A proposal for a new way to do cognitive science argues that cognition should be described in terms of agent-environment dynamics rather than computation and representation. While philosophers of mind have been arguing over the status of mental representations in cognitive science, cognitive scientists have been quietly engaged in studying perception, action, and cognition without explaining them in terms of mental representation. In this book, Anthony Chemero describes this nonrepresentational approach (which he terms radical embodied cognitive science), puts it in historical and conceptual context, and applies it to traditional problems in the philosophy of mind. Radical embodied cognitive science is a direct descendant of the American naturalist psychology of William James and John Dewey, and follows them in viewing perception and cognition to be understandable only in terms of action in the environment. Chemero argues that cognition should be described in terms of agent-environment dynamics rather than in terms of computation and representation. After outlining this orientation to cognition, Chemero proposes a methodology: dynamical systems theory, which would explain things dynamically and without reference to representation. He also advances a background theory: Gibsonian ecological psychology, “shored up” and clarified. Chemero then looks at some traditional philosophical problems (reductionism, epistemological skepticism, metaphysical realism, consciousness) through the lens of radical embodied cognitive science and concludes that the comparative ease with which it resolves these problems, combined with its empirical promise, makes this approach to cognitive science a rewarding one. “Jerry Fodor is my favorite philosopher,” Chemero writes in his preface, adding, “I think that Jerry Fodor is wrong about nearly everything.” With this book, Chemero explains nonrepresentational, dynamical, ecological cognitive science as clearly and as rigorously as Jerry Fodor explained computational cognitive science in his classic work The Language of Thought. Bradford Books imprint

A theory of affordances is outlined according to which affordances are relations between the abilities of animals and features of the environment. As relations, affordances are both real and perceivable but are not properties of either the environment or the animal. I argue that this theory has advantages over extant theories of affordances and briefly discuss the relations among affordances and niches, perceivers, and events.The primary difference between direct and inferential theories of perception concerns the location of perceptual content, the meaning of our perceptions. In inferential theories of perception, these meanings arise inside animals, based on their interactions with the physical environment. Light, for example, bumps into receptors, causing a sensation. The animal (or its brain) performs inferences on the sensation, yielding a meaningful perception. In direct theories of perception, on the other hand, meaning is in the environment, and perception does not depend on meaning-conferring inferences; instead, the animal simply gathers information from a meaning-laden environment. However, if the environment contains meanings, then it cannot be merely physical. This places a heavy theoretical burden on direct theories of perception, a burden so severe that it may outweigh all the advantages to conceiving perception as direct. 1 This is because direct theories of perception require a new ontology, one that is at odds with today's physicalist, reductionist consensus that says the world just is the physical world, full stop. ECOLOGICAL PSYCHOLOGY, 15(2), 181-195 Copyright © 2003, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. Requests for reprints should be sent to Anthony Chemero, Scientific and Philosophical Studies of Mind Program, Department of Psychology, Franklin and Marshall College, Lancaster, PA 17604-3003. E-mail: tony.chemero@fandm.edu 1 Among these advantages are that direct perception is more true to phenomenology, is more realistic from an evolutionary point of view, and short-circuits traditional skeptical worries.

This paper briefly introduces radical embodied cognitive science (RECS) and places it in historical perspective. Radical embodied cognitive science is an interdisciplinary approach to psychology that combines ideas from the phenomenological tradition with ecological psychology and dynamical systems modeling. It is argued that radical embodied cognitive science has a long history; it is as a direct descendent of the Jamesian functionalist approach to psychology. This approach to psychology is contrasted with the current trend of supplementing standard cognitive psychology with occasional references to the body. In contrast with these trends, radical embodied cognitive science is skeptical of the explanatory usefulness of mental representations. The future prospects of radical embodied cognitive science and the broader functionalist framework are discussed.

Effectively coordinating one’s behavior with those of others is essential for successful multiagent activity. Understanding the dynamical principles that underlie such coordination has received increased attention in recent years due to a growing interest in behavioral synchrony and complex systems phenomena. Here we examined the behavioral dynamics of a novel, multiagent shepherding task, in which pairs of individuals had to contain small herds of virtual sheep to the center of a virtual game field. Initially, all pairs adopted a complementary, search and recover mode of behavioral coordination. Over the course of game play, however, a significant number of pairs spontaneously discovered a more effective coupled oscillatory containment mode of behavior. Analysis and modeling revealed that both behavioral modes were defined by the task’s underlying dynamics and, moreover, reflected context specific realizations of the lawful dynamics that define functional shepherding behavior more generally.

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