Six views of embodied cognition (Wilson, 2002) What is meant by - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Six views of embodied cognition (Wilson, 2002) ● What is meant by embodied cognition? ● ”starting point: a body that requires mind to make it function” ● Traditional view: mind as abstract information processor ● Modularity hypothesis (Fodor, 1983) Grounded cognition: ● Embodied cognition view: Embodiment ● Piaget, Gibson, Lakoff & Johnson, Brooks ● Features: situatedness, time pressure, off-loading, environment, action, body-based. Igor Farkaš Centre for cognitive science DAI FMFI Comenius University in Bratislava Príprava štúdia matematiky a informatiky na FMFI UK v anglickom jazyku ITMS: 26140230008 1 2 Cognition is situated Cognition is time pressured ● takes place in the context of task-relevant inputs and outputs ● Constraints of real time processing, dynamic view of cognition (van Gelder & Port, Pfeiffer & Scheier,...) ● But some parts can be excluded (off-line mode) ● Coping with ”representational bottleneck”? ● Role of evolutionary history in situated cognition ● How much of cognition is exluded? ● But evolutionary new off-line activities - tool-making, art, ... ● Being in as hurry: environment driven vs self-imposed ● Counterarguments (Barsalou, Brooks) ● Is situatedness central to cognition? 3 4

Off-loading cognition onto environment Environment as part of cognitive system ● due to human cognitive limitations ● distributedness over mind, body and environment ● short-term and long-term off-loading ● forming a single, unified system ● use of epistemic actions (in the environment) ● open and closed systems ● off-loading as a cognitive strategy ● System organization: facultative and obligate systems ● For what types of tasks? ● weaker claim defendable: mind+situation ● symbolic off-loading ● Goal of science: find underlying principles and regularities ● need not be deliberate & formalized (but automatic) ● extending cognition by study of group behaviour (Hutchins) ● Example: gesturing 5 6 Cognition is for action Off-line cognition is body based ● Sensorimotor simulations of external situations – widely ● Vision → improved motor control (Churchland et al) implicated in human cognition: ● ”what” (ventral) & ”where”/”how” (dorsal) system ● Mental imagery ● ”how” system serves visually guided actions ● working memory (internal off-loading), ● discovery of mirror neuron system ● Memory → for perception and action (Glenberg) ● episodic memory (”reliving” the experience) ● not a passive storage but encoding of patterns of possible ● Implicit memory (procederes) physical interaction with 3D world ● Reasoning and problem solving ● applicable to both episodic and semantic memory ● cognitive linguistics (Talmy) ● When is action excluded? ● explaining mental concepts via PSS (Barsalou) or metaphors, ● Difference between ”what” and ”how” systems 2 nd order modeling (Lakoff & Johnson) 7 8

Conclusion ● Acknowledgment of both on-line and off-line aspects of embodied cognition ● what drives what in either case? ● Can we identify the core components of overall cognition? ● Other questions? 9