For in psychology there are experimental methods and conceptual confusion: From embodied cognition to wittgenstein on language and mind

Abstract

Embodied Cognition (EC) is a new psychological version of an old philosophical idea: human cognition is grounded in sensorimotor experience. According to EC there is not such an entity as abstract and disembodied knowledge, that is, the root of every form of human knowledge is an acting body in the world. In this chapter I will try to show that existing extensions of EC to language partly miss the point because do not fully account for the social and performative nature of language. Therefore a thorough embodied theory of language requires to consider the Wittgenstein legacy, which stresses at least two main points: (a) a coherent theory of language is not possible if not embedded in a more comprehensive description of human way of living; (b) the meaning of a word is not an internal and psychological entity but its social use, it is the action we do using that word/tool. In this chapter I will analyze EC literature showing that it needs to be complemented with Wittgenstein ideas on language and mind.