ABSTRACT
In this chapter we will scrutinize various attempts to define what it means for cognition to be embodied. Claims about the meaning of embodiment, we shall see, are far from uniform in the commitments they entail. More troubling still is that the claims often step far beyond the evidence or argument made in their support. Questions also arise concerning whether, and if so how, the assorted views on embodiment we shall examine mark a real departure from standard cognitive science. This chapter will be partly expository, but also critical, for there is much to criticize in many of the recent efforts to characterize embodiment. However, from the tangle of conceptions we will consider, we shall be able to pull a few straight threads that will lead the way toward a clearer grasp of the issues involved. The accounts of embodiment I will present in this chapter are drawn from some of the most prominent and widely cited sources in the field, and so represent something as close to a common background as is possible. This fact makes all the more surprising the remarkable multiplicity of ideas that have been hailed in the name of embodied cognition.
