Embodiment and Cognitive Science

Raymond W. Gibbs, Jr

Dec 2005 · Cambridge University Press

About this ebook

This 2006 book explores how people's subjective, felt experiences of their bodies in action provide part of the fundamental grounding for human cognition and language. Cognition is what occurs when the body engages the physical and cultural world and must be studied in terms of the dynamical interactions between people and the environment. Human language and thought emerge from recurring patterns of embodied activity that constrain ongoing intelligent behavior. We must not assume cognition to be purely internal, symbolic, computational, and disembodied, but seek out the gross and detailed ways that language and thought are inextricably shaped by embodied action. Embodiment and Cognitive Science describes the abundance of empirical evidence from many disciplines, including work on perception, concepts, imagery and reasoning, language and communication, cognitive development, and emotions and consciousness, that support the idea that the mind is embodied.

About the author

Raymond W. Gibbs, Jr. is Professor of Psychology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He is previously the author of The Poetics of Mind and Understanding and Intentions in the Experience of Meaning. He is co-editor (with G. Steen) of Metaphor in Cognitive Linguistics” and editor of the Interdisciplinary Journal, Metaphor and Symbol.