How human beings perceive the world and how we act within it is, to an important degree, shaped by habits. Habituation makes the world familiar, enabling us to find our way around it in a nearly effortless, automatic manner. But habituation also makes the world predictable. What room does this leave for experiences of chance, serendipity, and unpredictability? Furthermore, habits can be pernicious and recalcitrant to change, which seems particularly problematic in a world that is rapidly changing and demanding increasing adaptivity or “change-ability” (Rietveld's NWO-Vici project ). How do change-ability and chance emerge (Ross’s SCI lab)? And how can it be encouraged? What role could be played, for instance, by engaging creatively with unfamiliar or strange tools (Chemero’s Strange Tools Lab)? These questions have emerged at the forefront of research in the field of embodied, embedded, extended and/or enactive cognition [4E cognition], a field that has already contributed significantly to our understanding of the habitual. This workshop aims to foreground and further this development by bringing together philosophers and designers working within the 4E field in a collaborative exploratory setting. The workshop is partially funded by Janna van Grunsven’s NWO-Veni Project, Erik Rietveld’s NWO-Vici project and Samantha Copeland’s Delft University Fund.

This is an invitational workshop.