14 - Embodied, embedded, and extended cognition

Summary

Flesh and world are surely flavors of the moment. Talk of mind as intimately embodied and profoundly environmentally embedded shimmers at the cusp of the cognitive scientific zeitgeist. In a range of interesting and important cases, there is clear evidence that the problem-solving load is spread out across brain, body, and (sometimes) world. The exploitation of passive dynamic effects exemplifies one of several key characteristics of the embodied, embedded approach: a characteristic that M. Wheeler and A. Clark dubbed non-trivial causal spread. This chapter discusses evidence of the important roles played by bodily form and bodily action in the solution of basic adaptive problems such as locomotion and learning. It is the claims concerning cognitive extension, rather than those concerning simple causal spread (which now seems widely accepted in both the philosophical and cognitive scientific communities), that have received the most critical attention.