Connecting the conceptual dots in embodied cognition: A commentary on a??How body balance influences political party evaluations: a Wii balance board studya??

摘要

Embodied cognition is the hypothesis that things other than the brain contribute meaningfully to the structure of our cognition. A critical (and often ignored) corollary of this is that any example of embodied cognition in action needs an account of exactly how these distributed elements are connected to one another so that they might affect each other. A given embodied cognition effect therefore needs to come with a plausible path along which information can flow (Wilson and Golonka, 2013). Identifying this path is difficult, and it's not always possible to do so immediately; this is not a problem, and simply indicates a place for future research. However, when the only viable pathway is tested and fails, there is a problem and it suggests that there is something fundamentally wrong with the analysis of the task.