ABSTRACT
Given this assemblage of commitments, there might be several ways to go about challenging or questioning cognitive science. In this chapter I will consider two prominent approaches to cognition that are explicit in their antagonism toward the computational ideas that form the core of standard cognitive science. The reason to do this is twofold. First, because embodied cognition is often presented as an alternative to cognitive science, and, just as often, as superior in a number of ways, an examination of how an alternative to cognitive science might look and how a challenge to cognitive science might proceed will prove beneficial. The second reason to consider challenges to standard cognitive science is more bound to the particular two rivals we will be studying: J. J. Gibson’s ecological theory of perception and connectionist accounts of cognition. Embodied cognition, as we shall see in the coming chapters, has incorporated rather extensively a variety of insights emerging from research in both ecological psychology and connectionism. Taking time now to develop an understanding of Gibson’s work as well as some basic principles of connectionism will pay dividends later when we turn our attention more directly toward embodied cognition.
