My primary research interest concern the relations between perception and action, and the role of the body in structuring these relations. I am exploring new approaches to studying the mind and the brain through the lens of artificial intelligence, learning, virtual reality, and evolution.
A key feature of my work is approaching traditional philosophical questions through the lens of empirical work in the cognitive sciences. My aim is to enrich our philosophical conceptions through both challenging and transforming them. I also have general interests in metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of science and technology, and aesthetics.
Topics:
Embodied Agency
Virtual Reality and Embodiment
Body Cognition
Bodily Self-Consciousness and the First Person
Psychology and Neuroscience of Action
Emotion and Action
Reduction, Emergence and Special Science Ontology
Aesthetic Psychology and Philosophical Aesthetics
Moral Psychology
Monograph
Embodied Agency, under contract with Oxford University Press (forthcoming).
Edited Volumes
de Vignemont F. , Serino A., Wong H. Y., & Farnè A. The World at our Fingertips: A Multidisciplinary Exploration of Peripersonal Space, Oxford University Press (2021).
Garbarini F., Kalckert A., Pia L., & Wong H. Y. Owning a body + Moving a body = me? , Research Topic, Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 2016-2019
Embodied Agency
“Interrogating Artificial Agency” in Frontiers in Psychology: Cognition 15, Research Topic: Varieties of Agency (2025): 1449320.
Orbán, K. and Wong, H. Y. “The Sense of Body Ownership: What are We Studying?”, in M. V. Guillot and M. García-Carpintero (eds.) The Sense of ‘Mineness’, Oxford University Press, 2023.
Roth, M., Lindner, A., Hesse, K., Wildgruber, D., Wong, H. Y., and Buehner, M. “Impaired perception of temporal contiguity between action and effect is associated with disorders of agency in Schizophrenia”, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 20(21), e2214327120, 2023.
“Agency and the Body”, in L. Ferrero (ed.) Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Agency, Routledge, 2022.
de Vignemont F., Serino A., Wong H. Y., and Farne, A. “Peripersonal space: A special way of representing space” in de Vignemont et al. (eds.) The World at our Fingertips: A Multidisciplinary Exploration of Peripersonal Space (Oxford, 2021).
Orbán, K., and Wong, H. Y. “On the Possibility of Multimodal Bodily Immunity to Error Through Misidentification”, in F. Calzavarini & M. Viola (eds.) New Challenges in Philosophy of Neuroscience, Springer, 2020.
Wong H. Y. and Hochstetter G. “Minding the Body”, Review of de Vignemont’s Mind the Body (Oxford 2018), Mind, 2020.
“Embodied Agency”, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 2018.
“In and Out of Balance”, in F. de Vignemont and A. Alsmith (eds.) The Subject’s Matter: Self-Consciousness and the Body, MIT Press, 2017.
“On Proprioception in Action: Multimodality versus Deafferentation”, Mind and Language, 2017.
“On the Significance of Bodily Awareness for Action", Philosophical Quarterly 2015, doi: 10.1093/pq/pqv007
"On the Multimodality of Body Perception in Action", Journal of Consciousness Studies, 21: 130-139, 2014
[Annual Essay Prize, Centre for Philosophical Psychology, Antwerp, 2012]
“Bodily Awareness and Bodily Agency”, in T. O’Connor and C. Sandis (eds.) A Companion to the Philosophy of Action (Blackwell, 2010).
“On the Necessity of Bodily Awareness for Bodily Action”, Psyche, Consciousness in Natural and Cultural Contexts (CNCC) Special Issue, 15 (2009).
[Winner of ESF prize for interdisciplinary work on consciousness: the CNCC Essay Award for Junior Scholars.
Accompanying commentary by Thomas Goschke “Bodily Awareness and Action-Effect Anticipations in Voluntary Action”.]
Virtual Reality and Embodiment
van der Veer A.H., Alsmith A.J.T., Longo M.R., Wong H.Y., Diers D., Bues M., Giron A.P., & Mohler B.J. (2019) “The influence of the viewpoint in a self-avatar on body part and self-localization”, Proceedings of the ACM Symposium on Applied Perception.
van der Veer A.H., Longo M., Alsmith A.J.T., Wong H.Y., Bülthoff H.H., Mohler B.J. (2019) “Self and body part localization in virtual reality”, Frontiers in robotics and AI: Virtual environments, doi: 10.3389/frobt.2019.00033
Karnath H.-O., Mölbert S.C., Klaner K., Tesch J., Giel K.E., Wong H.Y., and Mohler B.J. (2019) “Visual perception of body shape under vestibular stimulation using biometric self-avatars in virtual reality” PLoS ONE 14(3): e0213944.
van der Veer A.H., Alsmith A.J.T., Longo M., Wong H.Y., Bülthoff H.H., Mohler B.J. (2018) “Where am I in virtual reality?” PLoS ONE 13(10): e0204358.
Piryankova I.V., Wong H.Y., Linkenauger S.A., Stinson C., Longo M.R., Bülthoff H.H., and Mohler B.J. (2014) "Owning an Overweight or Underweight Body: Distinguishing the Physical, Experienced and Virtual Body", PLoS ONE 9(8): e103428.
Body Cognition
Srismith, D., Wider, L., Wong, H.Y., Thiel, A., Giel, K., and Mölbert, S. (2020) “Influence of Physical Activity and Interoceptive Modulations on Body Image”, Frontiers in Psychiatry.
Saulton A., Longo, M.R., Wong H.Y., Bülthoff H.H., and de la Rosa S. (2016) “The role of visual similarity and memory in body model distortions”, Acta Psychologica 164: 103-111.
Linkenauger S.A., Wong H.Y., Geuss M., Stefanucci J.K., Proffitt D.R., Bülthoff H.H., and Mohler B.J. (2015) "The Perceptual Homunculus: The Perception of Bodily Proportions”, Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 144: 103-113.
Bodily Self-Consciousness and the First Person
Orbán K. and Wong, H. Y. “The Sense of Body Ownership: What are We Studying?”, in M. V. Guillot and M. García-Carpintero (eds.) The Sense of ‘Mineness’, Oxford University Press, 2023.
Orbán K. and Wong, H. Y. “On the Possibility of Multimodal Bodily Immunity to Error Through Misidentification”, in F. Calzavarini & M. Viola (eds.) New Challenges in Philosophy of Neuroscience, Springer, 2020.
Psychology and Neuroscience of Action
Roth, M., Lindner, A., Hesse, K., Wildgruber, D., Wong, H.Y., and Buehner, M. “Impaired perception of temporal contiguity between action and effect is associated with disorders of agency in Schizophrenia”, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 20(21), e2214327120, 2023
“The Body Schema as a Condition of Possibility for Action”, in Y. Coello and M. Fischer (eds.) From Action to Concepts: Behavioral and Neural Foundations of Embodied Cognition, 2 vols., Psychology Press, 2015.
"A Measure of My Agency?" Consciousness and Cognition, Special Issue "Beyond the Comparator Model" 21 (2012).
[Commentary on Synofzik, Vosgerau, and Newen "Beyond the comparator model: A multifactorial two-step account of agency", Consciousness and Cognition, 17 (2008).
Reply by Vosgerau and Synofzik "Weighting models and weighting factors", Consciousness and Cognition 21 (2012).]
Emotion and Action
J. M. Müller and Wong H. Y. “Which Emotional Behaviours are Actions?” in A. Scarantino (ed.) Emotion Theory: The Routledge Comprehensive Guide, Volume I: History, Contemporary Theories, and Key Elements, Routledge, 2024.
Hochstetter G. and Wong H. Y. “Affective Control of Action”, Emotion Review, 2017.
Reduction, Emergence and Special Science Ontology
“Personal and Sub-Personal: Overcoming Explanatory Apartheid”, in T.-W. Hung (ed.) Communicative Action (Singapore: Springer, 2014), pp. 93-104.
“Emergent Dualism in the Philosophy of Mind”, S. Gibb, R. F. Hendry and T. Lancaster (eds.) Routledge Handbook of Emergence, 2019.
“The Secret Lives of Emergents”, in A. Corradini and T. O’Connor (eds.) Emergence in Science and Philosophy (Routledge, 2010).
“Cartesian Psychophysics”, in P. van Inwagen and D. Zimmerman (eds.) Persons (Oxford University Press, 2007).
“Emergents from Fusion”, Philosophy of Science, 73 (2006).
O’Connor, T. and Wong, H. Y. “The Metaphysics of Emergence”, Noûs, 39 (2005).
O’Connor, T. and Wong, H. Y. “Emergent Properties”, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, first published Fall 2002 edition.
Aesthetic Psychology and Philosophical Aesthetics
Orbán K., Muskens A., and Wong H. Y. “Atmosphere, Sensibility, and Style”, in E. Di Bona and S. Ercolino (eds.) Philosophy of Atmospheres, Routledge, forthcoming 2026.
Grassi, P., Plikat, V., and Wong, H.Y. “How are we moved by magic?”, British Journal of Aesthetics, 2024, doi.org/10.1093/aesthj/ayad026
Moral Psychology
Ambrase, A., Hendrickx, M., Grahlow, M., Wong, H.Y., Derntl, B., “The German translation of the Oxford Utilitarianism Scale: validation and the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the observations”, 2025, PLoS One, 20(10), e0335215.
Ambrase, A., Veronika I. Müller, V.I., Camilleri, J.A., Wong, H.Y., Derntl, B., “Distinct neural networks of task engagement and choice response in moral, risky, and ambiguous decision-making: an ALE meta-analysis”, Imaging Neuroscience 2: 1-35, 2024.