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Tony Chemero

University of Cincinnati, Philosophy and Psychology, Faculty Member

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Tony Chemero is Distinguished Research Professor of Philosophy and Psychology, a core member of the Center for Cognition, Action, and Perception and of the Strange Tools Research Lab at the University of Cincinnati.
Address: Departments of Philosophy and Psychology
University of Cincinnati
Cincinnati, OH 45221 USA

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Károly Takács

Hungarian Academy of Sciences

Julian Kiverstein

João Pedro Vianna Ribeiro

Martyn Rothwell

University of Canberra

Sarah Bro Pedersen (Trasmundi)

University of Southern Denmark

Independent Scholar

Sune Vork Steffensen

University of Southern Denmark

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Papers by Tony Chemero

Places for reasoning

by Tony Chemero and Melina Gastelum

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 2024

In this article, we explore behaviour settings that enable reasoning and the diversity of constra... more In this article, we explore behaviour settings that enable reasoning and the diversity of constraints that not only limit but also make these behaviour settings possible. We focus specifically on reasoning and surveying how behaviour settings allow for the generation of norms of action that are nevertheless differentiated by geographies and sociocultural systems. These geographies and sociocultural systems involve diverse trajectories for reasoning even within similar behaviour settings. We will touch on places for reasoning like Twitter, social movements, traditional knowledge and laboratories set up for experimentation on our reasoning abilities. We will show how these places and the behaviour settings that emerge in them can be studied in terms of the complexity of the interactions between their participants and in terms of enabling constraints. This article is part of the theme issue 'People, places, things, and communities: expanding behaviour settings theory in the twenty-first century'.

Questioning Two Common Assumptions concerning Group Agency and Group Cognition

by Tony Chemero and Zachary Peck

Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, 2024

In this paper, we identify two common assumptions underlying popular accounts of group agency. Th... more In this paper, we identify two common assumptions underlying popular accounts of group agency. The first assumption is that paradigmatic cases of agency are to be identified with individual organisms, typically human beings. The second assumption is that cognition requires the manipulation of mental representations. Combining these two assumptions generates the status quo account of group agency, namely that a group's agency ontologically depends upon the mental representations of the individuals that constitute the group. We provide a taxonomy of views about group agency along two axes, each corresponding to the extent to which the view endorses (or rejects) one of these two common assumptions. We believe that none of the standard conceptions of group cognition and agency reject both of these two assumptions. After developing brief arguments against both assumptions, we provide a brief sketch of what an account of group agency that rejects both assumptions might look like.

Affordances, phenomenology, pragmatism and the myth of the given

This paper addresses a potential contradiction between the two primary philosophical traditions t... more This paper addresses a potential contradiction between the two primary philosophical traditions that inform Gibsonian ecological psychology: the phenomenological and pragmatist traditions. These two traditions exhibit potentially contradictory intuitions about the epistemic role of direct perception. This epistemic role of direct perception was famously problematized by Sellars' critique of the myth of the given (1956; 1997), and we draw on it here to serve as a test case for the Gibsonian synthesis of phenomenology and pragmatism. While ecological psychology's emphasis on the firstperson perspective of organisms shares in the legacy of the phenomenological tradition, it also tends to assume direct experience as a given, something basic and foundational to knowledge. Pragmatism, on the other hand, is generally suspicious of experience as a foundational given. We argue that Gibson's successful synthesis of these two traditions is also what makes his theory of affordances less susceptible to the myth of the given than some phenomenological approaches to perception. Namely, on the Gibsonian account of perception is always part of an actionperception cycle that takes place in and through embodied action and therefore no one act of perception functions as an epistemic given

L. Favela and A. Chemero, “Ontologically plural systems: A case study from the life sciences”, in M-O Casper and G. Artese (eds.), Methodology of Situated Cognition Research, Springer 2023

by Tony Chemero and Luis Favela

As with much contemporary philosophical and scienti c research, the predominant metaphysics of si... more As with much contemporary philosophical and scienti c research, the predominant metaphysics of situatedness is monism, particularly, physicalism. Here, we claim that while monism is the proper metaphysical thesis, empiricallysupported theories of situated phenomena require ontological pluralism as well. We defend this position via the example of bird ocks, which are situated systems that exhibit ontologically plural features, namely, component dominance and interaction dominance. The description of these features will illustrate that understanding these phenomena requires a coevolution of conceptual and methodological development. Speci cally, ontological features are partially identi ed and evaluated by way of the analyses applied to them. Both descriptive and normative lessons are drawn. Descriptively, research on bird ocks demonstrate that natural phenomena may not be readily cast via a monistic ontology (e.g., component dominant), even at the same scale of investigation. The normative consequence is that while research on situated systems need not reject metaphysical monism, it ought to begin from a pluralistic position concerning ontology.

LLMs differ from human cognition because they are not embodied

Nature Human Behaviour, 2023

Abduction and Deduction in Dynamical Cognitive Science

Topics in Cognitive Science, 2023

This paper reviews the recent history of a subset of research in dynamical cognitive science as p... more This paper reviews the recent history of a subset of research in dynamical cognitive science as progressing from abduction to deduction to induction. To do so, I examine the development of a controversy concerning the use of the interaction dominance of human cognitive systems as an explanation of the ubiquitous 1/f noise, multifractality and complexity matching in human behavior.

Life after "Life After Kant": Other Minds with Jonas and Merleau-Ponty (to appear in Journal of Consciousness Studies, SI on Francisco Varela

This paper examines two 21st century developments in the enactive approach in philosophy and the ... more This paper examines two 21st 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 sensemaking. We look at these two developments through the lens of the problem of other minds. We argue that they are incompatible due to a residual solipsism in Jonasian phenomenology. Ultimately, this leaves enactive theory with a choice between embracing Jonas or embracing the social turn in enactive theory. We recommend replacing Jonasian influences with those from the late work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty. We argue that enactivism can evade the problem of other minds using Merleau-Ponty's discussion of "flesh" and "expression".

E. Feiten*, Z. Peck*, K. Holland, and A. Chemero, “Constructive constraints: On the role of chance and complexity in artistic creativity”, Possibility Studies and Society, 2023.

by Tony Chemero and Tim Feiten

Creativity is sometimes understood as the individual, mental creation of novelty which is then im... more Creativity is sometimes understood as the individual, mental creation of novelty which is then imposed as form onto a material substrate. On this view, constraints would feature only as obstacles in the creative process. In contrast, we support the view that creativity emerges from the interactions between human agents and the material, cultural, and social constraints that comprise a particular situation. In this account, constraints play a key enabling role, scaffolding the space of possibilities in which improvisation and chance give rise to novelty. In this paper, we review experimental work on interpersonal synergies between jazz pianists, which provides a scientific framework from which to approach the complex relationship between chance, constraints, and creativity. We also explore two case studies from the science of complexity and the creative arts in order to substantiate this notion of creative constraints: Anthony Braxton's musical innovation at the intersection between composition and improvisation, and Marcel Duchamp's radical interventions in the fields of sculpture and conceptual art.

J. McKinney*, S. Steffensen, and A. Chemero, “Practice, enactivism, and ecological psychology”, Adaptive Behavior, to appear.

by Tony Chemero and Jay McKinney

Taraneh Wilkinson and Anthony Chemero (under review). "Why it matters that affordances are relations". This manuscript is part of a larger manuscript entitled “On affordances and its entailment in organisms and autonomous systems” (M. Mangalam & D. G. Kelty-Stephen, Eds.)

With the overall consensus that affordances cannot merely be features of the environment, recent ... more With the overall consensus that affordances cannot merely be features of the environment, recent literature has taken a relational approach to affordances to account for how complex interpersonal, social, and cultural dimensions constitute affordances in the human environmental niche. These recent trends draw on phenomenology and discussions in enactivist literature to apply “affordance” to capture a broader spectrum of human experience, but the question remains as to the scope of the term’s use. On a relational and dynamic definition, affordances are enmeshed in temporal scale, can be acquired by learning, and depend on both cultural niches and individual ability. In sum, because affordances are dependent on the ability of an organism, affordances for humans are colored by the full spectrum of human abilities. Debates on potential expansions of the term have thus taken up the social and cultural dimensions of phenomenological experience, increasingly taking on questions of ethics and normativity.

A path to ecological psychology (pre-print version)

Zakaria Djebarra (ed), Affordances in Everyday Life, 2022

Reconsidering perceptual constancy

Philosophical Psychology, 2022

The world shows some degree of invariance, and we perceive this invariance despite a lot of varia... more 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., perceiverand context-independent) local properties of external objects despite variation in the stimulation of sensory organs. In this paper, we argue that the traditional understanding of perceptual constancy should be expanded to include a broader range of phenomena connected to the perception of invariance. Our argument starts from an odd activity: pole balancing. Balancing a pole-shaped object (e.g., a broomstick) on the palm of your hand in order to maintain it in an upright position requires (multimodal) perception and continuous tracking (within a certain range) of a particular kind of global invariant feature in the world. By examining this activity and its connection to the notion of perceptual constancy as it is traditionally understood, we propose an alternative account with the goal of clarifying the relationship between the alleged mechanisms underlying constancy and the philosophical implications of the phenomenon.

Scalar symmetries and strange tools: Learning Analytics and Embodied Design as techno-cultural confluence

by Tim Elmo Feiten and Tony Chemero

International Journal of Child-Computer Interaction

L. Favela, M. Amon, L. Lobo, and A. Chemero, “Empirical Evidence for Extended Cognitive Systems”, Cognitive Science, 45, 2021, https://doi.org/10.1111/cogs.13060

by Tony Chemero and Lorena Lobo

We present an empirically supported theoretical and methodological framework for quantifying the ... more We present an empirically supported theoretical and methodological framework for quantifying the system-level properties of person-plus-tool interactions in order to answer the question: "Are personplus-tool-systems extended cognitive systems?" Nineteen participants provided perceptual judgments regarding their ability to pass through apertures of various widths while using visual information, blindfolded wielding a rod, or blindfolded wielding an Enactive Torch-a vibrotactile sensory-substitution device for detecting distance. Monofractal, multifractal, and recurrence quantification analyses were conducted to assess features of person-plus-tool movement dynamics. Trials where people utilized the rod or Enactive Torch demonstrated stable "self-similarity," or indices of healthy and adaptive single systems, regardless of aperture width, trial order, features of the participants' judgments, and participant characteristics. Enactive Torch trials exhibited a somewhat greater range of dynamic fluctuations than the rod trials, as well as less movement recurrence, suggesting that the Enactive Torch allowed for more exploratory movements. Findings provide support for the notion that person-plus-tool systems can be classified as extended cognitive systems and a framework for quantifying system-level properties of these systems. Implications concerning future research on extended cognition are discussed.

V. Raja, D. Villuri, E. Baggs, A. Chemero, and M. Anderson, The Markov blanket trick: On the scope of the free energy principle and active inference”, target article with commentary, Physics of Life Reviews, to appear.

by Tony Chemero and Vicente Raja

The free energy principle (FEP) has been presented as a unified brain theory, as a general princi... more The free energy principle (FEP) has been presented as a unified brain theory, as a general principle for the self-organization of biological systems, and most recently as a principle for a theory of every thing. Additionally, active inference has been proposed as the process theory entailed by FEP that is able to model the full range of biological and cognitive events. In this paper, we challenge these two claims. We argue that FEP is not the general principle it is claimed to be, and that active inference is not the all-encompassing process theory it is purported to be either. The core aspects of our argumentation are that (i) FEP is just a way to generalize Bayesian inference to all domains by the use of a Markov blanket formalism, a generalization we call the Markov blanket trick; and that (ii) active inference presupposes successful perception and action instead of explaining them.

L. Cecutti*, A. Chemero, and S. Lee, “Technology may change cognition without necessarily harming it, Nature Human Behavior, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-021-01162-0

Sung, J., Harris, O., Hensley, N., Chemero, A., and Morehouse, N. (2021), Beyond Cognitive Templates, to appear in Integrative and Comparative Biology

Synopsis. The term 'cognitive template' originated from work in human-based cognitive science to ... more Synopsis. The term 'cognitive template' originated from work in human-based cognitive science to describe a literal, stored, neural representation used in recognition tasks. As the study of cognition has expanded to non-human animals, the term has diffused to describe a wider range of animal cognitive tools and strategies that guide action through the recognition of and discrimination between external states. One potential reason for this non-standardized meaning and variable employment is that researchers interested in the broad range of animal recognition tasks enjoy the simplicity of the cognitive template concept and have allowed it to become shorthand for many dissimilar or unknown neural processes without deep scrutiny of how this metaphor might comport with underlying neurophysiology. We review the functional evidence for cognitive templates in fields such as perception, navigation, communication, and learning, highlighting any neural correlates identified by these studies. We find that the concept of cognitive templates has facilitated valuable exploration at the interface between animal behavior and cognition, but the quest for a literal template has failed to attain mechanistic support at the level of neurophysiology. This may be the result of a misled search for a single physical locus for the 'template' itself. We argue that recognition and discrimination processes are best treated as emergent and, as such, may not be physically localized within single structures of the brain. Rather, current evidence suggests that such tasks are accomplished through synergies between multiple distributed processes in animal nervous systems. We thus advocate for researchers to move towards a more ecological, process-oriented conception, especially when discussing the neural underpinnings of recognition-based cognitive tasks.

What the Jeweller’s Hand Tells the Jeweller’s Brain: Tool Use, Creativity and Embodied Cognition

Philosophy & Technology

The notion that human activity can be characterised in terms of dynamic systems is a well-establi... more 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 excellence, arises from the dynamic systems involved in jewellery making. Knowing whether an action has been completed to a 'good' standard is a significant issue in considering acts in creative disciplines. When making a piece of jewellery, there a several criteria which can define 'good'. These are not only the aesthetics of the finished piece but also the impact of earlier actions on subsequent ones. This suggests that the manner in which an action is coordinated is influenced by the criteria by which the product is judged. We see these criteria as indicating states for the system, e.g. in terms of a space of 'good' outcomes and a complementary space of 'bad' outcomes. The skill of the craftworker is to navigate this space of available states in such a way as to minimise risk, effort and other costs and maximise benefit and quality of the outcome. In terms of postphenomonology, this paper explores Ihde's humantechnology relations and relates these to the concepts developed here.

Nature's Turing Test

Eroding the Boundaries of Cognition: Implications of Embodiment 1

Topics in Cognitive Science, 2012

To accept that cognition is embodied is to question many of the beliefs traditionally held by cog... more To accept that cognition is embodied is to question many of the beliefs traditionally held by cognitive scientists. One key question regards the localization of cognitive faculties. Here we argue that for cognition to be embodied and sometimes embedded, means that the cognitive faculty cannot be localized in a brain area alone. We review recent research on neural reuse, the 1 ⁄ f structure of human activity, tool use, group cognition, and social coordination dynamics that we believe demonstrates how the boundary between the different areas of the brain, the brain and body, and the body and environment is not only blurred but indeterminate. In turn, we propose that cognition is supported by a nested structure of task-specific synergies, which are softly assembled from a variety of neural, bodily, and environmental components (including other individuals), and exhibit interaction dominant dynamics.

Places for reasoning

by Tony Chemero and Melina Gastelum

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 2024

In this article, we explore behaviour settings that enable reasoning and the diversity of constra... more In this article, we explore behaviour settings that enable reasoning and the diversity of constraints that not only limit but also make these behaviour settings possible. We focus specifically on reasoning and surveying how behaviour settings allow for the generation of norms of action that are nevertheless differentiated by geographies and sociocultural systems. These geographies and sociocultural systems involve diverse trajectories for reasoning even within similar behaviour settings. We will touch on places for reasoning like Twitter, social movements, traditional knowledge and laboratories set up for experimentation on our reasoning abilities. We will show how these places and the behaviour settings that emerge in them can be studied in terms of the complexity of the interactions between their participants and in terms of enabling constraints. This article is part of the theme issue 'People, places, things, and communities: expanding behaviour settings theory in the twenty-first century'.

Questioning Two Common Assumptions concerning Group Agency and Group Cognition

by Tony Chemero and Zachary Peck

Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, 2024

In this paper, we identify two common assumptions underlying popular accounts of group agency. Th... more In this paper, we identify two common assumptions underlying popular accounts of group agency. The first assumption is that paradigmatic cases of agency are to be identified with individual organisms, typically human beings. The second assumption is that cognition requires the manipulation of mental representations. Combining these two assumptions generates the status quo account of group agency, namely that a group's agency ontologically depends upon the mental representations of the individuals that constitute the group. We provide a taxonomy of views about group agency along two axes, each corresponding to the extent to which the view endorses (or rejects) one of these two common assumptions. We believe that none of the standard conceptions of group cognition and agency reject both of these two assumptions. After developing brief arguments against both assumptions, we provide a brief sketch of what an account of group agency that rejects both assumptions might look like.

Affordances, phenomenology, pragmatism and the myth of the given

This paper addresses a potential contradiction between the two primary philosophical traditions t... more This paper addresses a potential contradiction between the two primary philosophical traditions that inform Gibsonian ecological psychology: the phenomenological and pragmatist traditions. These two traditions exhibit potentially contradictory intuitions about the epistemic role of direct perception. This epistemic role of direct perception was famously problematized by Sellars' critique of the myth of the given (1956; 1997), and we draw on it here to serve as a test case for the Gibsonian synthesis of phenomenology and pragmatism. While ecological psychology's emphasis on the firstperson perspective of organisms shares in the legacy of the phenomenological tradition, it also tends to assume direct experience as a given, something basic and foundational to knowledge. Pragmatism, on the other hand, is generally suspicious of experience as a foundational given. We argue that Gibson's successful synthesis of these two traditions is also what makes his theory of affordances less susceptible to the myth of the given than some phenomenological approaches to perception. Namely, on the Gibsonian account of perception is always part of an actionperception cycle that takes place in and through embodied action and therefore no one act of perception functions as an epistemic given

L. Favela and A. Chemero, “Ontologically plural systems: A case study from the life sciences”, in M-O Casper and G. Artese (eds.), Methodology of Situated Cognition Research, Springer 2023

by Tony Chemero and Luis Favela

As with much contemporary philosophical and scienti c research, the predominant metaphysics of si... more As with much contemporary philosophical and scienti c research, the predominant metaphysics of situatedness is monism, particularly, physicalism. Here, we claim that while monism is the proper metaphysical thesis, empiricallysupported theories of situated phenomena require ontological pluralism as well. We defend this position via the example of bird ocks, which are situated systems that exhibit ontologically plural features, namely, component dominance and interaction dominance. The description of these features will illustrate that understanding these phenomena requires a coevolution of conceptual and methodological development. Speci cally, ontological features are partially identi ed and evaluated by way of the analyses applied to them. Both descriptive and normative lessons are drawn. Descriptively, research on bird ocks demonstrate that natural phenomena may not be readily cast via a monistic ontology (e.g., component dominant), even at the same scale of investigation. The normative consequence is that while research on situated systems need not reject metaphysical monism, it ought to begin from a pluralistic position concerning ontology.

LLMs differ from human cognition because they are not embodied

Nature Human Behaviour, 2023

Abduction and Deduction in Dynamical Cognitive Science

Topics in Cognitive Science, 2023

This paper reviews the recent history of a subset of research in dynamical cognitive science as p... more This paper reviews the recent history of a subset of research in dynamical cognitive science as progressing from abduction to deduction to induction. To do so, I examine the development of a controversy concerning the use of the interaction dominance of human cognitive systems as an explanation of the ubiquitous 1/f noise, multifractality and complexity matching in human behavior.

Life after "Life After Kant": Other Minds with Jonas and Merleau-Ponty (to appear in Journal of Consciousness Studies, SI on Francisco Varela

This paper examines two 21st century developments in the enactive approach in philosophy and the ... more This paper examines two 21st 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 sensemaking. We look at these two developments through the lens of the problem of other minds. We argue that they are incompatible due to a residual solipsism in Jonasian phenomenology. Ultimately, this leaves enactive theory with a choice between embracing Jonas or embracing the social turn in enactive theory. We recommend replacing Jonasian influences with those from the late work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty. We argue that enactivism can evade the problem of other minds using Merleau-Ponty's discussion of "flesh" and "expression".

E. Feiten*, Z. Peck*, K. Holland, and A. Chemero, “Constructive constraints: On the role of chance and complexity in artistic creativity”, Possibility Studies and Society, 2023.

by Tony Chemero and Tim Feiten

Creativity is sometimes understood as the individual, mental creation of novelty which is then im... more Creativity is sometimes understood as the individual, mental creation of novelty which is then imposed as form onto a material substrate. On this view, constraints would feature only as obstacles in the creative process. In contrast, we support the view that creativity emerges from the interactions between human agents and the material, cultural, and social constraints that comprise a particular situation. In this account, constraints play a key enabling role, scaffolding the space of possibilities in which improvisation and chance give rise to novelty. In this paper, we review experimental work on interpersonal synergies between jazz pianists, which provides a scientific framework from which to approach the complex relationship between chance, constraints, and creativity. We also explore two case studies from the science of complexity and the creative arts in order to substantiate this notion of creative constraints: Anthony Braxton's musical innovation at the intersection between composition and improvisation, and Marcel Duchamp's radical interventions in the fields of sculpture and conceptual art.

J. McKinney*, S. Steffensen, and A. Chemero, “Practice, enactivism, and ecological psychology”, Adaptive Behavior, to appear.

by Tony Chemero and Jay McKinney

Taraneh Wilkinson and Anthony Chemero (under review). "Why it matters that affordances are relations". This manuscript is part of a larger manuscript entitled “On affordances and its entailment in organisms and autonomous systems” (M. Mangalam & D. G. Kelty-Stephen, Eds.)

With the overall consensus that affordances cannot merely be features of the environment, recent ... more With the overall consensus that affordances cannot merely be features of the environment, recent literature has taken a relational approach to affordances to account for how complex interpersonal, social, and cultural dimensions constitute affordances in the human environmental niche. These recent trends draw on phenomenology and discussions in enactivist literature to apply “affordance” to capture a broader spectrum of human experience, but the question remains as to the scope of the term’s use. On a relational and dynamic definition, affordances are enmeshed in temporal scale, can be acquired by learning, and depend on both cultural niches and individual ability. In sum, because affordances are dependent on the ability of an organism, affordances for humans are colored by the full spectrum of human abilities. Debates on potential expansions of the term have thus taken up the social and cultural dimensions of phenomenological experience, increasingly taking on questions of ethics and normativity.

A path to ecological psychology (pre-print version)

Zakaria Djebarra (ed), Affordances in Everyday Life, 2022

Reconsidering perceptual constancy

Philosophical Psychology, 2022

The world shows some degree of invariance, and we perceive this invariance despite a lot of varia... more 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., perceiverand context-independent) local properties of external objects despite variation in the stimulation of sensory organs. In this paper, we argue that the traditional understanding of perceptual constancy should be expanded to include a broader range of phenomena connected to the perception of invariance. Our argument starts from an odd activity: pole balancing. Balancing a pole-shaped object (e.g., a broomstick) on the palm of your hand in order to maintain it in an upright position requires (multimodal) perception and continuous tracking (within a certain range) of a particular kind of global invariant feature in the world. By examining this activity and its connection to the notion of perceptual constancy as it is traditionally understood, we propose an alternative account with the goal of clarifying the relationship between the alleged mechanisms underlying constancy and the philosophical implications of the phenomenon.

Scalar symmetries and strange tools: Learning Analytics and Embodied Design as techno-cultural confluence

by Tim Elmo Feiten and Tony Chemero

International Journal of Child-Computer Interaction

L. Favela, M. Amon, L. Lobo, and A. Chemero, “Empirical Evidence for Extended Cognitive Systems”, Cognitive Science, 45, 2021, https://doi.org/10.1111/cogs.13060

by Tony Chemero and Lorena Lobo

We present an empirically supported theoretical and methodological framework for quantifying the ... more We present an empirically supported theoretical and methodological framework for quantifying the system-level properties of person-plus-tool interactions in order to answer the question: "Are personplus-tool-systems extended cognitive systems?" Nineteen participants provided perceptual judgments regarding their ability to pass through apertures of various widths while using visual information, blindfolded wielding a rod, or blindfolded wielding an Enactive Torch-a vibrotactile sensory-substitution device for detecting distance. Monofractal, multifractal, and recurrence quantification analyses were conducted to assess features of person-plus-tool movement dynamics. Trials where people utilized the rod or Enactive Torch demonstrated stable "self-similarity," or indices of healthy and adaptive single systems, regardless of aperture width, trial order, features of the participants' judgments, and participant characteristics. Enactive Torch trials exhibited a somewhat greater range of dynamic fluctuations than the rod trials, as well as less movement recurrence, suggesting that the Enactive Torch allowed for more exploratory movements. Findings provide support for the notion that person-plus-tool systems can be classified as extended cognitive systems and a framework for quantifying system-level properties of these systems. Implications concerning future research on extended cognition are discussed.

V. Raja, D. Villuri, E. Baggs, A. Chemero, and M. Anderson, The Markov blanket trick: On the scope of the free energy principle and active inference”, target article with commentary, Physics of Life Reviews, to appear.

by Tony Chemero and Vicente Raja

The free energy principle (FEP) has been presented as a unified brain theory, as a general princi... more The free energy principle (FEP) has been presented as a unified brain theory, as a general principle for the self-organization of biological systems, and most recently as a principle for a theory of every thing. Additionally, active inference has been proposed as the process theory entailed by FEP that is able to model the full range of biological and cognitive events. In this paper, we challenge these two claims. We argue that FEP is not the general principle it is claimed to be, and that active inference is not the all-encompassing process theory it is purported to be either. The core aspects of our argumentation are that (i) FEP is just a way to generalize Bayesian inference to all domains by the use of a Markov blanket formalism, a generalization we call the Markov blanket trick; and that (ii) active inference presupposes successful perception and action instead of explaining them.

L. Cecutti*, A. Chemero, and S. Lee, “Technology may change cognition without necessarily harming it, Nature Human Behavior, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-021-01162-0

Sung, J., Harris, O., Hensley, N., Chemero, A., and Morehouse, N. (2021), Beyond Cognitive Templates, to appear in Integrative and Comparative Biology

Synopsis. The term 'cognitive template' originated from work in human-based cognitive science to ... more Synopsis. The term 'cognitive template' originated from work in human-based cognitive science to describe a literal, stored, neural representation used in recognition tasks. As the study of cognition has expanded to non-human animals, the term has diffused to describe a wider range of animal cognitive tools and strategies that guide action through the recognition of and discrimination between external states. One potential reason for this non-standardized meaning and variable employment is that researchers interested in the broad range of animal recognition tasks enjoy the simplicity of the cognitive template concept and have allowed it to become shorthand for many dissimilar or unknown neural processes without deep scrutiny of how this metaphor might comport with underlying neurophysiology. We review the functional evidence for cognitive templates in fields such as perception, navigation, communication, and learning, highlighting any neural correlates identified by these studies. We find that the concept of cognitive templates has facilitated valuable exploration at the interface between animal behavior and cognition, but the quest for a literal template has failed to attain mechanistic support at the level of neurophysiology. This may be the result of a misled search for a single physical locus for the 'template' itself. We argue that recognition and discrimination processes are best treated as emergent and, as such, may not be physically localized within single structures of the brain. Rather, current evidence suggests that such tasks are accomplished through synergies between multiple distributed processes in animal nervous systems. We thus advocate for researchers to move towards a more ecological, process-oriented conception, especially when discussing the neural underpinnings of recognition-based cognitive tasks.

What the Jeweller’s Hand Tells the Jeweller’s Brain: Tool Use, Creativity and Embodied Cognition

Philosophy & Technology

The notion that human activity can be characterised in terms of dynamic systems is a well-establi... more 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 excellence, arises from the dynamic systems involved in jewellery making. Knowing whether an action has been completed to a 'good' standard is a significant issue in considering acts in creative disciplines. When making a piece of jewellery, there a several criteria which can define 'good'. These are not only the aesthetics of the finished piece but also the impact of earlier actions on subsequent ones. This suggests that the manner in which an action is coordinated is influenced by the criteria by which the product is judged. We see these criteria as indicating states for the system, e.g. in terms of a space of 'good' outcomes and a complementary space of 'bad' outcomes. The skill of the craftworker is to navigate this space of available states in such a way as to minimise risk, effort and other costs and maximise benefit and quality of the outcome. In terms of postphenomonology, this paper explores Ihde's humantechnology relations and relates these to the concepts developed here.

Nature's Turing Test

Eroding the Boundaries of Cognition: Implications of Embodiment 1

Topics in Cognitive Science, 2012

To accept that cognition is embodied is to question many of the beliefs traditionally held by cog... more To accept that cognition is embodied is to question many of the beliefs traditionally held by cognitive scientists. One key question regards the localization of cognitive faculties. Here we argue that for cognition to be embodied and sometimes embedded, means that the cognitive faculty cannot be localized in a brain area alone. We review recent research on neural reuse, the 1 ⁄ f structure of human activity, tool use, group cognition, and social coordination dynamics that we believe demonstrates how the boundary between the different areas of the brain, the brain and body, and the body and environment is not only blurred but indeterminate. In turn, we propose that cognition is supported by a nested structure of task-specific synergies, which are softly assembled from a variety of neural, bodily, and environmental components (including other individuals), and exhibit interaction dominant dynamics.

Phenomenology, Stephan Käufer and Anthony Chemero, Polity Press 2015

Radical Embodied Cognitive Science, 2009, MIT Press

Habit, Ontology, and Embodied Cognition Without Borders, Draft Chapter for Caruana and Testa (eds.), Habit: Pragmatist Approaches from Cognitive Neurosciences to Social Sciences

by Tony Chemero, Jay McKinney, and Maki Sato

Habits are fundamental for embodied action. In order to contribute to an embodied account of habi... more Habits are fundamental for embodied action. In order to contribute to an embodied account of habit formation, we will bring together the ontological approaches of William James , Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961 and Nishida Kitarō (1870Kitarō ( -1945. James treated habits as key to the mind, placing them at the center of his ontology. James argues that laws of nature characterize immutable habits of matter, and that living things are "bundles of habits." Merleau-Ponty argues that the 'lived body' determines the character of experience. He often refers to the lived body as the 'habit body,' so habits play a central role in Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology. Nishida argues, following James, that habits structure and stabilize human behavior and exemplify the unity of reality itself. Importantly, this places the embodied agent in an ongoing dialectic with the world. Nishida's nondualistic stance provides the pragmatic, enactive, and phenomenological accounts of embodiment a way to understand the active role of the world.