andrea hiott & waymaking

Andrea Hiott is a philosopher, cognitive scientist, and author who has developed a philosophy of mind known as Waymaking, which reframes cognition as a dynamic process of movement through various spatiotemporal landscapes. This framework defines cognition not as a separate mental function but as the trajectories of an agent’s movement through its ongoing encounter with the world, encompassing mental, physical, and virtual realms. Waymaking emphasizes that cognition is not confined to human experience but is a process shared across species, rooted in the embodied, navigational abilities of living beings.

The concept is inspired by recent research on the hippocampal formation and entorhinal cortex, which show that knowledge acquisition, memory, and spatial navigation are part of a continuous, nonlinear process governed by statistical regularities in sensory landscapes. Hiott's work positions cognition as a form of navigation—what she calls "way-making"—where movement and knowing are intertwined: "Movement is a way of knowing and knowing is a way of moving". This approach avoids collapsing the distinctions between mental and physical, instead holding them as complementary aspects of a shared process.

Waymaking is not merely about finding paths but about actively making them, acknowledging the uniqueness of each embodied being’s trajectory through time and space. It is a practice that resists binary thinking, promoting the idea of "holding the paradox" and moving beyond dichotomies such as mind-body or human-animal. Hiott uses this framework to explore how intelligence manifests in diverse forms, from human cognition to plant and animal behaviors, arguing that what humans label as cognition is merely the "growing tip" of a much older, life-wide process of navigability.

She has applied this philosophy across disciplines, including urban planning, neuroscience, and technology, and is currently a doctoral researcher in the Philosophy and Phenomenology at Heidelberg Universität, focusing on ecological orientation. Hiott is also the host of the podcast Love and Philosophy, where she explores themes of cognition, embodiment, and connection with leading thinkers. Her work is further disseminated through her Substack publication Waymaking, where she writes on topics such as threshold visioning and embracing paradox. She has authored books including Thinking Small, which explores the philosophy of transportation and mobility.