Glamour muscles: why having a body is not what it means to be embodied

TL;DR

The paper critically examines the concept of embodiment in intelligent systems, arguing that true embodiment involves ongoing negotiation of a body's function and integrity rather than mere physical presence or movement.

Contribution

It challenges traditional views by redefining embodiment as the continuous negotiation of a body's constitution, applicable even to non-physical or virtual entities.

Findings

Embodiment is not solely about physical movement or presence.

Non-physical systems can be more embodied than physical robots.

Embodiment involves ongoing negotiation of a body's function and design.

Abstract

Embodiment has recently enjoyed renewed consideration as a means to amplify the faculties of smart machines. Proponents of embodiment seem to imply that optimizing for movement in physical space promotes something more than the acquisition of niche capabilities for solving problems in physical space. However, there is nothing in principle which should so distinguish the problem of action selection in physical space from the problem of action selection in more abstract spaces, like that of language. Rather, what makes embodiment persuasive as a means toward higher intelligence is that it promises to capture, but does not actually realize, contingent facts about certain bodies (living intelligence) and the patterns of activity associated with them. These include an active resistance to annihilation and revisable constraints on the processes that make the world intelligible. To be theoretically or practically useful beyond the creation of niche tools, we argue that "embodiment" cannot be the trivial fact of a body, nor its movement through space, but the perpetual negotiation of the function, design, and integrity of that body$\unicode{x2013}$that is, to participate in what it means to $\textit{constitute}$ a given body. It follows that computer programs which are strictly incapable of traversing physical space might, under the right conditions, be more embodied than a walking, talking robot.