Anthony Chemero is a cognitive scientist and philosopher at the University of Cincinnati known for radical embodied cognitive science, the position that cognition is not computation over internal representations but the continuous interaction of an agent with its environment. His 2009 book Radical Embodied Cognitive Science (MIT Press) argued that the dynamical systems tradition dissolves the need for representational explanations in cognitive science.
His 2026 book Intertwined Creatures, The Embodied Cognitive Science of Self and Other (Columbia University Press) extends the embodiment critique to the social dimension of mind and applies it explicitly to the AI consciousness debate. Chemero argues that the mind is not a lone, disembodied thinker contemplating the world from afar. It is an embodied, dynamic, social phenomenon, constituted by ongoing engagement with the environment and with other people. Understanding cognition this way undercuts the analogy between LLMs and human minds that underwrites predictions of artificial consciousness, because sophisticated AI systems do not need to navigate interpersonal interaction to maintain their existence and do not have the capacity to care.
Chemero aligns with ecological psychology (Gibson), enactivism (Varela, Thompson, Noe), and non-linear dynamics. His relevance to machine consciousness research is critical. He supplies a principled, empirically grounded reason to doubt that any system lacking embodied engagement with a living world could have the kind of mind consciousness research seeks.
Known for. Radical embodied cognitive science, ecological psychology, enactive cognition, Intertwined Creatures (2026)
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Anthony Chemero is listed with the other critics and skeptics, who hold that current evidence and current methods do not support the claims being made. The positions themselves are set out in the index of consciousness theories. Every researcher covered on this site is indexed in the directory of consciousness researchers.