Embodied Cognition, Representationalism, and Mechanism: A Review and Analysis

Abstract

Embodied cognition has attracted significant attention within cognitive science and related fields in recent years. It is most noteworthy for its emphasis on the inextricable connection between mental functioning and embodied activity and thus for its departure from standard cognitive science's implicit commitment to the unembodied mind. This article offers a review of embodied cognition's recent empirical and theoretical contributions and suggests how this movement has moved beyond standard cognitive science. The article then clarifies important respects in which embodied cognition has not departed fundamentally from the standard view. A shared commitment to representationalism, and ultimately, mechanism, suggest that the standard and embodied cognition movements are more closely related than is commonly acknowledged. Arguments against representationalism and mechanism are reviewed and an alternative position that does not entail these conceptual undergirdings is offered.

Do gestures matter? The implications of using touchscreen devices in mathematics instruction

“…To understand the physical nature of gestures, we turn to cognitive science and embodied cognition theory. Embodied cognition, as applied within instructional design, purports an entangled relationship between thinking and acting (Spackman & Yanchar, 2013). As opposed to seeing an ontological separation between thought and action, embodied cognition theory maintains that these are intertwined in nature and that tangible engagement with objects affects the way we think about them and vice-versa (Black, 2010;Willems & Francken, 2012).…”

We Came Here to Remember: Using Participatory Sensory Ethnography to Explore Memory as Emplaced, Embodied Practice

“…Real experts, he asserts, act on inclination, responding to situations flexibly, rather than applying preordained, internally located ethical codes (Black et al 2012;Varela 1999). This intelligence as action model sees expertise growing out of embodied spontaneity, bypassing established codes and deliberation, getting smart on the hoof (Spackman & Yanchar 2014). We see here the distribution of thought out into the world as an appropriate response to a situation.…”

“…The portrayal of intimate relations between cognition and the lived world is well documented (Clark 2011;Geiffenhagen & Sharrock 2008;Spackman & Yanchar 2014). Hutchins (2008) coins the term cognitive ecology to invoke these processes of contextualized problem solving.…”

“…Whilst archival memory models depend on the reification of an internal realm of storage, this assumption is not universally accepted (Brockmeier 2010). There has been a turn toward seeing memory more as an embodied practice and less as an internal storage facility (Spackman & Yanchar 2014). Rather than mental repositories, we can see memories as practices, or exercises in skilled, living thinking (Ingold 2000;Thrift 2008).…”

Reinventing learning: a design-research odyssey

“…Whether it is couched as discursive or operational, knowledge is inherently immersive, relational, and interactive. Counter to Spackman and Yanchar (2013), I do not view a schema as an internal representation but as a systemically distributed dynamical routine: "Knowing does not really imply making a copy of reality but, rather, reacting to it and transforming it (either apparently or effectively) in such a way as to include it functionally in the transformation systems with which these acts are linked" (Piaget 1971, p. 6). I therefore join Allen and Bickhard (2013) in suggesting the enduring and even increasing relevance of Piaget's epistemological constructs for current research and theorizing of human learning.…”