Overview
Embodied cognition, broadly, investigates how cognition changes when situated in a physical environment. This is often contrasted with—but not always opposed to—“classical” cognitivism, which emphasizes computational or representational processes “in the head.”
The 4E concept involves, in addition to embodied cognition:
| Name | Theoretical emphasis | Additional notes |
|---|---|---|
| Embedded cognition | How the environment scaffolds cognitive processes or shifts cognitive load | |
| Extended cognition (i.e., the extended mind hypothesis) | Influenced by pragmatists like Peirce and Dewey, roboticists like Brooks, as well as connectionism and neural nets. |
Related notes:
- Simple vs. radical embodied cognition, after Clark
- Challenge questions for interpretations of embodied cognition, after Gallagher
Selected passages and quotations
- @1998clarkExtended: “The moral is that when it comes to belief, there is nothing sacred about skull and skin. What makes some information count as a belief is the role it plays, and there is no reason why the relevant role can be played only from inside the body.” (14)
Notes
- Do conscious mental states only supervene on local processes inside the head? (Clark 2008)
- Semantic efficacy: “the view that the meaning or content of mental states makes a causal difference to what agents do and how they affect their environments.”
- Semantic externalism: “the view that the meaning or “content” of a mental state depends on how one is situated in one’s environment.”
References
- @1998clarkExtended, “The extended mind”
- @1999clarkEmbodied, “An embodied cognitive science?”
- @2023gallagherEmbodied, Embodied and Enactive Approaches to Cognition