Body in Mind

Abstract

Abstract This chapter critically examines the empirical support for embodied and grounded cognition. The evidence typically cited in this context characteristically involves concrete concepts and implicates perception and action systems in their processing. Rehearsing this evidence has become something of a touchstone in the field of embodied cognition—papers regularly begin with a quick summary of it. This chapter offers a more comprehensive critical assessment of the relevant research and defends two novel claims: one that concerns the character of the available evidence and another that concerns our theoretical interpretation of it. The empirical claim is that the available evidence implicates both sensory and motor representations in conceptual processing but falls short of establishing that they are necessary for such processing. The theoretical claim is that what really matters is the causal influence of grounded representations and the scope of this influence remains an open and pressing question.