Abstract: The embodiment in ancient Chinese Confucianism and Taoism is embodied cognition in ancient Chinese psychological thought. However, Confucianism and Taoism have never agreed to each other. Taking representations and computation characteristics as clues, the authors first explain the differences between embodied cognition of Confucianism and that of Taoism before clarifying that the Confucian embodied cognition belongs to the “moderate school” while the Taoist embodied cognition belongs to the “radical school” from the phenomenological perspective. Likewise, the authors present their psychological interpretation as to why the major Taoist “metaphysics” categories–Tao, Qi, Shi, Xiang–are “radical” by taking the characteristics of representations and computations as clues from the perspective of phenomenology so as to compare them with Western radical embodied cognition. In addition, the Taoist views of emotions and the emotional views of radical enactivism could also be dialogue. This article tries to fully illustrate the characteristics and unique contributions of Taoist radical embodied cognition, so as to open up new vision for Taoism research in the psychological field and promote research on development of embodied cognition in China.

Key words: Taoism, radical embodied cognition, pure embodiment, "image thinking"