Michael Butler

Philosophy of Technology, Phenomenology, Cognitive Science (esp. Embodied Cognition), Ethics, Continental Philosophy.

2025 - Itterman Faculty Professional Development Award

2024 - UND Fine Arts and Humanities Scholarship Initiative Award 

PhD (Philosophy) University of Memphis

MA (Philosophy) Toronto Metropolitan University

BA (Philosophy and Cultural Studies) Trent University

Select Recent Publications:

Vincini, S. Butler, M and Satne, G. (eds) 2025. "Action and Social Interaction: Embodiment, Development, and Collectivity" Special Collection in Cogent Arts and Humanities, Vol. 12, No. 1.

Butler, M. 2025. "The City, The Highway, and the Spatial Level: Navigation Apps and Disorientation" Techne: Research in Philosophy and Technology, Vol. 29, No. 1. 

Butler, M.  2024. “Fracturing the Affordance Space: An Account of Digitalized Alienation” Frontiers in Psychiatry. Vol. 15 No. 1407586. doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2024.1407586

Butler, M. and Werkheiser, I. (eds) 2023 “Digital Worlds” special issue of Techne: Research in Philosophy and Technology, Vol. 27, No. 2.

Butler M.  2023. “Buying Green: A Trap For Fools, or, Sartre on Ethical Consumerism” in Earthly Engagements: Reading Sartre after the Holocene, Matthew Ally and Damon Boria (eds). Lexington Books. 

Select Recent Presentations:

April 2026. The Landscape is Where We Find Ourselves: Embodiment and Digital Photography. With Michael Conlan. Presented at the Digital Worlds Workshop, Mary Immaculate College, Limerick, Ireland.

October 2025. Technologies of Memory: Digital versus Narrative Access to the Past. Presented at the Canadian Society for Continental Philosophy, University of Alberta

August 2025. Artifical Intelligence and (the) Humanity(ies). Invited presentation at the UND AI Forum

June 2025. Enactivist App Design: Exper – A Case Study. Presented at the Society for Philosophy and Technology, Eindhoven, Netherlands

February 2025. Humanities in Technology: Career Paths for Students in the Liberal Arts. Invited talk at The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley

September 2024. Machines that Dream of Love: Sartre, Gym Selfies, and the Alienation of Interior Life. Presented at the Society for Phenomenological and Existential Philosophy (SPEP) Rochester Institute of Technology