I hold a PhD in cognitive science and an MA in Consciousness and Embodiment from the University College Dublin. My BA was a joint major in philosophy and psychology from the National University of Ireland Galway.
I work as a postdoctoral researcher in the Embodied Cognitive Science Unit (ECSU) at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST), Japan.
My academic background since my undergraduate studies has straddled the boundaries between philosophy and psychology. My current efforts are best characterised as an empirically informed approach to the philosophy of cognitive science. Leveraging insights and concepts from complex adaptive systems science, embodied cognitive science, and interactional sociology, my PhD focused on making intelligible the social constitution of individual minds by exploring multi-scale processes of habituation, from simple (shared) habits and (shared) routines, to modes of being and being together.
Other research interests include developing this philosophically rich perspective for the design of individual and collective behavioural outcomes, for facilitating more cooperative human relations in this time of great change, and for supporting the emergence of the planetary identities necessary to respond to the opportunities that the coming century is likely to present us with.
I am interested in systemic approaches to development and learning, phenomenology, pragmatism, process philosophy, the philosophy of science and cognitive science, the philosophy of psychiatry, the philosophy of biology, and the philosophy of technology and design.
I also find the dialectic relationship between theorising and contemplative practice very generative, and I spend much of my time outside of work practising martial arts.
Mark M. James 