Barbara Tversky dispels the myth that thinking takes place solely in our minds.
Should the body be considered part of the mind?
With a free trial, you can watch Barbara talk with Steven Pinker and Hilary Lawson about the relationship between language and thought NOW at https://iai.tv/video/lost-in-thought?utm_source=YouTube&utm_medium=description
We tend to think of thinking as something that happens in our heads and that is done using language. But leading psychologist Barbara Tversky argues that thinking is fundamentally spatial and embodied. Spatial cognition takes up half our cortex and evolved long before language. Gesturing precedes and facilitates thought rather than just expressing it. Even abstract concepts like justice have their roots in visceral, bodily responses that exist in us before any words do.
#psychology #thought #language #psycholinguistics #neuroscience
Barbara Tversky is an active Emerita Professor of Psychology at Stanford and Professor of Psychology at Columbia Teachers College. Her research has spanned memory, categorization, language, spatial cognition, event perception and cognition, diagrammatic reasoning, sketching, creativity, design, and gesture. The overall goals have been to uncover how people think about the spaces they inhabit and the actions they perform and see and then how people use the world and the things in it.
Her 2019 book, Mind in Motion: How Action Shapes Thought, provides an overview of some of that work. She has collaborated widely, with linguists, philosophers, neuroscientists, computer scientists, chemists, biologists, architects, designers, and artists.
The Institute of Art and Ideas features videos and articles from cutting edge thinkers discussing the ideas that are shaping the world, from metaphysics to string theory, technology to democracy, aesthetics to genetics. Subscribe today! https://iai.tv/subscribe?utm_source=YouTube&utm_medium=description&utm_campaign=https://iai.tv/video/thinking-isnt-only-in-the-brain-with-barbara-tversky
0:00 Intro
0:43 How does your view that thinking is fundamentally spatial change the way that we understand the mind?
2:10 Are linguistic reasoning and mathematical abstraction forms of spatial and embodied thinking?
3:41 Do you see your work as pushing back against a view that thinking primarily happens in the brain?
7:33 How does research into visual and linguistic thinking interact with what you say about embodied thinking
10:36 Is there literature exploring how people born with blindness think compared to people who become blind later in life?
12:32 Can you relate embodied thinking to studies comparing processing in the left and right hemispheres?
15:11 Has philosophy's focus on language and reason caused confusion when it comes to thinking about thinking?
16:13 Will the embodied thinking framework be able to account for abstract concepts like justice or infinity?
18:09 What is the role of philosophy in psychology?
For debates and talks: https://iai.tv
For articles: https://iai.tv/articles
For courses: https://iai.tv/iai-academy/courses