ABSTRACT
The multifarious manifestations of climate change are many and mystifying. Even if one has perchance met one of its manifestations in the flesh, and recognised it as such, it remains difficult to accurately mental-model. This can be explained, in part at least, by embodied cognition, which posits that the mind works in tandem with the physical world (Lobel, 2014). Although much conjecture surrounds embodied cognition, Robert D. Rupert (2009) defined his hypothesis of extended cognition, a component of 4E Cognition (see Aizawa, 2017) this way: ‘human cognition literally includes elements beyond the boundary of the human organism … and the human mind and self spread into the environment beyond the organism’ (p. 241). In effect, there is a cognitive system that comprises the brain, body, and environment. Think, metaphorically, of the 2009 movie Avatar as the ultimate version of extended cognition. The Na’vi, an alien species living on the planet Pandora, a lush tropical paradise bestowed with both beauty and danger, are intimately connected to their environment through an intricate network of neural tendrils. In essence, the Na’vi and their environment assimilate to form one global consciousness.
