•  214
    Distributed cognition and the humanities
    In Miranda Anderson, Douglas Cairns, Mark Sprevak & Michael Wheeler (eds.), The Edinburgh History of Distributed Cognition Series, Volumes 1-4, Edinburgh University Press Series. pp. 1-17. 2018.
    The general introduction, which is replicated across all four volumes, aims to orientate readers unfamiliar with this area of research. It provides an overview of the different approaches within distributed cognition and discussion of the value of a distributed cognitive approach to the humanities.
  •  106
    How Stories Expand Our Minds
    Resource: The Newsletter of Scotland's National Academy (Royal Soceity of Edinburgh) 70 (Summer 2022): 5. 2022.
    What happens to our minds when we listen to a story or read a book? How about when we watch a play or film? Any story, like a piece of music, plays out across our minds and in the process changes the nature of our notes and expands their range. Stories enable a metamorphosis of our minds through biological and sociocultural processes operating in concert.
  •  91
    'Involving Interface': An Extended Mind Theoretical Approach to Roboethics
    with Hiroshi Ishiguro and Tamami Fukushi
    Accountability in Research: Policies and Quality Assurance 6 (17): 316-329. 2010.
    In 2008 the authors held Involving Interface, a lively interdisciplinary event focusing on issues of biological, sociocultural, and technological interfacing (see Acknowledgments). Inspired by discussions at this event, in this article, we further discuss the value of input from neuroscience for developing robots and machine interfaces, and the value of philosophy, the humanities, and the arts for identifying persistent links between human interfacing and broader ethical concerns. The importance…Read more
  •  81
    The possibility that non-biological resources can act as part of the cognitive system is claimed by Andy Clark’s and David Chalmers’s seminal paper, ‘The Extended Mind’ (1998). This hypothesis holds parallels with the history of the book, an area of research that has long been considering the effect on culture and cognition of the technological changes from orality to literacy and from manuscripts to printing. M. T. Clanchy’s From Memory to Written Record describes literacy as a technology that …Read more
  •  80
    4E Cognition and the Mind-Expanding Arts
    European Journal of Philosophy in Arts Education 1 (7): 7-64. 2022.
    Examining imagination, 4E cognition and the arts together expands our understanding of them all. 4E cognition is a framework that comprises the theories separately known as embodied, enactive, embedded, and extended cognition. This paper draws on research in cognitive science (including 4E and recent predictive processing approaches), ideas in phenomenology, and artworks from The Extended Mind exhibition (2019–20). The artworks offer diverse reflections on 4E cognition, as well as revealing pers…Read more
  •  74
    4E cognition and the mind-expanding arts
    European Journal of Philosophy in Arts Education 1 (7): 7-64. 2022.
    Examining imagination, 4E cognition and the arts together expands our understanding of them all. 4E cognition is a framework that comprises the theories separately known as embodied, enactive, embedded, and extended cognition. This paper draws on research in cognitive science (including 4E and recent predictive processing approaches), ideas in phenomenology, and artworks from The Extended Mind exhibition (2019–20). The artworks offer diverse reflections on 4E cognition, as well as revealing pers…Read more
  •  73
    Developing the Fission-Fusion Concept
    Skape: Centre for Science, Knowledge and Policy. 2023.
    Dr Miranda Anderson is an Honorary Fellow in History, Classics and Archaeology at the University of Edinburgh and an Associate Lecturer at the Open University. She has held several prestigious fellowships and was principal investigator of an AHRC-funded project, titled ‘The Art of Distributed Cognition’, which involved collaboration with the Talbot Rice Gallery. Her work has investigated the relations between cognition and culture, particularly literary works, challenging the boundaries between …Read more
  •  59
    How stories expand our minds
    Resource: The Newsletter of Scotland's National Academy 70 (Summer 2022): 5. 2022.
    What happens to our minds when we listen to a story or read a book? How about when we watch a play or film? Any story, like a piece of music, plays out across our minds and in the process changes the nature of our notes and expands their range. Stories – whether told orally, read in a book, scrolled through or watched upon screen or stage – enable a metamorphosis of our minds through biological and sociocultural processes operating in concert.
  •  46
    Distributed Cognition in Victorian Culture and Modernism (edited book)
    with Peter Garratt and Mark Sprevak
    Edinburgh University Press. 2020.
    Reinvigorates our understanding of Victorian and modernist works and society Offers a wide-ranging application of theories of distributed cognition to Victorian culture and Modernism Explores the distinctive nature and expression of notions of distributed cognition in Victorian culture and Modernism and considers their relation to current notions Reinvigorates our understanding of Western European works – including Wordsworth, T. S. Eliot and Virginia Woolf – and society by bringing to bear r…Read more
  •  22
    Distributed Cognition in Medieval and Renaissance Philosophy (edited book)
    Edinburgh University Press. 2019.
    Reveals the diverse ways that cognition was seen as spread over brain, body and world in the 9–17th centuries - The second book in an ambitious 4-volume set looking at distributed cognition in the history of thought - Includes essays on literature, philosophy, law, art, music, medicine, science and material culture - For students and scholars in medieval and Renaissance studies, cognitive humanities and philosophy of mind - Draws out what was distinctive about medieval and Renaissance insigh…Read more
  •  17
    Distributed Cognition in Enlightenment and Romantic Culture (edited book)
    with George Rousseau and Michael Wheeler
    Edinburgh University Press. 2019.
    11 essays by international specialists open up the research field of distributed cognition and the cognitive humanities in the Enlightenment and Romantic periods - The third book in an ambitious four-volume set looking at distributed cognition in the history of thought - Brings together essays on literature, history, philosophy, art, archaeology, medicine, science and material culture - Includes a general and a period-specific introduction to distributed cognition and the cognitive humanities…Read more
  •  16
    Distributed cognition in the early modern era
    Encyclopedia of Early Modern Philosophy and the Sciences. 2020.
    Distributed cognition is an umbrella term for the overlapping, competing, and sometimes conflicting theories in current philosophy and cognitive science which claim that cognition is distributed across brain, body, and world. 4E cognition is another name used for this framework, with the 4Es representing embodied, enactive, embedded, and extended cognition (for a more comprehensive overview, see Anderson et al. 2018). This framework can help bring to the fore neglected ideas of the mind and the …Read more
  •  14
    The Renaissance Extended Mind
    Palgrave-Macmillan. 2015.
    The Renaissance Extended Mind explores the parallels and contrasts between current philosophical notions of the mind as extended across brain, body and world, and analogous notions in literary, philosophical and scientific texts circulating between the fifteenth century and early-seventeenth century. This perspective illuminates Renaissance works and aims to inspire a more general reevaluation in the humanities of what constitutes cognition. Anderson begins with an overview of research and debat…Read more
  •  13
    Picture This: A Review of Research Relating to Narrative Processing by Moving Image Versus Language
    with Elspeth Jajdelska, Christopher Butler, Nigel Fabb, Elizabeth Finnigan, Ian Garwood, Stephen Kelly, Wendy Kirk, Karin Kukkonen, Sinead Mullally, and Stephan Schwan
    Frontiers in Psychology 10. 2019.
    Reading fiction for pleasurable is robustly correlated with improved cognitive attainment and other benefits. It is also in decline among young people in developed nations, in part because of competition from moving image fiction. We review existing research on the differences between reading/hearing verbal fiction and watching moving image fiction, as well as looking more broadly at research on image/text interactions and visual versus verbal processing. We conclude that verbal narrative genera…Read more
  •  9
    Distributed Cognition in Classical Antiquity (edited book)
    with Douglas Cairns and Mark Sprevak
    Edinburgh University Press. 2018.
    12 essays by international specialists in classical antiquity create a period-specific interdisciplinary introduction to distributed cognition and the cognitive humanities - The first book in an ambitious 4-volume set looking at distributed cognition in the history of thought - Includes essays on archaeology, art history, rhetoric, literature, philosophy, science, medicine and technology -For students and scholars in classics, cognitive humanities, philosophy of mind and ancient philosophy -…Read more
  •  4
    The Edinburgh History of Distributed Cognition Series, Volumes 1-4 (edited book)
    with Douglas Cairns, Mark Sprevak, and Michael Wheeler
    Edinburgh University Press Series. 2018.
    The Edinburgh History of Distributed Cognition (Series Editor(s): Miranda Anderson, Douglas Cairns) Questions the barriers between the humanities and the cognitive sciences. Cognitive science is finding increasing evidence that cognition is distributed across brain, body and world. This series calls for a reappraisal of historical concepts of cognition in light of these findings. It engages with recent debates about the various strong or weak models of distributed cognition and brings them into …Read more
  • Immersion and Defamiliarization: Experiencing Literature and World
    with Stefan Iversen
    Poetics Today: International Journal for Theory and Analysis If Literature and Communication 3 (39): 569-95. 2018.
    Traditionally, immersion and defamiliarization have been seen as describing opposing phenomena. Immersion has been conceived of as transparently directing attention towards what has been referred to as the “language-independent reality” (Ryan 2001) that is presented by a fictional text. While defamiliarization has been conceived of as directing the reader’s attention to the artificial nature of the construction of the fictional world (Margolin 2004). In this article we set out to show that it is…Read more