Embodiment
Chapter 1 - Worldview
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Understanding embodiment
| ‘Embodied cognition’ focusses on the brain’s interdependence on physiological processes that allow an organism to sustain itself. From this point of view, the mind must be understood as embedded in a body, and the body as embedded in a physical, social and cultural environment. Reality is not simply out there for the taking, but is summoned via the constant fluctuations of our own organic matter. (1) |
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| (1) | The brain-heart dialogue - Manos Tsakiris - The Interoceptive Mind: From Homeostasis to Awareness - 2018 |
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We often compare the brain to a computer, but originally it was the other way around: the computer was designed as a model of the brain, with logic circuits that were supposed to be in the brain. But you don't find that structure in the brain at all. So the entire computer age is built on a misconception.
Metaphors have always guided science in its search for how the brain works. In the beginning, five centuries ago, the brain was a model of mechanics and hydraulics. After discovering electricity, the brain became an electrical machine, then a telephone exchange, and thus a computer for seventy years.
There is a fundamental problem with all the metaphors that have already been tacked onto the brain: unlike the technologies from which those metaphors arose, the brain is not designed. We are dealing with a structure that has evolved over many millions, if not billions of years.
Design is not the proper perspective but adaptation to the circumstances when looking at the brain. So, for example, the neuronal wiring for smell is the same in very different animals, not because there was one design, but because they had to solve the same problem.
Functions are localised in the brain and distributed at the same time. And neurons don't do just one thing, say, see or hear. As a result, neurons sometimes start doing things that we don't think they should be able to do at all.
The brain is not an isolated organ. Neurons do not stand alone. They are in a body and in an environment. The brain is busy with the body creating order in the outside world.
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| Matthew Cobb - The Idea of the Brain |
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