An increasingly popular trend in the sciences of the mind is to emphasize the ways in which cognition is embodied, embedded, situated, extended, distributed, enactive, ecological, etc. This course combines lectures and seminars to explore advanced topics at the cutting edge of "embodied cognitive science".
This semester (Summer 2022) in Advanced Topics in Embodied Cognitive Science we will study how ideas from dynamical systems theory (also known as complexity science, chaos theory, etc) have been used in radical approaches in embodied cognitive science such as the approaches of ecological psychology and enactivism. In particular, we will consider how ideas about complexity and nonlinear dynamics inform views about the nature of cognition (key terms: self-organization, autocatakinetics and autopoiesis) and about the relation between cognition and biological phenomena occurring at different spatiotemporal scales, including (a) the timescales of behavior (i.e., seconds, minutes and hours), development (i.e., an agent’s lifespan) and evolution (i.e., the entire history of a species), and (b) the spatial scales going from the single cell, through entire organisms and organism-environment systems, up to the whole planet (Gaia hypothesis).
Previous knowledge about embodied cognitive science is helpful, but not required. Resources will be made available for students who need help with the basics of embodied cognition, ecological psychology and enactivism.
- Trainer/in: Guilherme Sanches Sanchez