Consciousness and the Embodied Self
Abstract
What is embodied cognition?
Variously called ‘embodied,’ ‘extended,’ ‘situated’ or ‘distributed’
cognition, this paradigm can be seen as a direct response to
the cognitivist / classicist view of the mind.
Cognitivism is a rule-based, information-processing model of
cognition that:
1) characterizes problem-solving in
terms of inputs and outputs,
2) assumes the existence of symbolic,
encoded representations that
enable the system to devise a
solution by means of computation,
and
3) maintains that cognition can be
understood by focusing primarily on
an organism’s internal cognitive
processes (i.e., specifically those
involving computation and
representation).
By contrast, work in embodied cognition asserts that cognition
arises from—or is enacted by—real-time, goal-oriented bodily
interactions with the world. The manner in which organisms are
embodied constrains or determines their cognition; on-line
cognition is situated and possibly off-loaded onto the
environment; and it may be that off-line cognition is also bodybased.
This presentation deals with the relationship between the
embodied cognition paradigm and two sets of its implications:
its implications for the ontology of selves, and its implications
for the nature and extent of phenomenal consciousness.
I examine three relations:
• the implications of embodiment for the self;
• the implications of embodiment for consciousness; and
• the tension between these two.
I argue that the embodiment paradigm introduces a radical split
between consciousness and the self, and that it does so by
deflating our pre-theoretical instincts about consciousness and
self in two different directions; however, I claim, what both these
theoretical movements have in common is a scepticism about
the notion of a psychological container defining a boundary
between ‘inside’ and ‘outside.’
Embodiment and the self
The embodied cognition paradigm:
•
•
de-reifies the self as an entity;
smears the self across the boundary between organism
and environment.
E.g. non-occurrent memories located externally; perception
arising out of enactive interaction between organism and
environment; self as a ‘centre of narrative gravity.’
Embodiment and
consciousness
The embodied cognition paradigm entails a radical distinction
between cognition and phenomenality.
•
It is elements of cognition, not phenomenal
consciousness, that are externalized;
•
Enactive theories of perception still require a ‘raw feel,’
though they locate perceptual content in an interaction
between organism and environment. E.g. colour
properties are neither objective nor subjective, hence
the colours we experience are not ‘in the world.’
Consciousness and the self
The embodiment paradigm thus generates the following
tension:
•
•
The stream of consciousness is located within the
boundaries of the organism.
The self (and its memories, beliefs, personality traits,
etc.) is not located within the boundaries of the
organism.
We intuitively equate ourselves with our own consciousness,
but this intuition cannot survive the move to embodiment.
Mind uncontained?
Mind extended
Frequent themes in embodied cognition
suggest that:
• cognitive work is off-loaded onto the
environment (‘epistemic action’);
• the environment ‘is its own model’;
• cognition is ‘enactive’ rather than
representational.
Andrew Bailey
Philosophy Department
University of Guelph
Guelph, Ontario
N1G 2W1, Canada
[email protected]
www.uoguelph.ca/~abailey
Externalism about the self and non-phenomenal cognition
come from a shared source: scepticism about the notion that
mentality consists of objects/states plus a container. The self is
not a container for thoughts and traits; cognition is not a
process internal to the organism but loops between organism
and its environment.
It is phenomenal consciousness that fits uncomfortably with
this new paradigm: it is structured as states of an internal
medium.