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For centuries, scientists and humanists alike have divided human experience among the categories of mind, brain, body, and environment. From Descartes’ cogito ergo sum (an assertion that consciousness is independent from physical being) to today’s computer metaphor that imagines the mind (“software”) providing the “programs” for the physical brain (“hardware”), we assume a radical separation between the ideas and feelings that make us who we are and the bodies that contain them. Today, however, the field of “embodied cognition” is destabilizing such ideas about how thinking and acting work. Asking whether the systems we use to act in the world are called upon when we think, researchers of embodied cognition have found surprising continuities between the physical and the mental, and have even suggested that much of what we consider human nature may result from the shape of our bodies. In this conference we will explore these developments in cognitive theory and ask where these new models can take us in a range of fields.

To some extent, the findings of embodied cognition research echo common sense: we know that our bodies help us think. We accept that math is easier if we count on our fingers or pretend to write a problem in the air; that we understand directions by orienting our bodies along with the map; that we repeat phone numbers aloud to help keep them in our memories. Recent studies of brain functioning have verified such intuition, but have also shown that the influence of our actions on our thoughts is deeper and more extensive than has been previously imagined. Studying thinking in terms of embodied cognition promises to transform practices of education and training, generating methods to improve memory, understanding, and skill acquisition.

At the same time, embodied cognition is intervening in more fundamental and abstract questions. Research suggests that even seemingly disembodied sciences like mathematics and physics may be rooted in our physical participation in the world. Representation and language, too, are linked with physical being and action; gesturing may not only express but enable thought, while symbolic words and physical actions are linked by something more concrete than metaphor. Even such a deeply human capacity as empathy may be as much a function of our movements as of any higher self. A fresh perspective on the interrelations between action and thought offers new ways for scholars to approach such topics as consciousness, symbolism, and causality.

This conference will bring together researchers of language, learning, motor skills, and perception to explore the emerging field of embodied cognition, and imagine how its work can be useful to scholars across the academy. Presenters will include Sian Beilock (Psychology), William Wimsatt (Philosophy), Nicholas Hatsopoulos (Organismal Biology and Anatomy), Lawrence Zbikowski (Music), David McNeill (Linguistics) and John Haugeland (Philosophy).