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Stephen Downes

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I mentioned embodied cognition in a short blog post today and it has been touted as the thing that replaces theories of cognition based exclusively on the brain. This article appeared just this week, though of course the idea has been around at least since Francisco Varela was talking about it (covered here) two decades ago. And there's a lot to like about it, including one feature I've long advocated as a part of connectivism: "The array of computationally-inspired concepts, including symbol, representation, and inference, on which traditional cognitive science has drawn must be abandoned." Embodied cognition also recognizes the central role of perception in consciousness: "differently embodied organisms would understand their environments differently." Also, something else I've endorsed in the past: "Embodied moral cognition takes moral sentimentalism as a starting point. Moral sentimentalism is the view that our emotions and desires are, in some way, fundamental to morality." There's a lot more to talk about, and this article is quite a good introduction. Image: Milkowski and Nowakowski, Is embodied cognition a unifying perspective?

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Stephen Downes Stephen Downes, Casselman, Canada
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