Embodied cognition

Embodiment ( German: personification, incarnation or incarnation ) is a thesis from recent cognitive science, according to the awareness needed a body, that requires a physical interaction. This view is the classical interpretation of consciousness ( especially in the sense of cognitivism and computationaler theories ) diametrically opposed and regarded as fundamental turning point in cognitive science.

Concept

The cognitive understanding of Embodiment corresponds approximately to what is now known about the process of perception: perception is therefore not a process of mapping sensory stimuli on an internal model of the world, but a sensory-motor coordination, which always occurs in the overall concept of an acting being. It is called an agent of AI research as Complete.

General Embodiment is increasingly in psychology ( particularly social psychology and clinical psychology ) used to emphasize the interaction between body and psyche. It 's not just that mental states in the body express ( " nonverbal " as gestures, facial expressions, prosody, body posture ), it also show effects in the reverse direction: body states influence mental states. For example, postures that are taken for any reason, effects on cognition ( eg, judgments, attitudes ) and emotionality.

These theses are also represented in the sociology and social psychology, as well as some theoretical biologists for some time. Thus, by Jakob Johann von Uexküll since 1909 " Environmental Studies " developed by the perception is dependent on a functional circuit, for both " active members " ( the musculoskeletal system ) as well as sensory or " Wish organs " constitutive (cf. also proper motion ( anthropology ) ). The basis may in addition be called the theories of George Herbert Mead and out of the body phenomenology of Merleau -Ponty, Hermann Schmitz and social phenomenology Alfred Schutz. In recent discussions this knowledge was rediscovered by sociological practice theories (see Pierre Bourdieu and Anthony Giddens ) or theories in the course of social theory ' practice turn'.

A link between the concepts found in the Activity Theory, which was founded by Vygotsky. The interpretative video analysis in the Workplace Studies, representing the theoretical approach of ethnomethodology, have dealt extensively already in the 1980s with the concept of Embodiment.