The Embodied Mind (Or: How questioning Science leads to better Science)

[DocWatts]

 

The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience

 https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/243436.The_Embodied_Mind

 

@Leo Gura Just curious if you've ever gotten around to reading this, and if you've  considered adding it to the Book List. 

Ken Wilber heavily references this non-reductionist approach to cognitive science in Sex, Ecology, and Spirituality, and it's definitely worth a read on its own.

It's a great example of how science can stand to gain by incorporating contemplative practices as a legitimate method of scientific investigation.

It's also valuable as a guide for an enactive approach to cognitive science that pushes back against reductionist notions that cognition is simply a representation of a pre-given world.

To everyone else, I'd certainly recommend the book as a great starting point for scientifically minded folks to start questioning some of thier Materialist and Reductionist paradigms. The book is written in palatable language for people still in that paradigm (it in no way comes across as woo-woo or New Age). 

And even if you've already outgrown that paradigm, the book is still a great example of how questioning science can lead to better science.

Edited July 9, 2021 by DocWatts

[flyingguitarist]

Interesting I was looking for such topics,

Can you suggest more resources regarding to embodied cognition?

[DocWatts]

7 hours ago, flyingguitarist said:

Interesting I was looking for such topics,

Can you suggest more resources regarding to embodied cognition?

Thanks!

As far as works that deal with embodied cognition, after The Embodied Mind I'd probably recommend Philosophy in the Flesh by George Lakoff (the quote at the bottom of my posts is from that work).

While The Embodied Mind deals more with the science, Philosophy in the Flesh (as might be guessed from the title) deals with the epistemic and ontological implications of embodied cognition.

In particular it goes to great pains to demonstrate how mistaken assumptions that the Mind is disembodied (handed down to us from Rene Descartes) have led to epistemic errors that plague philosophy and Western thought to this day.

In addition to the above work, though written 70 or so years before The Embodied Mind, Martin Heidegger's philosophy is also a good exemplification of how our embodiment has very important philosophical implications.

His work Being and Time is largely about the meaning of Being in light of our embodied nature. Be warned that this one has a well earned reputation for being a difficult read, so having a guidebook handy for this one is almost a necessity.

Very much worth it though if you're in to that sort of thing, as Heidegger's system is probably the most penetrating explanations of our embodied experience of the world I've yet to read.

Edited May 15, 2022 by DocWatts