Making decisions does not suffice for minimal cognition

There is a movement afoot in cognitive science to grant the body a central role in shaping the mind. Proponents of embodied cognition take as their theoretical starting point not a mind working on abstract problems, but a body that requires a mind to make it function. These opening lines by Clark (1998) are typical: " Biological brains are first and foremost the control systems for biological bodies. Biological bodies move and act in rich real-world surroundings " (p. 506). Traditionally, the various branches of cognitive science have viewed the mind as an abstract information processor , whose connections to the outside world were of little theoretical importance. Perceptual and motor systems, though reasonable objects of inquiry in their own right, were not considered relevant to understanding " central " cognitive processes. Instead, they were thought to serve merely as peripheral input and output devices. This stance was evident in the early decades of cognitive psychology, when most theories of human thinking dealt in proposi-tional forms of knowledge. During the same time period, artificial intelligence was dominated by computer models of abstract symbol processing. Philosophy of mind, too, made its contribution to this zeitgeist, most notably in Fodor's (1983) modularity hypothesis. According to Fodor, central cognition is not modular, but its connections to the world are. Perceptual and motor processing are done by informationally encapsulated plug-ins providing sharply limited forms of input and output. However, there is a radically different stance that also has roots in diverse branches of cognitive science. This stance has emphasized sensory and motor functions, as well as their importance for successful interaction with the environment. Early sources include the view of 19th century psychologists that there was no such thing as " imageless thought " (Good-win, 1999); motor theories of perception such as those suggested by William James and others (see Prinz, 1987, for a review); the developmental psychology of Jean Piaget, which emphasized the emergence of cognitive abilities out of a groundwork of sensorimotor abilities; and the ecological psychology of J. J. Gibson, which viewed perception in terms of affordances— potential interactions with the environment. In the 1980s, linguists began exploring how abstract concepts may be based on metaphors for bodily, physical concepts (e.g., Lakoff & Johnson, 1980). At the same time, within the field of artificial intelligence, behavior-based robotics began to emphasize routines for interacting with the environment rather than internal representations used for abstract thought (see, e.g., Brooks, 1986). This kind of approach has recently attained high visibility , under the banner of embodied cognition. There is a growing commitment to the idea that the mind must be understood in the context of its relationship to a physical body that interacts with the world. It is argued that we have evolved from creatures whose neural resources were devoted primarily to perceptual and motoric processing, and whose cognitive activity consisted largely of immediate, on-line interaction with the environment. Hence human cog-nition, rather than being centralized, abstract, and sharply distinct from peripheral input and output modules, may instead have deep roots in sensorimotor processing. Although this general approach is enjoying increasingly broad support, there is in fact a great deal of diversity in the claims involved and the degree of controversy they attract. If the term embodied cognition is to retain meaning-625 The emerging viewpoint of embodied cognition holds that cognitive processes are deeply rooted in the body's interactions with the world. This position actually houses a number of distinct claims, some of which are more controversial than others. This paper distinguishes and evaluates the following six claims: (1) cognition is situated; (2) cognition is time-pressured; (3) we off-load cognitive work onto the environment; (4) the environment is part of the cognitive system; (5) cognition is for action; (6) off-line cognition is body based. Of these, the first three and the fifth appear to be at least partially true, and their usefulness is best evaluated in terms of the range of their applicability. The fourth claim, I argue, is deeply problematic. The sixth claim has received the least attention in the literature on embodied cognition, but it may in fact be the best documented and most powerful of the six claims.

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.

Penultimate Draft. To appear in Uriah Kriegel ed., The Oxford Handbook of the Philosophy of Consciousness (OUP, forthcoming)

Like many of the most interesting questions, the question of whether consciousness is embodied can mean so many different things that it is genuinely difficult to know where to start. And when I don't know where to start I generally like to go with bombast, and the sorts of ambitious claims I'm not entirely sure I'll be able to back up. So here we go. I shall argue that the question of whether consciousness is embodied has been vitiated -to the point of making it largely nonsensical -by a failure to ask a more basic, and when you think about it blindingly obvious, question: what is the body? Often, the reason a blindingly obvious question is not asked is because the answer is, similarly, blindingly obvious. This may seem like such a question. We all know what the body is. The body is a collection, an organization, of nerve, and sinew, muscle, blood and bone. The body is what you see when you look in the mirror. Except it is not. Or so I shall argue. This is only one version of the body. The body, understood as the thing that you see in the mirror, or parts of the body -the hands, for example, that you hold up in front of you when, in George Edward Moore style, you prove the existence of the external world -these are only one version of the body; one way the body might be. The body in the mirror, the hands that you hold up in front of you, these are examples of the body as object. But the body is more than the body as object. There is also the body as subject; the body as lived. You cannot see the lived body by looking in the mirror.

KOSMOS, Philosophical Society, St. Stephen's College, Delhi, 2023

In this essay, I would like to discuss a few topics on the notion of Embodied Cognition(thereafter as EC) or widely also known as Embodied mind. What is meant by the term Embodied Cognition?What exactly do we mean by embodiment of cognition? What is the need and purpose of such type of a cognitive theory? The constitution of body in cognition formation and the process of cognition. Can abstract ideas be embodied? Lastly, what is the scope of this theory to be applied in practical life? These are the few topics I would elaborate upon. I would do so by summarising some of the works on the topic and related topics that I have referred to for writing this paper along with my interpretations and takes of them.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse in how far the new field of embodied cognitive science is compatible with the traditional cognitive science program, with a side view on possible differences in the explanatory power between the two different programs. Two conclusions are drawn. First, the various approaches in embodied cognitive science should be classified into two versions ‐ one of which is compatible with traditional approaches, the second of which is not. In particular, weak embodied theories are still compatible with the core of the traditional program because they still share the latterʹs computational strategies. By contrast, radical embodied theories are not compatible with the traditional program since they completely abandon the computational approach in favour of the complex interactions between the system, its body and the world. Second, weak and radical embodiment have different status. Weak embodied cognitive science seems likely to exceed the traditional program in explanatory power, because it can extend the pool of traditional concepts in interesting ways. By contrast, radical embodiment at current seems to be a theoretical position rather than a mature experimental research program, because it is in a process of conceptual and methodological clarification that predates substantial empirical research.

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Classical cognitive scientists have operated with a strict separation of cognition from consciousness. At the same time they have attempted to explain consciousness using the same concepts of computation and representation as they employ to explain unconscious cognition. This has led some philosophers to argue that an unbridgeable gap separates sub-personal cognition from first-personal conscious experience. I shall argue that the appearance of such a gap is due to an assumption that classical cognitive science inherits from behaviourism that cognitive processes function independently from consciousness. My aim in this paper will be to argue against this assumption. I will develop an embodied theory of cognitive processes as constituted by temporally extended, skilled and practical engagements with the world. Such a conception of cognitive processes challenges any separation of conscious from non-conscious cognitive processes. It does so by showing how both conscious and non-conscious cognitive processes mutually constrain each other as dynamical processes evolving over different spatial and temporal scales. In virtue of the mutual constraints that hold between conscious and non-conscious cognitive processes, I argue against the view that cognition and consciousness can be separated. I finish up by showing how this move opens the door to a deflation of the hard problem.

Synthese