Western Philosophy Department is hiring! www.uwo.ca/facultyrelat...

Is ecological neuroscience a feasible enterprise? After some theoretical work on ecological resonance, we've engaged on experimental research to test some of the hypotheses that follow from it. These are the first results of (hopefully) many more to come! It's open access 👇 doi.org/10.1111/psyp...

Sad day for peope who still believe brain areas are the primary organizational units of function in the brain. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

This week @universitypress.cambridge.org has granted free access to all titles in the collection of Cambridge Elements in the Philosophy of Biology, edited by Grant Ramsey. There are many options to choose from! Happy reading! 📕👇 www.cambridge.org/core/publica... #philsci #HPbio #evosky #ISHPSSB2025

“The behaviour of my measuring system I made malfunction” isn’t actually good evidence but fundamentally it’s the only argument indirect perception really has (see: illusions, studying perceptual cues in isolation, etc)

We punch way above our weight. On many metrics.

This proposed bill allocates $500M for replacing gov. IT systems with commercial AI (a bad idea given known problems with AI) but then preemptively bans all state AI regulation and enforcement for 10 years, making a bad idea much, much worse. d1dth6e84htgma.cloudfront.net/Subtitle_C_C...

Physical affordances beat digital simulations every time

Yet another reason why open science initiatives are better options for universities. Right @richardgold.bsky.social ?

The 1st Society for Philosophy & Neuroscience @socphilneuro.bsky.social meeting was outstanding! I'm so sorry I have to miss the last day. Thanks to the organizers for putting together such an amazing lineup - great to see so many folks working at the intersection.

The time is fast approaching for the GOP to decide if it’s for or against dismantling significant government programs. It’ll take guts either way, so it’ll be interesting to see the creative ways they devise to kick the can down the road.

Affordances Constrain Motor Abundance: A Hypothesis and A Research Programme osf.io/preprints/ps... This is a new preprint by me, where I have written down my affordance based approach to UCM and similar methods for the first time in one place. Feedback very much appreciated!

In an alternative universe, cog. scientists *read* eco. psych. and find out that... 1. The foundational texts of eco. psych. (Gibson 1966, 1979) don't talk about representations. 2. Affordances aren't what they think they are. 3. The core is ecological information. 4. 50 years+ of experimental work.

1. LLM-generated code tries to run code from online software packages. Which is normal but 2. The packages don’t exist. Which would normally cause an error but 3. Nefarious people have made malware under the package names that LLMs make up most often. So 4. Now the LLM code points to malware.

I spent some time in Silicon Valley 10 years ago, and the obsession with IQ and SAT struck me as sad. Like people who cling to MENSA membership to substitute for actual accomplishments. But now they’ve added genes and the POTUS into the mix, and it’s suddenly dangerous again.

One possible good to come out of this clown show is an honest assessment of what actually creates prosperity. (Hint: it’s targeted investment, honest equal-footing negotiation between otherwise conflicting constituencies, and reliable partnerships.)

It’s pretty clear “Alma Mater” means nothing if thousands of powerful alumni will stand silently as their mother is mugged.

I do love college football. But this is a “laugh-but-it-hurts” sorta situation

I had been buying the general line that even rich universities weren’t sustainable if federal research dollars were significantly slashed. In light of more careful analysis, I’m revising that: the richest universities have the financial resources both to weather the storm and to legally fight back.

The symptoms identified here is spot on. The right cure is up for crucial, field-changing debate. www.thetransmitter.org/neuroai/acce...

Even if you think Paul Weiss and Columbia made the only choice available to them in the circumstances (and that's not what I think, to be clear), you have to recognize that there's no future for our democracy if every powerful institution approaches official extortion in this way.

Question. Why should or shouldn’t major research universities in the US incorporate their research institutes and sell them to major pharmaceutical (or other tech) companies, making a massive profit, and allowing the University to focus on its core mission, which is education and pure research.

“US President Donald Trump's administration has said it will revoke the temporary legal status of more than half a million migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela.” (BBC and Reuters). If you wanted a good way to lose Florida in the next election, that’d be it.

Trump, Musk, Vance, Vought, etc are systematically destroying: 1. Scientific research in the United States. 2. The talent pipeline for this research. 3. The university system itself. 4. The careers of thousands of people like Dr. Minor For what? Politics? Resentment? Thiel? Putin? Thread:

This looks like really excellent work on an important topic.

Does someone see the roadmap Judge Boasberg is following? He’s requiring written certification from Justice that no immigrants were deported after his order (we know they were) because…if department lawyers lie in court documents, they get disbarred, which Trump can’t undo through a pardon? Or what?

This outcome was absolutely foreseeable. And even the richest institutions (when combined with a threatened direct tax on endowments) won’t be able to sustain advanced scientific training. If destroying the current economy alongside investment in future prosperity was the goal, mission accomplished!

Those eye movements are to generate flow, which is the basis for being able to perceive the stable world - surely they are a feature, not a bug to be dealt with

“The surprising way the brain is wired” Podcast interview of my by Jack Roycroft youtu.be/9939jVJIZYo

Beautiful.

This is what happens when you promote a Junior field grade officer, former platoon leader and battalion level staffer, to run the whole shebang. He has no grasp of the needs of the enterprise, anything beyond kicking down the next 3 doors. www.science.org/content/arti...

Trump’s latest tariff moves are shaking markets and roiling our relationships with allies, but Trump doesn't seem to care. Could there be a method to his tariff madness?

Yes, theory should play a more prominent role in neuroscience (and psychology). But theory means more than computational modeling. (And certainly more than Marr-style levels of analysis).

𝗛𝗼𝗺𝗲𝗼𝘀𝘁𝗮𝘀𝗶𝘀 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗟𝗶𝗳𝗲 Looks like a must read if only for the history. By Bechtel and Bich, among the best philosophers of life out there. www.cambridge.org/core/service...

As a former IT professional, I feel the concrete reality of this. As a US citizen, I’m overwhelmed by the obvious metaphor.

Imagine DOGE opens your mail and finds your household electric bill. To eliminate this cost, they burn your house down without warning. Then they total up the bills that, as a homeless person, you will never again pay. On its website, DOGE boasts about the money it has saved you.

The SecDef announces we are stepping away from a fundamental law of ethical combat, and the NYT takeaway is that it will jeopardize 166 jobs?!

A new post on why we aren’t living in a simulation, and the (political) implications of pushing the claim. It was originally aimed at Musk and Co, but apparently the editorial policy at Psychology Today has changed so the politics bit had to go. Anyway, enjoy www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/af...

Francis Collins, the NIH Director for 12 years, led the Human Genome Project and other NIH efforts for 32 years, resigned today. Key words from his resignation letter www.nytimes.com/2025/03/01/u...

The end game is absolutely not Nazi Germany. I get why it’s pretty to think so, since the valences are then so clear. But can we instead analyze the actual pattern of events and see where it’s going to more effectively predict and prevent?

Averaging brain responses is not a great idea... #neuroscience #neuroskyence www.nature.com/articles/s41...

The trouble is, there’s no monarchy to topple. There’s just democracy. This is (a) possibly what’s happening and (b) not going to solve the problem.

Yes, Cognitive Psychology advocates HAVE systematically kicked the can down the road - it's a "science" based on faith that someday, someone else will bridge the gaps identified by everyone from Bergson and James to Deleuze and Guattari - see cognitioninaction.files.wordpress.com/2019/10/7.-g...

Heads-up: another FEP piece by a critic that is also a spectacularly accessible way in to challenging, potentially problematic, but none-the-less astonishing body of research. Cf. @bayesianboy.bsky.social on The Math is not the Territory and @diovicen.bsky.social on the Markov Blanket Trick 😍

Well this pretty thing arrived! 😊 Paperback is out March 25th! press.princeton.edu/books/paperb... @princetonupress.bsky.social

Who in the heck do you hang out with? I personally know very many philosophers who’ve made important contributions to science, both empirically and theoretically. And Popperian understanding of science is seriously old news.

Yep. And I’ll keep saying it: over-reliance on federal grant $$ changed University priorities in harmful ways, and made us more vulnerable to political winds (which have been shifting for some time). When we get through this initial crisis, the system needs rethinking.

And this is reason #1,547 that full cost accounting needs to become the norm. Otherwise as long as something isn’t on your books you can just ignore it.

@segundo-ortin.bsky.social and I were talking about ecological psychology, the ecological handicap, teaching, and learning in the Future Learning Design Podcast. You can check the episode here: www.goodimpactlabs.com/podcast/migu...

Executive orders be damned, this certainly violates existing anti-discrimination law. I have to assume they actively want to be sued, as a strategy.