Embodiment in cognitive linguistic: from experientialism to computational neuroscience

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to reflect on the character of embodiment in the framework of Cognitive Linguistics based on Lakoff, collaborators and interlocutors. Initially I characterize the embodied mind, via cognitive experientialism. In these terms, the theory shapes how human beings build and process knowledge structures which regulate their individual and collective lives. Next, the Neural Theory of Language in which embodiment is rebuilt from a five level paradigm, where structured connectionism carries on the very burden of computational description and explanation is discussed. From these assumption, classical problems about computational implementations for models of natural language functioning as reductionist-physicalist approaches, I then conclude by assuming that embodiment, as an investigation phenomenon, shouldn’t be formulated in terms of levels, being treated as interfaces instead, at such manner that: (a) the epistemological commitments should be synchronically sustained in all interfaces of the investigation paradigm; (b) the conventional computational level should be taken as one of the problems which has to be treated in the structured connectionism plan; (c) the strategic reduction levels paradigm and the results obtained from it might imply a kind of modularization of the program of research itself; e (d) the modules would be interdependent only as a result of the reductionist proposal. As a result, I assume that it is possible to do Cognitive Linguistics without adhering to structured connectionism, or to neurocomputacional simulation, as long as one would operate with interfaces constructions between domains of investigation and not with a reductionist features paradigm treated in terms of “levels”.