Franklin & Marshall College

Tony Chemero, associate professor of psychology and scientific and philosophical studies of the mind, has delivered dozens of presentations and lectures in the U.S. and around the world. But none of them were quite as intimidating as the lecture he gave just a few hundred feet from his office on the campus of Franklin & Marshall College last week.

“There’s always the fear that someone will ask a question you can’t answer,” Chemero says. “When I talk at other places, I probably won’t see that person again. But here, I’ll see them all the time.”

Chemero discussed “The Human-Environment System” at Common Hour last week as the 2011 winner of the Bradley R. Dewey Award for Outstanding Scholarship (click the video below to view highlights of the event). He is the 22nd recipient of the Dewey Award, which celebrates the faculty member who best exemplifies “the ideal of the scholar whose research efforts reflect and inspire excellence and enlighten teaching.”
 

“It’s an honor to receive the College’s highest research award,” Chemero says. “It’s also humbling to be among other [recipients of the award] who have had long and productive careers. Twenty years from now, I’d like to look back and have a career like the other winners.”

A native of Connecticut, Chemero joined the College in 1999 after earning his Ph.D. in philosophy and cognitive science at Indiana University. He completed his B.A. in philosophy at Tufts University, where he realized that his academic passion spanned several disciplines. “In college, I wanted to do a little bit of everything,” he says. “I went from psychology to philosophy to physics, and back to philosophy, because I found that questions raised by one discipline could be answered by another.”

Chemero focused his research in graduate school after reading a paper by Randy Beer, a professor at Case Western Reserve University. The paper discussed robots and mathematical models in “agent-environment” dynamics. “It ticked all my boxes because my undergraduate thesis was about chaos theory in neuroscience and free will,” Chemero says. “Sixteen years later, Randy Beers wrote a blurb for the back of my book. I had lunch with him two weeks ago. So, this is all his fault.”

Chemero’s book, Radical Embodied Cognitive Science, argues that cognitive science is best described in terms of agent-environment dynamics, not computation or representation. The idea, Chemero says, is that our experiences are not about what happens in the brain, but what happens in human-environment systems.

The professor’s work has been widely praised, with one notable exception: Chemero’s favorite philosopher, Jerry Fodor. Chemero likes Fodor because “he’s a great writer, clear, and funny as hell.” But Fodor, author of The Language of Thought, is famous for his work in computational theory—a vastly different view of cognitive science than Chemero’s.

“I sent Jerry Fodor a copy of my book when it came out,” Chemero says, reaching for a paper taped above his office computer. “And I got this letter in return.”

Dear Professor Chemero,

Thanks very much both for the book and for your kind words. I look forward to reading it with the most profound misgivings.

Best, Jerry Fodor

The letter brings a smile to Chemero’s face. Something else that makes the professor happy is working with his students at F&M. He has supervised more than 30 independent research projects, and 34 students have appeared as co-authors on his publications and presentations.

“I don’t think of research and teaching as separate,” Chemero says. “In a deep way, it’s all about the students. I’ve been lucky to teach what I’m interested in, so when students want to write about something, we can often collaborate. Students are an integral part of everything we do.”