the embodied mind, Wikipedia to the rescue
having slept on the first two chapters, I decided to revert to Wikipedia thinking that perhaps a simplified explanation of the overall text might clarify things. The particular strand of embodied cognition that is explored by the authors is actually called Enactivism, however I haven't quite established how that differs from other strands of Embodied Cognition, however what I have established, thanks to Wikipedia is that the authors believe there is no "core self", but rather a set of inter dependent, context dependent associations that collectively provide a point of view. My idea of two mirrors facing one another was probably more correct than I appreciated yesterday.
what I do like like is their idea that the world is neither purely metaphorical, nor purely representational, it is probably a to and fro between the two: that our experience of the world is some kind of middle ground between the concrete offered by science and the entirely subjective experience that we receive from our bodies; our consciousness somehow manages, through reflection to combine the two into what becomes each individual's experience of the world. .
Is there a game here? Funnily enough I've been thinking about circularity in games - about games where people play two roles and are responsible for one another - where winning might mean helping someone else to win, where you can only ever win by helping or with the help of someone else, but where you have the opportunity to be in both shoes at the same time. But could I use it to explore human experience more - where two different people's perceptions can be combined to make a new reality? On a simple level it might be a game where you act based on the life rules given to you by someone else. Hmm, this doesn't really make sense but that's OK for the moment. It also sounds a bit dry for a game, academic and overly sophisticated...but I've noticed that once you stick it in the real world, and provide a few silly props, and as long as you keep the rules simple enough that players feel they have some kind of grasp, then play comes naturally, regardless!
ps something that really interests me, not directly related to the book but quoted from Wikipedia's Embodied Cognition page "The degree of thought abstraction has been found to be associated with physical distance which then affects associated ideas and perception of risk." (Rohrer?)