Embodied cognition is an important trend in cognitive science that consists of three general themes:
Conceptualization: the concepts an organism can acquire are determined, limited, or constrained by the properties of the organism’s body.
Replacement: the dynamics of an organism’s bodily interaction with the environment replaces the need for representational processing. Thus, cognition can be explained without the appeal to computational processes or representational states.
Constitution: constituents of cognition extend beyond the brain, so the body or world does not play a mere causal role in cognitive processes.
A recent review of the evidence can be found in Shapiro (2010), or—much more briefly—in a review of that book: Martiny (2011).
Embodied cognition summary
Embodied cognition is an important trend in cognitive science that consists of three general themes:
Conceptualization: the concepts an organism can acquire are determined, limited, or constrained by the properties of the organism’s body.
Replacement: the dynamics of an organism’s bodily interaction with the environment replaces the need for representational processing. Thus, cognition can be explained without the appeal to computational processes or representational states.
Constitution: constituents of cognition extend beyond the brain, so the body or world does not play a mere causal role in cognitive processes.