Abstract

Embodiment appears to matter for mind and cognition in three ways: spreading the load, self-structuring information, and supporting extended cognition. The three threads are joined by the supporting hypothesis of cognitive impartiality: Our problem-solving performances take shape according to some cost function or functions that, in the typical course of events, accord no special status or privilege to specific types of operation (motoric, perceptual, introspective) or modes of encoding (in the head or in the world). This chapter argues that these appeals to embodiment, action, and cognitive extension are best understood as fully continuous with computational, representational, and information-theoretic approaches to understanding mind and cognition. In so doing, it attempts to display at least something of the likely shape of a mature science of the embodied mind.