Being There

Brain, body, and world are united in a complex dance of circular causation and computational activity. This text addresses questions concerning the techniques needed to make sense of the sciences of the embodied mind, and looks at ideas from robotics, neuroscience, and artificial intelligence.

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Brain, body and world are united in a complex dance of circular causation and extended computational activity. In "Being There", Andy Clark weaves these several threads into a whole and goes on to address foundational questions concerning the new tools and techniques needed to make sense of the emerging sciences of the embodied mind. Clark brings together ideas and techniques from robotics, neuroscience, infant psychology and artificial intelligence. He addresses a broad range of adaptive behaviours, from cockroach locomotion to the role of linguistic artifacts in higher-level thought. The old opposition of matter versus mind stubbornly persists in the way we study brain and mind, in the tradition of modelling intelligence and intelligent action, and in the choice of problem domains. Here, Clark shifts the perspective from treating the mental as a realm that is distinct from the body and the world to understanding brains as controllers for embodied activity. The embodied mind is emerging as a natural product of converging influences from real-world robotics, systems neuroscience, infant psychology, and the new field of artifical life and situated cognition.
Clark charts and critiques all these influences, pointing up the dangers, pitfalls and wider ramifications of an action-oriented perspective on mind.