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Embodiment and cognitive neuroscience: the forgotten tales

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Abstract

In this paper, I suggest that some tales (or narratives) developed in the literature of embodied and radical embodied cognitive science can contribute to the solution of two longstanding issues in the cognitive neuroscience of perception and action. The two issues are (i) the fundamental problem of perception, or how to bridge the gap between sensations and the environment, and (ii) the fundamental problem of motor control, or how to better characterize the relationship between brain activity and behavior. In both cases, I am going to propose that cognitive neuroscience could incorporate embodied insights—coming from the sensorimotor approach to perception and action, and from ecological psychology—to advance the solution for each issue without the need for abandoning or undergoing a substantial revision of its core assumptions. Namely, cognitive neuroscience could incorporate the forgotten tales of embodiment without undergoing through a complete revolution. In this sense, I am proposing not a call but a farewell to arms.

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Notes

  1. I will focus on vision for the sake of simplicity, but what follows can be applied to any perceptual system.

  2. In the rest of the article, I will use ‘embodiment’ as an umbrella term despite the plurality of notions that refer to the influence of body and environment in cognitive activities—embodied, embedded, situated, enactive, ecological, 3E cognition, 4E cognition, etc. If differences between these notions are relevant at any point, I will make them explicit and will use more concrete wording.

  3. I choose to call them tales, as opposed to theories, hypotheses, or conjectures, for the same reason Stephen Jay Gould defends a narrative approach to evolutionary biology in Wonderful Life (1989): because explanations of complex events sometimes require tools of history (p. 277). Here I convey a story about perception-action events and the role of the brain (along with body and environment) in them founded on some developments of embodied cognitive science. In this sense, I provide a new tale that may work both as a framework and as a source of new theories, hypotheses, and conjectures in cognitive neuroscience. Currie and Sterelny (2017) have provided a similar take on story-telling and scientific explanations.

  4. Further details of this characterization of radical embodiment may be found in Chemero (2009, pp. 28 & ff.) and Gallagher (2017, pp. 26 & ff.).

  5. This does not have to be the case though. Indeed, many of the proposals that can be considered as part of the embodied insurrection attribute an important role to the brain in perception, action, and cognition (see, e.g., Anderson 2014; de Wit et al. 2017; Favela 2014; Kelso et al. 2013; Raja 2018, 2019a, 2020; Raja and Anderson 2019). The role of the brain in these theories is just different from its role as it is understood by mainstream cognitive neuroscience.

  6. Notice that the irreversibility described here is understood as the same notion is understood in mathematics. A function F is irreversible if granting F′ = G, there’s no G’ and, therefore, there’s no way to go back to F from G. For instance, if G are the sensations as a function of environmental events F and the task of the brain is to find a way to bridge the gap from G to F, the fact that G’ is impossible makes the brain face an intractable problem. I follow Frsiton (2002, 2003, 2005) in this characterization.

  7. Examples of different perceptual invariants may be found in Jacobs and Michaels (2007) or Warren (2006), for instance.

  8. The lawfulness of the relation between tau and time-to-contact is founded in the physical properties of ambient light once it bounces off the surfaces of the local environment of the organism. These properties are described by what James Gibson named ecological optics (1960, 1966). A full account of ecological optics is out of the scope of this article, but the interested reader may check Chemero (2009), Michaels and Carello (1981), Segundo-Ortin et al. (2019), Turvey (2019), Warren (1998).

  9. Notice the striking similarity between this claim and Stone’s claim regarding our lack of knowledge regarding visual perception (above). To echo Watson & Crick’s famous motto, it has not escaped my notice that this similarity immediately suggests a possible common root for both issues.

  10. It is worth noting that work on modern robotics and minimal cognitive agents have used similar kind of insights to solve various computational puzzles that were deemed as unsolvable. An example of this is Rodney Brook’s work (1990). I am thankful to an anonymous reviewer for this suggestion.

  11. A simple reading of Gibson’s works on perceptual systems, specially The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems (1966), shows that he was concerned with the activity of the brain—referred to on many occasions as neural resonance—and that he was disappointed in the lack of knowledge about said neural activity . Gibson claims, for instance: “We do not know much yet about the neural action of resonance at higher centers, but it too may prove to be the reaching of some optimal state of equilibrium. If the neurophysiologists stopped looking for the storehouse of memory perhaps they would find it.” (Gibson 1966, p. 271). In this sense, the somewhat dismissive attitude regarding neuroscience/neurophysiology that is patent in some Gibsonians is not present in Gibson (although maybe it was present in his attitude towards the neurophysiologists of his time).

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Acknowledgements

I am deeply grateful to Robyn Wilford for her suggestions and her help proofreading the paper. I’m also thankful to the members of The EMRG Lab and the audience of the International Conference on Perception and Action (ICPA 2020; Groningen, Netherlands) for their helpful comments and suggestions at different stages of the development of this work.

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Raja, V. Embodiment and cognitive neuroscience: the forgotten tales. Phenom Cogn Sci 21, 603–623 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-020-09711-0

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