Embodied philosophy

Embodied cognition is the theory that many features of human, or other types of, cognition are shaped by aspects of the body beyond the brain. The features of cognition include high level mental constructs (such as concepts and categories) and human performance on various cognitive tasks (such as reasoning or judgment). The aspects of the body include the motor system, the perceptual system, the body's interactions with the environment (situatedness) and the assumptions about the world that are built into the body and the brain.

The embodied mind thesis challenges other theories, such as cognitivism, computationalism, and Cartesian dualism. It is closely related to the extended mind thesis, situated cognition and enactivism. The modern version depends on insights drawn from recent research in psychology, linguistics, cognitive science, dynamical systems, artificial intelligence, robotics, plant cognition and neurobiology.

In philosophy, embodied cognition holds that an agent's cognition is strongly influenced by aspects of an agent's body beyond the brain itself. In their proposal for an enactive approach to cognition Varela et al. defined "embodied":

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