Good news everyone: #Duke Summer Seminars in Neuroscience and Philosophy (SSNAP) are back!! We are now accepting applications for SSNAP 2026, which will take place from May 26 to June 6, 2026. #neuroscience #philosophy #brain Please spread the word! ssnap.submittable.com/submit

Inference in (neuro)cognitive systems Inference in (neuro)cognitive systems By Urte Laukaityte and Matteo Colombo Psychologists speak of perceiving as inferring. Neuroscientists maintain that the brain solves inference problems. Biologists say that individual cells infer the structure of their…

Check out my guide to the visual universe of Aubrey Beardsley - the master of fin-de-siècle sensibility.

Inferential theories are on the rise in cognitive science. But what does it mean to infer? Check out our take on inference across a variety of (neuro)cognitive systems.

Consider reading my new piece on the history and science of the nasogenital cure! Incidentally, that's not exactly what the theory was and not quite what the episode reveals. Bizarre tales sound rather less bizarre in context - possibly, our own tales in our own context, too.

On train home after Method & Convergence 2025. I got so much food for my work! Slide is from @laukas.bsky.social nice ”PR talk” on synthetic phil… 🔥

Consider reading this funky piece of mine from 2018! Featuring cameos from Ben Franklin, Marie Antoinette, and Stephen Jay Gould.

📣📣📣 Applications for the 2025 Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute (DISI) are now open!! Are you interested in intelligence, mind, and cognition in all its forms? Early-career scholars from any discipline—and storytellers in any medium—are encouraged to apply! More info: disi.org

A new project got a shout-out at the Monochrome Photography Awards 2024 - see the shot here.

Thanks for a great 2024, friends! We put out 21 new episodes this year (19 interviews, 2 essays). The top 5 were... (in chronological order) 🧵

My new book, Slime Mould and Philosophy, is now available — and for the next month, you can download it for FREE here: doi.org/10.1017/9781... Thanks to everyone who made this book come to life and shared the rather intense journey with me. Enjoy!

A Drive to Survive now has a cover! Thanks to my friend Toby Logan saving the day with his design skills. Unfortunately the release has been delayed another two months, but the pre-print can be downloaded here osf.io/preprints/ps... or I’m happy to email a PDF to anyone interested!

Chuffed to be 'honourably mentioned' at the ND Photography Awards this year - in case anyone else might enjoy seeing the shot, here it is.

A (provocative) new chapter. If "cognition all the way down" holds up when things go right with capacities like perception, learning, memory, etc., it should also apply when things go awry. What could taking the idea of scale-free psychiatry seriously teach us about our own cognitive (dys)function?

From Borch-Jacobsen, M. (2021). Freud's Patients: A Book of Lives. Reaktion Books.

From Shorter, E. (1992). From Paralysis to Fatigue: A History of Psychosomatic Illness in the Modern Era. The Free Press.

New episode!! 📣📣 An essay by our Assistant Producer, @laukas.bsky.social. We often hear about placebo treatments as controls—points of comparison for "real" treatments. But placebos are much more than that. Is it time we harnessed their power? Listen: disi.org/rehabilitati...

From Few, M. (2005). Chocolate, Sex, and Disorderly Women in Late-Seventeenth and Early-Eighteenth-Century Guatemala. Ethnohistory 52(4), pp. 673–687.

From Carnwath, T., Smith, I. (2002). The Heroin Century. Routledge.

From Wuthnow, R. (2017). American Misfits and the Making of Middle-Class Respectability. Princeton University Press.

From Weatherford, J. (2010). The Secret History of the Mongol Queens: How the Daughters of Genghis Khan Rescued His Empire. Crown Publishers.

From Wilkins, B. S. (2002). The Spleen. British Journal of Haematology 117(2), pp. 265-274.

From Park, S. K., Lee, E. J., Park, J. W. (2016). Visual History with Choson Dynasty Annals. Leonardo 49(4), pp. 334–341.

From Kotchemidova, C. (2005). From Good Cheer to “Drive-By Smiling”: A Social History of Cheerfulness. Journal of Social History 39(1), pp. 5-37.