Handedness, self-models and embodied cognitive content

Holger Lyre

pp. 529-538

The paper presents and discusses the "which-is-which content of handedness," the meaning of left as left and right as right, as a possible candidate for the idea of a genuine embodied cognitive content. After showing that the Ozma barrier, the non-transferability of the meaning of left and right, provides a kind of proof of the non-descriptive, indexical nature of the which-is-which content of handedness, arguments are presented which suggest that the classical representationalist account of cognition faces a perplexing problem of underdetermination of reference of left and right in the which-is-which sense. By way of contrast, no such problems occur in a framework were embodied contents are not mediated by some extra body model which carries the representational power, but are instead directly represented.

Publication details

DOI: 10.1007/s11097-007-9080-0

Full citation:

Lyre, H. (2008). Handedness, self-models and embodied cognitive content. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 7 (4), pp. 529-538.

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