Multi-Modal Simulation in Conceptual Processing

1 Over the course of the Medin Festschrift, we heard a lot about Doug's intellectual qualities and contributions. Certainly these are impressive and significant. Nevertheless, one thing that I've learned from adopting the embodied perspective on cognition is that this perspective often leads one to notice new things not seen from other perspectives. Given the strong cognitive orientation of most participants here, it is perhaps not surprising that we have focused so far on Doug's intellectual qualities. It might be interesting, though, to think about Doug from the embodied perspective. Perhaps we will see new qualities not noticed before. One such quality was revealed by an event that occurred the day before the Festschrift. On my flight from Atlanta to Chicago, I wore bike riding shorts, because I was going to ride the bike path along Lake Michigan after arriving. Notably, these shorts do not have a belt. Furthermore, the belt that I usually take on a trip is the one that I wear on the plane. Because I was not wearing a belt, I arrived in Chicago without one. As a result, I found myself standing around holding up my pants that evening at Sandy Waxman's welcoming party. Then a most fortuitous event occurred (especially for this story). As I was leaving the party, I ran into Doug in Sandy's front yard and asked if he could bring me a belt the next morning. Being the extremely generous guy that he is, Doug took off his belt on the spot and handed it to me. I'm sure that Sandy's neighbors are still talking about this. More importantly, though, when I put on the belt, it was about three inches too short, which I found surprising, given that I'm in pretty good physical condition. The thought that ran immediately through my mind was, " Wow, Doug is in great shape. " As anyone who has spent a few days with Doug knows, he exercises religiously and eats carefully, with the result being his gazelle-like figure. This is one of Doug's embodied qualities that might be missed from a purely cognitive perspective. Another of Doug's most notable embodied qualities is how intensely he blushes. When I pointed this out at the workshop, true to form, Doug produced one of his most intense and beautiful blushes ever. Making Doug blush is a favorite pastime of his friends. As these examples illustrate, the …