Embodiment

Being envisioned as a reader of sorts in theoretical and empirical research on embodiment, the book revolves around several core issues that have been addressed previously, to a large degree independently, in various disciplines. In particular the volume illustrates the diversity of notions of embodiment that has arisen in various disciplines over the last twenty years, and addresses the question how these different interpretations relate to each other, i.e. are they different aspects of or different perspectives on the same phenomena, or do they actually contradict each other? For this purpose, several aspects of cognition and language, such as phenomenal experience, perception, action, conceptualization, communication, meaning creation, social interaction and culture, are illuminated from the perspective of different theories of embodiment.

The contributions are integrated through cross-connections between individual authors’ papers and through an introductory essay that identifies the different strands of research, the central issues that they share, and the synergies that can be gained from addressing embodiment from an interdisciplinary perspective.