•  59
    Embodied cognition is a well-established and increasingly influential branch of the cognitive, neural, and psychological sciences. Unlike embodied cognition, extended cognition is not as well-established or influential. Our goal is to defend the idea that if cognition is truly embodied, then it is embodied in systems, and if it is embodied in systems, then it extends beyond animal boundaries. In order to demonstrate this, we situate the idea of extended cognitive systems in a historical context.…Read more
  •  38
    Perception, as you make it
    with David W. Vinson, Drew H. Abney, Dima Amso, James E. Cutting, Rick Dale, Jonathan B. Freeman, Laurie B. Feldman, Karl J. Friston, Shaun Gallagher, J. Scott Jordan, Liad Mudrik, Sasha Ondobaka, Daniel C. Richardson, Ladan Shams, Maggie Shiffrar, and Michael J. Spivey
    Behavioral and Brain Sciences 39. 2016.
  •  13
    Life After 'Life After Kant' Other Minds with Jonas and Merleau-Ponty
    with Rodrigo Benevides and Tim Elmo Feiten
    Journal of Consciousness Studies 30 (11): 104-130. 2023.
    This paper examines two twenty-first-century developments in the enactive approach in philosophy and the cognitive sciences. The first is the surging interest in Hans Jonas, which begins with Weber and Varela's 'Life After Kant' (2002) and continues up to the present. The second is the 'social turn' that the enactive approach has taken, especially after De Jaegher and Di Paolo's (2007) work on participatory sense-making. We look at these two developments through the lens of the problem of other …Read more
  •  43
    With the most profound misgivings. Interview with Anthony P. Chemero
    Avant: Trends in Interdisciplinary Studies 3 (2): 17-27. 2012.
    An overview of: "Why Red Doesn't Sound Like a Bell. Understanding the feel of consciousness".
  •  71
    Worlds Apart? Reassessing von Uexküll’s Umwelt in Embodied Cognition with Canguilhem, Merleau-Ponty, and Deleuze
    with Tim Elmo Feiten and Kristopher Holland
    Journal of French and Francophone Philosophy 28 (1): 1-26. 2020.
    Jakob von Uexküll’s (1864-1944) account of Umwelt has been proposed as a mediating concept to bridge the gap between ecological psychology’s realism about environmental information and enactivism’s emphasis on the organism’s active role in constructing the meaningful world it inhabits. If successful, this move would constitute a significant step towards establishing a single ecological-enactive framework for cognitive science. However, Uexküll’s thought itself contains different perspectives tha…Read more
  •  9
    Plural Methods for Plural Ontologies: A Case Study from the Life Sciences
    In Mark-Oliver Casper & Giuseppe Flavio Artese (eds.), Situated Cognition Research: Methodological Foundations, Springer Verlag. pp. 217-238. 2023.
    As with much contemporary philosophical and scientific research, the predominant metaphysics of situatedness is monism, particularly, physicalism. Here, we claim that while monism is the proper metaphysical thesis, empirically-supported theories of situated phenomena require ontological pluralism as well. We defend this position via the example of bird flocks, which are situated systems that exhibit ontologically plural features, namely, component dominance and interaction dominance. The descrip…Read more
  •  82
    In this paper, we address the question of how an agent can guide its behavior with respect to aspects of the sociomaterial environment that are not sensorily present. A simple example is how an animal can relate to a food source while only sensing a pheromone, or how an agent can relate to beer, while only the refrigerator is directly sensorily present. Certain cases in which something is absent have been characterized by others as requiring ‘higher’ cognition. An example of this is how during t…Read more
  •  39
    A persistent criticism of radical embodied cognitive science is that it will be impossible to explain “real cognition” without invoking mental representations. This paper provides an account of explicit, real-time thinking of the kind we engage in when we imagine counter-factual situations, remember the past, and plan for the future. We first present a very general non-representational account of explicit thinking, based on pragmatist philosophy of science. We then present a more detailed instan…Read more
  •  92
    A second-order intervention
    Philosophical Studies 176 (3): 819-826. 2019.
  •  24
    Thinking with other minds
    Behavioral and Brain Sciences 43. 2020.
    We applaud the ambition of Veissière et al.'s account of cultural learning, and the attempt to ground higher order thinking in embodied theory. However, the account is limited by loose terminology, and by its commitment to a view of the child learner as inference-maker. Vygotsky offers a more powerful view of cultural learning, one that is fully compatible with embodiment.
  •  749
    Understanding everyday behavior relies heavily upon understanding our ability to improvise, how we are able to continuously anticipate and adapt in order to coordinate with our environment and others. Here we consider the ability of musicians to improvise, where they must spontaneously coordinate their actions with co-performers in order to produce novel musical expressions. Investigations of this behavior have traditionally focused on describing the organization of cognitive structures. The foc…Read more
  •  22
    The emperor has no blanket!
    Behavioral and Brain Sciences 45. 2022.
    While we applaud Bruineberg et al.'s analysis of the differences between Markov blankets and Friston blankets, we think it is not carried out to its ultimate consequences. There are reasons to think that, once Friston blankets are accepted as a theoretical construct, they do not do the work proponents of free energy principle (FEP) attribute to them. The emperor is indeed naked.
  •  146
    Word frequency effects found in free recall are rather due to Bayesian surprise
    with Serban C. Musca
    Frontiers in Psychology 13. 2022.
    The inconsistent relation between word frequency and free recall performance and the non-monotonic relation found between the two cannot all be explained by current theories. We propose a theoretical framework that can explain all extant results. Based on an ecological psychology analysis of the free recall situation in terms of environmental and informational resources available to the participants, we propose that because participants’ cognitive system has been shaped by their native language,…Read more
  •  34
    Reconsidering perceptual constancy
    Philosophical Psychology 35 (7): 1057-1071. 2022.
    The world shows some degree of invariance, and we perceive this invariance despite a lot of variation generated locally by our movements, changes in illumination, and the way in which our sense organs react to stimulation. Generally, philosophy and psychology each explain our perception of invariance through the notion of ‘perceptual constancy’. According to the traditional definition, perceptual constancies are capacities to perceive the objective (i.e., perceiver- and context-independent) loca…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
  •  36
    Empirical Evidence for Extended Cognitive Systems
    with Luis H. Favela, Mary Jean Amon, and Lorena Lobo
    Cognitive Science 45 (11). 2021.
    Cognitive Science, Volume 45, Issue 11, November 2021.
  •  44
    Radical embodiment in two directions
    Synthese 198 (Suppl 9): 2175-2190. 2018.
    Radical embodied cognitive science is split into two camps: the ecological approach and the enactive approach. We propose that these two approaches can be brought together into a productive synthesis. The key is to recognize that the two approaches are pursuing different but complementary types of explanation. Both approaches seek to explain behavior in terms of the animal–environment relation, but they start at opposite ends. Ecological psychologists pursue an ontological strategy. They begin b…Read more
  •  17
    In Favor of Impropriety
    Constructivist Foundations 15 (3): 213-216. 2020.
    Heras-Escribano argues against the normative character of affordances from a framework that relies on a Wittgensteinian notion of normativity and the incompatibility of direct perception, …
  •  8
    An Ecological Account of Visual 'Illusions'
    Florida Philosophical Review 16 (1): 68-93. 2016.
    Direct realism in one form or another is gaining traction as an approach to perception. With the hope of bolstering such positions, we offer a framework upon which to base an argument for direct realism in matters of perception. Better yet, we offer an empirically supported framework. The framework on offer is that of ecological psychology. With the framework in place, we then discuss how it can address visual illusions, one of the major challenges facing proponents of direct realism.
  •  30
    What the Jeweller’s Hand Tells the Jeweller’s Brain: Tool Use, Creativity and Embodied Cognition
    with Chris Baber and Jamie Hall
    Philosophy and Technology 32 (2): 283-302. 2019.
    The notion that human activity can be characterised in terms of dynamic systems is a well-established alternative to motor schema approaches. Key to a dynamic systems approach is the idea that a system seeks to achieve stable states in the face of perturbation. While such an approach can apply to physical activity, it can be challenging to accept that dynamic systems also describe cognitive activity. In this paper, we argue that creativity, which could be construed as a ‘cognitive’ activity par …Read more
  •  4
    What Should we Be Realist about in Cognitive Science?
    with Fred Hasselman, Rick Dale, and John Holden
  • How to Be an Anti-Representationalist
    Dissertation, Indiana University. 1999.
    This dissertation examines claims made by philosophers and cognitive scientists that cognition does not involve the use of internal, mental representations. Anti-representationalism, the name for the position advocated in such claims, has become rather popular in recent years; indeed, it has become fashionable to simply adopt anti-representationalism. Arguments in favor doing so usually go like this: Here is a model of some cognitive phenomenon. There are no representations in this model. If cog…Read more
  •  35
    Interaction-Dominant Dynamics and Extended Embodiment
    with M. J. Lamb
    Constructivist Foundations 9 (1): 88-89. 2013.
    Open peer commentary on the article “Investigating Extended Embodiment Using a Computational Model and Human Experimentation” by Yuki Sato, Hiroyuki Iizuka & Takashi Ikegami. Upshot: First, we comment on a potential weakness highlighted by the use of self-reporting in the human-coupled windmill experiment as described in the target article. Second, we suggest that the authors treat their windmill models as soft-assembled dynamical systems. This would allow them to investigate extended body schem…Read more
  •  49
    Creating Time: Social Collaboration in Music Improvisation
    with Ashley E. Walton, Auriel Washburn, Peter Langland-Hassan, Heidi Kloos, and Michael J. Richardson
    Topics in Cognitive Science 10 (1): 95-119. 2018.
    Musical improvisation is a natural case of human pattern formation, and Walton and colleagues investigate the way that different contextual constraints affect patterns of improvisation and their aesthetic quality. The authors find that coordination patterns are more diversified between two musicians when the musical space in which to improvise is relatively more constrained. They also find that listeners experience more diversified, complementary patterns between musicians as more enjoyable and …Read more
  •  108
    Sensorimotor Empathy
    Journal of Consciousness Studies 23 (5-6): 138-152. 2016.
    The role of knowledge has long been seen as problematic in the sensorimotor approach to experience. I offer an amended version of the sensorimotor approach, which replaces knowledge with what I call 'sensorimotor empathy'. Sensorimotor empathy is implicit, sometimes unintentional, skilful perceptual and motor coordination with objects and other people. I argue that sensorimotor empathy is the foundation of social coordination, and the key to understanding our conscious experience. I also explain…Read more
  •  127
    Gibsonian affordances for roboticists
    with Michael T. Turvey
    Using hypersets as an analytic tool, we compare traditionally Gibsonian (Chemero 2003; Turvey 1992) and representationalist (Sahin et al. this issue) understandings of the notion ‘affordance’. We show that representationalist understandings are incompatible with direct perception and erect barriers between animal and environment. They are, therefore, scarcely recognizable as understandings of ‘affordance’. In contrast, Gibsonian understandings are shown to treat animal-environment systems as uni…Read more
  •  709
    We provide a taxonomy of the two most important debates in the philosophy of the cognitive and neural sciences. The first debate is over methodological individualism: is the object of the cognitive and neural sciences the brain, the whole animal, or the animal--environment system? The second is over explanatory style: should explanation in cognitive and neural science be reductionist-mechanistic, inter-level mechanistic, or dynamical? After setting out the debates, we discuss the ways in which t…Read more