Embodied cognition

Embodied cognition is the theory that our entire body—not just our brains—shape our knowledge and understanding of the world. From the standpoint of evolution, abstract thought is less than 100 thousand years old, whereas the sensory and motor portions of our brains—those necessary for survival—have been at work for a billion years. As one researcher said, “the deliberate process we call reasoning is, I believe, the thinnest veneer of human thought, effective only because it is supported by this much older and much powerful, though usually unconscious, sensorimotor knowledge.”

Researchers have performed lots of experiments to demonstrate this theory. For example, if you're holding a warm cup of coffee, you're more likely to judge a person as trustworthy than you would if you're holding a cold cup of coffee. If you squeeze a soft ball while looking at a gender-neutral face, you are more likely to perceive the face as female than you would while squeezing a hard ball, in which case you would perceive the face as male. When you think about the future, you're more likely to lean forward, but if you think about the past, you'll probably lean back.

One interesting aspect of embedded cognition is that we think and talk in metaphors because metaphors are based on the physiology of emotion. When we’re angry our skin temperatures and heartbeats rise. Thus, we describe someone as being “boiling mad” or doing a “slow burn.” Some of the metaphoric language comes from physical interactions during our first several years of life. We equate up with control (“I have control over him”) and down with being controlled. We equate affection with warmth (“I’m warming up to her”). 

Engineers who work with artificial intelligence are trying to figure out how to construct robots so that they, like us, can learn from their environment. As Alan Turing wrote in 1950, “ …it is best to provide the machine with the best sense organs that money can buy.” Good luck with that.

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