The Embodied Perspective

The Isolated Mind?

“[The mind] arises from the nature of our brains, bodies, and bodily experiences. This is not just the innocuous and obvious claim that we need a body to reason; rather, it is the striking claim that the very structure of reason itself comes from the details of our embodiment… Thus, to understand reason, we must understand the details of our visual system, our motor system, and the general mechanism of neural binding.”

Cognitivism and connectionism, despite their distinct approaches, share the assumption of an independent external reality that needs to be represented internally by the mind. Our mind interacts with the external world through these internal representations in the form of symbols, as in cognitivism or learned patterns in connectionism. Both of these systems focus on the internal complexities of the mind and seem to disregard the physical medium through which all the information reaches our cognition, which is the initial point of all of our sensory reception: our body. Cognitivism and connectionism, according to Andy Clark, seem to operate in isolation* Andy Clark, "Embodiment and the philosophy of mind," Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements 43 (1998). from the external world, relying only on its mental representation.

Embodied Cognition

The concept of embodied cognition has emerged as a response to these views and essentially poses that cognition is rooted in our physical existence and interaction with the environment. Our understanding of concepts and the world, thus, is grounded in bodily experiences and sensorimotor interactions.* The idea that cognition is not solely intellectual but involves the body’s active engagement with the world has strong historical roots in philosophy. In particular, Spinoza’s philosophy provides an early foundation for ideas that align with modern concepts of embodied cognition. In his system, mind and body are not separate substances but two attributes of the same underlying substance, which he identifies as God or Nature (Deus sive Natura). Spinoza’s idea proposes that mental and physical states mirror each other: changes in the body correspond to changes in the mind, implying that cognition is deeply influenced by bodily interactions with the world. Spinoza also views emotions as bodily responses to external stimuli that affect the mind, further linking cognitive processes to the body’s state. While Spinoza did not develop a comprehensive theory of embodied cognition in the contemporary sense, his work anticipates key ideas in this field, particularly the interconnectedness of mind, body, and knowledge. See Steven Nadler, Spinoza's 'Ethics' : An Introduction (Cambridge, UNITED KINGDOM: Cambridge University Press, 2006). From the embodied perspective, thus, cognition arises from the continuous interplay between the brain, body, and external world, moving beyond the internalized focus of cognitivism and connectionism.

Some key theorists in the field of embodied cognition include Clarence Barsalou, George Lakoff, and Mark Johnson. Despite some nuances among their views, these researchers generally agree that advanced cognitive abilities rely on the re-enactment of sensory and motor experiences. This means that semantic knowledge* Semantic knowledge encompasses general knowledge about concepts, their relationships, and how they are meaningfully connected. depends on sensorimotor representations. The neural systems that play a role in forming and accessing semantic knowledge are the same systems used when we perceive sensory stimuli or perform actions. Essentially, our higher mental processes* Higher mental processes are any of the more complex types of cognition, such as thinking, judgment, imagination, memory, and language. In APA Dictionary of Psychology https://dictionary.apa.org/higher-mental-process. Accessed Nov. 9, 2025. are largely or entirely achieved by re-enacting the processes we originally used for understanding sensory input or executing actions.

Ideas around embodied cognition rely on two key concepts: dynamic systems theory and enaction. Regarding the first, it is proposed that cognition arises from self-organizing, dynamic systems through the non-linear, circular causality of continuous sensorimotor interactions involving the brain, body, and environment. A metaphor representing this idea is the mind as an embodied dynamic system in the world rather than the mind as a neural network in the head.* Evan Thompson, Mind in life: biology, phenomenology, and the sciences of mind (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2007), 11. From this perspective, cognition is best understood through dynamic systems theory, which models changes in a system’s state over time using differential equations.* In mathematics, a differential equation is a formula that connects one or more unknown functions with their derivatives. In practical applications, the functions typically represent physical quantities, while the derivatives describe their rates of change. The differential equation establishes the relationship between these quantities and their rates of change. in Dennis G. Zill, A First Course in Differential Equations with Modeling Applications (Cengage Learning, 2012).

The idea of enaction emphasizes that living beings are autonomous agents, actively generating and sustaining themselves while enacting their own cognitive domains. As a dynamic and autonomous system, the nervous system generates coherent and meaningful patterns of activity through circular and reentrant interactions among neurons. Rather than merely processing information computationally, the nervous system creates meaning. Moreover, the world of a cognitive being is not an external reality internally represented by the brain but a relational domain enacted through the being’s autonomous agency and interactions with the environment.* Francisco J. Varela, Evan Thompson, and Eleanor Rosch, The Embodied Mind, Cognitive Science and Human Experience (revised edition) (The MIT Press, 2017).

Most theorists on embodied cognition emphasize the crucial role of simulation in understanding concepts.* Heath E Matheson and Lawrence W Barsalou, "Embodiment and grounding in cognitive neuroscience," Stevens’ Handbook of Experimental Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience 3 (2018). This view suggests that accessing semantic knowledge involves the same neural systems active during perception or action, requiring these systems to replicate the processes used during initial perception or action. Neuroscientific evidence supporting this claim emerged notably with the discovery of mirror neurons. These neurons activate when a specific movement is performed or observed in others. Mirror neurons, thus, are strongly linked to our process of learning actions through imitation and ultimately to our understanding of concepts.* Mamede de Carvalho and Michael Swash, "Chapter 2 - Upper and lower motor neuron neurophysiology and motor control," in Handbook of Clinical Neurology, ed. David S. Younger (Elsevier, 2023).

Some authors have broadened the idea of simulation to encompass more general cognitive applications. For instance, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson suggest that our cognition evolves and grows through metaphors derived from the physical world,* G. Lakoff and M. Johnson, Metaphors We Live By (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003). as we constantly use metaphors to assimilate physical experiences into our comprehension of abstract concepts. But what exactly is a metaphor? A metaphor is a figure of speech in which a word or phrase is applied to an object or action to which it is not literally applicable.* Oxford English Dictionary, "metaphor, n," in Oxford English Dictionary (Oxford University Press, 2024). A metaphor, therefore, is a figurative expression that implies a conceptual connection between two domains that suggests broad similarities between these two. Embodied cognition utilizes the idea of metaphor as the loose mapping of one conceptual field onto another, proposing that we think in constant metaphors by importing the physical and experiential into our understanding of the pure and abstract. Metaphors function conceptually, enabling a way of reasoning rather than merely as a linguistic tool. The metaphor, thus, is central to reasoning, and most metaphors, ultimately, are rooted in physical and social experiences.

However, the explanations provided by embodied cognition theorists seem insufficient to fully capture the complexities of cognition. A major criticism is that embodied perspectives struggle to explain the acquisition of abstract concepts* A deeper discussion around the concept of abstraction will come in the next section ‘Joining the threads.’ or the creation of novel ideas that cannot be directly simulated from prior embodied experiences. This is particularly relevant to certain forms of creativity: How does embodiment influence mathematical creativity, for instance?* Margaret Boden asks this question in Ch. 1 of Boden, The creative mind : myths and mechanisms. Or, in the context of musical creativity, how do embodied experiences or metaphoric thinking contribute to the use of counterpoint for composing a fugue, or to the composition of dodecaphonic music?* Dodecaphonic music, also known as twelve-tone music, is a method of musical composition that uses all twelve notes of the chromatic scale in a specific, recurring order. Unlike the tonal system, where certain notes and chords embody different degrees of tension and resolution, notes or chords in the dodecaphonic system do not convey a sense of tonal attraction. Instead, the perceived level of dissonance is consistently high, and hierarchies between notes cannot be easily traced. This technique was developed by Arnold Schoenberg in the early 20th century and later adopted by some of his students. In its strictest form, dodecaphonic music developed into total serialism, a method of composition that became almost prescriptive for the most relevant European and American composers around the mid-20th century. Beyond obvious physical constraints like audible frequency ranges, instrumental limitations, analogies with human voices and melodic lines, and so on, can musical creative ideas be explained only by the embodied experience of music? The answers to these questions are not so straightforward.

Composing with the Body

How does embodied cognition manifest in a compositional process? As I felt moved to investigate more about this, to understand better what the implications are within my creative practice, I discovered the very interesting work of a scholar from the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki. Ula Pohannoro investigates the material and physical aspects of compositional thinking. At the beginning of the article, she claims that:

“Within musical practice, composing is considered the mental, intellectual, and creative form of musical practice, par excellence. In contrast, the work of a performer seems to be substantially practical, reproductive, and corporeal. […] Working in the solitary studio of a Western art music score-based composer—notwithstanding the intellectual nature of their compositional activities—is in almost every instant grounded in materialities of different kinds and attained by non-propositional practical understanding. This practical understanding originates in the material and physical aspects of sound and the action of producing that sound. It manifests itself in the way the producers of sounds and timbres, such as the performers with their movements and instruments, persist in the working mind of a composer. Moreover, creative thinking entails bodily activity by the composer, which transpires in the form of an intuitive mode of reasoning.”

The article essentially aims to challenge the idea that composition is an exclusively intellectual task. It argues that a composition or score inherently includes material elements that require and lay the groundwork for physical action. Pohjannoro further discusses the idea of materiality and physicality in composition research and brings a case study as evidence to support her claims.* It is important to note that the author proposed the same case of study to discuss the compositional process in light of the two types of creative thought that I discussed earlier in this text: the rational and the intuitive. This later article seems to expand the same case of study into a new framework in which the embodiment of the process takes an unprecedentedly important role. See Ulla Pohjannoro, "Inspiration and decision-making: A case study of a composer's intuitive and reflective thought," Musicae Scientiae 18, no. 2 (2014), https://doi.org/10.1177/1029864914520848. The author concludes that the materiality of the process deeply connected to the embodied experience should complement, rather than replace, the other two paradigms, the symbolic and the connectionist.

From these earlier discussions, a natural question arises: how do embodiment, materiality, and physical constraints manifest in my compositional practice? To explore this, I will examine the creative process behind the piece Elevator Pitch for violoncello and electronics, aiming to better understand these aspects and how they interact with my creative methods and the overall conceptual vision for the piece.