From Wide Cognition to Mechanisms: A Silent Revolution

PsycCritques, 2011

Beyond the Brain presents a great synthesis of psychological knowledge. It provides an approachable explanation of the movements that seem increasingly likely to dominate the future of psychology -an 'embodied cognition' that embraces dynamic systems theory and recognizes the importance of environmental context. This will be a truly 'comparative' psychology, one that is open to evidence from research with adult humans, children and infants, other animals, robots, and computer simulation. The book targets an educated lay audience and a scientific audience, and it is well written enough to warrant keeping on an accessible shelf.

To accept that cognition is embodied is to question many of the beliefs traditionally held by cognitive scientists. One key question regards the localization of cognitive faculties. Here we argue that for cognition to be embodied and sometimes embedded, means that the cognitive faculty cannot be localized in a brain area alone. We review recent research on neural reuse, the 1 ⁄ f structure of human activity, tool use, group cognition, and social coordination dynamics that we believe demonstrates how the boundary between the different areas of the brain, the brain and body, and the body and environment is not only blurred but indeterminate. In turn, we propose that cognition is supported by a nested structure of task-specific synergies, which are softly assembled from a variety of neural, bodily, and environmental components (including other individuals), and exhibit interaction dominant dynamics.

How do we, as humans, take in the feelings and thoughts of other people? Theory-ofMind (ToM) and Embodied Simulation (ES) approaches hypothesize divergent neural and behavioral mechanisms underlying intersubjectivity. ToM investigators assert that humans take in the belief states and intentions of another person by holding “a theory of mind” that cognitively posits the other person’s mental contents, with some experiments identifying the right temporo-parietal junction as a specific ToM brain region. ES theorists hypothesize that humans perceive the other’s state of mind by simulating his/her actions, emotions, and goals in the
mirror neuron system
in the brain. A historical review suggests these understandings rely on opposing, dualist models of cognition and perception. William James’s intervention on this earlier debate is informative in anticipating recent findings in low-level sensory neuroscience. Of specific interest are studies showing that intersubjectivity and low-level sensory attentional filtering are both processed in the same cortical area (the temporo-parietal junction) suggesting that the ability to entertain other minds may be related to the ability to perceive salient stimuli during attention-demanding tasks.

Topics in Cognitive Science, 2012

To accept that cognition is embodied is to question many of the beliefs traditionally held by cognitive scientists. One key question regards the localization of cognitive faculties. Here we argue that for cognition to be embodied and sometimes embedded, means that the cognitive faculty cannot be localized in a brain area alone. We review recent research on neural reuse, the 1 ⁄ f structure of human activity, tool use, group cognition, and social coordination dynamics that we believe demonstrates how the boundary between the different areas of the brain, the brain and body, and the body and environment is not only blurred but indeterminate. In turn, we propose that cognition is supported by a nested structure of task-specific synergies, which are softly assembled from a variety of neural, bodily, and environmental components (including other individuals), and exhibit interaction dominant dynamics.

2020

Embodied cognition (EC) views propose that cognition is shaped by the kind of body organisms possess. We overview recent literature on EC, highlighting the differences between stronger and weaker versions of the theory. We also illustrate the debates on the notions of simulation, of representation, and on the role of the motor system for cognition, and we address some of the most important research topics. Future challenges concern the understanding of how abstract concepts and words are represented, and the relationship between EC and other promising approaches, the distributional views of meaning and the extended mind views. Definition of Embodied Cognition Embodied cognition theory (EC) is intended as a response to the increasing dominance of the classic representational and computational theories of mind (RCTM) in cognitive science. Despite many versions of embodied theories, there are however at least two commonalities between all EC approaches. The first is the view that cogni...

Theory & …, 2008

Contemporary cognitive neuroscience, for the most part, aims to figure out how cognitive processes are realized in the brain. This research goal betrays the field's commitment to the philosophical position that cognizing is something that the brain does. Since the 1990s, philosophers and cognitive scientists have started to question this position, arguing that the brain constitutes only one of several contributing factors to cognition, the other factors being the body and the world. This latter position we refer to as embodied embedded cognition (EEC). Although cognitive neuroscience's research practice and EEC do not seem to fit well together at present, it is pertinent to ask if a variant of cognitive neuroscience can be developed that sets itself research goals that are more congenial to the EEC view. In this paper we investigate this possibility. We put forth a new guiding metaphor of the role of the brain in cognitive behavior to replace the current cognitivist metaphor of the brain as an information-processing device. We also identify a research agenda that naturally arises from our metaphor. In this way we hope to provide an impetus for cognitive neuroscientists to pursue an EEC-inspired research program.

To accept that cognition is embodied is to question many of the beliefs traditionally held by cognitive scientists. One key question regards the localization of cognitive faculties. Here we argue that for cognition to be embodied and sometimes embedded, means that the cognitive faculty cannot be localized in a brain area alone. We review recent research on neural reuse, the 1/f structure of human activity, tool use, group cognition, and social coordination dynamics that we believe demonstrates how the boundary between the different areas of the brain, the brain and body, and the body and environment is not only blurred but indeterminate. In turn, we propose that cognition is supported by a nested structure of task-specific synergies, which are softly assembled from a variety of neural, bodily, and environmental components (including other individuals), and exhibit interaction dominant dynamics.

Proceedings of the 28th Annual …, 2006

This paper describes a catalytic theory that grounds cognition in biology, building on the proposals of (a) Gibson and ecological psychologists concerning the role of invariance and (b) Shepard, Gestaltists and neuroscientists concerning the role of 'resonating' neural waves. Enzyme catalysis increases the speed of a molecular reaction, perhaps via a type of wave, a soliton, whose formation, persistence and form depend on the structural invariance of its environment. Generalizing to cognition (Davia, 2006), the waves of neural activity constitute a catalytic process, with the organism's perceptionaction invariance playing the role of the environmental structure. This 'generalized catalysis' is a process by which an entity mediates its environment and is the organism's experience.

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.

Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 2015