Hi Pablo,

I think you've identified a really important issue: that of how the embodied aspects of linguistic communication relate to language as a symbolic system. It's probably a good idea to have a broader notion of higher embodied cognition than just perceptual concept formation and neuro-sensory/motor simulation. Such ideas are starting to emerge. My favorite is Guy Dove's article from a few years ago available at: http://www.frontiersin.org/Cognition/10.3389/fpsyg.2010.00242/abstract

His notion is that animals can recursively develop concepts through simulation and memory construction that are emergently "dis-embodied."

In a soon-to-be-available article, I try to combine this argument with that of Terry Deacon, suggesting that Peirce's semiotic framework helps us to bridge the apparent gap between embodied perceptual concepts and symbolic concepts. I argue that iconic representations of embodied narratives recursively helped our ancestors to maintain sustained introspective attention, helping them to learn to filter extrasomatic, proprioceptive and interoceptive indices, developing more complex private semiotic systems for making decisions about relevance, social judgment, and agency. The full article should be published any day:

http://journal.frontiersin.org/Journal/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00834/abstract

Let me know what you think. This is a fast-developing, highly interesting and important topic.

best,

Aaron

http://www.frontiersin.org/Cognition/10.3389/fpsyg.2010.00242/abstract

http://journal.frontiersin.org/Journal/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00834/abstract

Hi Aaron,

Thank you! Dove's article is one exhaustive piece indeed. I'm also eager to read yours, ambitiously eclectic and novel as it seems.

Best,

Pablo

Happily, the full text of my Frontiers in Psych article is available (see link above). Yet, it's already elicited feedback suggesting that I wasn't quite eclectic enough. I was happy to hear from Prof. Chris Sinha (a linguist who has much much more experience and knowledge than I in cognitive and sociolinguistics) has been working on similar ideas. I'd definitely encourage you to check out his Academia.edu page (see below).

I am hoping that it is becoming a better-defined area of inquiry concerning language and representation, that we seriously investigate language and symbolic representations as emerging from complex feedbacks among sensory-motor interaction, simulation, iconic narrative construction, and management of introspective attention.

best,

Aaron

https://hnu.academia.edu/ChrisSinha

Thanks. I will check Sinha too. 

Best wishes

Hello Pablo

"Language processing is probably neither wholly symbolic... nor wholly embodied . Rather, on recent proposals, both cognitive systems would play a role "

This statement bothers me as the second part assumes we know what we mean in the first part. To put it in more academic language, you assume as axiomatic some ideas I regard as conjectural.

As far as I know no-one has yet found a symbol in the brain, and I think we wouldn't know what one looked like if we fell over it. So the burden on you is to define what you mean by symbol, where one might find one (in the body), and how we might identify such. Likewise, what do you man when you use the term embodied? And are there two cognitive systems? Why not ten or a thousand? Are they systems - are we talking about systems in  systems-theoretic terms? If so, there is sound argument that there are no 'systems'  in the brain -in the sense that they can be broken into subsystems.

Added to that, any time the word 'processing' is used in relation to the brain, my hackles rise.Computing metaphors, like any metaphor, does much damage as good, an d assuming that the brain 'processes' in some way analogous to a boolean von neumann machine is not only fantastic but dangerous - it can lead to bad science and occlude other possibilities

I am being unfair, it is not your fault. I am sure that "within your discipline" terms like symbolic, embodied and processing are well understood. But like any discipline, it rests on a set of axiomatic assumptions. Sometimes those assumptions are simply mistaken. Breakthrough science occurs when assumptions are tested.(it seldom wins you any friends though).

Simon

Hi Simon,

Thanks a lot for this generous contribution. I can only agree. As it is, this inquiry is still built on speculation for its greater part -- from all sides. That is how I see it. On one end, arguments for a symbolic/disembodied/amodal conceptualization lack compelling evidence (where are the symbols, as you remarked). Yet so does the "embodiment" counterpart: neural evidence at hand by no means accounts for all language -- rather, it has focused on very sensory/physical concepts, likely to be processed as such. 

Regardless, let's take back skepticism: again, thank you. Research easily gets "stuffy", oversimplified, and so does one in it. You gave me some food for thought, and that's very friendly! 

Pablo

Hello Pablo

thanks for your kind response. If you do not know it, I recommend Lakoff and Gallese's paper - attached

Simon

Article The Brain's Concepts: The Role of the Sensory-Motor System i...

Take a look at my colleague/friend Ho Ming's recent paper:

http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/jocn_a_00487#.U_i87fldVHA

Excellent. Thanks!