I will introduce 5 psychological discoveries about how elegantly our body is connected to the mind. Our special brand of cognition (thinking and thinking processes) is the direct interaction of our mind, body, environment, and the tools we use.
The 5 discoveries
- Metaphors often involve the body or environment[1] – “His emotions are as steady as a mountain”. Such metaphors form the basis of advanced thinking, and they help us understand new concepts. For example, steadiness as a concept is learned as something that doesn’t move, which is typically a mountain. It is then applied to other concepts such as emotions or commitment.
- Playing a spatial rotation game like Tetris, which involves changing the perspective of colored blocks, can induce empathy because empathy is about changing perspectives[2]. The physical change in perspective triggers a mental change in perspective.
- Drinking warm soup and having a warm bath[3] can reduce loneliness because the physical experience of warmth is a building block for the more advanced cognition of “social warmth” which is often missing when lonely.
- Dancing can improve spatial reasoning skills[4] because spatial reasoning is built upon basic physical movements in a physical space.
- The concept of “moral” beauty – kindness and values shares neural mechanisms with physical beauty[5] -appearances. The more advanced form of beauty is an abstraction or “new skin” built on top of the foundational bone structure of physical beauty.
There is more kind of evidence[6] – when you think of doing a physical action, there is a signal sent to the muscles that corresponds with actually doing the action. The execution of muscle movement doesn’t happen, but the muscles are primed to act. This is also why just mentally visualizing a specific physical skill can lead to performance improvements. If you imagine throwing darts and visualize the motion accurately, you will improve slightly without physical practice. There is training in the mind’s eye. This wouldn’t be possible if there were no direct connection between muscles and the contents of thinking.
There is an inherent connection between the building blocks of “thought” and the physical experiences of interacting with the world. This theory has been referred to as the 4E theory of cognition by many researchers and philosophers. And, to this day, it is one of the best theories that doesn’t require any kind of mystical source like tapping into some extra-dimensional consciousness to create the mind.
The building blocks of the mind and patterns of interaction between the senses and the body. Those are the fundamental layers of the mind.
Body, Mind, Environment, and Tools – the 4 pillars of cognition
Here’s the 4E theory of cognition, which suggests cognition is beyond the contents of learning.
Cognition is Embedded: Cognition is meaningful when the external environment is involved.
E.g., thinking of cooking is cognitively easy when we have ingredients in front of us instead of imagining the ingredients. Involves culture, society, and the environment.
Cognition is Embodied: Cognition is not limited to the brain, it exists across the body. And bodily changes alter cognition.
E.g., Dancing well alters spatial reasoning. Involves the body.
Cognition is Enacted: It’s a meaning-making process that interprets information from the senses and internally generated thoughts.
E.g., our brain doesn’t receive an image of our food on the table. We interpret an interaction with food using our senses and movement.
Cognition is Extended: It is directly associated with the tools we use.
E.g., a calculator helps us think and reason. Involves tools we create, tools we naturally find, and other people.
Let me paint a story of someone just entering college now.
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Bro’s story (fictional case)
Bro is born with Alexa and genAI. Has access to music and TV via stream. Knows how the internet speaks and how ideas evolve. Has access to all the information on the internet. Has parents who are sufficiently aware of these but not intimately knowledgeable, even though the internet was created in their presence. The products this bro consumes are created by the parent’s generation. Has instructions to cook and do homework. Has examples of it online. Has the speed to search and find answers. Lives in a city with remarkable differences between poverty and prosperity within a locality. All senses are intact but bro has predominantly enjoyed classical music, Indian cuisine, and Western and Asian drama, and loves football. Choose to do engineering and looks forward to getting into robotics.
I’ll create his cognitive makeup with the 4E theory.
Bro’s cognition as per 4E
Notice how I said cognitive makeup. Cognition, being an abstract idea, has no real form; but the metaphor of makeup makes cognition tangible and more easily understood. This is because the word cognition itself is embodied by makeup and enacted in the unique ways people use makeup.
- Embedded cognition: Bro’s cognition is highly active when it is related to football, engineering, and internet culture. The best of Bro’s creative and smart thoughts emerge in these domains. The idea of poverty and prosperity combined with engineering will likely bring focus to thrifty solutions and products and generate an appreciation for thrifty innovation.
- Embodied cognition: Bro’s thought processes are directly reflected in what Bro has learned about in football (team players, different roles to meet a goal) and technology (going online to find answers). What Bro learns there becomes a part of Bro’s thoughts. The training in football shapes how the bro approaches new learning.
- Enacted cognition: Bro’s experience of classical music, Indian cuisine, and Asian and Western dramas create a personal relevance of thoughts and ideas that carry emotions as well as specific ideas like how people interact with each other and what counts as aesthetic pleasure. The emotions present in those sounds and tastes give certain thoughts more value, like dramatic build-up of sounds makes Bro want a good experience to have a good finale.
- Extended cognition: Bro’s thinking is directly related to asking for things from an agent like Alexa and GenAI and this expectation of asking something and getting ready answers is a familiar way of interacting. Thoughts are triggered by those interactions. Those interactions also depend on the type of tools created by his parent’s generation such as apps for everything, smart watches, streaming technology, cheap goods on Amazon, etc.
Based on this context, we can also conclude what is not a part of Bro’s cognition.
Who Bro is Not
- The idea of a 1-time payment for entertainment doesn’t exist in the thinking style, subscriptions are the norm – so the getting continuous value means regular depletion of resources.
- Individual skills are not solo contributions (they are in the context of a team).
- Poverty and prosperity have sensitized Bro to 2 extremes of how people live, so Bro is likely not of the opinion that cheaper is better or expensive is better.
- Bro is likely not tolerant of uncertainty because there is an expectation of answers online, in contrast with many older people who have been forced to not find answers due to limited access to information.
The Shape of Thought
If everyone’s cognition had a shape, the 4E framework illustrates how the shape is unique for all individuals. It is a unique shape created based on the body, the environment, the mind, and the tools we use. And the shape is likely to change with new interactions with the world.
Sources
[2]: https://essuir.sumdu.edu.ua/handle/123456789/44529
[3]: https://psycnet.apa.org/buy/2014-37463-001
[4]: http://chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://www.eurosa.org/wp-content/uploads/COMPLETE-VOLUME-2017.pdf
[5]: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30760800/
[6]: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10671188.1967.10613388?src=recsys
Hey! Thank you for reading; hope you enjoyed the article. I run Cognition Today to capture some of the most fascinating mechanisms that guide our lives. My content here is referenced and featured in NY Times, Forbes, CNET, and Entrepreneur, and many other books & research papers.
I’m am a psychology SME consultant in EdTech with a focus on AI cognition and Behavioral Engineering. I’m affiliated to myelin, an EdTech company in India as well.
I’ve studied at NIMHANS Bangalore (positive psychology), Savitribai Phule Pune University (clinical psychology), Fergusson College (BA psych), and affiliated with IIM Ahmedabad (marketing psychology). I’m currently studying Korean at Seoul National University.
I’m based in Pune, India but living in Seoul, S. Korea. Love Sci-fi, horror media; Love rock, metal, synthwave, and K-pop music; can’t whistle; can play 2 guitars at a time.
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