Embodiment and the Inner Life
Cognition and Consciousness in the Space of Possible Minds
Murray Shanahan
To understand the mind and its place in Nature is one of the great
intellectual challenges of our time, a challenge that is both scientific
and philosophical. How does cognition influence an animal's behaviour?
What are its neural underpinnings? How is the inner life of a human
being constituted? What are the neural underpinnings of the conscious
condition? Embodiment and the Inner Life approaches each of these
questions from a scientific standpoint. But it contends that before we
can make progress on them, we have to give up the habit of thinking
metaphysically, a habit that creates a fog of philosophical confusion.
From this post-reflective point of view, the book argues for an intimate
relationship between cognition, sensorimotor embodiment, and the
integrative character of the conscious condition. Drawing on insights
from psychology, neuroscience, and dynamical systems, it proposes an
empirical theory of this three-way relationship whose principles, not
being tied to the contingencies of biology or physics, are applicable to
the whole space of possible minds in which humans and other animals are
included.
For a summary of the book's key themes click here.
Full text of the book available here.
Published by Oxford University Press.