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Abstract
The last ten years have seen an increasing interest, within cognitive science, in
issues concerning the physical body, the local environment, and the complex interplay
between neural systems and the wider world in which they function. Yet many unanswered
questions remain, and the shape of a genuinely physically embodied, environmentally
embedded science of the mind is still unclear. In this article I will raise a number
of critical questions concerning the nature and scope of this approach, drawing a
distinction between two kinds of appeal to embodiment: (1) 'Simple' cases, in which
bodily and environmental properties merely constrain accounts that retain the focus
on inner organization and processing; and (2) More radical appeals, in which attention
to bodily and environmental features is meant to transform both the subject matter
and the theoretical framework of cognitive science.