- Enseignant-e: Corrado Corradi Dell'Acqua
The last decade has seen a renewed interest in investigating the central role of the body in cognition and behavior. One view in philosophy of mind and cognitive science considers the body as peripheral to understanding the nature of mind and cognition. Proponents of embodied cognitive science suggest instead that cognitive processes are deeply rooted in the body’s interaction with the world. Without the involvement of the body in both sensing and acting, mental states would not exhibit the characteristics and properties they do.
This course will address the interaction between body and cognition in two ways. First it will describe how the human brain processes the body in which is kept in, in terms of both structural and postural features. Second, it will focus on how a representation of the body shapes our processing of the world. In particular, as embodied cognitive science encompasses a wide range of domains, I will discuss topics such as visual and motor cognition, language, memory, social cognition, etc. I will discuss also recent critiques to embodied cognition (“disembodied accounts”) as well as proposals according to which, due to flexible engagement of domain-specific functions, cognition can be achieved through different (embodied and disembodied) strategies.