The Mind Beyond the Head: Two Arguments in Favour of Embedded Cognition
The Mind Beyond the Head: Two Arguments in Favour of Embedded Cognition

Summary/Abstract: In this paper I defend situated approaches of cognition, and the idea that mind, body and external world are inseparable. In the first section, I present some anti–Cartesian approaches of cognition and discuss the intuition they share that there is a constitutive interaction between mind, body and external environment. In the second section, I present the fallacy of the Cartesian theater of the mind and explain its theoretical premises. In the third section, I present a spatial argument against it, and argue that some case studies could give support to the idea of the mind stretching over the boundaries of the skull. In the fourth section, I present a temporal argument, and argue that even in this case the idea of an interaction between our cognitive life and the external world has at least a very strong intuitive palatability.

• Details
• Contents