Exbodiment: The Mind Made Matter

TL;DR

Exbodiment explores how engineered matter extends and influences the mind, highlighting a feedback loop between cognition and physical embodiment across various cultural and scientific contexts.

Contribution

It introduces the concept of exbodiment and the Helix of Exbodiment, emphasizing the mutual shaping of mind and matter in cognition and culture.

Findings

Matter encodes thought elements and decision-making.

Exbodiment is present in music, natural history, and cognition.

Feedback between mind and matter forms an extended computational system.

Abstract

Exbodiment describes mind outsourced to engineered matter and how matter reeducates mind. The constraints of exbodied matter encode elements of thought, channel decision-making, and constitute an important part of an extended computational phenotype. Here I provide an introduction and brief cultural history of exbodiment in music, natural history, cognition, and astrobiology. The "Helix of Exbodiment" is introduced to illustrate continuous feedback between mind and matter.