Abstract
The aim of this paper is to reflect on the character of embodiment in the framework of Cognitive Linguistics based on Lakoff, collaborators and interlocutors. Initially I characterize the embodied mind, via cognitive experientialism. In these terms, the theory shapes how human beings build and process knowledge structures which regulate their individual and collective lives. Next, the Neural Theory of Language in which embodiment is rebuilt from a five level paradigm, where structured connectionism carries on the very burden of computational description and explanation is discussed. From these assumption, classical problems about computational implementations for models of natural language functioning as reductionist-physicalist approaches, I then conclude by assuming that embodiment, as an investigation phenomenon, shouldn't be formulated in terms of levels, being treated as interfaces instead, at such manner that: (a) the epistemological commitments should be synchronically sustained in all interfaces of the investigation paradigm; (b) the conventional computational level should be taken as one of the problems which has to be treated in the structured connectionism plan; (c) the strategic reduction levels paradigm and the results obtained from it might imply a kind of modularization of the program of research itself; e (d) the modules would be interdependent only as a result of the reductionist proposal. As a result, I assume that it is possible to do Cognitive Linguistics without adhering to structured connectionism, or to neurocomputacional simulation, as long as one would operate with interfaces constructions between domains of investigation and not with a reductionist features paradigm treated in terms of "levels".
Highlights
When embodiment is brought up in Cognitive Linguistics, the main idea is to distinguish between the body as a “physiological entity” and the body as a “phenomenological entity”
That is why the purpose of this paper originally presented at the round table on Embodiment and Metaphor is to reflect on the character of embodiment in the overall framework of Cognitive Linguistics inaugurated by Lakoff
Recovering textually the proposal of the Language Neural Theory, we find in first place the description of the paradigm levels: (I) Level 1: Cognitive Science and Cognitive Linguistics Level 2: Neural Reducible Conventional Computational Models Level 3: Structured Connectionist Model Level 4: Computational Neuroscience Level 5: Neuroscience
Summary
When embodiment is brought up in Cognitive Linguistics, the main idea is to distinguish between the body as a “physiological entity” and the body as a “phenomenological entity”. Once the issue of the computational level required by this paradigm is considered, section 4 discusses traditional questions in the scope of Cognitive Science over computational implementations of models which are concerned with the effective functioning of human language. It is discussed reductionist-physicalist approaches in the philosophy of mind. In spite of the new design of the investigation program, the overall idea of the discussion suggests that is possible to develop research within the limits of Level 1 in which Cognitive Linguistics pre-Neural Theory of Language is situated
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