Intertwined Creatures - by Anthony Chemero (Paperback)

About the Book

Anthony Chemero--both a philosopher and a cognitive scientist--develops a new understanding of the mind that centers embodiment and social interaction.

Book Synopsis

In one common view, the mind is immaterial, internal, and invisible. From this perspective, the mind is inherently individual and isolated: It is unknowable from the outside, separated from the world and from other minds. Anthony Chemero--both a philosopher and a cognitive scientist--offers a powerful challenge to this theory of mind. Bringing together philosophical insight and empirical data, he develops a new understanding of the mind that centers embodiment and social interaction.

According to Chemero, the mind is intertwined with the world: It depends on the body, the surrounding environment, and the people with whom an individual interacts. He shows that cutting-edge research in cognitive science provides striking experimental evidence for this concept of the intertwined self. Chemero explores the philosophical, moral, and political implications of the claim that the self is necessarily interwoven with the world and with others, drawing connections to phenomenology, critical theory, and feminist political theory. Deeply interdisciplinary and engagingly written, Intertwined Creatures makes an urgent case for seeing the self as social--especially in the age of AI--with radical consequences for ethics and politics.

Review Quotes

Chemero has produced another phenomenal book, this time in the grand tradition of philosophical anthropology. He applies the concept of a synergy, which has had a significant impact in biology and complex systems theory, to illuminate and ground the related notions of interpersonal intertwining from continental phenomenology and solidarity from American pragmatism. The result is a unique and exciting study of who we are as persons.--Michael L. Anderson, Rotman Family Foundation Canada Research Chair in Philosophy of Science, University of Western Ontario

In Intertwined Creatures, Chemero deftly covers the spectrum of radical ecological and enactive philosophies and the interactive principles of embodied cognitive science. Brains, bodies, and environments that include technologies and especially other people and cultural practices--these are elements that form the "intertwined" mind. In extraordinarily clear terms, Chemero builds bridges to pragmatist, continental, and feminist philosophies, demonstrating natural connections and extending the relevance of ecological-enactive thinking to ethical and social-political contexts.--Shaun Gallagher, author of The Self and Its Disorders

In an age where AI is the zeitgeist, the individual brain is a computer, and thinking is computation, Anthony Chemero provides a compelling rebuttal--backed by empirical research and dynamical systems modeling--that favors what he calls the intertwined self. Chemero leads an impressive group of philosophers and scientists who conceive of a mind centered on embodiment, environment, and other members of the human species. Those seeking an antidote to AI, or at least a complement to it, should take a dose of Intertwined Creatures as soon as possible. They won't regret it.--Scott Kelso, author of Dynamic Patterns: The Self-Organization of Brain and Behavior

This is an original, engaging, and erudite book that makes a critical intervention into contemporary philosophies of embodiment. Challenging standard views in both cognitive science and philosophy of mind, Chemero's conception of the intertwined self redraws bodily boundaries and identity categories in a way that radically reorients ethical and political theory.--Moira Gatens, Department of Philosophy, University of Sydney

About the Author

Anthony Chemero is University Distinguished Research Professor of Philosophy and Psychology at the University of Cincinnati. He is the author of Radical Embodied Cognitive Science (2009) and coauthor of Phenomenology: An Introduction (second edition, 2021).