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Dave Ward

@philosodave.bsky.social
662 followers 244 following 30 posts

Philosopher at University of Edinburgh | Embodied Cognition; Merleau-Ponty | Running; Hills; Indolence

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Dave Ward @philosodave.bsky.social · 17/06/2026
’nonsense and visual evanescence’ - another go at a link: philpapers.org/rec/CUMNAV
philpapers.org
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Dave Ward @philosodave.bsky.social · 17/06/2026
Not ecological psychology, but have you read this chapter by Clare Mac Cumhaill? The account of things 'looking invisible' in there seems translatable into Gibson/ecopsych friendly language. philpapers-org.eux.idm.oclc.org/rec/CUMNAV
philpapers-org.eux.idm.oclc.org
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Kate Nave @kathrynnave.eurosky.social · 01/06/2026
In addition to being a fantastic speaker, Anil is also an incredible notetaker and wrote this beautiful recap of our workshop on Rewilding the Web last week.
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Dave Ward @philosodave.bsky.social · 01/06/2026
Yes, that sounds about right. Fuller answers hopefully in the paper. 🤞
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Dave Ward @philosodave.bsky.social · 21/05/2026
The paper is part of a special issue on 'prospects for a science of enaction,' edited by @marilynstendera.bsky.social, @jelliedsours.bsky.social & Russell Meyer. A bunch of great papers are already up, check them out! Thanks to the editors for waiting frickin ages whilst I slowly wrote this! /FIN
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Dave Ward @philosodave.bsky.social · 21/05/2026
I wrote this partly because *I* used to ignore everything that makes the enactive approach importantly different from its neighbours. It can be hard to see, and enactivists don't always make their case as well as they could. This is me trying to atone for my mistakes, and help others avoid them! 5/
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Dave Ward @philosodave.bsky.social · 21/05/2026
In the paper I explain what those emphases involve, how they fit together, and why they make the enactive approach different from other 'embodied cognitive science'. An upshot: Techbros who think that consciousness, agency and meaning are just networked information-processing are not enactivists 4/
A 2 by 2 diagram plotting some different ways of theorising about the mind with respect to each other. 'Enactivism' is conspicuously off in the bottom right-hand corner, away from most other 'embodied cognition' views
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Dave Ward @philosodave.bsky.social · 21/05/2026
The enactive approach emphasises the biological roots of cognition; it emphasises how central our experience of living is to an adequate understanding of our place in the world; and it emphasises how our ways of experiencing and our tools for self-understanding constantly reshape each other. 3/
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Dave Ward @philosodave.bsky.social · 21/05/2026
... In embodied cognition research there's a tendency to lump any view that doesn't like 'mental representations,' but does like going on about embodied interaction, under the heading 'enactivism'. But this makes it easy to miss what makes the approach of 'The Embodied mind' uniquely valuable. 2/
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Dave Ward @philosodave.bsky.social · 21/05/2026
Want to know what 'enactivism' is? Consider reading my new paper, 'What is Enactivism?', open access in Adaptive Behavior! journals.sagepub.com/doi/epub/10.... Short version: It's what Varela, Thompson & Rosch said it was in 'The Embodied Mind' ages ago. Slightly longer version... 1/
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Dave Ward @philosodave.bsky.social · 04/11/2025
Looks great! Maybe a bit advanced, but I love this paper and it would make a good optional extra for the groove week: academic.oup.com/bjaesthetics...
academic.oup.com
Enacting a Jazz Beat: Temporality in Sonic Environment and Symbolic Communication
Abstract. What does it mean to enact a jazz beat as a creative performer? This article offers a critical reading of Iyer’s much-cited theory on rhythmic en
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Dave Ward @philosodave.bsky.social · 19/09/2025
…So he’d have a (complicated) answer to your q: for economic and cultural reasons, it came to seem to lots of people like the only thing moral truths could be were weird entities that we somehow intuit.
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Dave Ward @philosodave.bsky.social · 19/09/2025
Not explicitly focused on that q, but the first chapters of MacIntyre’s After Virtue have his diagnosis of why anglophone moral philosophy got the way it did in the 20th C…
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Dave Ward @philosodave.bsky.social · 11/09/2025
See also this cool paper by Fred Keijzer about how Dennett/Hofstadter have unfairly trashed the intellectual reputation of digger wasps: philpapers.org/rec/KEITHT
philpapers.org
Fred Keijzer, The Sphex story: How the cognitive sciences kept repeating an old and questionable anecdote - PhilPapers
The Sphex story is an anecdote about a female digger wasp that at first sight seems to act quite intelligently, but subsequently is shown to be a mere automaton that can ...
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Dave Ward @philosodave.bsky.social · 04/09/2025
Seconding the Favela recommendation! Perhaps Sanneke de Haan’s ‘enactive psychiatry’ for the sense-making stuff - great intro to bioenactivism, then argues that it’s a uniquely useful/integrative framework for psychiatry. Or the ’cognition/consciousness/life’ chapters from ‘The Blind Spot’
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Dave Ward @philosodave.bsky.social · 25/03/2025
Congrats! So nice to see some happy news of something in the world unfolding in roughly the way it should!
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Reposted by Dave Ward
Dave Ward @philosodave.bsky.social · 07/03/2025
Been reading @giulio-ongaro.bsky.social's triptych of papers on prospects for an externalist biopsychosocial psychiatry with my MSc class this week. They are *really* good. 1/ philarchive.org/rec/ONGOFA-2
philarchive.org
Giulio Ongaro, Outline for an Externalist Psychiatry (1): Or, How to Fully Realize the Biopsychosocial Model - PhilArchive
The biopsychosocial (BPS) model in psychiatry has come under fire for being too vague to be of any practical use in the clinic. For many, its central flaw consists in lack ...
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Dave Ward @philosodave.bsky.social · 07/03/2025
All the papers are jam-packed with provocative and interesting ideas, and published alongside some great commentaries. Check em out! This interview with @awaisaftab.bsky.social is an excellent primer /FIN www.psychiatrymargins.com/p/the-social...
psychiatrymargins.com
The Social World Is Something We Collectively Create
Giulio Ongaro explores what this means for our approach to mental healthcare in a guest post and accompanying Q&A
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Dave Ward @philosodave.bsky.social · 07/03/2025
Pt 3 considers challenges for developing a useful biopsychosocial psychiatry in industrialised capitalist societies. How can we construct new, shared frameworks of meaning for understanding ourselves and our problems in such societies? And how much would this help? /4 philarchive.org/rec/ONGOFA-3
philarchive.org
Giulio Ongaro, Outline for an Externalist Psychiatry (3): Social Etiology and the Tension Between Constraints and the Possibilities of Construction - PhilArchive
Any progress in shaping up an externalist psychiatry, so previous discussion suggested, must begin from questions about the ontology of social causation. So far, research and theory have adhered to a ...
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Dave Ward @philosodave.bsky.social · 07/03/2025
Pt 2 draws on Ongaro's fieldwork to argue that the medical practices of the Akha provide a template for how this might look - a web of medicinal, ritual and shamanic practices all housed in a culturally shared system of meanings 3/ philarchive.org/rec/ONGOFA
philarchive.org
Giulio Ongaro, Outline for an Externalist Psychiatry (2): An Anthropological Detour - PhilArchive
Philosophical speculation about how psychiatric externalism might function in practice has yet to fully consider the multitude of externalist psychiatric systems that exist beyond the bounds of modern...
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Dave Ward @philosodave.bsky.social · 07/03/2025
Central idea: the big challenge for biopsychosocial psychiatry isn't providing an integrative model of how bio, psycho and social dimensions interact. Progress is good here. It's providing a way of understanding the social dimension that is meaningful and empowering for patients and clinicians 2/
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Dave Ward @philosodave.bsky.social · 07/03/2025
Been reading @giulio-ongaro.bsky.social's triptych of papers on prospects for an externalist biopsychosocial psychiatry with my MSc class this week. They are *really* good. 1/ philarchive.org/rec/ONGOFA-2
philarchive.org
Giulio Ongaro, Outline for an Externalist Psychiatry (1): Or, How to Fully Realize the Biopsychosocial Model - PhilArchive
The biopsychosocial (BPS) model in psychiatry has come under fire for being too vague to be of any practical use in the clinic. For many, its central flaw consists in lack ...
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Dave Ward @philosodave.bsky.social · 27/01/2025
Flattered to be there, and in such excellent company!
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Dave Ward @philosodave.bsky.social · 28/11/2024
Tempted to read, write or think anything about the free energy principle? Read Kate’s book first! The world would be a better place if everyone followed this simple rule.
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Dave Ward @philosodave.bsky.social · 23/11/2024
P.s. I made my dad read one of your papers 🤓. ‘Thanks, very interesting,’ he said.
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Dave Ward @philosodave.bsky.social · 23/11/2024
Don’t know why I only saw this now, but massive congrats! 🥳 Hope you’re loving it!
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Dave Ward @philosodave.bsky.social · 13/11/2024
Ecological psychology = studying the mind in a way that the Gibsons would like. Interested to know if you have a different take? /end
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Dave Ward @philosodave.bsky.social · 13/11/2024
Cognitive ethology = studying cognitive capacities and structures that produce animal behaviour (without caring too much about embedding context, and certainly not about pleasing Gibson)/2
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Dave Ward @philosodave.bsky.social · 13/11/2024
I'm not a behavioural ecologist, cognitive ethologist or ecological psychologist, but my vague sense is: behavioural ecology = studying at animal behaviour and its relation to the environment (without caring much about cognitive underpinnings or pleasing Gibson)/1
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Dave Ward @philosodave.bsky.social · 11/11/2024
(Lionel Terray, Conquistadors of the Useless)
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Dave Ward @philosodave.bsky.social · 11/11/2024
We rested a long time, gazing at the savage walls, hemmed with lace of snow. A mineral silence entered into us. In that enormous peace I felt that somehow, henceforward, nothing would truly count for me beyond this world of grandeur and purity where every corner held the promise of enchanted hours.
Bright sun shining over a snowy alpine landscape, above the clouds
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Dave Ward @philosodave.bsky.social · 08/11/2024
This absolute Banger of a book is available Open Access via your favourite search engine. Anyone into brains, science, or brain science should read.
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