Embodied cognition (EC) views propose that cognition is shaped by the kind of body that organisms possess. We give an overview of recent literature on EC, highlighting the differences between stronger and weaker versions of the theory. We also illustrate the debates on the notions of simulation, of representation, and on the role of the motor system for cognition, and we address some of the most important research topics. Future challenges concern the understanding of how abstract concepts and words are represented, and the relationship between EC and other promising approaches, the distributional views of meaning and the extended mind views.

Key words: affordances, cognitivism, distributional views, embodied cognition, emotion, enactivism, extended mind, grounded cognition, language comprehension, mental representation, mirror neurons, radical embodied cognition, representation, simulation, situated cog

Purpose: Constructivism postulates that the perceived reality is a complex construct formed during development. Depending on the particular school, these inner constructs take on different forms and structures and affect cognition in different ways. The purpose of this article is to address the questions of how and, even more importantly, why we form such inner constructs. Approach: This article proposes that brain development is controlled by an inherent anticipatory drive, which biases learning towards the formation of forward predictive structures and inverse goal-oriented control structures. This drive, in combination with increasingly complex environmental interactions during cognitive development, enforces the structuring of our conscious self, which is embedded in a constructed inner reality. Essentially, the following questions are addressed: Which basic mechanisms lead us to the construction of inner realities? How are these emergent inner realities structured? How is the self represented within the inner realities? And consequently, which cognitive structures constitute the media for conscious thought and selfconsciousness? Findings: Due to the anticipatory drive, representations in the brain shape themselves predominantly purposefully or intentionally. Taking a developmental, evolutionary perspective, we show how the brain is forced to develop progressively complex and abstract representations of the self embedded in the constructed inner realities. These self representations can evoke different stages of self-consciousness. Implications: The anticipatory drive shapes brain structures and cognition during the development of progressively more complex, competent, and flexible goal-oriented bodyenvironment interactions. Self-consciousness develops because increasingly abstract, individualizing self representations are necessary to realize these progressively more challenging environmental interactions.

Key words: anticipatory drive, self consciousness, mirror neurons, sensorimotor bodyspaces, language, social cognition

Open peer commentary on the target article “Who Conceives of Society?” by Ernst von Glasersfeld. First paragraph: Cognitive psychology, neurobiology, and cognitive systems research provide diverse clues as to how we are able to incrementally construct representations of the perceived environment and how we consequently understand other individuals and society. The construction of an individual’s reality starts with the capability to control one’s own body and to be able to predict the usual sensory effects caused by body movements. To be able to infer the potential intentions of others, mirror neurons project one’s own behavioral codes onto perceived patterns that are caused by others. Equipped with representations of many other individuals, personal social realities are constructed. In this commentary, I focus on these points for the construction of social reality and the consequent existence of society as a whole.

The article aims to provide the main conceptual coordinates in order to fully understand the state of the art of the most recent research in the field of neurobiology of interpersonal experience. The main purpose of this work is to analyze, at an anthropological, phenomenological and epistemological level, how the fundamental characteristics of the recognition of otherness and intercorporeity among human beings contribute to changing the image of nature in the light of a possible new relationship between living bodies, neurophysiological systems and empathy. From this point of view, the hypothesis to investigate is that neurophenomenology, understood as a new evolutionary, multidimensional and autopoietic approach, is capable of probing the preconditions of the possible delineation of a phenomenology of intersubjectivity shaped by the neuroscientific turning point, represented by the discovery of mirror neurons. At this level, the neuroscientific data are interpreted according to a specific interdisciplinary perspective, thus trying to offer a possible unitary and integrated theoretical framework.

Key words: otherness, enaction, intercorporeity, neurosciences, epistemology of complexity, living body, empathy.

This paper, in opposition to the standard theories of social cognition found in psychology and cognitive science, defends the idea that direct perception plays an important role in social cognition. The two dominant theories, theory theory (TT) and simulation theory (ST), both posit something more than a perceptual element as necessary for our ability to understand others, i.e., to “mindread” or “mentalize.” In contrast, certain phenomenological approaches depend heavily on the concept of perception and the idea that we have a direct perceptual grasp of the other person’s intentions, feelings, etc. This paper explains precisely what the notion of direct perception means, offers evidence from developmental studies, and proposes a non-simulationist interpretation of the neuroscience of mirror systems.

Key words: direct perception, theory theory, simulation theory, mirror neurons, social cognition.

Embodied action representation and action understanding are the first steps to understand what it means to communicate. We present a biologically plausible mechanism to the representation and the recognition of actions in a neural network with spiking neurons based on the learning mechanism of spike-timing-dependent plasticity (STDP). We show how grasping is represented through the multimodal integration between the vision and tactile maps across multiple temporal scales. The network evolves into a small-world organization with scale-free dynamics promoting efficient inter-modal binding of the neural assemblies with accurate timing. Finally, it acquires the qualitative properties of the mirror neuron system to trigger an observed action performed by someone else.

Key words: mirror neurons, action understanding, stdp, polychronization.

The chapter presents a conceptual framework that links the enaction of our intentions to the understanding of other people’s intentions through the concept of “Presence”, the feeling of being and acting in a world outside us. Specifically the chapter suggests that humans develop intentionality and Self by prereflexively evaluating agency in relation to the constraints imposed by the environment (Presence): they are “present” if they are able to enact in an external world their intentions. This capacity also enables them to go beyond the surface appearance of behavior to draw inferences about other individuals’ intentions (Social Presence): others are “present” to us if we are able to recognize them as enacting beings. Both Presence and Social Presence evolve in time, and their evolution is strictly related to the three-stage model of the ontogenesis of Self introduced by Damasio (Proto-Self, Core Self, Autobiographical Self). More, we can identify higher levels of Presence and Social Presence associated to higher levels of intentional granularity: the more is the complexity of the expressed and recognized intentions, the more is the level of Presence and Social Presence experienced by the Self. In this framework, motor intentions and mirror neurons are at the basis of the intentional chain, but full intentional granularity requires the activity of higher cortical levels.