Kirchhoff, Michael

Overview

Michael Kirchhoff studied at the University of Aarhus, Denmark, obtaining his PhD on the metaphysics of the extended mind hypothesis from Macquarie University in 2014. Michael is a chief investigator on an ARC DP on "Minds in Skilful Performance" and has previously received grants from the John Templeton Foundation. Some outcomes of these grants are: the special issue in Synthese on 'Predictive Brains and Embodied, Enactive Cognition', a co-authored with Routledge entitled 'Extended Consciousness and Predictive Processing: A Third-Wave View' and numerous single and jointly authored papers in top-rated journals such as the Australasian Journal of Philosophy, Philosophical Studies, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Synthese, Entropy, the Journal for the Royal Society Interface, and many more.

Michael is currently working on completing a Future Fellowship application to be submitted in the upcoming FT round.

Areas of specialisation (keywords):

Philosophy of mind
Philosophy of cognitive science
Metaphysics
Theoretical biology
Cognitive neuroscience

Top Publications

Year	Title
2018	Predictive processing, perceiving and imagining: Is to perceive to imagine, or something close to it? Published in Philosophical Studies: an international journal for philosophy in the analytic tradition
2018	Predictive brains and embodied, enactive cognition: an introduction to the special issue Published in Synthese: an international journal for epistemology, methodology and philosophy of science
2019	Extended Consciousness and Predictive Processing: a Third Wave View

Research Areas

Research Overview

Michael research interests include topics in naturalistic philosophy of mind, especially the relation between life and mind, the Bayesian brain hypothesis, the free energy principle, consciousness, and more philosophy of science motivated topics such as mechanistic and non-mechanistic explanation.

Michael is the associate editor of Adaptive Behavior

Available as Research Supervisor

Member Of

Australasian Association of Philosophy Discipline Leader for Philosophy
School of Humanities and Social Inquiry Discipline Leader for Philosophy 2019 - 2021

Selected Publications

Journal Article

Year	Title
2022	An Embodied Predictive Processing Theory of Pain Experience Published In Review of Philosophy and Psychology
2022	Extended active inference: Constructing predictive cognition beyond skulls Published In Mind and Language
2022	Free energy: a user’s guide Published In Biology and Philosophy
2022	Scientific realism about Friston blankets without literalism Published In Behavioral and Brain Sciences
2022	The Literalist Fallacy and the Free Energy Principle: Model-Building, Scientific Realism, and Instrumentalism Published In The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science
2022	The Problem of Meaning: The Free Energy Principle and Artificial Agency Published In Frontiers in Neurorobotics
2021	A universal ethology challenge to the free energy principle: species of inference and good regulators Published In Biology and Philosophy
2021	Between pebbles and organisms: weaving autonomy into the Markov blanket Published In Synthese
2021	Multiscale integration: beyond internalism and externalism Published In Synthese
2020	Anticipatory action active inference in embodied cognitive activity Published In Journal of Consciousness Studies
2020	Attuning to the World: The Diachronic Constitution of the Extended Conscious Mind Published In Frontiers in Psychology
2020	On Markov blankets and hierarchical self-organisation Published In Journal of Theoretical Biology
2020	Unfulfilled prophecies in sport performance: Active inference and the choking effect Published In Journal of Consciousness Studies
2019	A tale of two densities: active inference is enactive inference Published In Adaptive Behavior: animals, animats, software agents, robots, adaptive systems
2019	Breaking explanatory boundaries: flexible borders and plastic minds Published In Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences
2019	Enactive social cognition: Diachronic constitution & coupled anticipation Published In Consciousness and Cognition
2019	How to determine the boundaries of the mind: a Markov blanket proposal Published In Synthese: an international journal for epistemology, methodology and philosophy of science
2018	A New, Better BET: Rescuing and Revising Basic Emotion Theory Published In Frontiers in Psychology
2018	Autopoiesis, free energy, and the life–mind continuity thesis Published In Synthese: an international journal for epistemology, methodology and philosophy of science
2018	Enactivism and predictive processing: a non-representational view Published In Philosophical Explorations: an international journal for the philosophy of mind and action
2018	Hierarchical Markov blankets and adaptive active inference: Comment on “Answering Schrödinger's question: A free-energy formulation” by Maxwell James Désormeau Ramstead et al. Published In Physics of Life Reviews
2018	Predictive brains and embodied, enactive cognition: an introduction to the special issue Published In Synthese: an international journal for epistemology, methodology and philosophy of science
2018	Predictive processing, perceiving and imagining: Is to perceive to imagine, or something close to it? Published In Philosophical Studies: an international journal for philosophy in the analytic tradition
2018	The Markov blankets of life: autonomy, active inference and the free energy principle Published In Journal of the Royal Society Interface
2017	From mutual manipulation to cognitive extension: challenges and implications Published In Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences
2017	Where There Is Life There Is Mind: In Support of a Strong Life-Mind Continuity Thesis Published In Entropy: international and interdisciplinary journal of entropy and information studies
2016	Authors' response: Mind never the gap, redux Published In Constructivist Foundations
2016	Composition and transactive memory systems Published In Philosophical Explorations: an international journal for the philosophy of mind and action
2016	Dreaming: Ontological and Methodological Considerations Published In Constructivist Foundations
2016	Mind Never The Gap, Redux Response Published In CONSTRUCTIVIST FOUNDATIONS
2016	Never Mind the Gap: Neurophenomenology, Radical Enactivism, and the Hard Problem of Consciosuness Published In Constructivist Foundations
2015	Cognitive assembly: towards a diachronic conception of composition Published In Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences
2015	Experiential fantasies, prediction, and enactive minds Published In Journal of Consciousness Studies: controversies in science and the humanities
2015	Extended cognition & the causal-constitutive fallacy: in search for a diachronic and dynamical conception of constitution Published In Philosophy and Phenomenological Research
2015	Looking beyond the brain: social neuroscience meets narrative practice Published In Cognitive Systems Research
2015	Species of realization and the free energy principle Published In Australasian Journal of Philosophy
2015	The enactive roots of STEM: rethinking educational design in mathematics Published In Educational Psychology Review
2014	Book review: Feeling Extended: Sociality as Extended Body-Becoming-Mind by D Robinson Published In Journal of Consciousness Studies: controversies in science and the humanities
2014	Cognitive transformations and extended expertise Published In Educational Philosophy and Theory
2014	Extended cognition & constitution: Re-evaluating the constitutive claim of extended cognition Published In Philosophical Psychology
2014	Extensive enactivism: why keep it all in? Published In Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
2014	In search of ontological emergence: diachronic, but non-supervenient Published In Axiomathes
2013	Book review: Enaction: toward a new paradigm for cognitive science Published In Philosophical Psychology
2012	Distributed cognitive agency in virtue epistemology Published In Philosophical Explorations: an international journal for the philosophy of mind and action
2012	Extended cognition and fixed properties : steps to a third-wave version of extended cognition Published In Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences
2011	Anti-representationalism: Not a Well-founded Theory of Cognition Published In Res Cogitans: Journal of Philosophy
2009	Material agency: A theoretical framework for ascribing agency to material culture Published In Techne: Research in Philosophy and Technology
2009	Material agency: a theoretical framework for ascribing agency to material culture Published In Techne: Research in Philosophy and Technology

Book

Year	Title
2019	Extended Consciousness and Predictive Processing: a Third Wave View Publisher London, United Kingdom

Chapter

Year	Title
2019	A multi-scale view of the emergent complexity of life: A free-energy proposal Published In Springer Proceedings in Complexity Publisher Springer International Publishing
2019	Emotions on the Playing Field Published In HANDBOOK OF EMBODIED COGNITION AND SPORT PSYCHOLOGY Publisher MIT PRESS
2018	The Body in Action Published In The Oxford Handbook of 4E Cognition Publisher Oxford University Press
2018	The Body in Action Published In The Oxford Handbook of 4E Cognition Publisher Oxford University Press (OUP)

Conference Paper

Year	Title
2010	Pressing agency beyond the flesh: three programmatic arguments grounding the notion of material agency Published In Copenhagan Working Papers on Design

Other Publications

Year	Title
2017	Biological self-organisation and Markov blankets

Investigator On

Year	Title
2017	Minds in Skilled Performance: Explanatory Framework and Comparative Study Awarded by: Australian Research Council (ARC) Funding Scheme: Discovery Projects
2016	Michael Kirchhoff - Academic Cross - Training Fellowship Awarded by: John Templeton Foundation Funding Scheme: ACT Fellowship
2015 - 2016	Probabilitizing Consciousness: implications and new directions Awarded by: John Templeton Foundation Funding Scheme: Cambridge New Directions in the Study of Mind

Other Research Activities

Junior Fellowship awarded by the University of Bochum, Center for Mind, Brain and Cognitive Evolution Fellow 2017

Available as Research Supervisor

Potential Supervision Topics

Philosophy of mind and cognition:
- Are predictive processing theories of cognition compatible with enactivism?
- Are life and mind deeply connected?
- Can the free energy principle unify and explain the structure and function of biological and cognitive systems?
- What might a probabilistic view of cognition look like?
- If perception is probabilistic, why don’t we see the world probabilistically?
- Is there a distinction between perception and thought?
- Is there such a thing as cognitive penetration?
- Are 4E-approaches to cognition – embodied, enactive, embedded, ecological, extended – theoretically compatible?
- Do minds only extend sometimes or are they always naturally extensive?
- Can there be such a thing as extended consciousness?
- Can we understand cognitive scaffolding through niche construction?
- Is there really a hard problem of consciousness? Can it be solved or only dissolved?
- Is neurophenomenology credible?
- Can neurophenomenology make any progress on the hard problem of consciousness?
- Is perception contentful, at all?
- Is perception cognitively penetrable?
- And much more
Philosophy of Science:
- What is the explanatory reach of mechanistic explanation?
- Must interventionist approaches to explanation in science target difference-makers at the constituent level?
- Can dynamical systems be explanatory?
- What is causation?
- How does multi scale modelling work in science?
Metaphysics:
- Does physics fix all the facts? Are facts all there is?
- Is any version of idealism credible?
- Do the life and mind sciences require a process ontology?
- How can we make sense of grounding relations (constitution, composition, realisation) in the sciences of life and mind?
- Bottom-up causation doesn’t seem to be a problem. But what about top-down causation?
- What is the nature of time and its role in contemporary cognitive science?

Teaching Activities

PHIL227 The Meaning of Life Subject Coordinator, Lecturer, Tutor 2016 - 2018
PHIL234 Mind, Body and World Subject Coordinator, Lecturer, Tutor 2016 - 2018
PHIL 107 - Introduction to Philosophy Subject Coordinator, Lecturer, Tutor 2015 - 2018

Advisees

Graduate Advising Relationship

Degree	Research Title	Advisee
Doctor of Philosophy	Can the puzzle of skilled performance be solved?	Robertson, Ian
Doctor of Philosophy	The diachronic mind institutionalized: On the role of temporal hierarchies in neurodevelopment	Dengso, Mads

Education And Training

Ph.D. in Philosophy, Macquarie University, Philosophy 2010 - 2013
Master of Arts - Research (Faculty of Arts) in Philosophy, Aarhus University, Denmark, Philosophy 2006 - 2008
B.A. in Philosophy, Aarhus University, Denmark, Philosophy, B.A. in Philosophy and General (cognitive) Semiotics 2003 - 2006

Teaching Overview

My teaching covers areas such as philosophy of mind and metaphysics, phenomenology and its relation to the cognitive sciences, philosophy of science, and the relation between life and mind (including health)

Keywords

The Free Energy Principle
Active Inference
Predictive Processing
Enactivism
Embodiment
Extended mind
Markov blankets
Boundaries of mind

Orcid Id

http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2530-0718 (confirmed)

Top Publications

Year	Title
2018	Predictive processing, perceiving and imagining: Is to perceive to imagine, or something close to it? Published in Philosophical Studies: an international journal for philosophy in the analytic tradition
2018	Predictive brains and embodied, enactive cognition: an introduction to the special issue Published in Synthese: an international journal for epistemology, methodology and philosophy of science
2019	Extended Consciousness and Predictive Processing: a Third Wave View

Research Areas

Research Overview

Michael research interests include topics in naturalistic philosophy of mind, especially the relation between life and mind, the Bayesian brain hypothesis, the free energy principle, consciousness, and more philosophy of science motivated topics such as mechanistic and non-mechanistic explanation.

Michael is the associate editor of Adaptive Behavior

Member Of

Australasian Association of Philosophy Discipline Leader for Philosophy
School of Humanities and Social Inquiry Discipline Leader for Philosophy 2019 - 2021

Selected Publications

Journal Article

Year	Title
2022	An Embodied Predictive Processing Theory of Pain Experience Published In Review of Philosophy and Psychology
2022	Extended active inference: Constructing predictive cognition beyond skulls Published In Mind and Language
2022	Free energy: a user’s guide Published In Biology and Philosophy
2022	Scientific realism about Friston blankets without literalism Published In Behavioral and Brain Sciences
2022	The Literalist Fallacy and the Free Energy Principle: Model-Building, Scientific Realism, and Instrumentalism Published In The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science
2022	The Problem of Meaning: The Free Energy Principle and Artificial Agency Published In Frontiers in Neurorobotics
2021	A universal ethology challenge to the free energy principle: species of inference and good regulators Published In Biology and Philosophy
2021	Between pebbles and organisms: weaving autonomy into the Markov blanket Published In Synthese
2021	Multiscale integration: beyond internalism and externalism Published In Synthese
2020	Anticipatory action active inference in embodied cognitive activity Published In Journal of Consciousness Studies
2020	Attuning to the World: The Diachronic Constitution of the Extended Conscious Mind Published In Frontiers in Psychology
2020	On Markov blankets and hierarchical self-organisation Published In Journal of Theoretical Biology
2020	Unfulfilled prophecies in sport performance: Active inference and the choking effect Published In Journal of Consciousness Studies
2019	A tale of two densities: active inference is enactive inference Published In Adaptive Behavior: animals, animats, software agents, robots, adaptive systems
2019	Breaking explanatory boundaries: flexible borders and plastic minds Published In Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences
2019	Enactive social cognition: Diachronic constitution & coupled anticipation Published In Consciousness and Cognition
2019	How to determine the boundaries of the mind: a Markov blanket proposal Published In Synthese: an international journal for epistemology, methodology and philosophy of science
2018	A New, Better BET: Rescuing and Revising Basic Emotion Theory Published In Frontiers in Psychology
2018	Autopoiesis, free energy, and the life–mind continuity thesis Published In Synthese: an international journal for epistemology, methodology and philosophy of science
2018	Enactivism and predictive processing: a non-representational view Published In Philosophical Explorations: an international journal for the philosophy of mind and action
2018	Hierarchical Markov blankets and adaptive active inference: Comment on “Answering Schrödinger's question: A free-energy formulation” by Maxwell James Désormeau Ramstead et al. Published In Physics of Life Reviews
2018	Predictive brains and embodied, enactive cognition: an introduction to the special issue Published In Synthese: an international journal for epistemology, methodology and philosophy of science
2018	Predictive processing, perceiving and imagining: Is to perceive to imagine, or something close to it? Published In Philosophical Studies: an international journal for philosophy in the analytic tradition
2018	The Markov blankets of life: autonomy, active inference and the free energy principle Published In Journal of the Royal Society Interface
2017	From mutual manipulation to cognitive extension: challenges and implications Published In Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences
2017	Where There Is Life There Is Mind: In Support of a Strong Life-Mind Continuity Thesis Published In Entropy: international and interdisciplinary journal of entropy and information studies
2016	Authors' response: Mind never the gap, redux Published In Constructivist Foundations
2016	Composition and transactive memory systems Published In Philosophical Explorations: an international journal for the philosophy of mind and action
2016	Dreaming: Ontological and Methodological Considerations Published In Constructivist Foundations
2016	Mind Never The Gap, Redux Response Published In CONSTRUCTIVIST FOUNDATIONS
2016	Never Mind the Gap: Neurophenomenology, Radical Enactivism, and the Hard Problem of Consciosuness Published In Constructivist Foundations
2015	Cognitive assembly: towards a diachronic conception of composition Published In Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences
2015	Experiential fantasies, prediction, and enactive minds Published In Journal of Consciousness Studies: controversies in science and the humanities
2015	Extended cognition & the causal-constitutive fallacy: in search for a diachronic and dynamical conception of constitution Published In Philosophy and Phenomenological Research
2015	Looking beyond the brain: social neuroscience meets narrative practice Published In Cognitive Systems Research
2015	Species of realization and the free energy principle Published In Australasian Journal of Philosophy
2015	The enactive roots of STEM: rethinking educational design in mathematics Published In Educational Psychology Review
2014	Book review: Feeling Extended: Sociality as Extended Body-Becoming-Mind by D Robinson Published In Journal of Consciousness Studies: controversies in science and the humanities
2014	Cognitive transformations and extended expertise Published In Educational Philosophy and Theory
2014	Extended cognition & constitution: Re-evaluating the constitutive claim of extended cognition Published In Philosophical Psychology
2014	Extensive enactivism: why keep it all in? Published In Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
2014	In search of ontological emergence: diachronic, but non-supervenient Published In Axiomathes
2013	Book review: Enaction: toward a new paradigm for cognitive science Published In Philosophical Psychology
2012	Distributed cognitive agency in virtue epistemology Published In Philosophical Explorations: an international journal for the philosophy of mind and action
2012	Extended cognition and fixed properties : steps to a third-wave version of extended cognition Published In Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences
2011	Anti-representationalism: Not a Well-founded Theory of Cognition Published In Res Cogitans: Journal of Philosophy
2009	Material agency: A theoretical framework for ascribing agency to material culture Published In Techne: Research in Philosophy and Technology
2009	Material agency: a theoretical framework for ascribing agency to material culture Published In Techne: Research in Philosophy and Technology

Book

Year	Title
2019	Extended Consciousness and Predictive Processing: a Third Wave View Publisher London, United Kingdom

Chapter

Year	Title
2019	A multi-scale view of the emergent complexity of life: A free-energy proposal Published In Springer Proceedings in Complexity Publisher Springer International Publishing
2019	Emotions on the Playing Field Published In HANDBOOK OF EMBODIED COGNITION AND SPORT PSYCHOLOGY Publisher MIT PRESS
2018	The Body in Action Published In The Oxford Handbook of 4E Cognition Publisher Oxford University Press
2018	The Body in Action Published In The Oxford Handbook of 4E Cognition Publisher Oxford University Press (OUP)

Conference Paper

Year	Title
2010	Pressing agency beyond the flesh: three programmatic arguments grounding the notion of material agency Published In Copenhagan Working Papers on Design

Other Publications

Year	Title
2017	Biological self-organisation and Markov blankets

Investigator On

Year	Title
2017	Minds in Skilled Performance: Explanatory Framework and Comparative Study Awarded by: Australian Research Council (ARC) Funding Scheme: Discovery Projects
2016	Michael Kirchhoff - Academic Cross - Training Fellowship Awarded by: John Templeton Foundation Funding Scheme: ACT Fellowship
2015 - 2016	Probabilitizing Consciousness: implications and new directions Awarded by: John Templeton Foundation Funding Scheme: Cambridge New Directions in the Study of Mind

Other Research Activities

Junior Fellowship awarded by the University of Bochum, Center for Mind, Brain and Cognitive Evolution Fellow 2017

Potential Supervision Topics

Philosophy of mind and cognition:
- Are predictive processing theories of cognition compatible with enactivism?
- Are life and mind deeply connected?
- Can the free energy principle unify and explain the structure and function of biological and cognitive systems?
- What might a probabilistic view of cognition look like?
- If perception is probabilistic, why don’t we see the world probabilistically?
- Is there a distinction between perception and thought?
- Is there such a thing as cognitive penetration?
- Are 4E-approaches to cognition – embodied, enactive, embedded, ecological, extended – theoretically compatible?
- Do minds only extend sometimes or are they always naturally extensive?
- Can there be such a thing as extended consciousness?
- Can we understand cognitive scaffolding through niche construction?
- Is there really a hard problem of consciousness? Can it be solved or only dissolved?
- Is neurophenomenology credible?
- Can neurophenomenology make any progress on the hard problem of consciousness?
- Is perception contentful, at all?
- Is perception cognitively penetrable?
- And much more
Philosophy of Science:
- What is the explanatory reach of mechanistic explanation?
- Must interventionist approaches to explanation in science target difference-makers at the constituent level?
- Can dynamical systems be explanatory?
- What is causation?
- How does multi scale modelling work in science?
Metaphysics:
- Does physics fix all the facts? Are facts all there is?
- Is any version of idealism credible?
- Do the life and mind sciences require a process ontology?
- How can we make sense of grounding relations (constitution, composition, realisation) in the sciences of life and mind?
- Bottom-up causation doesn’t seem to be a problem. But what about top-down causation?
- What is the nature of time and its role in contemporary cognitive science?

Teaching Activities

PHIL227 The Meaning of Life Subject Coordinator, Lecturer, Tutor 2016 - 2018
PHIL234 Mind, Body and World Subject Coordinator, Lecturer, Tutor 2016 - 2018
PHIL 107 - Introduction to Philosophy Subject Coordinator, Lecturer, Tutor 2015 - 2018

Advisees

Graduate Advising Relationship

Degree	Research Title	Advisee
Doctor of Philosophy	Can the puzzle of skilled performance be solved?	Robertson, Ian
Doctor of Philosophy	The diachronic mind institutionalized: On the role of temporal hierarchies in neurodevelopment	Dengso, Mads

Education And Training

Ph.D. in Philosophy, Macquarie University, Philosophy 2010 - 2013
Master of Arts - Research (Faculty of Arts) in Philosophy, Aarhus University, Denmark, Philosophy 2006 - 2008
B.A. in Philosophy, Aarhus University, Denmark, Philosophy, B.A. in Philosophy and General (cognitive) Semiotics 2003 - 2006

Teaching Overview

My teaching covers areas such as philosophy of mind and metaphysics, phenomenology and its relation to the cognitive sciences, philosophy of science, and the relation between life and mind (including health)

Keywords

The Free Energy Principle
Active Inference
Predictive Processing
Enactivism
Embodiment
Extended mind
Markov blankets
Boundaries of mind

Orcid Id

http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2530-0718 (confirmed)

Overview

Overview

Top Publications

Research Areas

Research Overview

Available as Research Supervisor

Affiliation

Member Of

Publications

Selected Publications

Journal Article

Book

Chapter

Conference Paper

Other Publications

Funding

Investigator On

Other Research Activities

Supervision

Available as Research Supervisor

Potential Supervision Topics

Teaching Activities

Advisees

Graduate Advising Relationship

Background

Education And Training

Teaching Overview

Keywords

Identity

Orcid Id

Overview

Top Publications

Research Areas

Research Overview

Affiliation

Member Of

Publications

Selected Publications

Journal Article

Book

Chapter

Conference Paper

Other Publications

Funding

Investigator On

Other Research Activities

Supervision

Potential Supervision Topics

Teaching Activities

Advisees

Graduate Advising Relationship

Background

Education And Training

Teaching Overview

Keywords

Identity

Orcid Id

Visualisations

Research Areas