Embodied Cognitive Science, Aesthetics, and the Study of Visual Language

Abstract

The paradigm of embodied cognition provides a perspective for rethinking the nature of experience, intersubjectivity, and the interaction of the human animal with its physical and sociocultural environments. Embodied cognitive science can be a productive framework for the study of aesthetic experience and visual communication, enabling us to transcend the cognitivist paradigm of the twentieth century, understood here as the view that cognition is the rule-based manipulation of symbolic representations in a disembodied and decontextualized mind. Summaries of key concepts of embodied cognition are provided, with suggestions for their use in the exploration of aesthetics and visual language.

Keywords

• cognition
• embodiment
• aesthetic experience
• visual language