Is Cognition Embedded or Extended? The Case of Gestures

Citation

Wheeler M (2013) Is Cognition Embedded or Extended? The Case of Gestures. In: Radman Z (ed.) The Hand, an Organ of the Mind: What the Manual tells the Mental. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 269-301. http://mitpress.mit.edu/node/198189

Abstract
First paragraph: When we perform bodily gestures, are we ever literally thinking with our hands (arms, shoulders, etc.)? In the more precise, but correspondingly drier, technical language of contemporary philosophy of mind and cognition, essentially the same question might be asked as follows: are bodily gestures ever among the material vehicles that realize cognitive processes? More precisely still, is it ever true that a coupled system made up of neural activity and bodily gestures counts as realizing a process of thought, in such a way that the gross bodily movements concerned should be granted cognitive status along with, and in essentially the same sense as, the neural activity?

People

Professor Michael Wheeler

Professor, Philosophy

• wheeler_cognition_embedded_extended_gestures_RMS.pdf