Theories of Embodiment

Abstract

this may seem obvious and relates to longstanding ideas that are at the core of the philosophical movement of phenomenology [Moran 2000], the broad shift from a centralist (brain-centric) view of cognition to what Killeen and Glenberg [2010] call an “exocentric paradigm” represents a “sea change” that is still rolling out in the cognitive sciences [Hostetter and Alibali 2008]. We draw on this evolving view here, understanding cognition as a process that happens not in the brain alone (with perceptual and motor systems acting as mere inputs and outputs for thoughts happening in the head) but rather as a process that engages the brain, the body, and the physical and social environment together. This paradigm is sup­ ported by a wide array of empirical evidence as well as differing but related research approaches that have been characterized broadly by terms like “embodied cogni­ tion,” “situated cognition,” and “distributed cognition” [Hutchins 1996, Kirshner and Whitson 1997, Shapiro 2011], and will be discussed in some more detail in this chapter. Theories of Embodiment