How does the living body impact, and perhaps even help constitute, the thinking, reasoning, feeling agent? This is the guiding question that the following work seeks to answer. The subtitle of this project is emotion, prediction and embodied cognition for good reason: these are the three closely related themes that tie together the various chapters of the following thesis. The central claim is that a better understanding of the nature of emotion offers valuable insight for understanding the nature of the so called 'predictive mind', including a powerful new way to think about the mind as embodied Recently a new perspective has arguably taken the pole position in both philosophy of mind and the cognitive sciences when it comes to discussing the nature of mind. This framework takes the brain to be a probabilistic prediction engine. Such engines, so the framework proposes, are dedicated to the task of minimizing the disparity between how they expect the world to be and how the world actually is. Part of the power of the framework is the elegant suggestion that much of what we take to be central to human intelligence - perception, action, emotion, learning and language - can be understood within the framework of prediction and error reduction. In what follows I will refer to this general approach to understanding the mind and brain as 'predictive processing'. While the predictive processing framework is in many ways revolutionary, there is a tendency for researchers interested in this topic to assume a very traditional 'neurocentric' stance concerning the mind. I argue that this neurocentric stance is completely optional, and that a focus on emotional processing provides good reasons to think that the predictive mind is also a deeply embodied mind. The result is a way of understanding the predictive brain that allows the body and the surrounding environment to make a robust constitutive contribution to the predictive process. While it's true that predictive models can get us a long way in making sense of what drives the neural-economy, I will argue that a complete picture of human intelligence requires us to also explore the many ways that a predictive brain is embodied in a living body and embedded in the social-cultural world in which it was born and lives.

Over the years many developed economies around the world have used the domestic building sector capital growth as an indicator and as a stimulant to economic growth. However, attention to environmental duty of this industry has come to light only recently. There is an apparent increase in government attention and community awareness regarding the sustainability aspect of this growing industry and a greater emphasis is now being given to its environmental duty. The present pattern of metropolitan development in major Australian cities is one of spreading low-density suburbs. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics the current trend indicates that there is a 30% increase in average dwelling size and material consumption and also a decline in the number of people per dwelling. This means the energy consumption per capital, both embodied and operational energy is on the rise in the domestic sector. In relative terms the emphasis on the conservation of embodi ed energy component is far less than the operational energy component. This research dissertation discusses the importance and needs in addressing this existing gap. Housing is an essential amenity. However the impact, due to current trend of increasing embodied energy consumption per capital should be minimised. This may even require major cultural shift to traditional construction processes, practices and home owner perceptions. This thesis presents the outcomes of a study investigating ways to produce a

This thesis is concerned with issues relating to young people, identity and physical culture, and attempts to highlight how the comelex structure of young people's social experiences can influence their constructions of self. It follows a number of calls by various researchers for a multi-dimensional approach to the study of youth lifestyles (e. g. Hendry et al, 1996), and one that, while acknowledging societal influences on young people's practices, does not deny their potential to act agentically (e. g. Christensen & James, 2000). As such, taking into account the concerns expressed over the increasing pressures facing young people in contemporary society, and the problematisation of various youth behaviours, it examines the extent to which young people shape and are shaped by their experiences in a number of interrelating social contexts. The research upon which this account is based focuses on a notion of identity that is ephemeral, reflexive, and embodied, and examines the experiences of young people in five intersecting social sites that were identified from the literature as important contexts for individuals' constructions of identities: family, peers, school, media, and physical culture. These social arenas are likened to Bourdieu's notion of fields, and are perceived to be structured spaces in which the development of an appropriate habitus and the possession of relevant capital can help to determine an individual's practice and position within them. Data were generated through a series of focus group discussions with four groups of five young people (ten boys and ten girls) from three schools in tile Midlands. The young people were selected from a larger sample that had been surveyed and clustered in relation to their motivation to physical activity, and each group comprised an individual from each cluster. The focus group sessions involved semi-structured conversations in addition to a program of activity-based research tasks, and culminated in the creation of individual identity posters. The taped conversations and material infonnation generated through the focus group sessions were then collated, and a grounded theory approach was employed in the thematic analysis of tile data. A number of analytic strategies such as coding, memos, and conceptual mapping were utilised within this process, and, in association with a consideration of tile conceptual tools of field, habitus, practice, and capital, contributed to the development of theory. Within tile thesis, the five main analysis chapters presented the key themes in relation to each field, and highlighted the identity i work that the participants engaged in within each of these social sites. The chapters. map out the structure and practices of each field, and examine their influences on the young people's attempts to construct understandings of self. The final chapter of the thesis then attempts to summarise the findings of these previous analysis chapters, and examine them in relation to the central research questions that guided and underpinned the study. As such, the repetition of core themes, such as the management and presentation of self, a desire for autonomy and respect, and a tension within a dialect of conforinity and resistance, were identified as significant aspects of young people's social practices. Additionally, the evident overlaps between the different contexts indicated the complex configuration of fields within the experiences of young people. In relation to this issue, the final chapter focuses in particular on how the fields configured for the young people in relation to the field of physical culture, as this was identified in the study as a primary site for the construction of embodied identities. Having presented these key findings, the thesis concludes with a discussion of the implications for those working with and for young people, and for the design and implementation of youth policies, particularly in relation to the area of physical activity.

Modernity has seen the exchange of ideas about cognition between western science and eastern meditation traditions. In particular, western ways of thinking about the natural world have infiltrated Indian theories of yoga. This intersection of ideas in the twentieth-century has resulted in a problematic trend to theorize yogic phenomena, including meditation, in scientific terms. These translations converge on explicating yogic processes within a context of advancing knowledge about the brain. This translational approach to bringing etic and emic perspectives together in the same framework results in interpretations of meditation that succumb to problems cognitive science faces at a broader level in theorizing cognition and mind-body interrelations. In this study, I take a different approach to bringing emic and etic perspectives together by placing a phenomenologically interpreted emic account of absorption (the meditative shift in consciousness) into dialogue with current scientific understandings of three central mental processes of meditation. Specifically, I analyze ways of conceptualizing attention, memory, and emotion, and their underlying mechanisms as posited in yoga and science, focusing on the problem of how each system interprets the reality of absorption. This comparison suggests a basic similarity between the two systems: theorizing cognition and meditative absorption in terms of embodiment. This finding emphasizes the dual nature of embodiment as both experiential and physical. Finally, I consider this dialogue from an embodied mind perspective, an emerging way of thinking about and theorizing the mind-body in cognitive science, because this perspective challenges longstanding theoretical problems in western understandings of how the mind works. This analysis suggests that theorizing meditation in these dual terms of embodiment potentially solves the reductive challenges of dualistic and materialist philosophy that have plagued both religious and naturalistic attempts to explain absorption. This interdisciplinary dialogue provides a framework with which to think more critically about translational and cross-disciplinary efforts that have previously confused the goals of yoga and science and their respective foci on practice and mechanisms. I conclude that bridging ideas in this dialogical way reveals a complementary perspective between phenomenological and biological ways of understanding the mind that both hinge on embodied cognition. / text

Kognitivismen med rötter i analytisk filosofi och logik beskriver tänkande som symbolmanipulation efter logiska regler. Begrepp har sin mening genom att de refererar till objekt och händelser i världen. Embodied cognition (EC) eller kroppsbasserad kognition, med rötter i biologi, fenomenologi och pragmatism ser istället tänkande som ett emergent fenomen som uppstår ur erfarandet av kroppens aktivitet i världen. Begrepps mening har istället sin grund i det sensomotoriska systemet.  Abstrakta begrepp får sin mening via metaforer och metonymer. Likt konstruktivism ser EC lärande som modifiering av tidigare kunskap. Den skiljer sig dock från konstruktivism i avseende på dualism, hur kunskap finns organiserad och var begreppens mening finns. EC:s inflytande på didaktisk forskning inom naturvetenskap och matematik undersöktes genom sökning av artiklar där orden EC eller enactivism finns med. Resultatet visade ett klart större genomslag för EC inom matematikdidaktik med fler artiklar där teorin beskrivs utförligare. Inom naturvetenskapens didaktik har EC uppmärksammats i mycket mindre grad. Orsakerna till detta diskuteras.

This thesis examines the relationship between physical capabilities and the mental simulation of actions. Behavioural research suggests that the ability to understand of an action is directly related to the ability to perform it, an idea consistent with the Embodied theory of Cognition. The present work aims to further explore the relationship between the body and cognition and investigate whether the restriction of an action or movement disrupts the simulation of movements during motor imagery tasks, which have been shown to elicit motor activations upon performance. This theory was investigated in a series of seven motor simulation experiments during which participants’ movements were restrained. Studies 1-3 investigated simulations that occur unconsciously through the observation of manipulatable objects. Studies 4-6 investigated simulations that occur during performance of mental transformations of manipulatable objects and body part stimuli. The results of these studies found no significant difference in performance when movement was restricted compared to when free to move. Study 7 investigated simulations that occur consciously through the observation of actions performed by another individual and found a significant effect of restriction on performance. The findings of these studies indicate that the ability to perform a movement is required for the accurate simulation of actions when an action is being observed but not when a simulated action is required on a stationary object, which suggests a variable relationship between the body and cognitive processes. This thesis offers an interesting contribution to the Embodied Cognition debate and provides a further insight into the relationship between the motor and visual systems.

Embodied energy is the energy consumed in all activities necessary to support a process in its entire lifecycle. For power generation systems, this includes the energy cost of raw material extraction and transportation, plant construction, energy generation and the recycling and disposal stages following actual use. Embodied energy analysis is a crude method of estimating the environmental impacts and depletion of natural resources consequent to a certain process. In effect, the higher the embodied energy of a process, the greater the green house gas emissions and the depletion of the natural resources. This thesis presents the embodied energy analysis carried out on some New Zealand power plants belonging to various methods of generation, namely, natural gas combined cycle (NGCC), natural gas open cycle (NGOC), wind, reservoir hydro and run of river hydro power plants. The analysis was carried out using a combination of process chain analysis and input output analysis, which are the two fundamental methodologies for embodied energy analysis. It follows the standards set out by the International Organisation for Standardisation 14040 series, and uses some guidelines given in the International Federation of Institutes for Advanced Study workshop on energy analysis methodology and conventions. From the analysis, it was found that for renewable generation power plants, the exploration and plant construction phase of the lifecycle contributes the largest amount of embodied energy, while for the non renewable power plants, the largest amount of embodied energy is contributed by the plant operation and maintenance phase of the lifecycle. The lifecycle energy payback ratio, which corresponds to the ratio of electrical energy output over the total lifecycle energy input, of the power plants are 96.9, 62.8, 7.96, 0.487 and 0.354 for run of river hydro, reservoir hydro, wind, NGCC and NGOC, respectively. Therefore, the lifecycle performance of renewable electricity generation is superior to non renewable electricity generation. Hence, the environmental impacts and depletion of natural resources from non renewable electricity generation is higher than renewable electricity generation. From the generation methodologies, hydro power plants have exceptional performance characteristics.

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Screens mediate an ever-increasing part of our experience today. While the space within our screens is indispensable - as perceptually ‘real’ as embodied experience itself - this space tends to exclude the hands and body in favour of the eye and mind. This bifurcation does not recognize or allow for the integration of body and mind that is both fundamental to our well-being and vital to the process of making things. Moreover, immersion within our screens dulls an awareness of ourselves in relation to them. This thesis is an exploration of the immense potential that resides in the space between our hands and screens. Through a series of themed meditations and experimental set-ups, my research aims to prove that reconciliation between digital and embodied mediation can simultaneously offer enchantment to both our bodies and our minds, and furthermore, that the empowered hand is essential for the maturation of digital technologies.

Abstract The paintings in White Noise are a response to temporal lighting conditions that occur at night. A discussion of sensory affect demonstrates how perception is inextricably connected to the body’s sensory capabilities such as sound and touch. By examining Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s theory of phenomenology and looking at Gestalt Psychology based experiments it is made clear that seeing whole and complete forms in the world is a product of embodied perceptual experience. I recall early experiences of being affected by light describing the optical illusion of the afterimage and then move into the everyday perceptions that inform my current painting practice. The painting studio process is examined as a beacon from which to reconcile the affecting nuances of observed lighting at night. I discuss the importance of allowing trial, error and patience to take place while making paintings to in turn seek out optimal colour relationships and shape interaction. By developing a specific painting vocabulary that responds to the colour, texture and sound associated with perceptual experiences I reconcile through the abstract process of painting how affecting experiences can be re-presented and reinvented onto the canvas.