The Interdependence of Embodied Cognition and Consciousness

Classical cognitive scientists have operated with a strict separation of cognition from consciousness. At the same time they have attempted to explain consciousness using the same concepts of computation and representation as they employ to explain unconscious cognition. This has led some philosophers to argue that an unbridgeable gap separates subpersonal cognition from first-personal conscious experience. I shall argue that the appearance of such a gap is due to an assumption that classical cognitive science inherits from behaviourism that cognitive processes function independently from consciousness. My aim in this paper will be to argue against this assumption. I will develop an embodied theory of cognitive processes as constituted by temporally extended, skilled, and practical engagements with the world. Such a conception of cognitive processes challenges any separation of conscious from non-conscious cognitive processes. It does so by showing how both conscious and non conscious cognitive processes mutually constrain each other as dynamical processes evolving over dfferent spatial and temporal scales. In virtue of the mutual constraints that hold between conscious and non-conscious cognitive processes, I argue against the view that cognition and consciousness can be separated. I finish up by showing how this move opens the door to a deflation of the hard problem.