The body is a highly complex, coordinated system engaged in coping
with many environmental problems. It can be considered as some sort of
opportunity or obstacle, with which internal processing must deal.
Internal processing must take into account the possibilities and
limitations of the particular body. In other words, even if the body is not
involved in the realization of some cognitive explicit task, it is not a
neutral factor of our understanding of why a system solves a task in one
way or another. Therefore, when conducting research on embodiment
and the body’s cognitive system we should not neglect internal, cognitive
processing.
I appeal to Goldman’s research on embodied cognition to sketch
the broader framework for internal processing in embodied cognition. I
believe that even if we don’t accept Goldman’s approach as the viable
proposal for embodied cognition in general, it’s a quite natural starting
point for our analysis. Goldman (2012; 2014, and with de Vignemont
2009) argue for the essential role of the bodily formats or bodily codes
(respectively: B-formats and B-codes) in embodied cognition. B-codes
are here described as the processing of regions or sub-regions of the
central nervous system. They are primarily employed for body control or
monitoring, and reused for cognitive tasks. Beyond doubt, this
conception provides an excellent starting point for analyzing the internal
(mostly neural) processing in cases of embodied cognition.
At the end of this paper, I will argue that the embodiment of
cognition needs a conceptual twist. Following Keijzer’s (2015) interest in
the evolution of the nervous system, and the minimal forms of cognition,
I argue that in investigating embodied cognition, we should investigate
the role played by cognitive processing for specific kinds of organisms,
meaning organisms with a body of a particular morphology (size, shape,
kinds, and distribution of sensors and effectors). Doing that, I refer to
some conceptual and empirical considerations. I will also try to show
that research on embodied cognition is still not sufficiently anchored in
evolutionary and comparative studies on cognition, nor on the nervous
system and body morphology. Bigger reliance on these kinds of studies, will make it make possible to gain a deeper understanding of internal
processing in embodied cognition.Publikacja została sfinansowana ze środków Ministerstwa Nauki i Szkolnictwa Wyższego w ramach programu Narodowego Programu Rozwoju Humanistyki przyznanych na podstawie decyzji 0014/NPRH4/H3b/83/2016 - projekt „Przygotowanie i publikacja dwóch anglojęzycznych numerów monograficznych Internetowego Magazynu Filozoficznego HYBRIS” (3bH 15 0014 83)