•  9
    Cognitive Agency Without Individuality
    Constructivist Foundations 18 (3): 370-371. 2023.
    Open peer commentary on the article “Beyond Individual-Centred 4E Cognition: Systems Biology and Sympoiesis” by Mads Julian Dengsø & Michael David Kirchhoff. Abstract: A move to sympoiesis entails a conceptual overhaul of autopoiesis, a key facet of the enactive approach to cognition. In this commentary, I invite more systematic thinking about the concept of autopoiesis and enactivist commitments to it, given the inconsistencies regarding individuality raised in the target article.
  •  12
    Learning in the Open Air
    Public Philosophy Journal 4. 2022.
    The typical college lecture hall is a highly artificial environment: windowless, fluorescent-lit, and technology-heavy. It all but necessitates treating students as mental receptacles, where learning is a matter of passive absorption of knowledge, and where it is increasingly difficult to hold students’ attention. Natural environments, such as forests and public parks, provide a striking comparison—they free us from technological distractions, invigorate our senses, and encourage physical in add…Read more
  •  268
    An enactive-developmental systems framing of cognizing systems
    Biology and Philosophy 37 (4): 1-21. 2022.
    Organisms live not as discrete entities on which an independent environment acts, but as members of a reproductive lineage in an ongoing series of interactions between that lineage and a dynamic ecological niche. These interactions continuously shape both systems in a reciprocal manner, resulting in the emergence of reliably co-occurring configurations within and between both systems. The enactive approach to cognition describes this relationship as the structural coupling between an organism an…Read more
  •  74
    Embodiment and Enactivism
    In Benjamin D. Young & Carolyn Dicey Jennings (eds.), Mind, Cognition, and Neuroscience: A Philosophical Introduction, Routledge. 2021.
    Typically, we think of the brain as responsible for cognition. But the brain is, importantly, embedded in a body—a body that moves around and interacts with features of the environment. What role, then, does the body play in cognition? Some philosophers would argue that it has no significant role in determining how we think about cognitive processing. But others argue that the body is fundamental to cognition, because the body is deeply involved with cognitive processes such as acting and percei…Read more
  •  547
    Divergence of values and goals in participatory research
    Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 88 (C): 284-291. 2021.
    Public participation in scientific research has gained prominence in many scientific fields, but the theory of participatory research is still limited. In this paper, we suggest that the divergence of values and goals between academic researchers and public participants in research is key to analyzing the different forms this research takes. We examine two existing characterizations of participatory research: one in terms of public participants' role in the research, the other in terms of the vi…Read more
  •  429
    Defining the Environment in Organism–Environment Systems
    Frontiers in Psychology 11 1285. 2020.
    Enactivism and ecological psychology converge on the relevance of the environment in understanding perception and action. On both views, perceiving organisms are not merely passive receivers of environmental stimuli, but rather form a dynamic relationship with their environments in such a way that shapes how they interact with the world. In this paper, I suggest that while enactivism and ecological psychology enjoy a shared specification of the environment as the cognitive domain, on both accoun…Read more
  •  92
    A second-order intervention
    Philosophical Studies 176 (3): 819-826. 2019.