The earlier computational view of the mind presupposes that the mind is something rational and logical that is clearly detached from the body and far
from being “luid and messy.” This dualistic framework plainly differentiates between an internal world and an external objective world. Yet embodiment
theories of cognition challenge this very fundamental structure of Western thought Lakoff Johnson, 1999 and instead are heavily inluenced by work
in phenomenology, especially Maurice Merleau-Ponty 1962 and Martin Heidegger 1962. Whereas Cartesian dualism clearly distinguishes between
the “thinking” mind and the “being” body, Heidegger 1962 in Being and Time
, proposes to unify these two notions. For him, in order to “think” one needs to “be.” Being, he says, precedes thinking. For Merleau-Ponty, the body,
too, is essential for thinking to happen, for it acts as a mediator between the internal and external worlds. He points out the importance of the body for
“[M]y body is the fabric into which all objects are woven, and it is, at least in relation to the perceived world, the general instrument of my
‘comprehension’” Merleau-Ponty, 1962, p. 235. In short, the internal and external worlds are not two separable entities in opposition to each other but
meshed together and interdependent upon one another for meaning.
3.1 Evidence from the brain
In the late 1980’s and early 90’s, a group of researchers at the University of Parma Italy, while working on a macaque monkey, made an important
discovery that they subsequently called “mirror neurons” Di Pellegrino et al., 1992; Rizzolatti et al., 1996. They quite accidentally stumbled on the fact
that certain visuomotor neurons in the premotor cortex seem to have a dual function. Not only do they discharge while performing some action, but also
when observing another performing this action. There is now a growing body of evidence in the ield of neuroscience that substantiates the claim that
humans too have such an overlapping system. Cochin et al. 1999 looked at the relationship between observation and execution of inger movements and
provided evidence that they share the same cortical network. Buccino et al. 2001 further corroborated these indings and extended it to include not only
the ingers, but also the mouth and feet.
Extending this idea even further, researchers began to look at whether or not language, too, could possibly activate corresponding areas within the
motor cortex. Gallesse and Lakoff 2005 strongly afirm this as they state “language makes direct use of the same brain structures used in perception
and action” p. 473. Pulverm̈ller et al. 2001 provide some early evidence to support such a claim for when participants in their study processed leg and
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mouth related words, areas of the motor cortex involved with the motion of the leg and the mouth respectively showed higher activation. Hauk et al.
2004 also showed that reading action words e.g. lick, pick, or kick related to the body parts: face, arms, and legs respectively activate overlapping or
adjacent areas to the actual movement of the tongue, ingers, or feet. Other studies have also conirmed similar indings, albeit in a different fashion. For
example, one used auditory action related sentences instead of readings and found similar activation in the respective somatotopic areas of the premotor
cortex Tettamanti et al., 2005. Another study Aziz-Zadeh et al., 2006 looked at foot, hand, and mouth actions, where participants observed one of
these actions and also read a literal phrase relating to the same action. They found congruence in the area of the premotor and prefrontal regions for both
visually seeing the action and reading the literal phrase about it. Furthermore, Simmons et al. 2008, using MRI, conirm that conceptual
processing does not involve a single type of representation e.g. amodal symbol manipulation. They show that multiple systems are involved to
which they conclude, “[A]t this point, we are somewhat sceptical that completely amodal representations exist in the brain” p. 116. Jirak et al.
2010, after doing a meta-analysis of numerous research papers that looked at how language comprehension activates the same neural systems used for
perception and action, state that the “primary motor, supplementary motor and premotor cortices are repeatedly reported to be active during language
processing” p. 718. So there is a growing consensus that cognition is not disembodied and encapsulated, but rather emerges through the body
perceiving and acting in the world.
3.2 A closer look at one theory of embodiment
