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5On the spatiotemporal extensiveness of sense-making: ultrafast cognition and the historicity of normativitySynthese 198 (Suppl 1): 447-460. 2019.The enactive approach conceives of cognition as acts of sense-making. A requirement of sense-making is adaptivity, i.e., the agent’s capacity to actively monitor and regulate its own trajectories with respect to its viability constraints. However, there are examples of sense-making, known as ultrafast cognition, that occur faster than the time physiologically required for the organism to centrally monitor and regulate movements, for example, via long-range neural feedback mechanisms. These examp…Read more
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24An extended case study on the phenomenology of sequence-space synesthesiaFrontiers in Human Neuroscience 8. 2014.
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5Where Is the Action in Perception? An Exploratory Study With a Haptic Sensory Substitution DeviceFrontiers in Psychology 11. 2020.
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13Using minimal human-computer interfaces for studying the interactive development of social awarenessFrontiers in Psychology 5. 2014.
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6To Understand the Origin of Life We Must First Understand the Role of NormativityBiosemiotics 14 (3): 657-663. 2021.Deacon develops a minimal model of a nonparasitic virus to explore how nucleotide sequences came to be characterized by a code-like informational at the origin of life. The model serves to problematize the concept of biological normativity because it highlights two common yet typically implicit assumptions: that life could consist as an inert form, were it not for extrinsic sources of physical instability, and that life could have originated as a singular self-contained individual. I propose tha…Read more
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13The Problem of Meaning in AI and Robotics: Still with Us after All These YearsPhilosophies 4 (2): 14. 2019.In this essay we critically evaluate the progress that has been made in solving the problem of meaning in artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics. We remain skeptical about solutions based on deep neural networks and cognitive robotics, which in our opinion do not fundamentally address the problem. We agree with the enactive approach to cognitive science that things appear as intrinsically meaningful for living beings because of their precarious existence as adaptive autopoietic individuals. B…Read more
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13The Feeling Is Mutual: Clarity of Haptics-Mediated Social Perception Is Not Associated With the Recognition of the Other, Only With Recognition of Each OtherFrontiers in Human Neuroscience 14. 2020.
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24The extended body: a case study in the neurophenomenology of social interaction (review)Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 11 (2): 205-235. 2012.There is a growing realization in cognitive science that a theory of embodied intersubjectivity is needed to better account for social cognition. We highlight some challenges that must be addressed by attempts to interpret ‘simulation theory’ in terms of embodiment, and argue for an alternative approach that integrates phenomenology and dynamical systems theory in a mutually informing manner. Instead of ‘simulation’ we put forward the concept of the ‘extended body’, an enactive and phenomenologi…Read more
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4The enactive approach: Theoretical sketches from cell to societyPragmatics and Cognition 19 (1): 1-36. 2011.There is a small but growing community of researchers spanning a spectrum of disciplines which are united in rejecting the still dominant computationalist paradigm in favor of the enactive approach. The framework of this approach is centered on a core set of ideas, such as autonomy, sense-making, emergence, embodiment, and experience. These concepts are finding novel applications in a diverse range of areas. One hot topic has been the establishment of an enactive approach to social interaction. …Read more
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10The enactive approach: Theoretical sketches from cell to societyPragmatics and Cognition 19 (1): 1-36. 2011.There is a small but growing community of researchers spanning a spectrum of disciplines which are united in rejecting the still dominant computationalist paradigm in favor of the enactive approach. The framework of this approach is centered on a core set of ideas, such as autonomy, sense-making, emergence, embodiment, and experience. These concepts are finding novel applications in a diverse range of areas. One hot topic has been the establishment of an enactive approach to social interaction. …Read more
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11The enactive approach: Theoretical sketches from cell to societyPragmatics and Cognition 19 (1): 1-36. 2011.There is a small but growing community of researchers spanning a spectrum of disciplines which are united in rejecting the still dominant computationalist paradigm in favor of theenactive approach. The framework of this approach is centered on a core set of ideas, such as autonomy, sense-making, emergence, embodiment, and experience. These concepts are finding novel applications in a diverse range of areas. One hot topic has been the establishment of an enactive approach to social interaction. T…Read more
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8The brain is not an isolated “black box,” nor is its goal to become oneBehavioral and Brain Sciences 36 (3): 213-214. 2013.In important ways, Clark's (HPM) approach parallels the research agenda we have been pursuing. Nevertheless, we remain unconvinced that the HPM offers the best clue yet to the shape of a unified science of mind and action. The apparent convergence of research interests is offset by a profound divergence of theoretical starting points and ideal goals
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5Scientific Observation Is Socio-Materially Augmented Perception: Toward a Participatory RealismPhilosophies 7 (2): 37. 2022.There is an overlooked similarity between three classic accounts of the conditions of object experience from three distinct disciplines. Sociology: the “inversion” that accompanies discovery in the natural sciences, as local causes of effects are reattributed to an observed object. Psychology: the “externalization” that accompanies mastery of a visual–tactile sensory substitution interface, as tactile sensations of the proximal interface are transformed into vision-like experience of a distal ob…Read more
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19Sociality and the life–mind continuity thesisPhenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 8 (4): 439-463. 2009.The life–mind continuity thesis holds that mind is prefigured in life and that mind belongs to life. The biggest challenge faced by proponents of this thesis is to show how an explanatory framework that accounts for basic biological processes can be systematically extended to incorporate the highest reaches of human cognition. We suggest that this apparent ‘cognitive gap’ between minimal and human forms of life appears insurmountable largely because of the methodological individualism that is pr…Read more
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5Making sense of the chronology of Paleolithic cave painting from the perspective of material engagement theoryPhenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 18 (1): 91-112. 2019.There exists a venerable tradition of interdisciplinary research into the origins and development of Paleolithic cave painting. In recent years this research has begun to be inflected by rapid advances in measurement techniques that are delivering chronological data with unprecedented accuracy. Patterns are emerging from the accumulating evidence whose precise interpretation demands corresponding advances in theory. It seems that cave painting went through several transitions, beginning with the…Read more
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12Life is Precious Because it is Precarious: Individuality, Mortality and the Problem of MeaningIn Gordana Dodig-Crnkovic & Raffaela Giovagnoli (eds.), Representation of Reality: Humans, Other Living Organism and Intelligent Machines, Springer. 2017.Computationalism aspires to provide a comprehensive theory of life and mind. It fails in this task because it lacks the conceptual tools to address the problem of meaning. I argue that a meaningful perspective is enacted by an individual with a potential that is intrinsic to biological existence: death. Life matters to such an individual because it must constantly create the conditions of its own existence, which is unique and irreplaceable. For that individual to actively adapt, rather than to …Read more
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4Interactively guided introspection is getting science closer to an effective consciousness meterConsciousness and Cognition 22 (2): 672-676. 2013.The ever-increasing precision of brain measurement brings with it a demand for more reliable and fine-grained measures of conscious experience. However, introspection has long been assumed to be too limited and fallible. This skepticism is primarily based on a series of classic psychological experiments, which suggested that more is seen than can be retrospectively reported , and that we can be easily fooled into retrospectively describing intentional choices that we have never made . However, t…Read more
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72Imitation by social interaction? Analysis of a minimal agent-based model of the correspondence problemFrontiers in Human Neuroscience 6. 2012.
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7How passive is passive listening? Toward a sensorimotor theory of auditory perceptionPhenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 19 (4): 619-651. 2020.According to sensorimotor theory perceiving is a bodily skill involving exercise of an implicit know-how of the systematic ways that sensations change as a result of potential movements, that is, of sensorimotor contingencies. The theory has been most successfully applied to vision and touch, while perceptual modalities that rely less on overt exploration of the environment have not received as much attention. In addition, most research has focused on philosophically grounding the theory and on …Read more
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17Hume and the enactive approach to mindPhenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 8 (1): 95-133. 2009.An important part of David Hume’s work is his attempt to put the natural sciences on a firmer foundation by introducing the scientific method into the study of human nature. This investigation resulted in a novel understanding of the mind, which in turn informed Hume’s critical evaluation of the scope and limits of the scientific method as such. However, while these latter reflections continue to influence today’s philosophy of science, his theory of mind is nowadays mainly of interest in terms …Read more
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16From synthetic modeling of social interaction to dynamic theories of brain–body–environment–body–brain systemsBehavioral and Brain Sciences 36 (4). 2013.Synthetic approaches to social interaction support the development of a second-person neuroscience. Agent-based models and psychological experiments can be related in a mutually informing manner. Models have the advantage of making the nonlinear brainenvironmentbrain system as a whole accessible to analysis by dynamical systems theory. We highlight some general principles of how social interaction can partially constitute an individual's behavior
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11Enactive neuroscience, the direct perception hypothesis, and the socially extended mindBehavioral and Brain Sciences 38. 2015.Pessoa'sThe Cognitive-Emotional Brain(2013) is an integrative approach to neuroscience that complements other developments in cognitive science, especially enactivism. Both accept complexity as essential to mind; both tightly integrate perception, cognition, and emotion, which enactivism unifies in its foundational concept of sense-making; and both emphasize that the spatial extension of mental processes is not reducible to specific brain regions and neuroanatomical connectivity. An enactive neu…Read more
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9Enactive artificial intelligence: Investigating the systemic organization of life and mindArtificial Intelligence 173 (3-4): 466-500. 2009.
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31Book Review: Ecology of the Brain: The Phenomenology and Biology of the Embodied Mind (review)Frontiers in Psychology 9. 2018.
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4Book Review: Embodiment, Enaction, and Culture: Investigating the Constitution of the Shared World (review)Frontiers in Psychology 10. 2019.
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11Bio-machine Hybrid Technology: A Theoretical Assessment and Some Suggestions for Improved Future Design (review)Philosophy and Technology 27 (4): 539-560. 2014.In sociology, there has been a controversy about whether there is any essential difference between a human being and a tool, or if the tool–user relationship can be defined by co-actor symmetry. This issue becomes more complex when we consider examples of AI and robots, and even more so following progress in the development of various bio-machine hybrid technologies, such as robots that include organic parts, human brain implants, and adaptive prosthetics. It is argued that a concept of autonomo…Read more
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6Embodied Dyadic Interaction Increases Complexity of Neural Dynamics: A Minimal Agent-Based Simulation ModelFrontiers in Psychology 10. 2019.
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16Time-Series Analysis of Embodied Interaction: Movement Variability and Complexity Matching As Dyadic PropertiesFrontiers in Psychology 7. 2016.
Tom Froese
Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University
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Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate UniversityAssistant Professor
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Mind |
Epistemology |
Philosophy of Biology |
Philosophy of Cognitive Science |
Phenomenology |