Embodied Cognition: Our Inner Imaginings of the World around Us Make Us Who We Are [Excerpt]

Editor's note: This excerpt of a chapter from Louder Than Words: The New Science of How the Mind Makes Meaning by Benjamin K. Bergen (Basic Books, 2012) relates that our brain's capacity to both perceive a pig and then imagine what the animal is like, even one that flies, points to an essential cognitive skill that makes humans different from all other species. Excerpted from Louder Than Words: The New Science of How the Mind Makes Meaning by Benjamin K. Bergen. Starting as early as the 1970s, some cognitive psychologists, philosophers, and linguists began to wonder whether meaning wasn't something totally different from a language of thought [Call it Mentalese, whichtranslates words into actual concepts: a polar bear or speed limit, for instance]. They suggested that--instead of abstract symbols--meaning might really be something much more closely intertwined with our real experiences in the world, with the bodies that we have. As a self-conscious movement started to take form, it took on a name, embodiment, which started to stand for the idea that meaning might be something that isn't distilled away from our bodily experiences but is instead tightly bound by them. For you, the word dog might have a deep and rich meaning that involves the ways you physically interact with dogs--how they look and smell and feel.