Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Social Norms from the Perspective of Embodied Cognition

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
The Complexity of Social Norms

Part of the book series: Computational Social Sciences ((CSS))

Abstract

Like others within this title, I attempt to come to terms with the way in which human social norms emerge from, but are irreducible to, processes at the level of the individual. The particular contribution of this chapter is to suggest an emergentist account of norms which draws on the developing theory of enactive cognition. I use this to consider the characteristics needed for a system capable of simulating human-like norms in a computational environment.

Cognition is not a phenomenon that can be successfully studied while marginalizing the roles of body, world and action. (Andy Clark, 1999)

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 84.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Hardcover Book
USD 109.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    Clark is an advocate of embodied cognition; in this chapter I argue more for a more radical extension of the embodied standpoint—that of enaction. The enactive view has it that an agent’s cognitive capabilities in effect give rise to distinct worlds—as Varela once expressed it by ‘laying down a path by walking’.

References

  • Archer, M. (1998). Realism in the social sciences. In M. Archer, R. Bhaskar, A. Collier, T. Lawson, & A. Norrie (Eds.), Critical realism: Essential readings. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Archer, M., Bhaskar, R., Ciollier, A., Lawson, T., & Norrie, A. (1998). Critical realism: Essential readings. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ashby, W. R. (1974). Self-regulation and requisite variety. In F. E. Emery (Ed.), Systems thinking. Great Britain: Penguin.

    Google Scholar 

  • Barandiaran, X. (2005). Behavioral adaptive autonomy. A milestone on the ALife roue to AI? San Sebastian, Spain: Department of Logic and Philosophy of Science University of the Basque Country.

    Google Scholar 

  • Barandiaran, X., Di Paolo, E. A., & Rohde, M. (2009). Defining agency: Individuality, normativity, asymmetry and spacio-temporality in action. Adaptive Behavior, 17(5), 367–386.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Barandiaran, X., & Moreno, A. (2006). On what makes certain dynamical systems cognitive: A minimally cognitive organization program. Adaptive Behavior, 14(2), 171–185.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Barrett, L. F. (2006). Solving the emotion paradox: Categorization and the experience of emotion. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 10(1), 20–46.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Berger, P. L., & Luckman, T. (1972). The social construction of reality. Harmondsworth: Penguin.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bhaskar, R. (1997). A realist theory of science. London: Verso.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bhaskar, R. (1998). The possibility of naturalism. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Brooks, R. A. (1991). Intelligence without representation. Intelligence Without Reason, 47, 569–595.

    Google Scholar 

  • Castelfranchi, C. (1998). Simulating with cognitive agents: The importance of cognitive emergence. In J. S. Sichman, R. Conte, & N. Gilbert (Eds.), Multi-agent systems and agent based simulation. Berlin: Springer.

    Google Scholar 

  • Clark, A. (1998). Being there: Putting brain, body and world together again. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Clark, A. (1999). An embodied cognitive science? Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 3(9), 345–351.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Coleman, J. S. (1994). Foundations of social theory. Cambridge, MA: Belknap.

    Google Scholar 

  • Colombetti, G., & Thompson, E. (2008). The feeling body: An enactive approach to emotion. In W. F. Overton, U. Muller, & J. L. Newman (Eds.), Developmental perspectives on embodiment and consciousness. London: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cosmelli, D., Lachaux, J.-P., & Thompson, E. (2007). Neurodynamics of consciousness. In P. D. Zelazo, M. Moscovitch, & E. Thompson (Eds.), The Cambridge handbook of consciousness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cowley, S. J., & Macdorman, K. F. (2006). What baboons, babies and tetris players tell us about interaction: A biosocial view of norm-based social learning. Connection Science, 18(4), 363–378.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Crossley, N. (2001). The phenomenological habitus and its construction. Theory and Society, 30(1), 81–120.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Damasio, A. (2000). The feeling of what happens: Body, emotion and the making of consciousness. London: Vintage Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Damasio, A. (2006). Descartes’ error. London: Vintage Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • De Loor, P., Manac’h, K., Fronville, A., & Tisseau, J. (2008). Requirements for an enactive machine: Ontogenesis, interaction and human in the loop. Plouzane, France: Universite, Europeenne de Bretagne.

    Google Scholar 

  • Di Paolo, E. A. (2005). Autopoiesis, adaptivity, teleology, agency. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 4(4), 429–452.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Di Paolo, E. A. (n.d.). Organismically-inspired robotics: Homeostatic adaptation and teleology beyond the closed sensorimotor loop. Brighton: School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences, University of Sussex.

    Google Scholar 

  • Di Paolo, E. A., & Lizuka, H. (2007). How (not) to model autonomous behaviour. Biosystems, 91(2), 409–423.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dreyfus, H. L. (2007). Why Heideggerian AI failed and how fixing it would require making it more Heideggerian. Philosophical Psychology, 20(2), 247–268.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ekman, P. (1992). Facial expressions of emotion: New findings, new questions. Psychological Science, 3(1), 34–38.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ellis, G. F. R. (2006). On the nature of emergent reality. In P. Clayton & P. Davies (Eds.), The re-emergence of emergence: The emergentist hypothesis from science to religion. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Engels, F. (1934). Dialectics of nature. Moscow: Progress Publishers.

    Google Scholar 

  • Franklin, S. (1998). Artificial minds. London: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Froese, T. & Di Paolo, E. A. (2008). Stability of coordination requires mutuality of interaction in a model of embodied agents. Paper presented at the Procedures of the 10th international conference on simulation of adaptive behavior, Berlin, Germany.

    Google Scholar 

  • Froese, T., & Di Paolo, E. A. (2009). Sociality and the life-mind continuity thesis. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 8(4), 439–463.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Froese, T., & Ziemke, T. (2007). Enactive artificial intelligence. Brighton: University of Sussex.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gallagher, S. (2000). Philosophical conceptions of the self: Implications for cognitive science. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 4(1), 14–21.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gardenfors, P. (2006). How homo became sapiens: On the evolution of thinking. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Gibbs, J. P. (1965). Norms: The problem of definition and classification. American Journal of Sociology, 60, 8.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gibson, J. (1977). The theory of affordances. In R. Shaw & J. Bransford (Eds.), Perceiving, acting, and knowing. New York, NY: Lawrence Erlbaum.

    Google Scholar 

  • Giddens, A. (1984). The constitution of society: Outline of the theory of structuration. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gilbert, N. (2002). Varieties of emergence. Paper presented at the social agents: Ecology, exchange, and evolution conference, Chicago.

    Google Scholar 

  • Goldspink, C., & Kay, R. (2007). Social emergence: Distinguishing reflexive and non-reflexive modes, AAAI fall symposium: Emergent agents and socialites: Social and organizational aspects of intelligence, Washington, DC. Menlo Park, CA: AAAI.

    Google Scholar 

  • Goldspink, C. & Kay, R. (2008). Agent cognitive capabilities and orders of emergence: Critical thresholds relevant to the simulation of social behaviours, AISB convention, communication, interaction and social intelligence, April 1–4, 2008, University of Aberdeen.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hejl, P. (1993). Culture as a network of socially constructed realities. In A. Rigney & D. Fokkema (Eds.), Cultural participation: Trends since the middle ages (pp. 227–250). Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Johnson, M. (1990). The body in the mind: The bodily basis of meaning, imagination and reason. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kauffman, S. A. (1993). The origins of order: Self organization and selection in evolution. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kauffman, S. (2000). Investigations. New York, NY: Oxford.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kelso, J. A. S. (1995). Dynamic patterns: The self-organization of brain and behavior. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kravchenko, A. V. (2007). Essential properties of language, or, why language is not a code. Language Sciences, 29, 650–671.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (1999). Philosophy in the flesh: The embodied mind and its challenge to Western thought. New York, NY: Basic Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lehrer, J. (2009). The decisive moment: How the brain makes up its mind. Melbourne, VIC: Text Publishing.

    Google Scholar 

  • Leont’ev, A. N. (1978). Activity, consciousness and personality. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lewis, D. (1969). Convention: A philosophical study. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Luhmann, N. (1990). Essays on self reference. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Luhmann, N. (1995). Social systems. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Maturana, H. (1978). Biology of language: The epistemology of reality. In G. A. Miller & E. Lenneberg (Eds.), Psychology and biology of language and thought: Essays in honor of Eric Lenneberg. New York, NY: Academic.

    Google Scholar 

  • Maturana, H., & Varela, F. (1980). Autopoiesis and cognition: The realization of the living. Boston, MA: Reidel.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Menary, R. (2008). Embodied narratives. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 15(6), 63–84.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mingers, J. (1991). The cognitive theories of Maturana and Varela. Systems Practice, 4(4), 319–338.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Montebelli, A., Lowe, R., & Ziemke, T. (2009). The cognitive body: From dynamic modulation to anticipation. Anticipatory behavior in adaptive learning systems (Vol. 5499). Berlin: Springer.

    Google Scholar 

  • Moreno, A., & Etxeberria, A. (1995). Agency in natural and artificial systems. San Sebastian, Spain: Department of Logic and Philosophy of Science University of the Basque Country.

    Google Scholar 

  • Morse, A. F., Lowe, R., & Ziemke, T. (2008). Towards an enactive cognitive architecture. Paper presented at the international conference on cognitive systems, April 2–4, 2008, Karlsruhe, Germany.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ochs, E., & Capps, L. (1996). Narrating the self. Annual Review of Anthropology, 25, 19–43.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Reddy, V. (2008). How infants know minds. London: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rocha, L. M. (1996). Eigenbehavior and symbols. Systems Research, 13(3), 371–384.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ross, D. (2007). H. sapiens as ecologically special: What does language contribute? Language Sciences, 29(5), 710–731.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rudrauf, D., Lutz, A., Cosmelli, D., Lachaux, J.-P., & Le Van Quyen, M. (2003). From autopoiesis to neurophenomenology: Francisco Varela’s exploration of the biophysics of being. Biological Research, 36, 27–65.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2001). On happiness and human potentials: A review of research on hedonic and eudaimonic well-being. Annual Review of Psychology, 52, 141–166.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sawyer, K. R. (2001). Emergence in sociology: Contemporary philosophy of mind and some implications for sociology theory. American Journal of Sociology, 107(3), 551–585.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sawyer, K. R. (2005). Social emergence: Societies as complex systems. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Shapiro, L. A. (2011). Embodied cognition. Bristol, PA: Taylor & Francis.

    Google Scholar 

  • Smith, L. B. (2005). Cognition as a dynamic system: Principles from embodiment. Developmental Review, 25, 278–298.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Smith, L. B., & Thelen, E. (2003). Development as a dynamic system. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 7(8), 333–348.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sripada, C. S., & Stich, S. (2006). A framework for the psychology of norms. In P. Carruthers (Ed.), The innate mind: Culture and cognition (Vol. 2). New York, NY: Oxford Univer-sity Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Stewart, J., Gapenne, O., & Di Paolo, E. A. (2010). Enaction: Towards a new paradigm for cogni-tive science. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Therborn, G. (2002). Back to norms! On the scope and dynamics of norms and normative action. Current Sociology, 50(6), 17.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Thompson, E. (2004). Life and mind: From autopoiesis to neurophenomenology, a tribute to Francisco Varela. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 3, 381–398.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Thompson, E. (2005). Sensorimotor subjectivity and the enactive approach to experience. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 4(4), 407–427.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Thompson, E., & Varela, F. J. (2001). Radical embodiment: Neural dynamics and consciousness. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 5(10), 418–425.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • van Duijn, M., Keijzer, F., & Franken, D. (2006). Principles of minimal cognition: Casting cognition as sensorimotor coordination. Adaptive Behavior, 14(2), 157–170.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • van Gelder, T. (1998). The dynamical hypothesis in cognitive science. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 21, 615–665.

    Google Scholar 

  • Varela, F. (1997). Patterns of life: Intertwining identity and cognition. Brain and Cognition, 34, 72–87.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Varela, F., Thompson, E., & Rosch, E. (1992). The embodied mind. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Vygotsky, L. S. (1962). Thought and language. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Victoria Institute for Education, Diversity and Lifelong learning, University of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia

    Chris Goldspink

  2. Graduate School of Education, Faculty of Social Science and Law, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK

    Chris Goldspink

  3. Systems Centre for Learning and Leadership, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK

    Chris Goldspink

  4. School of Humanities and Social Science, University of Newcastle, Newcastle, Australia

    Chris Goldspink

Authors
  1. Chris Goldspink
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Chris Goldspink .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Sociology, University of Surrey, Guildford, Surrey, United Kingdom

    Maria Xenitidou

  2. Centre for Policy Modelling, Manchester Metropolitan University Business School, Manchester, United Kingdom

    Bruce Edmonds

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2014 Springer International Publishing Switzerland

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Goldspink, C. (2014). Social Norms from the Perspective of Embodied Cognition. In: Xenitidou, M., Edmonds, B. (eds) The Complexity of Social Norms. Computational Social Sciences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-05308-0_4

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation