I am a Specially Appointed Lecturer at the Center for Human Nature, Artificial Intelligence, and Neuroscience (CHAIN), Hokkaido University, Japan. Besides doing philosophy, I generally like to move my body. I've played rugby for a long time and have started basketball and skiing recently. I've stopped eating animals since 2012, turning vegan (as much as I can) since around 2016. I am married to a fantastic vegan cooking teacher Chika Miyahara aka oishivegetarian and also a father of a daughter.

Research

Philosophy of cognitive science. I'm interested in developing the enactive approach to mind and cognition, an approach that highlights the embodied and embedded nature of human minds, first proposed by Francisco Varela, Evan Thompson, and Elenor Rosch in their seminal book The Embodied Mind.
Phenomenology. My initial enter into the embodied perspective was French phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty's philosophy. I explored his account of perception and concepts in my MA thesis. Since then, I have focused more on using phenomenology to approach questions in philosophy of mind and cognitive science, rather than engaging deeply with phenomenological texts as such. But I still consider myself a phenomenologist in spirit.  ​
Philosophy of artificial intelligence. Recent developments in AI raises a number of philosophical questions. I am especially interested in the question of whether we should treat highly intelligent AI systems as agents, non-agents, or something else.

Short Bio

​I completed my PhD at the University of Tokyo in 2015 under the supervision of A/Professor Koji Ishihara. Part of my PhD research was conducted at University of Central Florida with Professor Shaun Gallagher (2010-11) and at the Centre for Subjectivity Research, University of Copenhagen with Professor Dan Zahavi (2011-12). After completing my PhD program, I spent two years at Harvard University between 2016-18 to undergo post-doctoral training under the supervision of Professor Sean Kelly. Following this, I worked as a Post-doc Researcher at the School of Liberal Arts, University of Wollongong, Australia, from September 2018 until March 2020 for the ARC Discovery project "Minds in Skilled Performance: Explanatory framework and comparative study" (DP170102987) under the supervision of Senior Professor Daniel D. Hutto. I started my current position at CHAIN, Hokkaido University, in April 2020.