Tom Froese

Froese is a cognitive scientist with a background in computer science and complex systems. He investigates the interactive basis of life and mind with a variety of methods, including evolutionary robotics, agent-based modeling, sensory substitution interfaces, artificial neural networks, and virtual reality. He is particularly known for his contributions to the field of artificial life and to the enactive approach to cognitive science.

One of the central questions that guides Froese’s research is: how are agents transformed by the interactions in which they participate with others? He explores this question across various scales of analysis, including the origins of life, the origins of social awareness, the origins of symbolic communication, and the origins of large-scale social organization.

Another important aspect of Froese’s research is to reveal the essential role of tools and technology, and of environmental mediation more generally, in facilitating these qualitative transitions in the complexity of life and mind. As a paradigmatic case study, he studies how the use of human-computer interfaces has the potential to transform the user’s perceptual experience, which has implications for the science of consciousness.