Embodied Cognition Quotes

“If ensuring the survival of the body proper is what the brain first evolved for, then, when minded brains first appeared, they began by minding the body. And to ensure body survival as effectively as possible, nature, I suggest, stumbled on a highly effective solution: representing the outside world in terms of the modifications it causes in the body proper, that is, representing the environment by modifying the primordial representations of the body proper whenever an interaction between organism and environment takes place.”
― Antonio Damasio, Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason and the Human Brain

“Embodied cognition is the science linked with the ancient science of mantra-tantra-yantra systems. It deals with body-mind and ego simultaneously as an integrated system. It encompasses biological, psychological and cultural context together.”
― Amit Ray, Mantra Design Fundamentals - Basics of mantra forms, structures, compositions, and formulas

“In using the notion of self, I am in no way suggesting that all the contents of our minds are inspected by a single central knower and owner, and even less that such an entity would reside in a single brain place. I am saying, though, that our experiences tend to have a consistent perspective, as if there were indeed an owner and knower for most, though not all, contents. I imagine this perspective to be rooted in a relatively stable, endlessly repeated biological state. The source of the stability is the predominantly invariant structure and operation of the organism, and the slowly evolving elements of autobiographical data.”
― Antonio Damasio, Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason and the Human Brain

“[O]ur brains try to predict the patterns that serve our needs and that fit our action repertoires. This may well result in the use of simple models whose power resides precisely in their failing to encode every detail and nuance present in the sensory array. This is not a barrier to true contact with the world - rather, it's a prerequisite for it. For knowing the world, in the only sense that can matter to an evolved organism, means being able to act in that world: being able to respond quickly and efficiently to salient environmental opportunities.”
― Andy Clark

“Wild cognition, it seems, has (literally) no time for the filing cabinet.”
― Andy Clark