Embodied Cognition, Body Coherence, and Immersion in Non-Euclidean Virtual Reality

Embodied Cognition (EC) encompasses the notion that the body shapes cognition. Fundamental to this, are the ideas of image-schemas and conceptualisation. These concepts posit that abstract thought is a sort of metaphor grounded in some phenomenological body-environment interaction. The intuitive environment that we exist in can be described using Euclidean geometry. Recently, Virtual Reality (VR) has been used to successfully simulate non-Euclidean environments. These are geometric spaces that are non-intuitive, and are counter to the Euclidean space that we perceive in our day-to-day life. Hence, building on the idea that Human Computer Interaction (HCI) can be used to experimentally test ideas in philosophy of mind, we look to explore how image-schemas and conceptualisation apply to immersive, non-Euclidean environments, simulated using VR.