Darwin? Lamarck? Piaget? All of the Above?: Commentary on Joe Becker

摘要

Embodied cognition is a hot topic. The increasing appreciation of the physical nature of all activity, including cognitive activity, has led to efforts to relate cognitive development to physical processes and changes, especially brain changes. Unfortunately, not all that much is known yet about brain change as it relates to thought, so we do a lot of speculating about what changes and how things change. Among the toughest questions is how the experience we refer to as consciousness could possibly occur in a brain, central nervous system, and body that consists of no more than the physical elements that are found in its living matter. Not surprisingly, Piaget and his collaborators were among the most important early scholars to help frame the issue [Piaget, 1976, 1978].