Radical Embodied Cognitive Neuroscience
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
7-3-2019
Journal
Ecological Psychology
Volume
31
Issue
3
First Page
166
Last Page
181
URL with Digital Object Identifier
10.1080/10407413.2019.1615213
Abstract
© 2019, © 2019 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC. A radical embodied cognitive neuroscience (RECN) based on ecological psychology requires the understanding of the brain, its structure, and its functions to be compatible with the main tenets of the Gibsonian theory. In this paper, we propose neural reuse as a promising candidate to achieve such understanding. We base our proposal on two fundamental ideas. In section two, we review what we take to be the two central requirements for a RECN based on ecological psychology: compatibility with the explanation of perception and action at the ecological scale and the rejection of computation as a paradigm for the explanation of the activity of the brain. In section three, we show how neural reuse meets the two requirements and, furthermore, we evaluate its theoretical parallelism with ecological psychology. Finally, after developing these ideas, in the conclusion we put forward further aspects and research possibilities that follow from the coalition of neural reuse and ecological psychology for a Gibsonian neuroscience.
