Dr. Gallagher will discuss the "4E Cognition"—Embodied, Embedded, Extended, Enactive Cognition—approaches to inquiries into questions of self-awareness, as well as the important role of mindful embodied practices for maintaining a healthy flexibility in human thinking and behavior patterns. He will address how the use of AI and social media present a challenge to maintaining this healthy flexibility while, at the same time, it threatens the loss of self in a way quite different from changes in the self-related processing that enhances an awareness of the present moment in mindful practices.  Dr. Gallagher also will explore the question, "How can we understand self-regulation processes in the context of AI and social media use?" 

Shaun Gallagher, PhD, Hon DPhil, is the Lillian and Morrie Moss Professor of Excellence in Philosophy at the University of Memphis, Professorial Fellow at the School of Liberal Arts, University of Wollongong (AU), and Honorary Visiting Professor at the Department of Philosophy, Communication and Performing Arts, Università degli Studi Roma Tre, Rome, Italy (2026-2029). He was a recipient of the Humboldt Foundation Anneliese Maier Research Fellowship (2012-18) and has held Honorary Professorships at Tromsø University (Norway); Durham (UK) and Copenhagen (DK), as well as visiting positions at Cambridge, Lyon, Paris, Berlin, Oxford and Rome (Sapienza and Roma Tre).

Dr. Gallagher's areas of research include phenomenology, philosophy of mind, embodied cognition, social cognition, and concepts of self. His publications include The Self and its Disorders (Oxford 2024); Embodied and Enactive Approaches to Cognition (Cambridge 2023); Action and Interaction (Oxford 2020); Performance/Art: The Venetian Lectures (Milan 2021); The Phenomenological Mind (Routledge 2021 – 3rd ed); Enactivist Interventions: Rethinking the Mind (Oxford 2017); The Neurophenomenology of Awe and Wonder (Palgrave Macmillan 2015); Phenomenology (Palgrave Macmillan 2012); How the Body Shapes the Mind (Oxford 2005); as editor, the Oxford Handbook of the Self (Oxford 2011); and co-editor The Oxford Handbook of 4E Cognition. He served as editor-in-chief of the journal Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences from 2001 to 2025.

This session is part of the FREE Contemplation by Design Summit, Oct. 14-25, 2026.

The full summit schedule for this year will be posted at: https://med.stanford.edu/contemplation/summit.html.