Embodied Cognition

Fundamental differences in philosophical outlook divide the more conservative and radical branches of the E-family. Yet the emergence of E-approaches to cognition, wherever they sit on the conservative-radical spectrum, represents an undeniably important development for understanding cognition. Educational research and practice should take serious stock of these approaches for the simple reason that questions of how to educate cannot be kept apart from questions about how we think and learn. This chapter reviews empirical findings in the E-cognition domain that lend credence to Shapiro and Stolz’s (2019) claim that, “the emerging research agenda of embodied cognition has much to offer educational practitioners, researchers, and/or policy-makers” (p. 34).
This chapter brackets question about the philosophical barriers that may, for some, block the acceptance of E-approaches and how to deal with them. It focuses instead on possible practical outcomes of such acceptance. Taking an imaginative leap, it asks: Assuming one adopted either a more conservative or more radical E-framework, how would that choice matter to one’s thinking about educational research and practice?

È veramente possibile comprendersi? Siamo in grado di coesistere con gli inviolabili spazi che ci separano? La psicologia cognitiva ha elaborato alcuni modelli che tentano di spiegare la comprensione dell’altro. Ma cosa accade se questo altro è un personaggio letterario? Come possiamo provare delle emozioni per dei personaggi che non esistono nella realtà? Per sceverare questi temi mi sono basata su alcune derivazioni della tradizione fenomenologica, analitica e su alcuni studi di psicologia cognitiva, partendo dall’assunto che elementi tratti dalle diverse tradizioni possano servire vicendevolmente da correttivi.

This paper asks about the ways in which embodimentoriented
cognitive science contributes to our understanding of phenomenal
consciousness. It is first argued that central work in the field
of embodied cognitive science does not solve the hard problem of consciousness
(Chalmers, 1996) head on. It is then argued that an
embodied turn toward neurophenomenology makes no distinctive
headway on the puzzle of consciousness; for neurophenomenology
either concedes dualism in the face of the hard problem or represents
only a slight methodological variation on extant cognitive-scientific
approaches to the easy problems of consciousness. The paper closes
with the positive suggestion that embodied cognitive science supports
a different approach to phenomenal consciousness, according to
which the mind is massively representational (and cognitive processing
teems with body-related representations), cognitive science has no
use for the personal-level posits that tend to drive philosophical theorizing
about consciousness and mind, and the hard problem is
illusory.

Successful athletic performance requires precision in many respects. A batter stands behind home plate awaiting the arrival of a ball that is less than three inches in diameter and moving close to 100 mph. His goal is to hit it with a ba­­t that is also less than three inches in diameter. This impressive feat requires extraordinary temporal and spatial coordination. The sweet spot of the bat must be at the same place, at the same time, as the ball. A basketball player must keep a ball bouncing as she speeds from one end of the court to another, evading defensive players. She may never break pace as she lifts from the ground, throwing the ball fifteen feet toward a hoop that is eighteen inches in diameter. One task facing a psychologist involves explaining how the body does such things within the sometimes very demanding spatial and temporal constraints that a given task imposes. Part of the goal of this chapter is to sketch the commitments of an embodied approach to such an explanation. We shall see that an embodied account of motor skills draws concepts that depart radically from more traditional cognitivist theories of motor activity. Similarly, because an embodied approach to cognition introduces new ways to understand the human capacity for social interaction, it also promises to shed new light on how athletes coordinate their actions with each other.

Embodied accounts have offered a theoretical framework in which emotions are understood to be patterned embodied responses that are about core relational themes. Some authors argue that this intentionality should be understood in terms of some kind of non-conceptual representation format, while others suggest a radical enactivist framework that takes emotions to be intentional but not representational. In this paper I will argue that the abstract nature of the core relational themes emotions are about and the interrelatedness of emotions with each other and with other mental states speak in favor of emotions being representations.

Despite the popularity that the embodied cognition thesis has gained in recent years, explicit memories of events personally experienced are still conceived as disembodied mental representations. It seems that we can consciously remember our personal past through sensory imagery, through concepts, propositions and language, but not through the body. In this article, I defend the idea that the body constitutes a genuine means of representing past personal experiences. For this purpose, I focus on the analysis of bodily movements associated with the retrieval of a personal memory, which have certain features that make them different from procedural memories, pragmatic actions and common gestures, as well as other forms of embodied memories found in recent literature. I refer to these as “kinetic memories” and analyse their representative nature as well as their adaptive functions. Kinetic memories are bodily movements in which some event or action that took place in the past can be seen, because they are an externalisation of the subject’s inner intention of representing a past personal experience. Kinetic memories represent a past experience sometimes by imitation of a past movement, and other times through embodied symbols and metaphors. Furthermore, although sometimes they present direct pragmatic benefits, such as communicative benefits, they seem to enhance the whole reexperience of the past event and memory recall, which I argue is one important adaptive value.

This book argues that thinking is bounded by neither the brain nor the skin of an organism. Cognitive systems function through integration of neural and bodily functions with the functions of representational vehicles. The integrationist position offers a fresh contribution to the emerging embodied and embedded approach to the study of mind.

This chapter examines the meaning-making functions of cinematic sound from the perspective of embodied cognition. Using embodied simulation theory (Gallese, 2005) as a unifying framework, and placing particular emphasis upon the affective aspects of ‘Feeling of Body’ (Wojciehowski & Gallese, 2011), an account of cinematic media emerges which puts into play Mark Johnson’s concept of ‘embodied meaning’ (Johnson, 2007). Central to Johnson’s concept is the assertion that all human meaning, abstract conceptual thinking, and imagination have basis in our sensorimotor interactions with the world. In the context of cinematic media, it suggests the stylistic crafting and patterning of perceptual content not only elicits an affective response but also shapes cognition. Drawing upon examples of cinematic sound design an embodied aesthetics is illustrated.

Thinking posthumanly – from a post-Enlightenment, critical, new materialist perspective – things, including concepts, become more permeable and topological – they leak and stretch. Freed from limiting notions of agency, things behave. Rivers have established the same legal rights as humans in New Zealand  and India,  stones have been reported slithering across the desert floor in California,  an electrical power grid in the USA has revealed a unique agential dexterity  and walls have been spotted walking over mountains in the UK’s Lake District.  Thinking with a posthuman partiality, we begin to witness a democracy of objects rather than an anthropocentric dictatorship over inorganic materials. If agency is reworked into an ‘enactment’ as opposed to something that is ‘held’,  conceivably humans and other biological organisms are not necessary for agency (or life) to emerge as inorganic material agency erupts from unchoreographed assemblages of spacetimematter(ing). And if cognitive and dermatological boundaries are no longer organ-ised by an Enlightenment prescription, how might pedagogies perform differently and more equitably?
This article draws on the empirical materials from two psychogeographic walks that agitate lithic spaces with a posthuman affection. Part One examples a radical mobile classroom that I undertake regularly with university students where the use of it-narratives exposes the distributed agency of buildings. I explore what a posthuman gaze might do to/for performative pedagogies as my students attempt to interview a building. Part Two offers an example from my previous post-qualitative PhD inquiry which – by manipulating the practices of psychogeography and schizocartography – highlights how a shopping centre assemblage called Liverpool ONE diagnosed itself with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), thus reinforcing the notion of inorganic agential distribution. The pedagogic implications of this posthuman diagnosis are discussed.

Puts 'Dialectic of Enlightenment' in an historical context and shows hows the concept of 'mimesis' prefigures more recent cognitive interest in the emotional foundations of human knowledge and human interaction. The paper builds bridges between the critical legacy of the Frankfurt School and recent more empirically-oriented work on cognition, using Nietzsche and Winnicott as a bridge. It suggests we shouldn't be too attached to Adorno and Horkheimer's dialectical form of argument, and should focus instead on their early interdisicplinary analyses of embodied forms of knowledge.

In phenomenology, normality is neither an objectively measurable average nor a mere historical or social construct. Rather than being understood from without, looked at from the outside of lived experiences, normality is approached from within as a condition and mode of lived experience. In the first part of the paper, I will show why it is relevant to turn to a phenomenological investigation of normality if one is interested in normativity. This perspective, so I will argue, is needed if one wants to understand not only how external norms actually become part of subjective experience but also how norms develop in the first place through repeated practices. As such, the experience of normality, understood here as consisting of selfevident feelings of orientation and familiarity, can be interpreted as the result of an operative normativity. In the second part, I will present Husserl's theory of normality in more detail in order to demonstrate how it could be applied to a more systematic investigation of normality and norms on different genetic levels. Lived normality is seen here as a dynamic and fragile system of balances; a constant attempt to achieve an equilibrium with one's environment and fellow subjects. (Re)turning to normality allows us to see normativity at work, embedded in the need for constant development, appropriation, and transformations of regular structures in experience.

O objetivo do artigo é apresentar o conceito de jogo na obra de Hans-Georg Gadamer
(2012) e suas relações com novos paradigmas da cognição sobretudo com o enacionismo (Varela,
1991). Procurarei por fim esboçar possíveis desdobramentos que o conceito pode oferecer à
construção de uma teoria da performance musical. A relação da hermenêutica filosófica de Gadamer
com o paradigma enacionista da cognição acontece pela superação da dicotomia na relação sujeito/
objeto que ambas abordagens enfrentam. Gadamer apresenta uma teoria geral da interpretação que
pretende explicar de que forma compreendemos e interpretamos o mundo. O conceito de jogo trazido
pelo autor permite abordar e iluminar diversos aspectos implicados em nossa interpretação de mundo,
sendo portanto uma teoria do entendimento. Gadamer traz a questão da compreensão para além da
consciência de quem conhece, ao entender que esse processo não suspende a alteridade do outro, mas
a conserva. Para Gadamer devemos nos desfazer de um modelo de entendimento centrado seja no
objeto, seja no sujeito, que é também um projeto enacionista. A compreensão é sempre um acordo, um
diálogo e num diálogo não existem sujeitos e objetos. É justamente a possibilidade de jogar-se sempre
com (alguém ou alguma coisa) que possibilita ao conceito apresentar a alteridade como um aspecto
inerente à compreensão. Transposta para o contexto da performance musical, o conceito de jogo
permite uma abordagem ampla de diversos aspectos implicados na performance tal como a relação
interprete e ouvinte assim como o caráter imponderável, dinâmico e circunscrito presente em toda
performance.
Palavras-chave: performance musical, filosofia cognitiva, enacionismo, jogo, Hans-Georg Gadamer.

Purpose—The paper uses part of the distributed cognition literature to study how employees cope with organizational plasticity, in an attempt to identify the characteristics of cognitive plasticity.
Design/methodology/approach—Evidence is collected by designing and implementing an agent-based computational simulation model (the IOP 2.0) where employees have the option to use external resources and the social environment to perform tasks. Since plasticity is more effective when change and uncertainty are high, the simulation features an increase in the difficulty and number of tasks to which employees need to cope.
Findings—Cooperation and sharing of competence and ability are key to cognitive plasticity. Being able to master the use of some resources, together with other employees competencies make some achieve the most efficient task performance.
Practical implications—Findings suggest that, under conditions of change and plasticity, HRM shall attempt to develop measures to support employees' cognitive skills necessary to cope with it, for example, mostly through diagnosis, training, and facilitating on-the-job dialogue.
Originality/value—This is the first study that attempts a merger between organizational cognition and plasticity, and it is the first to match its results to HRM policy recommendations.

The notion of nonconceptual content in Dienes & Perner’s theory
is examined. A subject may be in a state with nonconceptual content without having the concepts that would be used to describe the state. Nonconceptual content does not seem to be a clear-cut case of either implicit or explicit knowledge. It underlies a kind of practical knowledge, which is not reducible to procedural knowledge, but is accessible to the subject and under voluntary control.

According to theories of embodied cognition, language comprehenders simulate sensorimotor experiences to represent the meaning of what they read. Previous studies have shown that picture recognition is better if the object in the picture matches the orientation or shape implied by a preceding sentence. In order to test whether strategic imagery may explain previous findings, language comprehenders first read a list of sentences in which objects were mentioned. Only once the complete list had been read was recognition memory tested with pictures. Recognition performance was better if the orientation or shape of the object matched that implied by the sentence, both immediately after reading the complete list of sentences and after a 45-min delay. These results suggest that previously found match effects were not due to strategic imagery and show that details of sensorimotor simulations are retained over longer periods.

ABSTRACT

An increasing understanding from various research fields shows that body-movement affects the way we perceive and evaluate ourselves and the environment, this raises new and challenging questions regarding embodiment in interaction, in virtual reality (VR) and data-live environments. New technologies have brought the body back to the centre of the interactive experience. This research is interdisciplinary and explores body-interactive audio-visuals in relation to embodied cognition, embodiment and body perception theory in the context of embodied interactive audio-visual art installations. This was practice-based research, through a series of experimental studies that results in a Pilot Study and Main study. This was to inform the aesthetic and technical design of embodied interactive audio visuals useful to art research, digital research, and human-computer-interaction (HCI) User experience was important to consider in the creative design of interactive digital audio-visual installation environments and technologies in this research. The aim was to uncover phenomena and perceptual experiencers of user interactive experience with the technologies in these studies, to inform body-movement perception. This was processed from interview/questionnaires which were recorded, transcribed and analyzed. This research contributes to knowledge in the field of human-computer-interaction in interactive audio-visual art environments, artist’s research practice in interactive audio-visual research, from a phenomenological view of users’ perception and consciousness in relation to sound and 3-D visual interactive technologies.

This research in embodied interaction with audio-visuals and human-computer-interaction (HCI) found users’ perception oscillated between proprioceptive and movement-vision, modes of perception and interaction. It was found that these salient modes of perception during interaction, that Proprioceptive were more for sound interaction, and movement-vision more for 3-D interaction. I developed a series of software tools; for body-interactive 3-D visuals and analogue synthesizer modulation. Full-body-part tracking of motion x, y, z, co-ordinates in performance space;  raw, pitch and roll data of all body parts tracked in motion, which can be used in simultaneously interactive sound and 3-D visuals. A theory of embodied interactive audio-visuals data-live environments was developed from analysis of user experience. The research expands existing knowledge in the fields of human-computer-interaction (HCI): digital media, augmented and virtual realities, embodied interaction, interactive audio-visuals, and new media theory.

Emergence of a pantheon -- cognitive or otherwise
Pantheons as patterns of cognitive N-foldness
Pantheon dynamics in a globalized semi-secular civilization?
Mathematical theology enabling the quest for a meta-pattern?
Complex equations forming "pantheons" of mathematical experience?
Prime number and curvature implications for global governance?
Polyhedra suggestive of arrays of requisite variety of pantheons in 3D
Configuring the 64 subjects of mathematics as a 64-edged drilled truncated cube
Exploring potential dynamics within a pantheon?
Engendering and navigating pantheons -- "angelic" and "demonic"?
Pantheon as a psychosocial "O-ring" -- speculatively understood?

The article outlines a thesis that, from the cognitive point of view, natural numbers share common structure with the physical experiences encountered by students during their early childhood years.
This common structure displays conceptual duality which is described in the context of numbers as magnitude and multitude. The issue is examined by using tangible examples of walking, cutting bread and pouring water into beakers. The article presents a cognitive view of learning.
Key words: mathematical thinking, mathematical practices, cognition of mathematics, conceptual development

While the notion of the brain as a prediction machine has been extremely influential and productive in cognitive science, there are competing accounts of how best to model and understand the predictive capabilities of brains. One prominent framework is of a "Bayesian brain" that explicitly generates predictions and uses resultant errors to guide adaptation. We suggest that the prediction-generation component of this framework may involve little more than a pattern completion process. We first describe pattern completion in the domain of visual perception, highlighting its temporal extension, and show how this can entail a form of prediction in time. Next, we describe the forward momentum of entrained dynamical systems as a model for the emergence of predictive processing in non-predictive systems. Then, we apply this reasoning to the domain of language, where explicitly predictive models are perhaps most popular. Here, we demonstrate how a connectionist model, TRACE, exhibits hallmarks of predictive processing without any representations of predictions or errors. Finally, we present a novel neural network model, inspired by reservoir computing models, that is entirely unsupervised and memoryless, but nonetheless exhibits prediction-like behavior in its pursuit of homeostasis. These explorations demonstrate that brain-like systems can get prediction "for free," without the need to posit formal logical representations with Bayesian probabilities or an inference machine that holds them in working memory.

Les personnes avec un trouble du spectre de l’autisme (TSA) présentent plusieurs types de difficultés, notamment cognitives et socio-cognitives, suivant un développement particulier1, qui impactent fortement leurs chances de réussite, de trouver complétude et bien-être dans la vie sociale et personnelle (cf. Chapitre n°…, Plumet). Ces difficultés résident notamment dans des particularités de leur fonctionnement exécutif (FE, en particulier du contrôle cognitif en conditions d’incertitude, Mackie & Fan, 2017, p. 262 ; Roy, 2018). Certains auteurs en font même un élément central du trouble (Ozonoff, Pennington & Rogers, 1991 ; Hill, 2004a, 2004b).

Il existe plusieurs approches et techniques pour tenter d’y remédier : de type crayon- papier, informatisé ou combiné (Majerus, 2018 ; Demily, C., et al., 2016 ; Grynspan, 2012)2 ; ou multimodale, (Bizet et Moya de la Rosa, 2018 ; Doyen, C., Contejean, Y., Risler, V., et al., 2015) qui ciblent ces difficultés et proposent de remédier aux troubles cognitifs de l’enfant ou de l’adulte (rééducation cognitive, Seguin, Habib et al., 2018 ; Roy, Guillery-Girard et al., 2017 ; Franck, 2012).

Outre les approches psychomotrices modernes ou ergothérapiques (Madieu & Swiatek, 2018 ; Lefebvre, 2018) qui par des activités ludiques peuvent contribuer à cibler certaines des fonctions exécutives, celles de la remédiation cognitive (RC) s’envisagent dans le contexte plus large de la réhabilitation3, et en particulier psychosociale4. Même si le concept de réhabilitation ne semble pas « adapté à la situation de l’enfant avec des troubles du neurodéveloppement, celui-ci se développant d’emblée avec des dysfonctionnements cognitifs » (Peyroux et Seguin, 2018, p. 149)5, la considération bio-psycho-sociale de l’enfant ou de l’adolescent, avec un TSA, dans un service de pédopsychiatrie tel que le nôtre, doit permettre au sujet à la fois de développer son fonctionnement cognitif par une rééducation adaptée mais également de l’intégrer dans son économie de vie, en lien avec sa famille et les différents milieux où il séjourne (Seguin, 2018 ; Lapasset, Gravil & Cézanne-Bert, G., 2013, non publié). Ceci demande souvent des adaptations réciproques, en accord avec les recommandations de l’HAS.

Nous nous proposons donc de présenter un programme particulier appelé CRT (pour Cognitive Remediation Therapy, en français Thérapie par Remédiation Cognitive6) et de faire apparaître l’apport du psychomotricien, dûment formé, dans sa mise en œuvre. Pouvoir y associer des compétences supplémentaires et en collaboration avec les
autres membres de l’équipe (neuropsychologues, infirmiers, assistante sociale et médecins) est un facteur d’optimisation de ce soin.

Nous tenterons de montrer les aspects cliniques et les effets de validation externe de ce programme qu’anime un psychomotricien, suivant une approche multimodale en remédiation cognitive des enfants et adolescents avec un TSA, au sein de l’Unité Socio- Cognition (USC) du pôle de pédopsychiatrie du C. H. Le Vinatier.

People make social inferences without intentions, awareness, or effort, i.e., spontaneously. We review recent findings on spontaneous social inferences (especially traits, goals, and causes) and closely related phenomena. We then describe current thinking on some of the most relevant processes, implicit knowledge, and theories. These include automatic and controlled processes and their interplay; embodied cognition, including mimicry; and associative versus rule-based processes. Implicit knowledge includes adult folk theories, conditions of personhood, self-knowledge to simulate others, and cultural and social class differences. Implicit theories concern Bayesian networks, recent attribution research, and questions about the utility of the disposition-situation dichotomy. Developmental research provides new insights. Spontaneous social inferences include a growing array of phenomena, but they have been insufficiently linked to other phenomena and theories. We hope the links suggeste...

АННОТАЦИЯ
После начала активного развития новых технологий, изменяющих взаимодействие человека и медиа, в научной среде возрос интерес к теории воплощенного познания и перспективным возможностям, которые она в себе содержит. Сама природа таких технологий, как сенсорные мобильные телефоны, смарт-часы, очки виртуальной реальности, открывает возможности для использования более широкого спектра перцептивных ощущений, чем традиционные настольные вычисления. За счет таких особенностей новых медиа, как например, наличие разных цифровых дополнений, которыми человек манипулирует; конвергентность, посредством которой у человека расширяется контекстуально-ориентировочный опыт в реальной среде и возникают новые формы взаимодействия, также как и новые способы мышления, человек иначе, чем прежде, испытывает большое количество физических телесных переживаний. Поэтому для изучения медиа действительно подходит теория воплощенного познания. В данной работе содержится краткий обзор основных тезисов теории и описывается, каким образом эти знания могут помочь человеку в познании медиа.


ABSTRACT
After the beginning of active development of new technologies that change the interaction of people and media, the scientific community has increased interest in the theory of embodied knowledge and the promising opportunities that it contains. The very nature of technologies such as touch-sensitive mobile phones, smart watches, and virtual reality glasses opens up opportunities for using a wider range of perceptual sensations than traditional desktop computing. Due to such features of new media, such as the presence of various digital add-ons that a person manipulates; convergency, through which a person expands contextual-oriented experience in a real environment and new forms of interaction arise, as well as new ways of thinking, a person experiences a large number of physical bodily experiences differently than before. Therefore, the theory of embodied knowledge is indeed relevant and applicable for studying media. This paper provides a brief overview of the main theses of the theory of embodied knowledge and investigates how this knowledge can help us in understanding the new media.

The future society may be and most likely
1. A society without human labor
2. A society of free activities and free time
3. A company dreamed of by Heinz von Foerster, Henri Atlan and Ilya Prigogine
Part 1: Development issues of developed countries
1.1 They have already made and updated their industrial revolution, they are:
• A nano computer revolution that will boost the artificial intelligence foundation of automation and robotics (and aggravation of unemployment)
• A biotechnological and genetic revolution
• And to the revolution of the "service economy" where 65% of the active population produces 70% of national wealth (against 29% and 28% for industry and 6% and 2% for agriculture - France). These are the services that pay the most!
1.2 They have new groups - multinationals - and very active and dynamic social networks.
In this case, the future development for these already developed countries will focus on what? Or what is missing - the "almost" - to the development of today's society.
The perception - relatively widespread and fair - of a more technology-centric development - and its legal owners - than on humans feeds this ... but.
To which the question of "what" will bring about the future development of today's society becomes indeed relevant.

Viewpoints are a structural approach to both training and devising. Originating from the innovative, inventive and exploratory approach of Mary Overlie and the self-confessed scavenger approach of Anne Bogart, Viewpoints offers a practical philosophy of working. As a training approach it begins with a disciplined engagement of the body in space and time; yet it similarly generates spaces for both invention and innovation and for scavenging, appropriating and adapting. The tangible elements of Viewpoints provide a set of tasks on which the student can focus, thus freeing the imagination and spirit to improvise. Yet at the same time the systematic logic of Viewpoints supports young makers to begin to question their perception, invest in creative practice that demands action and exploration, and to deconstruct, re-organise and rebuild scores and sequences in the pursuit of theatre that is visceral and visual. Examining ways in which embodied engagement in training in tandem with the multiplicity of subject positions of observer/participant/creator/reflector/director/composer/actor are utilised and accessed the essay discusses undergraduate training in Viewpoints with particular interrogation of the demand on non-dancers in the embodied learning of a movement/structural system within the university context.

Where does the self stop and the rest of the world begin? Clark and Chalmers already paved the way for an application of the extended mind theory to the problem of selfhood and identity, when in their seminal paper they asked ‘What, finally, of the self? Does the extended mind imply an extended self? It seems so’ (2010: 39). However, how can the self persist in time if it is chiefly constituted by a series of constantly renewed couplings, enactions, and extensions? If the self does persist, what are the processes responsible for the temporal unification and synthesis of what enactivists call different ‘sensorimotor contingencies’ (O’Regan and Noë 2001)? If the self does not persist, what kind of phenomenology and new ontology underlies, or results from, this shift? This essay focuses on these questions as they relate to an extended and enactive view of the self in the space-time trajectory explored in Marcel Proust’s Swann’s Way (2005) – the first volume of In Search of Lost Time. Proust’s work is regarded as the monumental literary research on temporality, self and memory. I will argue, however, that extended and enactive frameworks can provide important new insights on the key claims and findings of Proust’s literary endeavour.

The Contemporary Theory of Metaphor argues that we need metaphors in order to express abstract concepts and complex experiences such as emotions. These metaphors related to emotions are reenactments of sensory-motor experiences. For example, happy is up, emotion is heat or sympathy is softness. Metaphors conceptualizing emotions represent a well-researched area within the general framework of a cognitive theory of metaphor. They have been identified and analysed in the verbal corpus (Kövecses), in comics (Forceville and Urios-Aparisi), in sound (Fahlenbrach; Zangwill) or gestures (Cienki and Müller; Hurtienne et al.) At the same time, research has been carried out on the ways films cue emotional responses (Plantinga and Smith; Smith, G.) or the emotional structure and design of audiovisual media (Grodal). The intention of this chapter is to continue in this line of research, by arguing that filmmakers can use the different aspects of mise-en-scène metaphorically in order to help create and maintain the mood of a film.

Since the claim of this journal issue points out a potential relationship between the (theatrical) notion of “performance” and the notion of “semiotic practices”, rather than to the semiotic notion of “performance” as such, an intended side effect of the article is to supply an indirect answer to the reason of such a choice. After having briefly introduced the paradigm shift from theatre studies to performance studies having taken place over the last five decades or so, I attempt to outline the large theoretical framework in which this shift occurred, by adding two cognitive-semiotic layers to the conventional dyad of orality-literacy — that is, “performativity” and “electracy”. In the last section, I focus on cognitive neuroscientist Merlin Donald’s theory of three stages in the evolution of the human mind in order to explain the notion of “action-metaphor” as the “performatic” and non-linguistic source of human meaning-making processes.

Rene Descartes (1596 – 1650) is considered the founder of modern philosophy. Profoundly influenced by the new physics and astronomy of Kepler and Galileo, Descartes was a scientist and mathematician whose most long-lasting contributions in science were the invention of Cartesian coordinates, the application of algebra to geometry, and the discovery of the law of refraction, what we now call Snell’s law. His most important books on philosophy were The discourse on method(1637) and The meditations (1642). Descartes’ writings display an exemplary degree of clarity and an aversion to pedantry. I explore Descartes' break with Aristotle, but also shine a light on the intellectual continuity Descartes had with Aristotle's thought. I also draw attention to some overlooked but interesting possibilities for an experimental test of a dualistic theory of mind.