The Meaning of Embodiment

There is substantial disagreement among philosophers of embodied cognitive science about the meaning of embodiment. In what follows I describe three different views of that can be found in the current literature. I show how this debate centres around the question of whether a science of embodied cognition can retain the computer theory of mind. One view which I will label body functionalism takes the body to play the functional role of linking external resources for problem solving with internal biological machinery. Embodiment is thus understood in terms of the role the body plays in supporting the computational circuits that realise cognition. Body enactivism argues by contrast that no computational account of cognition can account for the role of commonsense knowledge in our everyday practical engagement with the world. I will attempt a reconciliation of these seemingly opposed views.