Neuroscience
I mentioned Embodied Cognition briefly in my talk at SILS yesterday so thought I would post a bit more about it here. The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy has a nice definition, which begins: "Embodied Cognition is a growing research program in cognitive science that emphasizes the formative role the environment plays in the development of cognitive processes."
What sparked my interest was this article in the January/February issue of Scientific American Mind: Body of Thought by Siri Carpenter which includes these tantalizing tidbits: "...a rapidly growing body of research indicates that metaphors joining body and mind reflect a central fact about the way we think: the mind uses the body to make sense of abstract concepts." Carpenter cites some interesting examples, two of which stand out to me:
library note: this article is not freely available on the Internet, but it is available to UNC and other institutional subscribers to Scientific American.
- The Special Issue Spotter
We trawl the world's journals so you don't have to: Extended mind (Cognitive Systems Research). From the editorial: 'The extended mind literature cuts across a bewildering smorgasbord of (often overlapping) and even incompatible ... research...
- More On Embodied Cognition
Ginger Campbell interviews philosopher Lawrence Shapiro about his new book, Embodied Cognition, on the March 25, 2011 episode of the Brain Science Podcast. Shapiro writes about his new book on his website: I lay out the various research programs within...
- Fiction / Science / Philosophy
I like when more than one of my interests combine, as they did in a 1983 book I recently read by Rebecca Goldstein. In The Mind-body Problem, Goldstein's heroine is a philosopher / graduate student at Princeton married to a math genuius. She jokingly...
- 'embodied Cognition', By Lawrence Shapiro
'Embodied Cognition', by philosopher Lawrence Shapiro, is not a book advocating for any particular brand of embodiment. Instead, Shapiro has performed an invaluable service and written an overview of the current state-of-the-art in embodied cognition....
- It's Not Just Us, Honest
I need to put together posts on Heft and a couple of other points, but we've been noticing more and more examples of people expressing the same worry we have - that psychology is no longer a field with theories, merely phenomena. A couple of links...
Neuroscience
Embodied Cognition
I mentioned Embodied Cognition briefly in my talk at SILS yesterday so thought I would post a bit more about it here. The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy has a nice definition, which begins: "Embodied Cognition is a growing research program in cognitive science that emphasizes the formative role the environment plays in the development of cognitive processes."
What sparked my interest was this article in the January/February issue of Scientific American Mind: Body of Thought by Siri Carpenter which includes these tantalizing tidbits: "...a rapidly growing body of research indicates that metaphors joining body and mind reflect a central fact about the way we think: the mind uses the body to make sense of abstract concepts." Carpenter cites some interesting examples, two of which stand out to me:
- Just in the past few years studies have shown that holding a hot cup of coffee or being in a comfortably heated room warms a person's feelings toward strangers ...
- [T]hat sitting on a hard chair turns mild-mannered undergraduates into hard-headed negotiators.
library note: this article is not freely available on the Internet, but it is available to UNC and other institutional subscribers to Scientific American.
- The Special Issue Spotter
We trawl the world's journals so you don't have to: Extended mind (Cognitive Systems Research). From the editorial: 'The extended mind literature cuts across a bewildering smorgasbord of (often overlapping) and even incompatible ... research...
- More On Embodied Cognition
Ginger Campbell interviews philosopher Lawrence Shapiro about his new book, Embodied Cognition, on the March 25, 2011 episode of the Brain Science Podcast. Shapiro writes about his new book on his website: I lay out the various research programs within...
- Fiction / Science / Philosophy
I like when more than one of my interests combine, as they did in a 1983 book I recently read by Rebecca Goldstein. In The Mind-body Problem, Goldstein's heroine is a philosopher / graduate student at Princeton married to a math genuius. She jokingly...
- 'embodied Cognition', By Lawrence Shapiro
'Embodied Cognition', by philosopher Lawrence Shapiro, is not a book advocating for any particular brand of embodiment. Instead, Shapiro has performed an invaluable service and written an overview of the current state-of-the-art in embodied cognition....
- It's Not Just Us, Honest
I need to put together posts on Heft and a couple of other points, but we've been noticing more and more examples of people expressing the same worry we have - that psychology is no longer a field with theories, merely phenomena. A couple of links...