Jelle Bruineberg
Biographic Data
| ID | 1295624 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Jelle Bruineberg |
| GIVEN NAMES | Jelle |
| FAMILY NAME | Bruineberg |
| SIGNATURE | BRUINEBERG J |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Amsterdam |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-5675-3376 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 12 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 52 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 12 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2014 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Perceptual attention and indeterminacy
In Phenomenology of Perception , Merleau-Ponty criticizes what he calls “Empiricist” and “Intellectualist” accounts of perception. One of his central criticisms is that both misconstrue the relationship between perception and attention. As a result, neither can tell a coherent story about the role of attention in perceptual knowledge. In this paper, we extract the core lessons of Merleau-Ponty’s discussion and apply them to some prominent contemp…
Rethinking the cognitive foundations of the attention economy
The attention economy is the economic system in which human attention is the scarce resource. This literature takes a particular passage in Herbert Simon’s seminal Chapter Designing Organization for an Information-rich World as its point of departure: information abundance implies attention scarcity. My aim in this paper is firstly to provide an exposition of the assumptions that underlie Simon’s statement and the context in which he makes these …
Structuring embodied minds
Perception is, at least sometimes, something we do. This paper is concerned with how to account for perceptual agency (i.e., the active aspect of perception). Eilan divides accounts of perceptual agency up into two camps: enactivist theories hold that perceptual agency is accounted for by the involvement of bodily action, while mental theories hold that perceptual agency is accounted for by the involvement of mental action in perception. In Struc…
Predictive Minds Can Be Humean Minds
The predictive processing literature contains at least two different versions of the framework with different theoretical resources at their disposal. One version appeals to so-called optimistic priors to explain agents’ motivation to act (call this optimistic predictive processing). A more recent version appeals to expected free energy minimization to explain how agents can decide between different action policies (call this preference predictiv…
Affordances and the Logic of the Gift
Embodying mental affordances
The concept of affordances is rapidly gaining traction in the philosophy of mind and cognitive sciences. Affordances are opportunities for action provided by the environment. An important open question is whether affordances can be used to explain mental action such as attention, counting, and imagination. In this paper, we critically discuss McClelland’s (‘The Mental Affordance Hypothesis’, 2020, Mind, 129(514), pp. 401–427) mental affordance hy…
Metastable attunement and real-life skilled behavior
In everyday situations, and particularly in some sport and working contexts, humans face an inherently unpredictable and uncertain environment. All sorts of unpredictable and unexpected things happen but typically people are able to skillfully adapt. In this paper, we address two key questions in cognitive science. First, how is an agent able to bring its previously learned skill to bear on a novel situation? Second, how can an agent be both sens…
What’s Inside Your Head Once You’ve Figured Out What Your Head’s Inside Of
In this article, we investigate the foundations for a Gibsonian neuroscience. There is an increasingly influential current in neuroscience based on pragmatic and selectionist principles, which we think can contribute to ecological psychology. Starting from ecological psychology, we identify three basic constraints any Gibsonian neuroscience needs to adhere to: nonreconstructive perception, vicarious functioning, and selectionist self-organization…
General ecological information supports engagement with affordances for ‘higher’ cognition
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 ‘hig…
The anticipating brain is not a scientist
In this paper, we argue for a theoretical separation of the free-energy principle from Helmholtzian accounts of the predictive brain. The free-energy principle is a theoretical framework capturing the imperative for biological self-organization in information-theoretic terms. The free-energy principle has typically been connected with a Bayesian theory of predictive coding, and the latter is often taken to support a Helmholtzian theory of percept…
Surfing uncertainty
Predicting the binding mode of flexible polypeptides to proteins is an important task that falls outside the domain of applicability of most small molecule and protein−protein docking tools. Here, we test the small molecule flexible ligand docking program Glide on a set of 19 non-α-helical peptides and systematically improve pose prediction accuracy by enhancing Glide sampling for flexible polypeptides. In addition, scoring of the poses was impro…
Self-organization, free energy minimization, and optimal grip on a field of affordances
In this paper, we set out to develop a theoretical and conceptual framework for the new field of Radical Embodied Cognitive Neuroscience. This framework should be able to integrate insights from several relevant disciplines: theory on embodied cognition, ecological psychology, phenomenology, dynamical systems theory, and neurodynamics. We suggest that the main task of Radical Embodied Cognitive Neuroscience is to investigate the phenomenon of ski…
The anticipating brain is not a scientist
In this paper, we argue for a theoretical separation of the free-energy principle from Helmholtzian accounts of the predictive brain. The free-energy principle is a theoretical framework capturing the imperative for biological self-organization in information-theoretic terms. The free-energy principle has typically been connected with a Bayesian theory of predictive coding, and the latter is often taken to support a Helmholtzian theory of percept…
General ecological information supports engagement with affordances for ‘higher’ cognition
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 ‘hig…
Metastable attunement and real-life skilled behavior
In everyday situations, and particularly in some sport and working contexts, humans face an inherently unpredictable and uncertain environment. All sorts of unpredictable and unexpected things happen but typically people are able to skillfully adapt. In this paper, we address two key questions in cognitive science. First, how is an agent able to bring its previously learned skill to bear on a novel situation? Second, how can an agent be both sens…
Self-organization, free energy minimization, and optimal grip on a field of affordances
In this paper, we set out to develop a theoretical and conceptual framework for the new field of Radical Embodied Cognitive Neuroscience. This framework should be able to integrate insights from several relevant disciplines: theory on embodied cognition, ecological psychology, phenomenology, dynamical systems theory, and neurodynamics. We suggest that the main task of Radical Embodied Cognitive Neuroscience is to investigate the phenomenon of ski…
Surfing uncertainty
Predicting the binding mode of flexible polypeptides to proteins is an important task that falls outside the domain of applicability of most small molecule and protein−protein docking tools. Here, we test the small molecule flexible ligand docking program Glide on a set of 19 non-α-helical peptides and systematically improve pose prediction accuracy by enhancing Glide sampling for flexible polypeptides. In addition, scoring of the poses was impro…
The anticipating brain is not a scientist
In this paper, we argue for a theoretical separation of the free-energy principle from Helmholtzian accounts of the predictive brain. The free-energy principle is a theoretical framework capturing the imperative for biological self-organization in information-theoretic terms. The free-energy principle has typically been connected with a Bayesian theory of predictive coding, and the latter is often taken to support a Helmholtzian theory of percept…
What’s Inside Your Head Once You’ve Figured Out What Your Head’s Inside Of
In this article, we investigate the foundations for a Gibsonian neuroscience. There is an increasingly influential current in neuroscience based on pragmatic and selectionist principles, which we think can contribute to ecological psychology. Starting from ecological psychology, we identify three basic constraints any Gibsonian neuroscience needs to adhere to: nonreconstructive perception, vicarious functioning, and selectionist self-organization…
General ecological information supports engagement with affordances for ‘higher’ cognition
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 ‘hig…
Embodying mental affordances
The concept of affordances is rapidly gaining traction in the philosophy of mind and cognitive sciences. Affordances are opportunities for action provided by the environment. An important open question is whether affordances can be used to explain mental action such as attention, counting, and imagination. In this paper, we critically discuss McClelland’s (‘The Mental Affordance Hypothesis’, 2020, Mind, 129(514), pp. 401–427) mental affordance hy…
Metastable attunement and real-life skilled behavior
In everyday situations, and particularly in some sport and working contexts, humans face an inherently unpredictable and uncertain environment. All sorts of unpredictable and unexpected things happen but typically people are able to skillfully adapt. In this paper, we address two key questions in cognitive science. First, how is an agent able to bring its previously learned skill to bear on a novel situation? Second, how can an agent be both sens…
Affordances and the Logic of the Gift
Structuring embodied minds
Perception is, at least sometimes, something we do. This paper is concerned with how to account for perceptual agency (i.e., the active aspect of perception). Eilan divides accounts of perceptual agency up into two camps: enactivist theories hold that perceptual agency is accounted for by the involvement of bodily action, while mental theories hold that perceptual agency is accounted for by the involvement of mental action in perception. In Struc…
Predictive Minds Can Be Humean Minds
The predictive processing literature contains at least two different versions of the framework with different theoretical resources at their disposal. One version appeals to so-called optimistic priors to explain agents’ motivation to act (call this optimistic predictive processing). A more recent version appeals to expected free energy minimization to explain how agents can decide between different action policies (call this preference predictiv…
Rethinking the cognitive foundations of the attention economy
The attention economy is the economic system in which human attention is the scarce resource. This literature takes a particular passage in Herbert Simon’s seminal Chapter Designing Organization for an Information-rich World as its point of departure: information abundance implies attention scarcity. My aim in this paper is firstly to provide an exposition of the assumptions that underlie Simon’s statement and the context in which he makes these …
Perceptual attention and indeterminacy
In Phenomenology of Perception , Merleau-Ponty criticizes what he calls “Empiricist” and “Intellectualist” accounts of perception. One of his central criticisms is that both misconstrue the relationship between perception and attention. As a result, neither can tell a coherent story about the role of attention in perceptual knowledge. In this paper, we extract the core lessons of Merleau-Ponty’s discussion and apply them to some prominent contemp…
Embodied and Extended Cognition (11 works) · Psychology (11 works) · Epistemology (9 works) · Cognitive science (8 works) · Philosophy (8 works) · Cognitive psychology (6 works) · Computer Science (6 works) · Action Observation and Synchronization (5 works) · Affordance (5 works) · Artificial Intelligence (4 works)