At first sight, it might seem surprising that the concept of embodiment is play-ing an ever-increasplay-ing role in the philosophy of mind and anthropology. Is it not evident from many empirical findings that the body “shapes the mind” in important respects, as Shaun Gallagher set out in detail years ago (see Gallagher 2005)? Only very few philosophers defend the argument in the current body-mind debate that there is a strict dichotomy between mental and physical events, let alone entirely different substances (see Meixner 2004). And most theorists in the field today accept that humans are the outcome of an evolutionary pro-cess and that Darwin’s insight (not to be confused with Neo-Darwinism) in the Origin of Species (Darwin 1859) has significant explanatory value not only with regard to the biological heritage of the human mind but also the cultural condi-tion (cultural niches) of its existence.
Though these issues are often agreed upon, the explanatory role of the body and the metaphysical and anthropological implications of embodiment have still to find broad consensus within the cognitive sciences and anthropology. There are several reasons for this, as the contributions in the first chapter explain. The most obvious is that embodied cognition is frequently viewed as an alternative to standard cognitive sciences, or at least as a challenge to some of their basic assumptions (see Shapiro 2011). The challenges concern such questions as the relationship of the brain and body to consciousness and cognition, the question of whether basic minds have representational, content-involving access to the world or the role of emotions and affections for cognitive processes.
The first contribution of this chapter analyzes in greater depth the relation between brain and body with regard to cognition and consciousness. Mog Sta-pleton introduces and defends the thesis of proper embodiment. This concept of embodiment is intimately related to Thompson and Cosmelli’s view, devel-oped in recent years, that the entire body and not only the brain plays a con-stitutive role in the emergence of consciousness (see Cosmelli and Thompson [2010] 2014). According to the thesis of proper embodiment, our physiology is paramount to our cognition: the underlying “mechanisms” of cognition and consciousness are so finely grained that the specification of the algorithm for cognition would entail aspects of the “internal body” and not only the configu-rations and processes of the brain.
The reference to mechanisms indicates that there might be functional states that determine how the implementation of sub-personal processes gives rise to
cognitive and mental states. Stapleton coins this approach “orthodox embodied cognitive sciences” (see Stapleton 2013). This refers to one important research tradition in current embodied cognitive science that shares the traditional func-tionalist approach to mind and cognition but does not confine the implementa-tion of cognitive and mental states to the working mechanisms of the brain. The latter approach thus includes the position of extended functionalism (see Wheeler 2010).
But how is the concept of proper embodiment related to orthodox embodied cognitive science? To answer this question, it is important to note that the thesis consists of two sub-theses that Stapleton develops in the course of her paper. She terms the first one “internal embodiment” and defines it as the thesis that “the internal ‘gooey’ body matters to cognition and consciousness in a fundamental way” (Stapleton, this volume). She refers here in particular to the sense of our internal body in interoception and the constitutive role it plays in conscious-ness and cognition. The second sub-thesis is termed “particular embodiment.”
This is the view that the fine-grained details of functional implementation matter when it comes to the emergence of cognitive states. Taking both sub-theses and their implications together, Stapleton argues that the seemingly clear-cut distinc-tion between (funcdistinc-tional) algorithms and their implementadistinc-tion – a key feature of orthodox cognitive science – is undermined by proper embodiment.
The topic of the second paper, by Christian Tewes, concerns the question of whether the extended mind hypothesis (still as part of the orthodox embodied cognitive sciences) or the enactivist research program in embodied cognition is better suited to deal with the research field of embodied memory formation.
Enactivism involves, among other things, the thesis that even basic organisms have sense-making capacities and that there is a strong relation between actions and perceptions at different levels of explanation that are not fully captured in the traditional cognitive sciences.
In the inaugural paper of the “extended mind hypothesis” (henceforth, EM) the extension of memory capacities already plays an important role (see Clark and Chalmers [1998] 2010). The extension of cognitive and mental states and capacities is usually justified by means of a dynamical systems approach in order to show in what cases the mind actually extends the skull and the body and inte-grates items of the environment into the cognitive machinery.
Proponents of the enactivist camp have challenged this picture und provided some distinctions and criteria to differentiate between new emerging (auton-omous) systems and the mere extension or enhancement of mental capacities.
Besides the more formal concepts of autonomous systems and sense-making processes, enactivism also relies on phenomenological insights and concepts to argue for these distinctions. It is Tewes’ thesis that these basic distinctions are also of major significance for exploring the constitution of memory. He elabo-rates this point with particular regard to the question of how enactivism can con-tribute to research on habitual embodied memory formation and how memory research undertaken within the framework of EM can profit from the enactive research program and its insights.
In the paper which follows, Karim Zahidi and Erik Myin apply the radical enactivist approach to the phylo- and ontogenetic emergence of numerical cog-nition. According to “Radically Enactive / Embodied Cognition” (henceforth REC), basic cognition is constituted by concrete items of environmentally sit-uated organismic activity (Hutto and Myin 2013, 11). What is “radical” with regard to the REC approach is the conviction that basic forms of perception and interaction are mindful – such experiences have phenomenal character and are intentionally directed – but do not involve content and the use of representation.
Thus, as Zahidi and Myin point out in their paper, sensorimotor cognition such as chasing a rabbit or grasping a leaf are directed towards objects but do not rep-resent them (see Zahidi and Myin, this volume). However, this does not imply that the existence of representation and contentful states should be abandoned.
Quite the contrary, these shape the human mind in important respects even if they only emerge at later phylo- and ontogenetic stages.
Proponents of REC also hold the view that computational abilities – in strict analogy with representational states – require sociocultural language contexts for their evolutionary emergence. Zahidi and Myin’s aim is to develop an REC account of the phylo- and ontogenetic development of numerical cognition, one that implies the inversion of the explanans and the explanandum of the tradi-tional cognitive sciences. In this sense “REC aims to truly account for compu-tation in contrast to assuming compucompu-tation as a basic, and fundamentally unac-counted for, ingredient in nature” (Zahidi and Myin, this volume).
It is the aim of their paper to show that descriptions of certain types of behav-ior displayed by animals or pre-verbal infants does not warrant the ascription to them of arithmetical competence. In their discussion, the authors focus on a proposal that monkeys already possess number concepts. If this claim were to be true, it would apparently refute certain basic tenets of the REC approach to cognition.
Zahidi and Myin develop conceptual arguments against such a “rich inter-pretation” of numerical abilities in monkeys and infants, namely “that to treat similar things or situations as perceptually similar” already involves representa-tional and computarepresenta-tional abilities. Furthermore, they point to possible empir-ically-grounded “lean interpretations” that could explain the same behavioral evidence without the assumption of basic computational abilities.
In the final contribution of this chapter, Christian Spahn explores the wider reasons that have motivated the “turn to embodiment” in the first place. In the first part of his paper, he analyzes some deeply rooted motives in Western cul-ture that have led to dualistic concepts. We measure ourselves with regard to values and self-governance that are connected with our ability to “distance our-selves from mere biological impulses and instincts” (Spahn, this volume). This has contributed to the emergence of basic distinctions such as “is” (factual real-ity) and “ought” (ideal realm) and the idea of mental powers shaping our nature (impulses and instincts).
Spahn then shows how enactivism as a theory of embodied cognition tries to overcome these dualisms by focusing on the philosophy of organic life (see
Thompson 2007). The differences between the physical and the organic body and the attempt to elaborate a concept of nature that does not coincide with reductive physicalism guide Spahn’s discussion. He also evaluates Thompson and Cos-melli’s critique of neurocentric intuitions that consciousness supervenes locally on brain states, drawing upon their conceptual and empirically-based arguments for why one cannot isolate brain states and their corresponding conscious states from the entire body, even in a thought experiment (see Cosmelli and Thompson [2010] 2014).
However, as he points out in the last part of the paper, Spahn does not think that dualistic implications are entirely solved within the enactivist research pro-gram and in its findings. What remains to be explained are such basic questions as how the interiority of the organism is related to consciousness. Is it possible to answer this question within a naturalistic framework or do we need to look at alternative ontological options? And can the sense-making processes of organis-mic life be built upon to deliver a justification for values and ethical judgements (facts versus justification procedures) as well?
Each of these issues delineates fields which embodiment-based research can fruitfully explore in future.
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