Trends in Cognitive Sciences
Volume 3, Issue 9, 1 September 1999, Pages 345-351
Journal home page for Trends in Cognitive Sciences

Opinion
An embodied cognitive science?

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Abstract

The last ten years have seen an increasing interest, within cognitive science, in issues concerning the physical body, the local environment, and the complex interplay between neural systems and the wider world in which they function. Yet many unanswered questions remain, and the shape of a genuinely physically embodied, environmentally embedded science of the mind is still unclear. In this article I will raise a number of critical questions concerning the nature and scope of this approach, drawing a distinction between two kinds of appeal to embodiment: (1) ‘Simple’ cases, in which bodily and environmental properties merely constrain accounts that retain the focus on inner organization and processing; and (2) More radical appeals, in which attention to bodily and environmental features is meant to transform both the subject matter and the theoretical framework of cognitive science.

Section snippets

Fish

Consider first the swimming ability of the Bluefin tuna. The Bluefin tuna is a swimming prodigy, but its aquatic capabilities – its ability to turn sharply, to accelerate quickly, and to reach such high speeds – have long puzzled biologists. Physically speaking, so it seemed, the fish should be too weak (by about a factor of seven) to achieve these feats. However, an explanation for this prodigious ability can be found in the use of embodied, environmentally embedded action by the tuna. Fluid

Robots

Next consider a hopping robot, designed and built by Raibert and Hodgins in 1993 (Ref. 21). Their robots were designed to balance and move by hopping on a single leg – a pneumatic cylinder with a kind of foot. To get the hopper to locomote – to move, balance and turn – involved solving a control problem that was radically impacted by the mechanical details, such as the elastic rebound that occurs when the leg hits the floor. The crucial control parameters included items such as the resting

Vision

A further example can be found in research in animate or interactive vision22, 23. The key insight here is that the task of vision is not to build rich inner models of a surrounding 3-D reality24, but rather to use visual information efficiently and cheaply in the service of real-world, real-time action. Researchers in animate and interactive vision thus reject what Churchland et al.23 dub the paradigm of ‘pure vision’ – the idea (associated with work in classical AI and in the use of vision

Action and affordance

Related insights stem from the work of J.J. Gibson26, 27 and the ecological psychology movement7, 28, 29. This approach stresses bodily movement, ecological context and the action-relevant information available in the perceptual array. A central organizing construct is the concept of an ‘affordance’26. Affordances are the possibilities for use, intervention and action which the physical world offers a given agent and are determined by the ‘fit’ between the agent’s physical structure, capacities

Beyond adaptive coupling?

The full implications and significance of these embodied and embedded approaches remain to be determined, and there are a number of difficulties that clearly remain to be resolved. An immediate question is, to what extent, if at all, can the embodied, embedded approach contribute to our understanding of so-called ‘representation-hungry’ problem-solving40? To illustrate this idea, consider the much simpler notion of ‘adaptive coupling’. Adaptive coupling occurs when a system (typically a plant

Simple versus radical embodiment

In addition to asking how far the embodied approach can go, we should also ask to what extent it is a genuinely radical alternative to more traditional views. To focus this concern, I would like to distinguish two different ways to appeal to facts about embodiment and environmental embedding. The first, which I will call ‘simple embodiment’, treats such facts as, primarily, constraints upon a theory of inner organization and processing. The second, which I will call ‘radical embodiment’ goes

Conclusions

Embodied, environmentally embedded approaches have a lot to offer cognitive science. It is increasingly clear that, in a wide variety of cases, the individual brain should not be the sole locus of cognitive scientific interest. Cognition is not a phenomenon that can be successfully studied while marginalizing the roles of body, world and action.

The major challenge for the vision of ‘radical embodiment’ described here lies with the class of ‘representation-hungry’ problems and the phenomena of

Outstanding questions

  • Is cognition truly seamless – implying a gentle, incremental trajectory linking fully embodied responsiveness to abstract thought and off-line reason? Or is it a patchwork quilt, with jumps and discontinuities and with very different kinds of processing and representation serving different needs?

  • What role does public language play in the transition from simple adaptive coupling to heavy-duty cognition?

  • Insofar as we depend heavily on cultural artifacts (pen, paper, PC) to augment and enhance

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Tim Van Gelder, Esther Thelen, Dan Dennett, Randy Beer, Michael Wheeler, Lynn Stein, Brian Cantwell Smith, Dominic Murphy, Timo Jarvilehto and the anonymous referees for invaluable help and suggestions on these topics.

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