What is embodied about cognition?

Mahon, Bradford Z.

doi:10.1080/23273798.2014.987791

Cited by 185 publications

(178 citation statements)

References 66 publications

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“…In recent years, there has been growing interest in Embodied Cognition (EC), with many books and journal articles appearing every year (see Mahon, 2015, Figure 1). A keyword search on Google Scholar using “embodied cognition” shows over 15,000 books and articles published since the year 2000.…”

Section: Mind and Bodymentioning

confidence: 99%

The poverty of embodied cognition

et al. 2016

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In recent years, there has been rapidly growing interest in Embodied Cognition, a multifaceted theoretical proposition that (1) cognitive processes are influenced by the body, (2) cognition exists in the service of action, (3) cognition is situated in the environment, and (4) cognition may occur without internal representations. Many proponents view embodied cognition as the next great paradigm shift for cognitive science. In this article, we critically examine the core ideas from embodied cognition, taking a “thought exercise” approach. We first note that the basic principles from embodiment theory are either unacceptably vague (e.g., the premise that perception is influenced by the body) or they offer nothing new (e.g., cognition evolved to optimize survival, emotions affect cognition, perception-action couplings are important). We next suggest that, for the vast majority of classic findings in cognitive science, embodied cognition offers no scientifically valuable insight. In most cases, the theory has no logical connections to the phenomena, other than some trivially true ideas. Beyond classic laboratory findings, embodiment theory is also unable to adequately address the basic experiences of cognitive life.

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Section: Mind and Bodymentioning

confidence: 99%

The poverty of embodied cognition

et al. 2016

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“…Likewise, the activation of neural regions associated with sensory or motor information during conceptual retrieval (e.g., Hauk, Johnsrude, & Pulvermüller, 2004) is evidence about interaction, and not about reducibility (even granting that those regions are purely sensory-motor, which is not always evident). There is extensive treatment of this argument elsewhere (Bedny & Caramazza, 2011;Binder & Desai, 2011;Chatterjee, 2010;Leshinskaya & Caramazza, 2014b;Mahon & Caramazza, 2008;Mahon, 2014).…”

Section: Versions Of Embodiment: What Is Really At Stake?mentioning

confidence: 99%

For a cognitive neuroscience of concepts: Moving beyond the grounding issue

Leshinskaya

Caramazza

2016

Psychon Bull Rev

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Cognitive neuroscience research on conceptual knowledge often is discussed with respect to Bembodiment^ or Bgrounding.^ We tried to disentangle at least three distinct claims made using these terms. One of these, the view that concepts are entirely reducible to sensory-motor representations , is untenable and diminishing in the literature. A second is the view that concepts and sensory-motor representations Binteract,^ and a third view addresses the question of how concepts are neurally organized-the neural partitions among concepts of different kinds, and where these partitions are localized in cortex. We argue that towards the second and third issues, much fruitful research can be pursued, but that no position on them is specifically related to Bgrounding.^ Furthermore, to move forward on them, it is important to precisely distinguish different kinds of representations-conceptual vs. sensory-motor-from each other theoretically and empirically. Neuroimaging evidence often lacks such specific-ity. We take an approach that distinguishes conceptual from sensory-motor representations by virtue of two properties: broad generality and tolerance to the absence of sensory-motor associations. We review three of our recent experiments that employ these criteria in order to localize neural representations of several specific kinds of nonsensory attributes: functions , intentions, and belief traits. Building on past work, we find that neuroimaging evidence can be used fruitfully to distinguish interesting hypotheses about neural organization. On the other hand, most such evidence does not speak to any clear notion of Bgrounding^ or Bembodiment,^ because these terms do not make clear, specific, empirical predictions. We argue that cognitive neuroscience will proceed most fruitfully by relinquishing these terms.

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“…Numerical cognition requires the activation of an amodal system. This would undermine strong versions of the grounded approach (e.g., [7,47,48]), which claim that modality-specific systems are necessary and sufficient to support conceptual processing [49]. It is relevant to notice that many grounded theorists currently endorse a weak version of the approach, which claims that concept-related tasks require both modality-specific and modality-independent structure [3,[50][51][52][53][54][55].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Defense of an Amodal Number System

Paz

2018

Philosophies

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It has been argued that the approximate number system (ANS) constitutes a problem for the grounded approach to cognition because it implies that some conceptual tasks are performed by non-perceptual systems. The ANS is considered non-perceptual mainly because it processes stimuli from different modalities. Jones (2015) has recently argued that this system has many features (such as being modular) which are characteristic of sensory systems. Additionally, he affirms that traditional sensory systems also process inputs from different modalities. This suggests that the ANS is a perceptual system and therefore it is not problematic for the grounded view. In this paper, I defend the amodal approach to the ANS against these two arguments. In the first place, perceptual systems do not possess the properties attributed to the ANS and therefore these properties do not imply that the ANS is perceptual. In the second place, I will propose that a sensory system only needs to be dedicated to process modality-specific information, which is consistent with responding to inputs from different modalities. I argue that the cross-modal responses exhibited by traditional sensory systems are consistent with modality-specific information whereas some responses exhibited by the ANS are not.

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What is embodied about cognition?

Cited by 185 publications

References 66 publications

The poverty of embodied cognition

The poverty of embodied cognition

For a cognitive neuroscience of concepts: Moving beyond the grounding issue

A Defense of an Amodal Number System

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