In this short presentation we wish to formulate a definition of social embodiment grounded on an analysis of the relations between emotions, social interaction and development. Our hope is that this theoretical definition can be "tested" by social robotics, conceived in a "synthetic" (Pfeifer et al., 2008) or "constructivist" (Nehaniv and Dautenhahn, 2007) way - in short: building robotic models to comprehend human cognition. One interest of this definition of social embodiment lies in that it expresses a "post-cognitivist" approach to cognitive science in its refusal of the "classic paradigm" that modelises the human cognitive system as a computer and cognition as computation of representational internal states (Nunez and Freeman, 1999; Calvo and Gomila, 2009). This different orientation is manifest in the very structure of our definition of social embodiment, which condenses four closely interrelated sub-theses. The first is that emotions should be conceived as salient moments in a process of social coordination (Dumouchel, 2008), rather than as internal states resulting from representational information-processing. In conformity with this first thesis, the second claims that "expression of emotions" should not be seen as a source of information concerning the internal states or intention of action of individuals, but as a social process through which the intentions of actions of agents are co-determined leading to coordination. The third thesis is that this process of emotional co-determination drives human epigenetic development - in particular cognitive development. The fourth is that this view of the role of emotional coordination in development requires a "radical embodiment" (Clark, 1999) conception of human "mind" (Damiano, 2009) that rests on a systemic definition of social embodiment, that can be expressed in the theoretical language of antipoetic biology and fits well with recent social neuroscientific insights (Gallese, 2005).
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