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A Moderate Approach to Embodied Cognitive Science

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Abstract

Many current programs for cognitive science sail under the banner of “embodied cognition.” These programs typically seek to distance themselves from standard cognitive science. The present proposal for a conception of embodied cognition is less radical than most, indeed, quite compatible with many versions of traditional cognitive science. Its rationale is based on two elements, each of which is theoretically plausible and empirically well-founded. The first element invokes the idea of “bodily formats,” i.e., representational codes primarily utilized in forming interoceptive or directive representations of one’s bodily states and activities. The second element appeals to wideranging evidence that the brain reuses or redeploys cognitive processes having different original uses. When the redeployment theme is applied to bodily formats of representation, they jointly provide for the possibility that body-coded cognition is a very pervasive sector of cognition.

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Notes

  1. A more complex representationalist analysis of one class of feelings, i.e., emotions, is offered by Prinz (2004). He holds that emotions are perceptions of the body, specifically, of bodily changes. He argues that emotions represent organism–environment relations, but they do so by perceiving bodily changes. In different terminology, organism–environment relations are said to be the “real” contents of emotions, and bodily changes are said to be their “nominal” contents (2004: 68). This is close enough, for our purposes, to treat emotions as embodied under our proposal; and Prinz certainly presents himself as an embodiment theorist.

  2. For additional supportive evidence of motor involvement in language understanding, see Pulvermuller and Fadiga (2010), Jirak et al. (2010), and Glenberg and Gallese (2011).

  3. Vignemont and Haggard (2008) pose the question of what specific representations are “shared” between sender and receiver in a mirror transaction. At what level of the hierarchical structure of the motor system do shared representations occur? This is a good question, to which they offer a complex array of interesting possible answers. However, the central question for present purposes does not concern the specific motoric level at which the observer’s representations replicate those of the actor, but whether any different cognitive tasks at all are undertaken by the observer that are distinct from those of the actor. And that question can be addressed without settling the one that concerns Vignemont and Haggard.

  4. In the experiment by Iacoboni et al. (2005) subjects observed a person in three kinds of conditions: an action condition, a context condition, and an intention condition. The intention condition was one that may have suggested an intention beyond that of merely grasping a cup: an intention either to drink tea or to clean up (after tea). This condition yielded a significant signal increase in premotor mirroring areas where hand actions are represented. This was interpreted by the researchers as evidence that premotor mirroring areas are involved in understanding the intentions of others. There is room for doubt about this interpretation. However, even if the enhanced mirroring activity during the intention condition did not constitute an intention attribution by the observer, it very plausibly did constitute a prediction or expectation of a future action by the portrayed individual. Since an action is not a mental state, predicting an action would not qualify as mindreading.

  5. For details of evidence about pain, see Avenanti et al. (2006), Shanton and Goldman (2010). For details about emotions like disgust and fear, see Goldman and Sripada (2005); Goldman (2006, chap. 6), Jabbi et al. (2007). The main “special” evidence for mirror-based mindreading in the case of emotions is evidence involving patients with paired deficits in experiencing and attributing the same emotion. For example, Calder et al. (2000) found such a pairing in patient NK, who had suffered insula and basal ganglia damage. On a questionnaire to probe the experience of disgust, NK’s score was significantly lower than that of controls. Similarly, in tests of his ability to recognize emotions from faces, NK showed a marked deficit in recognizing disgust but not other emotions. The natural inference (when conjoined with the Wicker et al. 2003 study) is that a normal subject who sees someone else’s disgust-expressive face undergoes a mirrored experience of disgust and uses it to recognize disgust in the other. This is why an impaired disgust system leaves a subject (selectively) unable to mindread disgust normally based on a facial (or vocal) expression, i.e., because he does not undergo a mirrored disgust experience.

  6. Gallese had previously advanced the concept of reuse, one of the core elements of the B-format approach, as the linchpin of an account of embodiment (Gallese 2007, 2008, 2010). Note, however, that reuse by itself is neither necessary nor sufficient for embodiment. It isn’t necessary because primary, or fundamental, uses of a B-format—which do not constitutes reuses—still qualify as instances of embodiment. It isn’t sufficient because there may be many cognitions that reuse non-bodily formats. Such reuses are not instances of embodied cognition. Gallese and Sinigaglia take notice of the latter point, writing “The notion of reuse, however, is not sufficient to explain the MM [mirror mechanism]” (2011: 513).

  7. Proffitt and colleagues often speak of influences on visual “experience,” and some might question whether this is fully supported by the evidence. The issue is whether their findings are merely post-perceptual phenomena rather than genuine perceptual phenomena. This matter has been tested and addressed in Witt et al. (2010). What they say seems quite re-assuring on this point, namely, that the findings do pertain to genuinely perceptual phenomena. The reader can judge for him/herself.

  8. I thank Dennis Proffitt, Michael Anderson, Vittorio Gallese, Frederique de Vignemont, and Lucy Jordan for helpful feedback on some of the main ideas in this paper. An earlier version of the material on Proffitt was presented to a workshop at the Australian National University. A talk based on the paper as a whole was presented at the Rutgers University Center for Cognitive Science. I am grateful to members of these groups for instructive criticisms.

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    Alvin I. Goldman

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Goldman, A.I. A Moderate Approach to Embodied Cognitive Science. Rev.Phil.Psych. 3, 71–88 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13164-012-0089-0

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