Wilson, Robert A., and Lucia Foglia. "Embodied Cognition." STANFORD ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PHILOSOPHY July 25, 2011.

Cognition is embodied when it is deeply dependent upon features of the physical body of an agent, that is, when aspects of the agent's body beyond the brain play a significant causal or physically constitutive role in cognitive processing.

In general, dominant views in the philosophy of mind and cognitive science have considered the body as peripheral to understanding the nature of mind and cognition. Proponents of embodied cognitive science view this as a serious mistake. Sometimes the nature of the dependence of cognition on the body is quite unexpected, and suggests new ways of conceptualizing and exploring the mechanics of cognitive processing.

Embodied cognitive science encompasses a loose-knit family of research programs in the cognitive sciences that often share a commitment to critiquing and even replacing traditional approaches to cognition and cognitive processing. Empirical research on embodied cognition has exploded in the past 10 years. As the bibliography for this article attests, the various bodies of work that will be discussed represent a serious alternative to the investigation of cognitive phenomena.

Relatively recent work on the embodiment of cognition provides much food for thought for empirically-informed philosophers of mind. This is in part because of the rich range of phenomena that embodied cognitive science has studied. But it is also in part because those phenomena are often thought to challenge dominant views of the mind, such as the computational and representational theories of mind, at the heart of traditional cognitive science. And they have sometimes been taken to undermine standard positions in the philosophy of mind, such as the idea that the mind is identical to, or even realized in, the brain. . . .

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/embodied-cognition/

Wilson, Robert A. Review of Robert D. Rupert, COGNITIVE SYSTEMS AND THE EXTENDED MIND. NDPR (March 2010).

Rupert, Robert D. Cognitive Systems and the Extended Mind. Oxford: OUP, 2009. Once upon a time, empirically-informed, philosophical work on the mind was pretty straightforward. Mental activity went on inside the head, and we were pretty sure that it, along with all the good stuff associated with it -- consciousness, intentionality, mental representation, computation -- could be most readily understood without having to crease our brows too much about how minds were situated vis-à-vis bodies, or vis-à-vis environments. To be sure, the cognitive sciences had renegade, pluralistic strands running through them, and particular disciplinary itches that needed scratching. But there was a sufficiently articulated paradigm in place that at least made designing jacket covers for books in the field relatively easy. Find a picture of a head, such as a representation of a brain, ideally an image a bit attuned to the title or theme of the book, and you're at least well on your way. I failed to understand this simple point during what were politely called "ongoing discussions" over the cover of The MIT Encyclopedia of the Cognitive Sciences a dozen years ago. "No, I'm sorry, Professor Wilson", I was informed by way of a solemn conclusion delivered by an exasperated senior editor at the Press, someone whom I imagined had to avert his gaze in embarrassment on my behalf as he typed back curtly, "I am afraid that it has to be a head". Designing jacket covers for books in this neck of the woods is no longer so easy. Heads are not exactly out, but they are no longer strictly required. Shaun Gallagher and Dan Zahavi's The Phenomenological Mind (2008) has a person half-way through exit mode on its cover. Fred Adams and Ken Aizawa's The Bounds of Cognition (2008), for crying out loud, has a cube of green cubes on the cover. Not even a thing that thinks, so far as we know. Rob Rupert's stimulating book continues down this path with quite a beautiful black and white photograph of a grove of aspens in the wilds of Colorado plonked right on the cover. It's enough to start me worrying that in order to understand the field that I work in, I can no longer simply look at jacket covers. In order to write this review in my current state of existential confusion, I have thus had to resort to an old trick of the trade, something I learned in grad school but like most things so learnt, haven't had to use much since. Read. And, somewhat to my initial surprise, especially given the total absence of pictures once one gets beyond the cover of Cognitive Systems and the Extended Mind, and the distinct dearth of bad jokes between the sheets, I'm glad I did. Rupert's book is a good read. It is a sustained, systematic, critical examination of the idea that minds are not simply ensconced inside heads, but extend into both bodies and the world beyond the body. As his title suggests, Rupert is focused primarily on the latter of these, the extended mind thesis, a thesis articulated neatly by Andy Clark and David Chalmers a dozen years ago in a paper that, had it been a movie, would have been an instant blockbuster, then a classic, and now be competing with Seinfeld re-runs on cable tv. . . . Read the rest here: http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=19128.

Cfp: "Embodiment, Intersubjectivity and Psychopathology," University of Heidelberg, September 30-October 2, 2010.

During the last decade, the concept of embodiment has become a key paradigm of interdisciplinary approaches from the areas of philosophy, psychology, psychiatry and neuroscience. The body is no longer merely considered as an interesting input for the brain or mind. The new trend is to link embodiment, cognition and emotion in a deeper way, and this has particular repercussions for understanding our social engagements. This in turn has implications for psychopathology and psychotherapy, because embodied and intersubjective views on mental illness can offer new insights useful for diagnosis and remediation. The conference is aimed at creating an interdisciplinary forum for the exchange of ideas on the themes of embodiment, intersubjectivity and their role in psychopa­thology. It brings together worldwide experts from the fields of developmental psy­chology, philosophy, and psychopathology, in order to advance on some key ques­tions for this research area, among them: · What is embodied intersubjectivity? In how far is our relationships with others mediated by the body? · What is the role that embodied intersubjectivity plays for the development of social cognition? · How can mental illness be conceived from an embodied and enactive point of view? · What is the use of the notion of embodiment for therapy and training? Keynote Speakers:

• Ezequiel Di Paolo, Matthew Ratcliffe, Beata Stawarska, Dan Zahavi(Philosophy)
• Peter Hobson, Vasu Reddy, Colwyn Trevarthen, Ed Tronick (Developmental Psychology)
• Jonathan Cole, George Downing, Giovanni Stanghellini (Neurology, Psychology, Psychiatry)

Strawson, Galen. "Up and Coming." TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT May 28, 2009.

Analytic philosophers of mind are heavily into the body. They’re forever in flight from something they call "Cartesianism". There's a pouring forth of books and papers explaining that the mind or self is essentially embodied, essentially environmentally embedded, "ecological", "enactive", elementally earthy, endogenously "extended" beyond the bounds of the skull and even the body. Much of this is good and sensible; for an overview see for example Shaun Gallagher’s How the Body Shapes the Mind (reviewed in the TLS, January 27, 2006), or Evan Thompson's Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology and the Sciences of Mind (to be reviewed in a future issue of the TLS). Philosophy, though, tends to careen from one extreme to another, and many think that the "extended mind" hypothesis, according to which your diary and mobile phone are quite literally part of your mind, goes too far. . . . Read the rest here: http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/the_tls/article6377644.ece.

Temporary Free Access to PHENOMENOLOGY AND THE COGNITIVE SCIENCES 6.1-2 (2007).

The special double issue of Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences (Vol 6, #1-2, 2007) on Dennett's heterophenomenology, edited by Alva Noë, is available for free download until the end of March at http://www.springerlink.com/content/1568-7759. The issue includes papers by Taylor Carman, Roberto Casati and Elena Pasquinelli, Jérome Dokic and Elisabeth Pacherie, John Drummond, Hubert Dreyfus and Sean Kelly, Uriah Kriegel, Eduard Marbach, Alva Noë, Jean-Michel Roy, Eric Schwitzgebel, Charles Siewert, Gianfranco Soldati, Evan Thompson, Max Velmans, and Dan Zahavi; and a response by Dan Dennett. Also the most recent issue (Vol. 7 #1, 2008), a special issue on Moral Phenomenology, edited by Uriah Kriegel, has just been published.