Mental representations as patterns of embodied experience
The present post is based on a part of my M.A. thesis (Torre 2011) and was inspired by an informal Skype chat I had with Dr Emanuele Bardone (Dept. of Philosophy, University of Pavia) last April 23, discussing the role of the concept of “mental representation” in cognitive science.
Basically, Dr Bardone’s point of view on this topic overlaps with mine: we conceive mental representations as having an inherently embodied, experienced-based nature. This means that, in agreement with most theoreticians of Embodied Cognition, we reject the perspective advocated in Mainstream Cognitive Science. The mainstream approach considers cognitive processes as computational activities which operate on amodal symbolic units. In other words, this approach sees cognitive functions as processes of manipulation of abstract symbols carried out by the mind, a formal device which happens to be physically implemented in the brain. This rationalist orientation adopts the so-called “mind as a computer” metaphor, according to which cognitive processes can be analyzed independently of their physical realization. On this view, representations are computational symbols in our mind which stand-in for objects and events in the external world. Among the most influential proponents of this approach, we can mention the American philosopher and psychologist Jerry Fodor (see Fodor 1975).
On the other hand, scholars who advocate for an embodied perspective on human cognition (see e.g. Varela et al. 1991; Lakoff and Johnson 1999, Clark 2008) refuse the view of the human mind as a piece of computational software, claiming instead that cognition emerges from the constant interplay of our brains, our bodies, and the environment. In other words, it is shaped by our daily experience as embodied agents in constant dynamic interaction with the physical as well as sociocultural setting we are situated in (e.g. Gibbs 2005). According to this point of view, mental representations are not amodal symbols, but experiential traces which are shaped by perception and action in our physico-biological as well as sociocultural environment. From this perspective, cognition is moulded by the bulk of situations experienced in everyday life by taking part in the functioning of a bio-cultural system. In the last decades, this assumption has come to be supported by a substantial body of empirical evidence from the various branches of cognitive science. According to this embodied approach, mental representations are not astract symbols; rather, they can be seen as “flexible patterns of organism-environment interaction” (Johnson and Lakoff 2002: 249-250), conceptual entities which represent the result of a process of generalization over events of perception and action (i.e. over patterns of embodied experience). As a consequence, according to this “experientially-driven” conception, mental representations are much less abstract than traditionally thought. Rather, they are inherently anchored in everyday life.
References:
Clark, Andy. 2008. Supersizing the Mind. Embodiment, Action, and Cognitive Extension. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Fodor, Jerry A. 1975. The Language of Thought. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Gibbs, Raymond W., Jr. 2005. Embodiment and Cognitive Science. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Johnson, Mark, and George Lakoff. (2002). Why Cognitive Linguistics Requires Embodied Realism. Cognitive Linguistics 13 (3): 245-263.
Lakoff, George, and Mark Johnson. 1999. Philosophy in the Flesh. The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought. New York: Basic Books.
Torre, Enrico. (2011). Grounding Meaning in Everyday Experience in the World. An Embodied Construction Grammar Analysis of Italian Caused-Motion Constructions. M.A. thesis. Università degli Studi di Pavia.
Varela, Francisco J., Evan Thompson, and Eleanor Rosch. 1991. The Embodied Mind. Cognitive Science and Human Experience. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
