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# Can There Be Such a Thing as Embodied Embedded Cognitive Neuroscience?

## Details

**Authors** Dijk et al.

**Year** 2008

**Publisher** Theory and Psychology

**Discipline** Neuroscience

[Read it at the publisher](https://doi.org/10.1177/0959354308089787) 
10.1177/0959354308089787

## In authors' words

### Abstract

Contemporary cognitive neuroscience, for the most part, aims to figure out how cognitive processes are realized in the brain. This research goal betrays the field's commitment to the philosophical position that cognizing is something that the brain does. Since the 1990s, philosophers and cognitive scientists have started to question this position, arguing that the brain constitutes only one of several contributing factors to cognition, the other factors being the body and the world. This latter position we refer to as embodied embedded cognition (EEC). Although cognitive neuroscience's research practice and EEC do not seem to fit well together at present, it is pertinent to ask if a variant of cognitive neuroscience can be developed that sets itself research goals that are more congenial to the EEC view. In this paper we investigate this possibility. We put forth a new guiding metaphor of the role of the brain in cognitive behavior to replace the current cognitivist metaphor of the brain as an information-processing device. We also identify a research agenda that naturally arises from our metaphor. In this way we hope to provide an impetus for cognitive neuroscientists to pursue an EEC-inspired research program.

### What they set out to do (purpose)

To discuss embodied cognition.

### What they found (results)

Drawing on work in robotics, biology, and neuroscience, we propose a conceptualization (a metaphor) of the relationship between behavior, body, and brain activity in real-world contexts. As one builds a larger and more complex robot they need to focus heavily on how the bot processes the Relationship between its processor and the unpredictable environment it encounters.

## Commentary

### In short

They imply that the Relationship between the brain and the outside world is essential to the brain’s success. The sensory inputs of the brain and body all help D, S, R, and P to occur in embodied cognition.

### In more detail

Dijk et. al. 2008 discussed embodied cognition, which is the idea that the brain is one part of cognition, while the body and the world are the other two parts of cognition. They wrote that, “Drawing on work in robotics, biology, and neuroscience, we propose a conceptualization (a metaphor) of the relationship between behavior, body, and brain activity in real-world contexts.” One of the examples used to make their point was in robotics, as one builds a larger and more complex robot they need to focus heavily on how the bot processes the Relationship between its processor and the unpredictable environment it encounters. The article makes the point that, “the success of the brain’s functioning is formulated in terms of how well it is able to model the outside world internally…” They imply that the Relationship between the brain and the outside world is essential to the brain’s success. The sensory inputs of the brain and body all help D, S, R, and P to occur in embodied cognition.

21 Emphasis added.

**Patterns it shows** D, S, R, P

**How to cite this** Dijk et al. (2008). Can There Be Such a Thing as Embodied Embedded Cognitive Neuroscience?. Theory and Psychology.