach, puts it in historical and conceptual context, and applies it to traditional problems in the philosophy of mind. Radical embodied cognitive science is a direct descendant of the American naturalist psychology of William James and (...) John Dewey, and follows them in viewing perception and cognition to be understandable only in terms of action in the environment. Chemero argues that cognition should be described in terms of agent-environment dynamics rather than in terms of computation and representation. After outlining this orientation to cognition, Chemero proposes a methodology: dynamical systems theory, which would explain things dynamically and without reference to representation. He also advances a background theory: Gibsonian ecological psychology, "shored up" and clarified. Chemero then looks at some traditional philosophical problems through the lens of radical embodied cognitive science and concludes that the comparative ease with which it resolves these problems, combined with its empirical promise, makes this approach to cognitive science a rewarding one. "Jerry Fodor is my favorite philosopher," Chemero writes in his preface, adding, "I think that Jerry Fodor is wrong about nearly everything." With this book, Chemero explains nonrepresentational, dynamical, ecological cognitive science as clearly and as rigorously as Jerry Fodor explained computational cognitive science in his classic work The Language of Thought. (shrink)

Journal Name: Semiotica Issue: Ahead of print.

In her book Experience Embodied, Anik Waldow challenges and reimagines the traditional interpretative approach to the concept of experience in the early modern period. Traditionally, commentators have emphasized early moderns’ views on the first-person perspective and eschewed the relevance of our embodiment to their epistemological outlooks. My focus here is on Waldow’s chapter on Hume, wherein she analyzes Hume’s account of our capacity for reflective moral judgment, arguing that he understands it as natural despite the countless ways in which (...) our embodied social experiences impinge on it. After detailing Waldow’s contributions, I clarify, corroborate, and criticize them. Since I contend that Waldow is broadly successful in her interpretative efforts, I suggest that she undermines the traditional interpretative approach to experience in the early modern period, but not in the sense that she moves us away from the epistemological towards other lenses. Rather, Waldow should be understood as showing that, at least in the case of Hume’s metaethics, the epistemological is embodied, is social, and is both cognitive and sentimental. (shrink)

Embodied Cognition is an approach to cognition that departs from traditional cognitive science in its reluctance to conceive of cognition as computational and in its emphasis on the significance of an organism's body in how and what the organism thinks. Three lines of embodied cognition research are described and some thoughts on the future of embodied cognition offered.

This book explores how people's subjective, felt experiences of their bodies in action provide part of the fundamental grounding for human cognition and language. Cognition is what occurs when the body engages the physical and cultural world and must be studied in terms of the dynamical interactions between people and the environment. Human language and thought emerge from recurring patterns of embodied activity that constrain ongoing intelligent behavior. We must not assume cognition to be purely internal, symbolic, computational, (...) and disembodied, but seek out the gross and detailed ways that language and thought are inextricably shaped by embodied action. Embodiment and Cognitive Science describes the abundance of empirical evidence from many disciplines, including work on perception, concepts, imagery and reasoning, language and communication, cognitive development, and emotions and consciousness, that support the idea that the mind is embodied. (shrink)

(Penultimate draft) Embodied Cognition holds that bodily (e.g. sensorimotor) states and processes are directly involved in some higher-level cognitive functions (e.g. reasoning). This challenges traditional views of cognition according to which bodily states and processes are, at most, indirectly involved in higher-level cognition. Although some elements of Embodied Cognition have been integrated into mainstream cognitive science, others still face adamant resistance. In this paper, rather than straightforwardly defend Embodied Cognition against specific objections I will do the following. (...) First, I will present a concise account of embodied conceptual processing and highlight some of its advantages over non-embodied accounts, specifically focusing on the role of metaphors. Second, I will detail the influence of computational metaphors on theories of cognition and evaluation of these theories. Third, I will argue that embodied cognitive mechanisms, specifically those operating through computational metaphors, may drive some of the resistance to Embodied Cognition - and that Embodied Cognition is able to offer a uniquely compelling account of this. Ultimately, this will contribute to an improved understanding of Embodied Cognition, its explanatory power, and how it ought to be evaluated. Additionally, it will shed light on the role of metaphors in shaping philosophical thought and highlight the importance of these influences. (shrink)

Cognition is embodied when it is deeply dependent upon features of the physical body of an agent, that is, when aspects of the agent's body beyond the brain play a significant causal or physically constitutive role in cognitive processing. In general, dominant views in the philosophy of mind and cognitive science have considered the body as peripheral to understanding the nature of mind and cognition. Proponents of embodied cognitive science view this as a serious mistake. Sometimes the nature (...) of the dependence of cognition on the body is quite unexpected, and suggests new ways of conceptualizing and exploring the mechanics of cognitive processing. Embodied cognitive science encompasses a loose-knit family of research programs in the cognitive sciences that often share a commitment to critiquing and even replacing traditional approaches to cognition and cognitive processing. Empirical research on embodied cognition has exploded in the past 10 years. As the bibliography for this article attests, the various bodies of work that will be discussed represent a serious alternative to the investigation of cognitive phenomena. Relatively recent work on the embodiment of cognition provides much food for thought for empirically-informed philosophers of mind. This is in part because of the rich range of phenomena that embodied cognitive science has studied. But it is also in part because those phenomena are often thought to challenge dominant views of the mind, such as the computational and representational theories of mind, at the heart of traditional cognitive science. And they have sometimes been taken to undermine standard positions in the philosophy of mind, such as the idea that the mind is identical to, or even realized in, the brain. (shrink)

This thesis argues for the continuing possibility of Adorno set against the backdrop of a post-modern proliferation of affects. A major theoretical contention is the concept of the subject: a sticking point within philosophy. The thesis takes this up and offers a new pathway without falling into the cliché of a renewal of Adorno’s position. Drawing on Adorno’s theoretical thoughts on the subject the thesis contends that the subject is that which by turns dissolves all eventualities or more proportionally acts (...) like a place-holder for the newly emerging: structures that cannot be explained by recourse to the laws that govern its parts. These experiential structures present a surface, resistance, or solidarity that upon closer examination dissolve back into the ephemeral. Although such structures are profligate and prolific, the thesis adopts as its major concern artworks and aesthetics. Following Adorno, a claim is made for artworks that present open-ended possibilities. They are able for example to critically challenge the dominant hegemony the profundity that all too easily sides with the oppressors of life. What philosophy, a critical tool in furtherance of the good life, a concept restaged, here takes from art is not a sense of equivalence, art and philosophy are held apart in a creative and critical tension, but the sense of yearning that animates the nonconceptual side of art which the concept negates. The yearning, being experiential, is always embodied. Its fulfilment negates the immediacies, the mere appearance of life, particularly in its systematically reflexive form. The conclusion concurs with Adorno in the thought that affinity with the object is achieved not as the resultant of identity thinking, but through the act of definite negation of identifying schema. (shrink)

Is the self narratively constructed? There are many who would answer yes to the question. Dennett (1991) is, perhaps, the most famous proponent of the view that the self is narratively constructed, but there are others, such as Velleman (2006), who have followed his lead and developed the view much further. Indeed, the importance of narrative to understanding the mind and the self is currently being lavished with attention across the cognitive sciences (Dautenhahn, 2001; Hutto, 2007; Nelson, 2003). Emerging from (...) this work, there appear to be a variety of ways in which we can think of the narrative construction of the self and the relationship between the narrative self and the embodied agent. I wish to examine two such ways in this paper. The first I shall call the abstract narrative account, this is because its proponents take the narrative self to be an abstraction (Dennett, 1991; Velleman, 2006). Dennett, for example, refers to the self as a centre of narrative gravity, to be thought of as analogous to a mathematical conception of the centre of gravity of an object. The second I shall call the embodied narrative account and this is the view that the self is constituted both by an embodied consciousness whose experiences are available for narration and narratives themselves, which can play a variety of roles in the agent’s psychological life. (shrink)

Embodied cognitive science holds that cognitive processes are deeply and inescapably rooted in our bodily interactions with the world. Our finite, contingent, and mortal embodiment may be not only supportive, but in some cases even constitutive of emotions, thoughts, and experiences. My discussion here will work outward from the neuroanatomy and neurophysiology of the brain to a nervous system which extends to the boundaries of the body. It will extend to nonneural aspects of embodiment and even beyond the boundaries (...) of the body to prosthetics of various kinds, including symbioses with a broad array of cultural artifacts, our symbolic niche, and our relationships with other embodied human beings. While cognition may not always be situated, its origins are embedded in temporally and spatially limited activities. Cognitive work also can be off-loaded to the body and to the environment in service of action, tool use, group cognition, and social coordination. This can blur the boundaries between brain areas, brain and body, and body and environment, transforming our understanding of mind and personhood to provide a different grounding for faith traditions in general, and of the historically dualist Christian tradition in particular. (shrink)

Psychologists are increasingly interested in embodiment based on the assumption that thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are grounded in bodily interaction with the environment. We examine how embodiment is used in social psychology, and we explore the ways in which embodied approaches enrich traditional theories. Although research in this area is burgeoning, much of it has been more descriptive than explanatory. We provide a critical discussion of the trajectory of embodiment research in social psychology. We contend that future researchers should (...) engage in a phenomenon-based approach, highlight the theoretical boundary conditions and mediators involved, explore novel action-relevant outcome measures, and address the role of individual differences broadly defined. Such research will likely provide a more explanatory account of the role of embodiment in general terms as well as how it expands the knowledge base in social psychology. (shrink)

This paper clarifies Merleau-Ponty’s original account of “higher-order” cognition as fundamentally embodied and enacted. Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy inspired theories that deemphasize overlaps between conceptual knowledge and motor intentionality or, on the contrary, focus exclusively on abstract thought. In contrast, this paper explores the link between Merleau-Ponty’s account of motor intentionality and his interpretations of our capacity to understand and interact productively with cultural symbolic systems. I develop my interpretation based on Merleau-Ponty’s analysis of two neuropathological modifications of motor intentionality, (...) the case of the brain-injured war veteran Schneider, and a neurological disorder known as Gerstmann’s syndrome. Building on my analysis of Schneider’s sensorimotor compensatory performances in relation to his limitations in the domains of algebra, geometry, and language usage, I demonstrate a strong continuity between the sense of embodiment and enaction at all these levels. Based on Merleau-Ponty’s interpretations, I argue that “higher-order” cognition is impaired in Schneider insofar as his injury limits his sensorimotor capacity to dynamically produce comparatively more complex differentiations of any given phenomenal structure. I then show how Merleau-Ponty develops and specifies his interpretation of Schneider’s intellectual difficulties in relation to the ambiguous role of the body, and in particular the hand, in Gerstmann’s syndrome. I explain how Merleau-Ponty defends the idea that sensorimotor and quasi-representational cognition are mutually irreducible, while maintaining that symbol-based cognition is a fundamentally enactive and embodied process. (shrink)

From the late 1950s until 1975, cognition was understood mainly as disembodied symbol manipulation in cognitive psychology, linguistics, artificial intelligence, and the nascent field of Cognitive Science. The idea of embodied cognition entered the field of Cognitive Linguistics at its beginning in 1975. Since then, cognitive linguists, working with neuroscientists, computer scientists, and experimental psychologists, have been developing a neural theory of thought and language (NTTL). Central to NTTL are the following ideas: (a) we think with our brains, (...) that is, thought is physical and is carried out by functional neural circuitry; (b) what makes thought meaningful are the ways those neural circuits are connected to the body and characterize embodied experience; (c) so-called abstract ideas are embodied in this way as well, as is language. Experimental results in embodied cognition are seen not only as confirming NTTL but also explained via NTTL, mostly via the neural theory of conceptual metaphor. Left behind more than three decades ago is the old idea that cognition uses the abstract manipulation of disembodied symbols that are meaningless in themselves but that somehow constitute internal “representations of external reality” without serious mediation by the body and brain. This article uniquely explains the connections between embodied cognition results since that time and results from cognitive linguistics, experimental psychology, computational modeling, and neuroscience. (shrink)

This paper aims at expanding theories of metaphorical reasoning to other tropes. Asking why figurative language tends to fall into a limited number of patterns, it first examines approaches that offer an answer – ranging from antique rhetoric theory, Hans Blumenberg, Harald Weinrich, Donald Davidson, and Roman Jakobson to George Lakoff and Mark Johnson. By then turning to Giambattista Vico, it puts forth the argument that a limited set of pre-structured ways of embodied reasoning is hard-wired in and enacted (...) by different aspects of children’s ways of playing – and provides the foundation for structures of thinking in the adult life. (shrink)

Embodied agents use bodily actions and environmental interventions to make the world a better place to think in. Where does language fit into this emerging picture of the embodied, ecologically efficient agent? One useful way to approach this question is to consider language itself as a cognition-enhancing animal-built structure. To take this perspective is to view language as a kind of self-constructed cognitive niche: a persisting though never stationary material scaffolding whose critical role in promoting thought and (...) reason remains surprisingly ill-understood. It is the very materiality of this linguistic scaffolding, I suggest, that is responsible for some key benefits. By materializing thought in words, we create structures that are themselves proper objects of perception, manipulation, and thought. (shrink)

A thought is a mental state with a phenomenal aspect; it is essentially subjective. However, in Yorùbá thought system, a thought involves third persons or objective perspectival aspects. This is contrary to the nature of thoughts, hence the need to explain how the distinct properties of subjectivity and objectivity are found in Yorùbá thoughts system. The paper is divided into three parts. The first explores the nature of phenomenality in human mental states. The second explains that the (...) Yorùbá thoughts system is linked with the embodied cognitive system. It is argued that when an average Yorùbá thinks, such a thought is a dialogue between the first person and third persons or objects. The third part draws examples from Yorùbá thought system to illustrate the complementariness between the first-person character and the objective or external elements of mental state. (shrink)

My aim in this chapter is to explain how and why all human cognition depends on the body for Leibniz. I will show that there are three types of dependence: (a) the body is needed in order to supply materials, or content, for thinking; (b) the body is needed in order to give us the opportunity for the discovery of innate ideas; and (c) the body is needed in order to provide sensory notions as vehicles of thought. The third (...) type is intimately connected to the faculty of the imagination, which supplies the sensory vehicles of thought. Hence, the paper will also examine Leibniz’s account of that faculty and its operations. Before doing any of this, however, I will address the elephant in the room: Leibniz’s claim that mind and body do not interact at all, metaphysically speaking. The correspondence between mind and body is merely a matter of what he calls ‘pre-established harmony’. At first glance, this Leibnizian doctrine may suggest a radical disembodiment of all human cognition. Yet, I will argue that this is not the case and that, quite to the contrary, pre-established harmony requires that cognition is embodied in one important sense. (shrink)

By “essentially embodied Kantian selves,” I mean necessarily and completely embodied rational conscious, self-conscious, sensible (i.e., sense-perceiving, imagining, and emoting), volitional or willing, discursive (i.e., conceptualizing, judging, and inferring) animals, or persons, innately possessing dignity, and fully capable not only of free agency, but also of a priori knowledge of analytic and synthetic a priori truths alike, with egocentric centering in manifestly real orientable space and time. The basic theory of essentially embodied Kantian selves was spelled out (...) by Kant over the course of slightly less than two decades, between 1768 and 1787, but above all, it flows from an empirical realist and metaphysical reading of the “Refutation of Idealism” that Kant inserted into the Postulates of Empirical Thought section in the 1787 edition of the first Critique. In my opinion, all rational but also “human, all-too-human” creatures like us are, synthetic a priori necessarily, essentially embodied Kantian selves. Let’s call that the essentially embodied Kantian selves thesis, or for short, EEKST. If EEKST is true, then it’s synthetic a priori impossible for the selves of creatures like us to exist independently of our own living organismic animal bodies or beyond the deaths of those bodies, whether temporarily or permanently, by any means whatsoever. Indeed, the very ideas of disembodied selves, their survival after death, and of human immortality, while minimally logically consistent, are in fact conceptually empty and incoherent, even over and above the synthetic a priori impossibility of such things, since the term “myself” indexically picks out an essentially embodied Kantian self, all of whose core features require grounding in a particular living organismic animal body. According to the recent and contemporary movement of transhumanism, the selves of creatures like us can not only exist independently of our bodies, as functional systems of representational content that are inherently able to be implemented or realized in digital-mechanical technology and uploadable to servers, but also to survive accidental or natural human death in server-limbo, then be downloaded into technologically enhanced partially mechanical humanoid bodies or even into wholly artificially-created completely mechanical non-humanoid bodies, survive in these new implementations or realizations for an indefinitely long time, repeat that process, and possibly even become immortal. Transhumanism is in fact metaphysically equivalent to Swedenborgianism, which Kant so effectively criticizes and wittily derides in his 1766 book, Dreams of a Spirit-Seer Elucidated by Dreams of Metaphysics. Moreover, and more importantly, if EEKST is true, then, just like Swedenborgianism, transhumanism is not only conceptually empty and incoherent, but also synthetic a priori impossible. And what’s more, it’s also existentially and morally reprehensible. In short, then, the belief in transhuman selves is nothing but a reprehensible noumenal fantasy or Hirngespinst. (shrink)