Decision making: Embodied by nature

In this article, I provide three arguments to advocate that decisions are inherently embodied, and that there is no need to make a distinction between classical (i.e., abstract) and embodied decisions. The first argument is grounded in affordance perception and posits that decisions are shaped by unique (i.e., inter-personally different) bodies and brains and the unique individual's experience and interaction with its environment. The second argument combines the idea that motor control is decision-making with the degrees of freedom problem, supporting the notion of singularity of each decision due to inherent intra-individual variability. The third argument is based on theoretical reasoning and empirical evidence, in particular from linguistics, positing that even abstract concepts and representations that decisions supposedly rely on are grounded in concrete sensorimotor experience and interactions with the world. The third argument hence refutes the idea that so-called abstract decisions may be disembodied (i.e., not inherently embodied). I conclude by arguing why it is important to further advocate the idea of embodied decisions.