Commentary: The poverty of embodied cognition

Abstract

According to classic cognitive science, higher cognitive processes involve amodal mental representations (Fodor, 1975), and are carried by brain regions other than sensorimotor areas (Bechtel et al., 1998). Over the last few decades, this view has been questioned. Numerous researchers argue that cognitive processes are fundamentally rooted in sensorimotor activity and that the body both constrains and enables cognition (Wilson, 2002; Clark, 2009). Such a view is called “the embodied cognition” (EC) and it is widely applied in various fields of cognitive science, from linguistics to robotics. Recently, Goldinger et al. (2016), however, questioned its applicability. They emphasized that some assumptions of EC are unacceptable, and others proffer nothing new. Primarily, they claim that EC offers no useful insight into the classic problems of experimental psychology. Although, we agree with some theses presented in the article (e.g., radical embodiment that rejects the existence of mental representation is a blind alley), it appears the authors’ methodological view on EC is inadequate.