Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Contributors
- Introducing Embodied Grounding
- PART ONE EMBODIED LANGUAGE AND CONCEPTS
- 1 Grounding Symbolic Operations in the Brain's Modal Systems
- 2 Toward the Integration of Bodily States, Language, and Action
- 3 Brain Embodiment of Category-Specific Semantic Memory Circuits
- 4 What Thoughts Are Made Of
- PART TWO EMBODIMENT OF SOCIAL COGNITION AND RELATIONSHIPS
- PART THREE EMBODIMENT AND AFFECT
- Index
- References
3 - Brain Embodiment of Category-Specific Semantic Memory Circuits
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Contributors
- Introducing Embodied Grounding
- PART ONE EMBODIED LANGUAGE AND CONCEPTS
- 1 Grounding Symbolic Operations in the Brain's Modal Systems
- 2 Toward the Integration of Bodily States, Language, and Action
- 3 Brain Embodiment of Category-Specific Semantic Memory Circuits
- 4 What Thoughts Are Made Of
- PART TWO EMBODIMENT OF SOCIAL COGNITION AND RELATIONSHIPS
- PART THREE EMBODIMENT AND AFFECT
- Index
- References
Summary
At present, abstract symbolic and embodied theories of semantic and conceptual processing compete for the minds of cognitive scientists. Are concepts built in interaction with the world, from perceptual information? Or are they inborn and only in a very distant relationship with the “reality,” which contacts the thinking organs (if at all) only via long axons and unreliable sensory organs? Can an abstract thought be built from sensory experience – or would there rather be need for other ingredients to construct abstraction? These are questions that heated the debate in ancient Greece – (cf. Plato's and Aristotle's positions) – and are being warmed up in contemporary cognitive and brain science. Can we add anything new? We have a vast number of nice brain pictures to show – pictures that indicate brain parts active when people think, speak, listen, and understand. But a colored picture is not always easily converted into a thousand words, let alone a new insight. Here, the embodiment question will be addressed on the basis of new evidence from cognitive neuroscience in the hope that the brain pictures, especially the dynamic ones, might speak to the issues – or more modestly, might make a significant contribution to the cognitive debate.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Embodied GroundingSocial, Cognitive, Affective, and Neuroscientific Approaches, pp. 71 - 97Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2008
References
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