Embodied cognition according to TEC ( Theory of Event Coding

1 This is an extended version of the Opinion paper " The theory of event coding (TEC) as embodied-cognition framework " submitted to Frontiers in Cognition. 2 As common in the more lively phases of scientific disciplines, the key concept of this book and of this chapter—embodied cognition—is not very well defined. Wilson (2002) has identified no less than six different meanings the concept has acquired in different writings, and this is arguably an underestimation. And yet, there certainly is quite some deal of overlap across approaches and authors, especially with regard to the shortcomings in cognitive theorizing that the concept is meant to overcome. As Wilson (2002, p. 625) summarizes, " There is a growing commitment to the idea that the mind must be understood in the context of its relationship to a physical body that interacts with the world. ... Hence human cognition, rather than being centralized, abstract, and sharply distinct from peripheral input and output modules, may instead have deep roots in sensorimotor processing ". What is much less clear, however, is what that might mean and to which timescale it refers; e.g., does that really require that any cognition must always be accompanied by sensorimotor activity (however that might be defined), or that the ontogenetic emergence of cognition relies on sensorimotor activity, or that the phylogenetic roots of the architecture of human cognition reflect the human ability to perceive and act? Commitments to one or another of these possibilities are more frequent than are straightforward justifications and solid empirical support, which is likely to create islands of research that are dogmatically shielded from the mainstream of cognitive research. If and to the degree that the embodied-cognition movement has really put the finger on something important, the mainstream would strongly benefit from taking the main message of the movement on board and mutual ignorance would be unfortunate for both sides. As I will argue, it is neither necessary nor helpful to accept or even embrace the strategy of embodied-cognition approaches to consider embodied-cognition and cognitivistic models as mutually exclusive alternatives. More useful seems to be a 3 Marxian strategy to treat embodied cognition as a challenging, interesting antithesis that would need to be synthesized with (and not just added to) more traditional cognitive approaches to reach a new level of scientific insight. To make that more concrete, I will address key claims of embodied-cognition approaches and show …