Top Highlights

• The embodied thesis maintains cognition depends upon physical characteristics of the body (Wilson, 2002); its sensory and motor capabilities shape the mind (Robbins and Aydede, 2009). The thesis has philosophical roots in existential phenomenology works of Edmund Husserl, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Martin Heidegger who, among others, believed the b...
• Pallasmaa largely responsible for bringing awareness of embodied cognition to architectural design (Mallgrave, 2011) by advocating for multi-sensory environments engaging hearing, smell, and touch as antidote to the visual bias in architecture, which he believes yields “impoverished environments” causing feelings of detachment and alienation in use...
• Another historical influence for the embodiment thesis is Gibson’s (1977) work in ecological psychology, including his theory of affordances. Gibson believed people understand the world in terms of functional relevance and possibilities for action (affordances).
• Gibson defines affordance as a relationship between person and environment, dependent upon the person’s intentions and physical abilities with respect to action opportunities provided by features of the environment
• The “bottom-up” approach to cognition he describes is reflected in Brooks’s (1991a,b) seminal artificial intelligence research and Clark’s (2001) concept of “intelligence without [mental] representation,” arguing minds are not for thinking but for doing.

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