English Theme 45 3.3-3.5

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English Theme 45 3.3-3.5

• Date Apr 24, 2007
• Room 8-405
• Instructor Mafuyu Kitahara
• Material Thelen, E. (1995) Time-scale dynamics
  and the development of an embodied cognition in
  R. Port and T. van Gelder (eds.) Mind as motion,
  Cambridge MIT Press

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3.3 Some background

• Traditional view
• Motor skill necessary but uninteresting part
• Stagelike rolling over, sit up, crawling,
  walking
• Reflects AUTONOMOUS development of brain
• Brain matures from codes in the genes
• Dualism motor skill not part of the mind

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3.4 Piaget

• Another approach
• Thought grows from action
• Sensori-motor period foundation of cognition
• Sucking, batting, looking, smiling meaningful
• But, still dualism-like
• Cognition designed to know the world
• World symbolic, logical structures
• Body low-level, bound, limited
• Mind high-level, abstract, pure
• Baby prisoners at the low-level

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3.5 Alternative to dualism
Traditional, Piaget, Dualism
Alternative, growing, dynamic
cognitivist
embodied
objectivist
background
materialist
enactive

• Grounded knowledge
• No separation of mind from body
• All is process, all is emergent

• No physical body involved
• Intelligent behavior separate from self