Michael L. Anderson is a philosopher and cognitive scientist whose work focuses on the philosophy of neuroscience, embodied cognition, and theoretical and computational neuroscience. He is a Canada Research Chair in Philosophy of Science and a professor in the Department of Philosophy and the Rotman Institute of Philosophy at the University of Western Ontario.
Anderson received a B.S. with honors in philosophy and pre-medical studies from the University of Notre Dame in 1990. He completed his Ph.D. in philosophy at Yale University in 1996. During his graduate training, he held an exchange scholar appointment at Harvard University from 1992 to 1994.
Anderson taught at St. John's College, Annapolis, from 1996 to 1998. He subsequently worked in the biotechnology industry as a systems scientist and software developer, and held a postdoctoral fellowship in artificial intelligence at the University of Maryland, College Park from 2001 to 2006. Anderson joined the faculty of Franklin & Marshall College in 2006, where he served as assistant and later associate professor of psychology.
In 2017, Anderson joined the University of Western Ontario as a full professor in the Department of Philosophy. He was appointed Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Philosophy of Science the same year. He served as interim director of the Rotman Institute of Philosophy from 2023 to 2024.
AndersonâÂÂs research spans the philosophy of neuroscience, embodied cognition, ecological psychology, and theoretical and computational neuroscience. His most influential work concerns the theory of neural reuse, which proposes that neural circuits are frequently repurposed for multiple cognitive functions rather than being strictly domain-dedicated. His 2010 target article in Behavioral and Brain Sciences and his 2014 book After Phrenology: Neural Reuse and the Interactive Brain have been widely cited, contributing to debates on brain organization, cognitive architecture, and evolutionary explanations of neural function.
His work on embodied cognition, metacognition in computation, and active logic has also been incorporated into research on artificial intelligence and humanâÂÂcomputer interaction.