The Body in Mind

In this book Mark Rowlands challenges the Cartesian view of the mind as a self-contained monadic entity and offers in its place a radical externalist or environmentalist model of cognitive processes. Cognition is not something done exclusively in the head but fundamentally something done in the world. Drawing on both evolutionary theory and a detailed examination of the processes involved in perception memory thought and language use Rowlands argues that cognition is in part a process whereby creatures manipulate and exploit relevant objects in their environment. It is not simply an internal process of information processing; equally significantly it is an external process of information processing. This innovative book provides a foundation for an unorthodox but increasingly popular view of the nature of cognition.