Concept teaching and learning theory

Embodied Imagination [EI] concept teaching and learning theory: the potency of words

 

                                                                                                                Dr. Linda Zibell, July 2023

 

Abstract:

               Trainees in Embodied Imagination’s (EI) subtle craft learn to work with the raw material of dreams, memories and symptoms by verbally guiding a participant towards therapeutic and/or creative evolution. Course learning combines teaching of the EI method along with  sessions dedicated to concept understanding which inform, validate and give rigour to practice. In this paper I explore this concept teaching to consider how embodied imagining is   embedded in its process. Trainees prepare by reading theory and formulating questions then teacher and trainees work together toward learning in a dyadic approach of respect, trust and mutuality. I offer examples from the course to show how the teacher activates trainees’ embodied imaginations through words that prompt images as they describe and clarify concepts, while inviting trainees to respond with dialogic word exchange. As concepts are     rendered imaginable, cognition is precipitated. I draw from a range of scholars to propose how the course approach to concept teaching may catalyse cognition in action through selected theory of learning and cognition, and in light of neuroscience.   171

 

Introduction: Embodied Imagination [EI] is an emerging field of study grounded in participants’ bodily experience of their living, manifesting imagination. Trainees learn its particular therapeutic, creative method of conscious verbal interplay with a participant’s dreams, memories, physical symptoms, or creative ideas which come to life whilst they are in a hypnogogic state. Trainees also learn concepts arising from theory that prompt a deeper understanding of method practice. This ‘concept teaching’ is invitational, empathic and responsive: the word ‘dyadic’ describes teaching and learning roles in active interplay. In dyadic teaching and learning trainees consciously connect method and conceptual learning within a shared dialogic – or ‘mutual’ space to make meaning. I propose, and explore learning theory to identify how, during interactive word exchange between teacher and trainees, embodied imagining might catalyse knowing, i.e. cognition. Since I write this paper as a trainee, I aim for fidelity with my embodied experience of the course teaching.

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Preamble: In my work as a teacher from early childhood to tertiary levels across thirty years imagination was my go-to method – largely because it worked: learning was evident and the positive environment generated along the way supported success. I afterwards realised that the role of imagining as an approach to teaching and learning is scarcely recognised: a distinct lack of clarity obstructs general understanding about how imagining plays a part in concept formation and how it may prompt cognition. In consequence I enquired into how teachers understand imagining as part of their method toward learning as a PhD research study. In my methodology I constructed a theoretical framework for analysis which combined elements of Mikhail Bakhtin, Jens Brockmeier and Paul Ricoeur’s thinking on how imagining is involved during meaning-making as words are expressed and received in dialogic exchange. Educational philosophers like Maxine Greene, Allan Luke and Elliot Eisner helped me to relate the framework to practical understanding. In this paper I join together a variety of insights that emerged from this rich theory to consider EI’s concept teaching as a strong example of how imagining may be involved in conceptual meaning-making.

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I begin with a memory. Far from home as a young adult, while hitchhiking in Tasmania, my friend and I accept a lift. Along the way the driver turns into a semi-circular driveway leading to a large old house, saying, “Come on, I’ll show you something unusual.” We follow through thick shrubs to a high mesh fence and I find myself face to face with an animal I’ve never before encountered. My seeing eyes slow … time slows … I am acutely aware of the turmoil between my interacting eye and mind because I cannot work out what I am seeing: all seems in limbo – all aswim. I strain to recognise – am I looking at a giant white rabbit? As I think, I see. Before my eyes a rabbit image overlays the animal itself, which partially comes into view: image and animal coincide but the ears dissuade me. Is it a giant white cat? A cat image from my mind’s eye is overlain on the animal’s living presence. But the shape of the face gives me pause. This idea-forming-imagining-attempting-to-see experience might have continued had not our kind host spoken: “Bet you’ve never seen a white wallaby before!” With the sounding of the word ‘wallaby’ the animal suddenly takes definitive form. Now I cannot ‘unsee’ it … Yet only a moment before, with ‘wallaby’ unuttered, I could not see it.

               On the cusp of my intention and expectation, as I witnessed my personal struggle to recognise, imagining was there attempting to somehow gel physical seeing to existing experience. It resonates with the view of imagining as a ‘stepping down’ of the new to habitual consciousness (Thompson, 1989). I was left wondering – what if I’d never experienced a wallaby? – what if I’d never heard the word ‘wallaby’? The experience became a kind of touchstone for my meandering study of the interplay of embodied imagining, words and conceptual meaning-making.[1]

 

What is teaching? What is learning? How do they relate and manifest?

               If you dream about your brother then [his] simulacrum is the substrate of the image … like a     costume … if we burn the literal brother out of it and just have the presence of the image …              it gains … potency … gets stronger … Whenever we take an image literally we do not get to      the power of the image … [which] comes … through burning the exterior.                

1. Bosnak, Alterity Webinar, 2022, (see Appendix 3).

This excerpt, taken from the flow of an EI concept teaching session, shows the teacher expressing to trainees why we should NOT take dream figures literally, why EI’s power depends on us NOT reducing the power of the image to everyday consciousness. It’s an example from Robert Bosnak’s teaching – the initiator, principal and course concept teacher of EI – a fluent communicator who is widely read and deeply knowledgeable in this emerging field of post-graduate study.

               Education as a relationship of teaching to learning derives etymologically from ‘to lead’ – in two senses: educare is ‘to train or to mould’; educere is ‘to draw out’.[2] The distinction is not hard and fast and EI involves both, but the pattern of the first seems more apparent in method teaching (which includes mimesis); the second is more apparent in concept teaching. Concepts are drawn out from trainees through interactive meaning-making (not fed in or implanted). The process is one in which Robert and trainees form a ‘dyad’: a willing, respectful relationship of mutual reaching-together-toward-meaning. This dyad forms around the learning and begins as trainees prepare for webinars and intensives by reading relevant texts and formulating questions. This primes them to enter into active meaningful exchange followed by shared ongoing reflection.

               The idea of teaching as leading through formation of a responsive dyad proposes teachers are agents who intentionally, strategically, and systematically ‘conduct’[3] the interactive communications of their learning community in living contexts that are always unique  in time, place, persons and social conditions (Greene, 1978). Because of this, teachers must be flexible, open, attentive and responsive to the present moment.

               The complement to teaching – ‘learning’ – finds its etymological root in ‘to follow or find the track’.[4] We trainees ‘find the track’ by allowing our seeing/sensing to entwine with our imagining, thinking and remembering in interaction with teaching expressions. Maxine Greene (various dates below) offers her practical philosophy to elucidate this process of allowing imagination to shift our configuring of the world from “…what is already known and understood to what is newly given…”  and her thinking rings true to my experience with the white wallaby. It is, she says, a process that is “mediated by the body,” (1985, p. 168). It begins with a “reaching out … intending … grasping at the appearance of things … [with the] felt possibility of looking beyond the boundary.” This personal field is “… opened up by perception” then subsequently “enlarged by imagination, which opens up the possible,” (1995, p.26). In consequence, as EI trainees learn concepts they come to “see through the taken-for-granted … [and] see reality anew.” (1988a, p.53).

               As the “image-making function … brings new intelligibility to the present moment, ” (1985,

p.168) concept teaching interactions shift a trainee’s existing perspective and meaning is re-

organised and transformed.[5]

               Greene (1978) speaks of how significant “the life of language” is when a learner’s “embodied

consciousness” is in “transaction” with what is presented (1978, p.24). This ‘life,’ in her view, does much of the ‘heavy lifting’ as our seeing/sensing and imagining intertwine. It enables us to construct reality out of sensory perception. The ‘life’ of the word ‘wallaby’ and its effect, reminds us of that. A teachers’ significant words activate this life for trainees to purposefully prompt living meaning-making. As learning emerges from their mutuality their responsive attention secures it.

               In light of this it is clear that success in ‘drawing out’ or educere is not guaranteed: no teacher has a “hypodermic” to directly transfer learning content; it is a process of bringing abstract concepts “to life” for trainees and largely hinges on their teaching leadership and choice of words. The words most likely to succeed are those that relate to trainees’ own “cultural scripts and background schemata,” (Luke, 2010, p. 2) – that accord with trainees existing imaginings of life. Learning as educere in which embodying imagination is drawn out through mutual interchange involves both teacher and trainees in imagining.

               In returning to my befuddled attempt to configure a white wallaby a question remains: how do imagining and seeing intertwine?  Are they two sides of a coin as N. J.T. Thomas (1997,1998,  1999, 2004) envisions? Does their relation hinge on intent? He says that as we intend outwardly we are drawn to see in the physical sense, to see the concrete expressions of life. As we intend inwardly our focusing draws instead to the non-literal, i.e. toward imagining – our way of ‘seeing’ an idea, a metaphor, an allusion, a meaning. Our words are intimately attuned to this position – for example we say “I see what you mean,” or “I see what you’re saying.” This is not literal seeing – we all know it refers to a ‘seeing via imagination.’ So they don’t have to be an either-or binary. We all can watch the shifts of our own awareness from physical seeing to imagining and back again. They seem simply attuned to life’s flow. We shift from seeing to imagining in a heartbeat, and this accords with Stephen Mithen’s (2001) theory that imagining is an evolutionary capacity that is part of being human – it arose with Homo Sapiens, the earliest human beings.     

 

EI’s conceptual teaching /learning approach.

In EI’s conceptual teaching and learning trainees learn with Bosnak’s intention to bring concepts to life. In his holistic teaching he relishes his role and welcomes feeling – if a concept is tortuous he will mobilise our confidence, showing us that, “the cognitive and conceptual” are not “at odds with the affective, the authentic, the humane,” (Greene, 1978, p.24). He invites us to openly share our thoughts then responds with clarifications, or offers an anecdote or example, or he introduces a model. Along the way he adjusts and explores – introducing alternative expressions that may provoke a different perspective. He makes apparent his own position as one of radical ‘not knowing’ – he is overt in prioritising new learning over fixed knowing in life. If trainees make insightful responses he confirms their fellowship as learners together, their democratic relationship. In this way we see how mutual, dialogic, “responsive understanding” becomes a “funda/mental force” for the meaning making. This brings genuine credibility to teaching and learning as a dyadic process of active interplay.

               The excerpt that accompanies this paper – Appendix 3  – shows how this approach demonstrates Luke’s ‘bringing to life’ and ‘activation of learning’ in a deeper sense. Mutual, active, responsive listening between teacher and learner is not abstract, neutral or passive, it furthers actual and evident meaning-making as Russian philologist M.M. Bakhtin has suggested. This quality of listening is ultimately the “activating principle [that] prepares the ground for active and engaged understanding.” As it plays out the listener’s interacting, configuring attention[6] becomes “pregnant with responses and objections,” and as a result words are assimilated into their “conceptual system [including its] emotional expressions,” (1981, p.280-2). As Bakhtin shows, imagining is instrumental to the process, (1981, pp. 276-7).    

               It is not – of necessity – an earnest process. Bosnak may sketch a metaphor or simile, give a qualified definition or call up a sense of drama, humour or surprise while interacting. In-the-moment words and actions may spontaneously prompt meaning as he translates abstract concepts into “the conventional imagery of the sensory world with which [trainees] are familiar.” Responsive embodied imagining brings images and felt experiences as trainees come to see what Bosnak means through their own conceptual body of understanding. As imagination “reconstitute[s] the inconceivable into the perceivable,” each person’s physical body becomes “both membrane and metaphor” for meaning, (Thompson, pp. 83/84).

               As this in-the-moment activation and bringing to life takes place Bosnak is engaging with trainees’ Zone of Proximal Development [ZPD]. This is a concept originated by Lev Vygotsky. ZPD identifies a trainee’s actual developmental level alongside their potential development during a teaching-learning process. It opens while “individuals are in the process of developing mastery of a practice or understanding a topic” so applies to both conceptual and method learning (Wells, in Kozulin et al, 2003, p. 41). ‘Proximal’ means ‘next to’: Bosnak’s teaching places trainees ‘next to’ a concept while he listens and responds by ‘scaffolding’ further learning. As trainees respond he discerns how and what learning is taking place, then strategically intervenes to influence its trajectory (see Appendix 3).

 

As they configure what is ‘imaginable’ in a teacher’s expressions, a trainee’s ZPD is like a ‘dialogic space’ (Wegerif, 2016) where existing concepts encounter new possibilities. Language influences construal in this space: words, as they sound, impact the trainee’s “embodied consciousness.” As Greene says:

               What we understand [as] “reality” is … reflected-on experience … Perceived shapes, colors,   lights, sounds, present … to our embodied consciousness … Only as we [move] … into the life of language, thematizing, symbolizing, making sense … [do] we … single out … aspects of the

               flux of things to attend to … [That is when] we begin orienting … to … the “real.”

                                                                                                                        (1978, p.24, my italics)

‘Singling-out’, ‘orienting’ are actions of focus (see Thomas above), they affirm perception and imagining as intertwined. When Greene refers to ‘the life of language,’ and ‘the real‘ (or actual), she supports Luke’s and Bakhtin’s views above. Eisner says (1993, p.5) “… the eye is part of the mind” when we focus inwardly (or imagine), we ‘see’ in light of our ideas and existing experience. He states that all our senses ‘see’ in this way depending on context. Concepts become imaginable to the body as connections to the ‘real’ in life experience are triggered.

 

In my view, this is how trainees come to learn the concepts that underpin their practice: because concepts are, as Eisner says, “imaginative distillations of the essential features of the experienced world,” (1993, p.7). Vygotsky (1998, p. 53) states they form as we recognise, connect, relate, synthesise and integrate the objects of our living world:

 

               A real concept is an image of an objective thing in its complexity. Only when we                recognize            the thing in all its connections and relations … only when this diversity is            synthesized in a word, in an integral image … do we develop a concept … [It] … includes not only the general,

 

               but also … individual and particular … mediated knowledge of the object, (my italics).[7]

 

As these philosophers agree: concepts are outflows of bodily interactions, images and words.

 

In review, trainees learn EI concepts through dyadic or dialogic teaching based on responsive understanding which renders content imaginable. Perception of words activates the senses allowing embodied imagination to present new ‘possible’ [8]meanings to one’s living consciousness enabling trainees to configure – in light of their conceptual system and emotional responses accessed as a ‘print’ from long term memory – a ‘new real’ that makes embodied ‘sense.’

 

1995 words

Relevant neuroscience as discussed by Illeris (2016) shows as a trainees’ sensorimotor system is activated, sense impulses take direct and indirect paths on the way to being processed in working memory. The ‘indirect’ impulses travel via emotional centres and long-term memory (LTM). Sense images (principally sight and sound) are formed and, “a print of the event with … associated emotions and reactions” is secured in LTM. This ‘print’ may later be re-activated as an “impulse to … learning … [as] relevant [to] new events or situations,” (p. 14). Earlier learning is later retrieved.  I propose Illeris’s “sense images” are consistent with activations of “embodied imagination” in learning.

My own research (Zibell, 2016) into how teachers understand imagination as a teaching method shows teachers intentionally introduce narratives, words, gestures, activities, the unexpected, memories or objects into their teaching to activate trainees’ imaginations. They remain alert to visible evidence of this in trainees’ body language: bright eyes, an alert posture, increased motivation and emotional connection to learning content, appetite to dialogue with teacher, peers, and/or teaching materials. They flexibly adjust their teaching in the living context as appropriate and acknowledge trainees’ emotions. Luke’s ‘bringing to life’ and ‘activation of learning’ seem reflected here in reference to sensory perception, emotion and imagination in interaction. 

 

 

Appendix 1.

Thomas (1998) discusses Neisser’s ‘perceptual activity’ (PA) theory of the image (p. 206), to affirm Greene’s ‘configuring’ process. He says we do not merely passively receive during perception, we consciously reach out into the world, searching out what comes toward us using our schemata (sets of exploratory procedures). We actively interrogate the context to decide how best to explore what is presented to us, then direct our attention to specifics before ‘making sense’. As our schemata inform and incline our perceptual decision-making, we constantly refine and update them. Simultaneously our ‘perceptual instruments’ (eyes, cochlear vibrations, neural maps and so on) report to the brain. When perception is, instead, intrapersonal, (when we focus inward, toward internalised mental activity) the process directs schemata to ‘use’ our sensory systems [eyes, ears, neural maps] to make internal tests and measurements (Thomas, 1997). The object of our gaze in such a circumstance forms an internal image, which is a product of our mental intention – even as it mimics the material object we are bringing to mind. He notes how ‘perceiving-as-seeing’ and ‘perceiving-as-imagining’ use similar brain zones. He suggests both simultaneously activate our perceptual, motor, and affective systems. Perception is living activity steered by who we are and our prior experiences: these incline our perceptual schemata as well.

 

Appendix 2

Vygotsky’s view of concepts is supported by theory of embodied cognition from Barsalou, (1999) and Barsalou et al., (2003): see below. Note the frequent use of Luke’s word activate. 

“A far more developed and empirically grounded case … comes from psychological and neurological studies that show a connection between a subject’s use of a concept and activity in the subject’s sensorimotor systems … Central to the idea that concepts are embodied is the description of such concepts as modal … perceptual symbols. Thoughts about a lake … consist in activation of the sensorimotor areas of the brain that had been activated during previous encounters with actual lakes. A lake thought re-activates areas of visual cortex that respond to visual information … areas of auditory cortex … areas of motor cortex … [all] correspond to actions … associated with lakes … and so on. The result is a lake concept that reflects the kinds of sensory and motor activities that are unique to human bodies and sensory systems. Lake means something like “thing that looks like this, sounds like this, smells like this, allows me to swim within it like this”. Moreover, because how things look and sound depend on the properties of sensory systems, and because the interactions something affords depends on the properties of motor systems, concepts will be body-specific.”

 

               Quotation from – 3.2 https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/embodied-cognition/#EmboConc

Appendix 3: Example of dyadic teaching as it arouses embodied imagining for learning.

Here Robbie teaches trainees conceptual theory relevant to practice: in particular what allows a dream image’s potency to be released? In relation to this question he shares a passage from Mimesis and Alterity on how the Cuna Indians deal with evil spirits attracted after a snake bite. Concepts involved are mimesis, alterity, image, substrate or exterior of an image, literal, non-literal, image as ‘container’ of spirit.

 

Teacher (reads and comments in brackets along the way) – “The soul of [a] commodity is its image which, released on burning, fascinates the dangerous spirits and keeps them from doing harm … a snake bite is both physical, and a metaphysical cataclysm … when a person is bitten … it endangers the whole village … [since] there’s [now] an opening for the spirit of the snake to enter … The first thing [the Cuna] do is [to] stay in … complete silence … [creating] … a vacuum through which the evil spirits cannot penetrate.” (Then comes the interesting part) … “A medicine man collected … pictures from trade catalogues … When someone was bitten by a snake and … [made] seriously ill [he] … would … burn these illustrations and … strew the ashes around the patient’s house. The rationale was that this burning released the soul of the pictures and … (I love this) … created a vast shopping emporium for the evil spirits … (they are so busy looking at all the wonderful things) … they had no time … for the sick person (I love that) … The notion was that … in order for the image to gain its power, its substrate needs to be burnt  … (he repeats these words)…

 

Trainee – Would the substrate be the narrative?

 

Teacher – Yeah … If you dream about your brother then [his] simulacrum is the substrate of the image … it’s like a costume … if we burn the literal brother out of it and just have the presence of the image … it gains its potency … gets stronger. If we stay with the

… that this is about [the brother] we stay with the substrate … the picture in the [catalogue] … hasn’t been burnt yet … the … brother … as costume … needs to be burnt so that from the ashes … the image arises … Whenever we take an image literally we do not get to the power of the image … [it] comes … through burning the exterior.

 

Trainee – Because … that exterior is perceived through the lens of habituated consciousness.

 

Teacher – Yes … and because it is a container out of which the spirit [of the image] cannot escape … all the power … in the image … is contained in your relationship to your literal brother … the power can never emerge unless you burn the exterior … your relationship to your brother.

 

Trainee – Yeah … you stay within the confines of the relationship instead of what that is representing.

 

Teacher – Yep, correct.

………………………………………………

How I understand this interaction: Here, as conceptual learning is in process, the trainee wonders what this idea of ‘substrate of an image?’ means, how does it apply to dreamworking practice? She connects to existing concepts: narrative and habituated consciousness and vocalises the relationship she imagines. The teacher, knowing her attention is focused toward meaning, allows ZPD – the dialogic space – to open. (In this exchange he can potentially add the words ‘substrate’, ‘image exterior’, ‘burning’ and ‘image potency’ to the vocabulary of all trainees who are simultaneously participating in the interaction). He gives an explicit example to demonstrate his meaning. The “your brother” example scaffolds by prompting an image that can be a temporary structure to ‘bridge’ to meaning – in her reality. His use of the words “Yes, and …” indicate he is extending her understanding. When she replies, he listens carefully then adds further detail. She shows she now imagines his meaning accurately, and voices it succinctly in her own words. As the excerpt closes he acknowledges that accuracy. This is an example of educere teaching as a ‘drawing out.’

 

References 

                       Bakhtin, M. M. (1981). The dialogic imagination, four essays. Austin: University of Texas Press.

 

               Eisner, E. W. (1993) Forms of understanding and the future of educational research.                Educational Researcher, 22 (7) 5-11.

 

               Greene, M. (1978). Teaching: The Question of Personal Reality. Teachers College Record, 80          (1), 23-35. Sage Journals, https://doi.org/10.1177/016146817808000102                https://maxinegreene.org/uploads/library/question_personal_reality.pdf

 

               Greene, M. (1985). Imagination and learning: a reply to Kieran Egan. In Teachers College Record 87 (2) 167-171 Retrieved from:                 https://maxinegreene.org/uploads/library/imagination_learning_ke.pdf.

 

               Greene, M. (1988). The dialectic of freedom. New York: Teachers College Press.

 

               Greene, M. (1995). Releasing the imagination: essays on education, the arts, and social                change. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers.

 

               Illeris, K. (2016). How we learn, learning and non-learning in school and beyond (2^nd ed.).       London: Routledge.

 

               Kozulin, A., Gindis, B., Ageyev, V. S., Miller, S.M.(Eds.) (2003), Vygotsky’s educational theory           in cultural context. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

 

               Luke, A. (2010). Will the Australian curriculum up the intellectual ante in primary         classrooms? Curriculum perspectives, 30 (3) 59–64. Retrieved from: QUT Digital Repository: http://eprints.qut.edu.au/32392/.

 

               Mithen, S. (2001) The Evolution of Imagination: An Archaeological Perspective. SubStance,          Issue 94/95 (Vol 30, Number 1&2, pp. 28-54) .John Hopkins University Press                                               https://doi.org/10.1353/sub.2001.0012 https://muse.jhu.edu/article/32285 28

 

               O’Connor, K.P. & Aardema, F. (2005). The imagination: Cognitive, pre-cognitive, and meta-    cognitive aspects. – Consciousness and Cognition 14 (2):233-256.

 

               Ricoeur, P. (1994). Imagination in discourse and action. In G. Robinson & J. F. Rundell, (Eds.).    Rethinking imagination, culture and creativity (pp. 118-135). London: Routledge.

 

               Thomas N. J. T. (1997). Imagery and the Coherence of Imagination: A Critique of White.
               Journal of Philosophical Research 22:95-127

 

               Thomas N. J. T. (1998). Imagination, Eliminativism, and the Pre-History of Consciousness. Paper from Toward a Science of Consciousness (Tucson III) Conference, April 30th, 1998.         [Abstract published in Consciousness Research Abstracts (3) 1998 p. 36.]

 

               Thomas N. J. T. (1999). Are theories of imagery theories of imagination? An active                perception          approach to conscious mental content. Cognitive Science 23 (2):207-245.

 

               Thompson, W. I. (1989). Imaginary landscapes: making worlds of myth and science. New       York: St Martin’s Press.

 

               Vygotsky, L. S. (1998) The Collected Works of L.S. Vygotsky, Volume 5, Child Psychology. R.W.             Reiber (ed.). New York: Plenum Press

 

               Wegerif, R. (2016). What is dialogic space? Blog post retrieved from

               https://www.rupertwegerif.name/blog/what-is-dialogic-space#

 

               Zibell, L.M. (2016). Teacher Pedagogies of Dialogic Imagination. PhD thesis, Federation                University Australia, Ballarat.                http://researchonline.federation.edu.au/vital/access/HandleResolver/1959.17/157642

 

[1] See also ideas on Aboriginal Australians’ perceptual impressions on encountering horses at first contact:  https://australianhumanitiesreview.org/2017/12/04/encountering-the-horse-initial-reactions-of-aboriginal-australians-to-a-domesticated-animal/    

 

[2] Retrieved from https://flourishingstudent.com/educare-or-educere/

[3]  – conduct like an orchestra –

[4] Retrieved from https://www.etymonline.com/word/learning#

[5] The process of perception and imagination acting to allow cognition is theorised by cognitive psychologists O’Connor & Aardema, (2005).

[6] Bakhtin’s term is “apperceptive background.”

[7] More on embodied concepts as part of embodied cognition theory in Appendix 2.

[8] O’Connor & Aardema (2005) and evolutionary philosopher Stephen Mithen, theorise that at a fundamental level both human consciousness and imagination evolved to be ‘possibilistic’ in nature: we may be primed toward the ‘possible’.