Ric Sims

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Telephone: 0046708770517 

College: College of Social Sciences and International Studies
Discipline: Sociology and Philosophy
Department: Philosophy
Research Centre/Unit: Egenis

I have a PhD in Philosophy from Egenis, the centre for the study of life sciences, with supervisors Adam Toon and John Dupre. I am interested in distributed- and 4E-cognition (extended, embodied, enactive, and embedded). My thesis explored a cybernetics or systems approach to the problem of demarcating cognitive systems by taking cognition to be a coordinated coalition of semi-autonomous processes. A particular focus of my work is stigmergic systems where a trace of the system's action in the world is partly coordinative. My work has implications for minimal and plant cognition as well as cognition distributed over social systems. Indeed in the future I hope to extend it to philosophy of science to investigate the use of models as coordinative of scientific investigations.

Side interests include political philosophy, philosophy of science and aesthetics.

As a mature student, Exeter has been a wonderful setting for this stage of my intellectual journey. My portfolio career as musician and educator has stood me in good stead for philosophical research.