Michael D Kirchhoff
Biographic Data
| ID | 972406 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Michael D Kirchhoff |
| GIVEN NAMES | Michael D |
| FAMILY NAME | Kirchhoff |
| SIGNATURE | KIRCHHOFF M D |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Wollongong |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-2530-0718 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 16 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 55 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 16 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2013 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Idealization and mental fictionalism
Cognitive scientists speak of codes, signals, encoding, decoding, computation, representation, and information-processing. The orthodox view is to take talk of neuronal signaling and computational processes over mental representations literally – as as truth-conditioned descriptions of brain and cognitive activity. Mental fictionalism challenges the orthodox view. Mental fictionalism is, broadly speaking, the view that talk about mental represent…
Beyond the extended mind
Clark and Chalmers (Analysis 58:7–19, 1998) landmark paper, The Extended Mind, launched a thousand ships and changed the contours of the larger sea of theorizing about cognition. Over the past twenty-six years, it has led to intense philosophical debates about of the constitutive bounds of mind and cognition and generated multiple waves of work taking the form of various attempts to clarify and defend its core thesis. The extended mind thesis sta…
The Literalist Fallacy and the Free Energy Principle
Breaking boundaries
An Embodied Predictive Processing Theory of Pain Experience
This paper aims to provide a theoretical framework for explaining the subjective character of pain experience in terms of what we will call ‘embodied predictive processing’. The predictive processing (PP) theory is a family of views that take perception, action, emotion and cognition to all work together in the service of prediction error minimisation. In this paper we propose an embodied perspective on the PP theory we call the ‘embodied predict…
Extended active inference
Cognitive niche construction is the process whereby organisms create and maintain cause–effect models of their niche as guides for fitness influencing behavior. Extended mind theory claims that cognitive processes extend beyond the brain to include predictable states of the world. Active inference and predictive processing in cognitive science assume that organisms embody predictive (i.e., generative) models of the world optimized by standard cog…
Between pebbles and organisms
How to determine the boundaries of the mind
Multiscale integration
We present a multiscale integrationist interpretation of the boundaries of cognitive systems, using the Markov blanket formalism of the variational free energy principle. This interpretation is intended as a corrective for the philosophical debate over internalist and externalist interpretations of cognitive boundaries; we stake out a compromise position. We first survey key principles of new radical (extended, enactive, embodied) views of cognit…
Enactive social cognition
The Body in Action
This chapter considers the possible convergence of predictive processing and embodied cognition. It is argued that the embodied view of cognition comprises a subset (if not all) of the following theses: (1) the constitutive thesis, (2) the nonrepresentational thesis, (3) the cognitive-affective inseparability thesis, and (4) the metaplasticity thesis. It is then argued that predictive processing is prima facie at odds with some (if not all) of th…
The Markov blankets of life
This work addresses the autonomous organization of biological systems. It does so by considering the boundaries of biological systems, from individual cells to Home sapiens , in terms of the presence of Markov blankets under the active inference scheme—a corollary of the free energy principle. A Markov blanket defines the boundaries of a system in a statistical sense. Here we consider how a collective of Markov blankets can self-assemble into a g…
Predictive brains and embodied, enactive cognition
Autopoiesis, free energy, and the life–mind continuity thesis
Extended Cognition & the Causal‐Constitutive Fallacy
Philosophical accounts of the constitution relation have been explicated in terms of synchronic relations between higher‐ and lower‐level entities. Such accounts, I argue, are temporally austere or impoverished, and are consequently unable to make sense of the diachronic and dynamic character of constitution in dynamical systems generally and dynamically extended cognitive processes in particular. In this paper, my target domain is extended cogni…
Cognitive Transformations and Extended Expertise
Expertise is extended by becoming immersed in cultural practices. We look at an example of mathematical expertise in which immersion in cognitive practices results in the transformation of expert performance
Extended Cognition & the Causal‐Constitutive Fallacy
Philosophical accounts of the constitution relation have been explicated in terms of synchronic relations between higher‐ and lower‐level entities. Such accounts, I argue, are temporally austere or impoverished, and are consequently unable to make sense of the diachronic and dynamic character of constitution in dynamical systems generally and dynamically extended cognitive processes in particular. In this paper, my target domain is extended cogni…
Autopoiesis, free energy, and the life–mind continuity thesis
Multiscale integration
We present a multiscale integrationist interpretation of the boundaries of cognitive systems, using the Markov blanket formalism of the variational free energy principle. This interpretation is intended as a corrective for the philosophical debate over internalist and externalist interpretations of cognitive boundaries; we stake out a compromise position. We first survey key principles of new radical (extended, enactive, embodied) views of cognit…
Cognitive Transformations and Extended Expertise
Expertise is extended by becoming immersed in cultural practices. We look at an example of mathematical expertise in which immersion in cognitive practices results in the transformation of expert performance
The Literalist Fallacy and the Free Energy Principle
How to determine the boundaries of the mind
Predictive brains and embodied, enactive cognition
Between pebbles and organisms
Extended Cognition & the Causal‐Constitutive Fallacy
Philosophical accounts of the constitution relation have been explicated in terms of synchronic relations between higher‐ and lower‐level entities. Such accounts, I argue, are temporally austere or impoverished, and are consequently unable to make sense of the diachronic and dynamic character of constitution in dynamical systems generally and dynamically extended cognitive processes in particular. In this paper, my target domain is extended cogni…
Cognitive Transformations and Extended Expertise
Expertise is extended by becoming immersed in cultural practices. We look at an example of mathematical expertise in which immersion in cognitive practices results in the transformation of expert performance
The Body in Action
This chapter considers the possible convergence of predictive processing and embodied cognition. It is argued that the embodied view of cognition comprises a subset (if not all) of the following theses: (1) the constitutive thesis, (2) the nonrepresentational thesis, (3) the cognitive-affective inseparability thesis, and (4) the metaplasticity thesis. It is then argued that predictive processing is prima facie at odds with some (if not all) of th…
The Markov blankets of life
This work addresses the autonomous organization of biological systems. It does so by considering the boundaries of biological systems, from individual cells to Home sapiens , in terms of the presence of Markov blankets under the active inference scheme—a corollary of the free energy principle. A Markov blanket defines the boundaries of a system in a statistical sense. Here we consider how a collective of Markov blankets can self-assemble into a g…
Predictive brains and embodied, enactive cognition
Autopoiesis, free energy, and the life–mind continuity thesis
Enactive social cognition
Between pebbles and organisms
How to determine the boundaries of the mind
Multiscale integration
We present a multiscale integrationist interpretation of the boundaries of cognitive systems, using the Markov blanket formalism of the variational free energy principle. This interpretation is intended as a corrective for the philosophical debate over internalist and externalist interpretations of cognitive boundaries; we stake out a compromise position. We first survey key principles of new radical (extended, enactive, embodied) views of cognit…
An Embodied Predictive Processing Theory of Pain Experience
This paper aims to provide a theoretical framework for explaining the subjective character of pain experience in terms of what we will call ‘embodied predictive processing’. The predictive processing (PP) theory is a family of views that take perception, action, emotion and cognition to all work together in the service of prediction error minimisation. In this paper we propose an embodied perspective on the PP theory we call the ‘embodied predict…
Extended active inference
Cognitive niche construction is the process whereby organisms create and maintain cause–effect models of their niche as guides for fitness influencing behavior. Extended mind theory claims that cognitive processes extend beyond the brain to include predictable states of the world. Active inference and predictive processing in cognitive science assume that organisms embody predictive (i.e., generative) models of the world optimized by standard cog…
Breaking boundaries
Idealization and mental fictionalism
Cognitive scientists speak of codes, signals, encoding, decoding, computation, representation, and information-processing. The orthodox view is to take talk of neuronal signaling and computational processes over mental representations literally – as as truth-conditioned descriptions of brain and cognitive activity. Mental fictionalism challenges the orthodox view. Mental fictionalism is, broadly speaking, the view that talk about mental represent…
Beyond the extended mind
Clark and Chalmers (Analysis 58:7–19, 1998) landmark paper, The Extended Mind, launched a thousand ships and changed the contours of the larger sea of theorizing about cognition. Over the past twenty-six years, it has led to intense philosophical debates about of the constitutive bounds of mind and cognition and generated multiple waves of work taking the form of various attempts to clarify and defend its core thesis. The extended mind thesis sta…
The Literalist Fallacy and the Free Energy Principle
Psychology (14 works) · Cognitive science (13 works) · Embodied and Extended Cognition (12 works) · Epistemology (12 works) · Philosophy (12 works) · Computer Science (10 works) · Cognition (8 works) · Metaphysics (7 works) · Artificial Intelligence (6 works) · Neural dynamics and brain function (6 works)