Embodied Intelligence and the Phenomenology of AI
Advances in Computational Intelligence and Robotics December 12, 2025 Saakshi Anand
Consciousness is fundamentally rooted in embodied, context-dependent, and experiential structures rather than emerging from disembodied computation. This chapter explores the intersection of artificial intelligence, embodied cognition, and phenomenology, focusing on qualia—the subjective, first-person qualities of experience. It advances an integrative framework that challenges reductionist and purely mechanistic views of cognition by bridging computational models of intelligence with phenomenological analyses of perception and awareness. Drawing from Husserl, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty alongside connectionism and enactivism, the argument positions embodied, experiential structures as central to understanding consciousness.