Proceedings of The 20th World Multi-Conference on Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics (WMSCI 2016) The Enaction of Embodied Wisdom: The Unifying, Dynamic Nature of Cognition, Behavior, and Affect Faith B. POWER Ambriel Technologies Winchester, VA 22601, USA Clyde V. CROSWELL Human and Organizational Learning, The George Washington University Washington, DC 20052, USA ABSTRACT knowledge and wisdom. In what follows, we will outline the basic foundations of embodied Cognitive theorists have tended to separate “mind” cognition as it is enacted by affect, behavior and and “body.” This separation implies a physical responses and how it relates to embodied phenomenologically incomplete account of wisdom. cognition. As an alternative, this paper conceptualizes mind as the embodied process of The use of the term “cognition” is broad, yet living that is constitutive of emotions, behavior and generally cognition has been understood as physical responses, and it explains how these “thinking” or “knowing.” Cognitive science components dynamically co-emerge as embodied represents a multidiscipline field of study, much of wisdom. Embodied wisdom is presented as the which has under valued the embodied cognitive coadunation of objective and subjective realities perspective, and the more comprehensive that informs our embodied cognitive processes and approach to cognition. In the embodied cognition expands our knowledge from merely a cognitive- view, cognition is not confined to one’s cortices, evaluative psychological process, to an embodied but rather is influenced, perhaps even determined way of understanding. by, one’s subjective experiences in the world [2]. Central to the embodied approach to cognition is Keywords: Cognition, Affect, Subjectivity, Enaction, the idea of enaction, which has emerged as a new Embodied Wisdom. paradigm for understanding cognition [3,4]. Embodied cognition is rooted in the enactive 1. INTRODUCTION perspective, which views cognition as subject to the kinds of experiences that come from having a There is a growing re-thinking of the nature of physical body with multiple sensorimotor cognition, a conceptualization away from formal capabilities. Further, these sensorimotor capacities operations on abstract symbols to a new are embedded in an encompassing biological, paradigmatic view that understands cognition as a psychological, social and cultural context [5,6,7]. In highly embodied and situated process. [1]. The other words, cognitive activity does not take place classical approach to cognition that is bounded by in a vacuum, but in a world where a cognitive agent psychology and sociology alone has left us only is trying to get something accomplished. Thusly, partially adept at understanding the profound role cognition emerges as a correlate of one’s biological of our body in the process of cognition. The experience [8], which is comprised of a situated question of whether mind and body are separate psychological, social and cultural milieu, which has long limited theory and research in cognition. allows one to act skillfully. This skillful know-how is Western science’s Cartesian view that mind and conceptualized as embodied wisdom, which flows body are separate has constrained our attempts to from the unity and coherence of one’s actions in gain a thorough understanding of cognition by the present moment [9] and is part and parcel of undervaluing the neurobiological basis of wisdom. embodied cognition. The purpose of this article is to explain the relationship between mind and body in order to 2. EMBODIED COGNITION provide a more comprehensive understanding of cognition and to bridge the gap between While embodied cognition has many different meanings [10], they all hold that cognitive 218 Proceedings of The 20th World Multi-Conference on Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics (WMSCI 2016) processes are deeply rooted in the body’s information” [17], and, as such, it is a self- interactions with the world. From a neurobiological organizing [dynamically co-emerging] property that perspective, human beings are biophysically is both embodied [within the living system] and autonomous systems that are spatially and between [a relational other(s)]. functionally distributed [11], which is to say that humans and their environments are highly For example, among cognitive scientists, it is the structured dynamical systems or “mutually rule of thumb that “unconscious thought is 95% of embedded systems” [8]. An autonomous living all thought – and that may be a serious system is a self-organizing, cybernetic unity that is underestimate. Moreover, the 95% of thought always structurally coupled with its environment below the surface of conscious awareness shapes [12,3,8]. Humans, as living systems [13], cannot and structures all conscious thought” [2]. Yet the separate from their biophysical structure because human body responds to stimuli [behavior] with they are living and functioning in relationships biological imperative and autonomy, most often within and to some type of environment that they prior to awareness of intentionality. This is why one are a part of, not separate from. Living systems as often has to explain one’s behavior and actions complex adaptive systems [14] and self-organizing, after they actually occur. cybernetic unities adapt by learning through experience to transform behavior, or otherwise Finally, in neurophysiology and the neuroscience of they become isolated and die. mind, intentionality is seen as “the process by which meanings grow and operate” [18]. The environment constrains actions and behaviors, “Intentionality precedes consciousness”, and “most yet living systems simultaneously and dynamically intentional behaviors occur without the need for co-emerge with the environment, co-operating by awareness and consciousness up to a point. That specifying, co-creating, and imagining [15] a life, in point [the emerging present moment] is reached complementarity with the environment by means when, in order to understand intentionality, we of synchronicity or co-creativity. As such, each need to think about meaning and to re-present our element or component of the living system thought in words [conceptions/information]. We combines the maintenance of itself with the need to hear and read the words of others in order maintenance of the other, thus “coproducing” and to enhance our own meaning.” The brain makes up co-creating their world [12,3,11,8]. “Living systems its own mind through the body’s own natural are cognitive systems” [5] and “living as a process is selection and dynamic sense-making or co- a process of cognition” [7]. The central idea of the emergence of conception and perception [19], embodied approach to cognition is that the most often through the arousal of affective environment is enacted by one’s living behavior, energy/valence and perceptions of the embodied actions and intentions. mind or emotioning, which in turn triggers cognition and conception or languaging [12]. 3. LIVING BEHAVIOR, ACTION, AND INTENTION In sum, perception and conception, body and mind, feeling and thought, and emotion and cognition are Human forms and levels of behavior in the social inseparable, as they operate with complementarity, world [16] are categorized in three ways: (1) composite unity, and dynamic co-emergence. The behavior, which means to respond in a particular outcome, then, of this dynamic co-emergence way; (2) action, which is behavior with a actually enacts the environment. determinate future goal or object in mind, and (3) social action, which is behavior with the goal of an 4. ENACTION AND THE ENVIRONMENT ‘other’ in mind (or an object with a shared meaning), for example where the ‘other’ is Human beings ‘enact’ the world in which they live; imagined as an individual, group, or organizational and their actions [and behaviors] in the world goal in mind. According to interpersonal actually constitute perception and thereby ground neurobiologist Daniel Siegel, and other scientists cognition (i.e., affect our conceptions) [4]. across multiple disciplines, mind has been defined Cognition in humans is a dynamic biological as “a process that regulates the flow of energy and function and is best understood from the 219 Proceedings of The 20th World Multi-Conference on Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics (WMSCI 2016) cybernetic, self-organizing, living systems but also the basis of one’s knowing. Thus, the perspective [20]. A dynamic, living system is one body’s processes (i.e., emotions, behaviors, and that continually changes over time. Cognition physical responses) contribute to the meaning we “unfolds as the continuous coevolution of acting, make [3,8,9]. perceiving, imagining, feeling, and thinking” [8]. Thus, the content of one’s mind is not pre-given, Affect and emotion provide the necessary but rather it is one’s bodily experiences that create components and energy that give meaning and and give meaning to the content of one’s mind [1]. sensemaking [25] to our thoughts, beliefs and From infancy, we come to know the world through attitudes, giving individuals a sense that what they the experience of movement rather than from know is correct or not [26]. Affect acts as a sort of adult thoughts. “Without action there is no “world” internal compass that aligns subjective experience and no perception” [4]. In the words of Maturana with external facts [9]. Meaning, however, is also (1987), human beings “bring forth the world in relational. Meaning is generated within the human which it