Some current critics of mainstream cognitive science argue that its computational understanding of
mental processes has been fundamentally wrong because it ignores the nature of mind as embodied,
extended, and situated. Minds are embodied in that our thinking depends heavily on the ways our
bodies enable us to perceive and act in particular ways, not on abstract information-processing
capabilities. Thinking is extended and situated in that it occurs in ways heavily dependent on
interactions with our physical and social environments. Minds are part of the physical and social
worlds, not disembodied entities like desktop digital computers that just sit and crunch numbers. I
agree that minds are embodied, extended, and situated, but these claims pose no problem for mindbrain
identity,as brains are obviously embodied, extended, and situated too, in ways that will bemade
clear in the chapters that follow. Particular ways that our bodies enable our brains to know reality
and to use emotion to appreciate it's significance and relevance will be discussed in Chapters 4 and 5.
We will see that the embodied and situated aspects of brains are compatible with an understanding
of their processes as representational and computational.