Abstract
A growing body of data has been gathered in support of the view that the mind is embodied and that cognition is grounded in sensory-motor processes. Some researchers have gone so far as to claim that this paradigm poses a serious challenge to central tenets of cognitive science, including the widely held view that the mind can be analyzed in terms of abstract computational principles. On the other hand, computational approaches to the study of mind have led to the development of specific models that help researchers understand complex cognitive processes at a level of detail that theories of embodied cognition (EC) have sometimes lacked. Here we make the case that connectionist architectures in particular can illuminate many surprising results from the EC literature. These models can learn the statistical structure in their environments, providing an ideal framework for understanding how simple sensory-motor mechanisms could give rise to higher-level cognitive behavior over the course of learning. Crucially, they form overlapping, distributed representations, which have exactly the properties required by many embodied accounts of cognition. We illustrate this idea by extending an existing connectionist model of semantic cognition in order to simulate findings from the embodied conceptual metaphor literature. Specifically, we explore how the abstract domain of time may be structured by concrete experience with space (including experience with culturally specific spatial and linguistic cues). We suggest that both EC researchers and connectionist modelers can benefit from an integrated approach to understanding these models and the empirical findings they seek to explain.
Highlights
IntroductionA growing body of data has been gathered in support of the idea that the mind is situated and embodied and that cognition is grounded in sensory-motor interactions with the world (Varela et al, 1991; Clark, 1998; Barsalou, 1999, 2008; Lakoff and Johnson, 1999; Gibbs, 2006; Spivey, 2007; Chemero, 2009)
Why the model works Several theorists have proposed that the grounding of abstract thought in concrete knowledge may be due in part to the direct co-occurrence of certain domains in experience, for example, of time with space or of love with physical warmth (Lakoff and Johnson, 1999; see the afterward to the 2003 edition of Lakoff and Johnson, 1980)
Implications of the model for embodiment We have presented this model as an exploration of effects in the embodied conceptual metaphor literature, and as having implications for theories of embodied cognition (EC) as a whole
Summary
A growing body of data has been gathered in support of the idea that the mind is situated and embodied and that cognition is grounded in sensory-motor interactions with the world (Varela et al, 1991; Clark, 1998; Barsalou, 1999, 2008; Lakoff and Johnson, 1999; Gibbs, 2006; Spivey, 2007; Chemero, 2009). It has been argued that this “body-up” approach to cognition poses a serious challenge to more traditional “mind-down” approaches in cognitive science (Lakoff and Johnson, 1999; Spivey, 2007; Barsalou, 2008; Chemero, 2009), which have attempted to define cognition in terms of discrete, amodal, symbolic information-processing mechanisms divorced of any particular physical instantiation (Fodor, 1975; Marr, 1982; Kemp and Tenenbaum, 2008) This debate has been contentious in discussions of high-level cognition, where the amodal symbolic view has typically dominated. Theories must have a solid foundation and be well-supported by the data or they might fall apart, and you can build them up, tear them down, or even explode them in light of new findings
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