180164 SE MEi:CogSci Topic-Seminar (2025S)

The aim of the seminar is to introduce approaches in cognitive science that recognise the fundamental importance of the body in cognition and to explore the relation between body and mind both in theory and in practice. Embodied approaches to understanding mind and thinking have become very popular in the last decades since Varela, Thompson and Rosch (1991) coined the term “embodied mind”. Embodied cognition, and more recently 4E/4EA cognition, have evolved into a spectrum of diverse research programmes studying the role of the body in cognitive processes. However, one major point emphasised by Varela et al. (1991) has been all too often neglected: the necessity to include a first-person perspective when investigating cognition. Building on the phenomenological tradition, enactivism stresses the constitutive role of the body in subjective experience, in processes of sense-making, learning and thinking, and generally in cognition.

The seminar has two foci:

On the one hand, the main ideas of embodiment and enactivism will be revisited with the help of acquiring a phenomenological vocabulary and viewpoint. Questions such as the following will guide our explorations and discussions: What is a body? What is my body? How do I experience my body? How do I experience the world (through my body)? Am I my body? What is an emotion? Where do I experience it? How do emotions relate to movement? How do I attune to others? How do interpersonal affective dynamics constitute a sense of self and a sense of other?

On the other hand, we aim to explore possible applications of an enactive view on cognition, especially looking at dance and somatic practices, as well as design processes. How do we think in movement? How are we aware of our physical and bodily interactions with our Umwelt/our environment? How does attending to the body and to movement enable possibilities for learning, personal change and development?

Throughout the seminar, our theoretical investigations will be accompanied by movement explorations, which should enable us to experience and explore moving minds and bodies, or the ‘bodymind’ as some call it.
The classes will be collaboratively shaped by students and teachers, including interactive parts/workshops on discussed phenomena, as well as presentations and discussions based on the compulsory literature.