Online research in philosophy

To what extent can plants be considered cognitive from the perspective of embodied cognition? Cognition is interpreted very broadly within embodied cognition, and the current evidence for plant intelligence might find an important theoretical background here. However, embodied cognition does stress the presence of animal-like perception-action coupling as a key feature for cognitive systems to arise. In this paper, we discuss whether, or to what extent, plants may qualify as cognitive systems, given this criterion.

Embodied cognition is sweeping the planet. On a non-embodied approach, the sensory system informs the cognitive system and the motor system does the cognitive system’s bidding. There are causal relations between the systems but the sensory and motor systems are not constitutive of cognition. For embodied views, the relation to the sensori-motor system to cognition is constitutive, not just causal. This paper examines some recent empirical evidence used to support the view that cognition is embodied and raises questions about some of the claims being made by supporters.

One of the central insights of the embodied cognition (EC) movement is that cognition is closely tied to action. In this paper, I formulate an EC-inspired hypothesis concerning social cognition. In this domain, most think that our capacity to understand and interact with one another is best explained by appeal to some form of mindreading. I argue that prominent accounts of mindreading likely contain a significant lacuna. Evidence indicates that what I call an agent’s actional processes and states—her goals, needs, intentions, desires, and so on—likely play important roles in and for mindreading processes. If so, a full understanding of mindreading processes and their role in cognition more broadly will require an understanding of how actional mental processes interact with, influence, or take part in mindreading processes.

This paper deals with the relationship between the embodied cognition paradigm and two sets of its implications: its implications for the ontology of selves, and its implications for the nature and extent of phenomenal consciousness. There has been a recent wave of interest within cognitive science in the paradigm variously called ‘embodied,’ ‘extended,’ ‘situated’ or ‘distributed’ cognition. Although ideas applied in the embodied cognition research program can be traced back to the work of Heidegger, Piaget, Vygotsky, Merleau-Ponty, and Dewey, the current thesis can be seen as a direct response and, in some cases, a proposed alternative to the cognitivist/classicist rule-based, information-processing model of cognition. Embodied cognition, by contrast, arises from real-time, goal-oriented bodily interactions with the world. I lay out three relations: the implications of embodiment for consciousness; the implications of embodiment for the self; and the tension between these two. I argue that the embodiment paradigm introduces a radical split between consciousness and the self, and that it does so by deflating our pre-theoretical instincts about consciousness and self in two different directions; however, I claim, what both these theoretical movements have in common is a scepticism about the notion of a psychological container defining a boundary between ‘inside’ and ‘outside.’ (203 words).

Can an embodied approach to social cognition accommodate mindreading, our ability to attribute mental states to another person? Prima facie it might not. Mindreading has been conceived in terms of what Susan Hurley calls the classical sandwich picture of the mind. On this view, perception corresponds to input from world to mind, action to output from mind to world, and cognition as sandwiched in between. It separates perception and action, and takes cognition to be central and distinct from both. Embodied cognition rejects the classical sandwich. The mind evolved to guide action, to enhance an organism' s coping with the world. Perception and action and action are central to cognitive activity rather than peripheral. If mindreading is a central cognitive activity, isolated from sensorimotor processing, it's hard to see how it can have a place in an embodied account of social cognition. But at the same time it seems that a complete embodied social cognition should be able to accommodate mindreading, as it is an important social cognitive skill. The present dissertation investigates how this can be done. More specifically, it investigates whether the simulation theory of mindreading can be integrated with an embodied account of social cognition. The simulation theory of mindreading holds that one understands another not by applying a theory but by using one's own mental processes to generate information about the mental processes of the other. Even though its proponents appear to have subscribed to the classical sandwich, simulative mindreading could be a central component of an embodied social cognition.

Machine generated contents note: -- Series Editors' Preface -- Acknowledgements -- Introduction -- The Essential Embodiment Thesis -- Essentially Embodied, Desire-Based Emotions -- Sense of Self,_Embodiment, and Desire-Based Emotions -- The Role of Emotion in Decision and Moral Evaluation -- Essentially Embodied, Emotive, Enactive Social Cognition -- Breakdowns in Embodied Emotive Cognition -- Conclusion -- Notes -- References -- Index.

Social cognition is the capacity to understand and interact with others. The mainstream account of social cognition is mindreading, the view that we humans understanding others by interpreting their behavior in terms of mental states. Recently theorists from philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience have challenged the mindreading account, arguing for a more deflationary account of social cognition. In this paper I examine a deflationary account of social cognition, embodied simulation, which is inspired by recent neuroscientific findings. I argue that embodied simulation fails to present an adequate alternative to mindreading accounts of social cognition. I defend a philosophically and empirically plausible two-systems account of social cognition, which holds that even very young children are capable of mindreading.

Embodied Cognition is an approach to cognition that departs from traditional cognitive science in its reluctance to conceive of cognition as computational and in its emphasis on the significance of an organism’s body in how and what the organism thinks. Three lines of embodied cognition research are described and some thoughts on the future of embodied cognition offered.

Recently, philosophers and psychologists defending the embodied cognition research program have offered arguments against mindreading as a general model of our social understanding. The embodied cognition arguments are of two kinds: those that challenge the developmental picture of mindreading and those that challenge the alleged ubiquity of mindreading. Together, these two kinds of arguments, if successful, would present a serious challenge to the standard account of human social understanding. In this paper, I examine the strongest of these embodied cognition arguments and argue that mindreading approaches can withstand the best of these arguments from embodied cognition.

Introduction: toward an understanding of embodied cognition -- Standard cognitive science -- Challenging standard cognitive science -- Conceptions of embodiment -- Embodied cognition: the conceptualization hypothesis -- Embodied cognition: the replacement hypothesis -- Embodied cognition: the constitution hypothesis -- Concluding thoughts.