Disentangling Notions of Embodiment

Embodiment has become a n important concept in many areas of cognitive science. There a re, however, very different notions of exactly what embodiment i s and what kind of body is required for what kind of embodied cognition. This paper identifies and contrasts four different, increasingly restrictive notions of embodiment which can roughly be c haracterized as (1) ‘ structural coupling’ between agent and environment, (2) ‘physical embodiment’, (3) ‘organismoid embodiment’, i.e. organism-like bodily form (e.g., humanoid robots), and (4) ‘organismic embodiment’ of autopoietic, living systems.

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