With embodiment different researchers use the concept at cross purposes. There are “embodied cognition” aficionados who simply claim that embodiment in some sense informs or shapes cognition (like Lakoff and Johnson). That’s not particularly interesting. The more interesting claim is that the “bodily interactions with the world” that Thelen describes can replace an algorithmic account of some computational process taking place in the mind. It’s the claim that there are no computations, no symbols manipulated, no information processed, there’s simply the situated embodied organism reacting dynamically to its environment. (Sometimes researchers hedge on whether computation also has a role to play but it’s easier to understand as a straightforward alternative.)
With embodiment different researchers use the concept at cross purposes. There are “embodied cognition” aficionados who simply claim that embodiment in some sense informs or shapes cognition (like Lakoff and Johnson). That’s not particularly interesting. The more interesting claim is that the “bodily interactions with the world” that Thelen describes can replace an algorithmic account of some computational process taking place in the mind. It’s the claim that there are no computations, no symbols manipulated, no information processed, there’s simply the situated embodied organism reacting dynamically to its environment. (Sometimes researchers hedge on whether computation also has a role to play but it’s easier to understand as a straightforward alternative.)