Dr. Tom Froese

Abstract:

All human affairs assume a priori that people are conscious agents, and that our perspective genuinely makes a difference to behavior. Yet natural science has been in apparent tension with this genuine subjectivity, because in principle nothing but material processes are measurable in our bodies. I therefore propose a novel framework centered on the prospect that the role of mental activity is related to an underdetermination of the material properties of our living embodiment. The upshot of irruption theory is that we are conscious agents who can rely on our first-person perspective to make an effective difference with our embodied actions, yet without being able (nor needing) to directly control our body’s material processes.

About Tom:

Dr. Tom Froese is Assistant Professor at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University (OIST), where he heads the Embodied Cognitive Science Unit. He serves as Editor-in-Chief of the academic journal Adaptive Behavior. Froese has an MEng in Cybernetics and Computer Science, and a DPhil. in Cognitive Science, both from England. Previously he held a JSPS Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Tokyo, and was faculty member at IIMAS-UNAM. For over a decade Froese has been investigating the phenomenology and dynamics of agent-environment interaction.

Category: 

Cognitive Science