Abstract
The most exciting hypothesis in cognitive science right now is the theory that cognition is embodied. Like all good ideas in cognitive science, however, embodiment immediately came to mean six different things. The most common definitions involve the straight-forward claim that “states of the body modify states of the mind.” However, the implications of embodiment are actually much more radical than this. If cognition can span the brain, body, and the environment, then the “states of mind” of disembodied cognitive science won’t exist to be modified. Cognition will instead be an extended system assembled from a broad array of resources. Taking embodiment seriously therefore requires both new methods and theory. Here we outline four key steps that research programs should follow in order to fully engage with the implications of embodiment. The first step is to conduct a task analysis, which characterizes from a first person perspective the specific task that a perceiving-acting cognitive agent is faced with. The second step is to identify the task-relevant resources the agent has access to in order to solve the task. These resources can span brain, body, and environment. The third step is to identify how the agent can assemble these resources into a system capable of solving the problem at hand. The last step is to test the agent’s performance to confirm that agent is actually using the solution identified in step 3. We explore these steps in more detail with reference to two useful examples (the outfielder problem and the A-not-B error), and introduce how to apply this analysis to the thorny question of language use. Embodied cognition is more than we think it is, and we have the tools we need to realize its full potential.
Highlights
The most exciting idea in cognitive science is the theory that cognition is embodied
Thelen et al (2001) do not include an object concept as a resource. The purpose of this seeming omission is to see how well they can model the behavior without invoking any core competence separate from observed performance. How might these resources be assembled to solve the task? The reason why this work by Thelen et al (2001) is such a powerful example of replacement style embodied cognition is that their model is an excellent example of using dynamical systems to explain how perceptual and embodied resources might be assembled to produce an error that, on the face of it, seems to require a representational explanation
THE CONCEPTUALIZATION HYPOTHESIS FOR EMBODIMENT: CONCEPTS AND GROUNDING We have identified embodied cognition as a cluster of research tied together by the same basic research strategy; (1) identify the task at hand, (2) identify the resources available within that task space that might help an organism solve the task, (3) generate hypotheses about how these resources are assembled and coordinated, and (4) empirically test whether people, use these resources assembled in this way
Summary
The most exciting idea in cognitive science is the theory that cognition is embodied. Embodiment is the surprisingly radical hypothesis that the brain is not the sole cognitive resource we have available to us to solve problems Our bodies and their perceptually guided motions through the world do much of the work required to achieve our goals, replacing the need for complex internal mental representations. We will detail how to use a task analysis to identify the cognitive requirements of a task and the resources (in brain, body, and environment) available to fill these requirements According to this analysis, it is the job of an empirical research program to find out which of the available resources the organism is using, and how they have been assembled, coordinated, and controlled into a smart, taskspecific device for solving the problem at hand (Runeson, 1977; Bingham, 1988). We’ll focus on two classic examples in detail: www.frontiersin.org
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