Disentangling Notions of Embodiment

Abstract

Embodiment has become an important concept in many areas of cognitive science. There are, however, very different notions of exactly what embodiment is and what kind of body is required for what kind of embodied cognition. This paper identifies and contrasts four different, increasingly restrictive notions of embodiment which can roughly be characterized as (1) `structural coupling' between agent and environment, (2) `physical embodiment', (3) `organismoid embodiment', i.e. organism-like bodily form (e.g., humanoid robots), and (4) `organismic embodiment' of autopoietic, living systems.