🚀 It's almost time to officially launch CAIC! There have been a couple of changes to the schedule-- check them out and then be sure to RSVP: caic.centers.purdue.edu

Kant says: stop reading novels!!!! God forbid you come to remember the characters of fantasy novels when you could instead have memorized 53 new maxims to will and therefore be an even better person.

Episodic memory, as we know it now, might not have emerged at a specific point in our evolutionary history. Instead, it may have been cobbled together in a stepwise manner. Rebecca Dreier (LSE) is at The Memory Palace today exploring this possibility; take a look! #philsky #philscisky

If you work on values in science, and have noticed that the literature is a bit too focused on values in science in Anglophone democracies – and that it therefore stays silent on issues that we should be talking about – please consider submitting an abstract to our workshop! (24–25 August, Helsinki)

Last week's Coffee & CAIC gave us a chance to celebrate our inaugural CAIC postdoc @okaydaniellle.bsky.social on her job market success. Next year she'll be a Bersoff Faculty Fellow at NYU, before starting her TT job @ The Ohio State. We’re toasting her hard work and bright future with Buckeyes!

The Predatory Intelligence Hypothesis 👉 The cognitive challenges associated with interactions with predators and prey create a co-evolutionary arms race that promote bidirectional enhanced cognition Corollary: no predation, little or no cognition www.nature.com/articles/s44...

🥁Now announcing the winner of the 2026 Stanton Prize: Congratulations, Melissa Kibbe @levelsof.bsky.social! ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ This honor will be celebrated at the upcoming meeting of the SPP

My paper, "Hume on the Prospects for a Scientific Psychology," was accepted by the Journal for the History of the Behavioral Sciences, which is nice. It's on section 1 of the first Enquiry, both as a manifesto for a future science and as a guide to the rest of the Enquiry philpapers.org/rec/JACHOT-4

John Lubbock (1883) on individuality of bees. It's always a bit sad when people write that individual differences in animal psychology are a recent discovery. Using the cutesy label of "animal personality" doesn't make it novel. The study of the phenomenon is as old as the study of animal behaviour.

The schedule and RSVP link for the CAIC launch event is now live on our website 🚀 Check the schedule and RSVP to attend ✏️ caic.centers.purdue.edu

I encountered this Bursaria truncatella after it "inhaled" a Paramecium. I was hoping to see the Paramecium get sealed into a vacuole, but instead it finally managed to escape! My students have nicknamed Bursaria "Micro Roomba." LOL #microscope #science #microscopy #iteachbiology

Just out: my account of an extended thought experiment conducted by Dan Dennett and me. Open access. The Emancipation of the drone: A Dennettian thought experiment www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Obviously saddened we didn't get gold. But the moment of holding up Gaudreau's jersey and seeing his parents in the stands -- made it all worth the loss. I saw the USA team also brought out Gaudreau's kids on the ice for the team photo. Wonderful.

Loretta wants you to know that we'll be heading to The Ohio State University soon where I'll be an Assistant Professor of Philosophy 🥹 The OSU phil department is absolutely fantastic and I can't wait to go do philosophy with them! 🐎 🐻 🚂 🌰

So happy to see this paper published! It represents by far the most fun and enriching experience I've had as a grad student. Reading philosophy is fun, but spending most of my week in a lab with dogs of all breeds and personalities? Nothing beats that. Couldn't have asked for better mentors!!!

If you are in the Baltimore area and would like to help us with our effort to understand how dogs think, sign your dog up to participate in our studies: www.social-cognitive-origins.com/participate-...

We build on seminal work w/ human infants by @hyogweon.bsky.social & @miteccl.bsky.social but find no evidence that dogs can correctly infer the social or physical causes for a failed action, even when interacting with a highly familiar kind of object (pet gates) journals.plos.org/plosone/arti...

My high school doesn't even have a wiki to look up who went to it

Bergson’s view of memory has largely been lost in recent philosophical discussion Doudja Boumaza is at the Palace today, with a strong case for bringing him back! #philsky #philscisky

Trust in leadership is essential to success A new study found that PhD students who had greater trust in their graduate advisor finished their first year more motivated, higher in well-being, and more academically successful than those with lower advisor trust. academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/ar...

📢 New Paper 🚨 Hadza food-sharing is egalitarian, yet offers in giving games have never matched the equitable redistribution seen in real life. In this study, we allowed people to give *or* take. Lifelike equitable distributions only appeared when people took from peers in surplus. bit.ly/4kvLOwA

APA member Bas van Fraassen has been awarded the 2026 Rolf Schock Prize in Logic and Philosophy. Congratulations! dailynous.com/2026/01/21/b...

Anyone have suggestions for things to do in Bochum on my day off? I hear the mining museum is nice, but I must confess that mining is not one of my special interests (though I'm sure it's fascinating).

The Memory Palace is back for 2026! Our first post is from Charlotte Harmon, our Purdue student editorial assistant. The piece highlights the work of some of our translators and how language plays a role in the philosophy of memory. Check it out! open.substack.com/pub/thememor...

Finished my readings for this week, and now it's time to play the greatest point and click adventure game (besides Myst and Riven) while drinking a couple of PBRs.

Highlights from today’s Coffee & CAIC with @dryan149.bsky.social and @evanwestra.bsky.social

My fellow grad students do not know about Cow Tools, and I find this deeply disturbing. Even worse, when I try to explain how important it is, they simply stare at me blankly, as though Cow Tools is NOT a significant cultural moment.

Tomorrow in BRNG 7119: @dryan149.bsky.social and @evanwestra.bsky.social will be talking about how norms are entangled with other norms, interwoven into a larger social fabric 🌀

This coming Friday @dryan149.bsky.social and @evanwestra.bsky.social will be presenting their work 'Norms, Articulated and Un--' at Coffee & CAIC! Join us at 10am in BRNG 7119 🥳

Excited to recruit a 🚨 postdoc 🚨 for projects on #AI and evolving scientific practice, norms, and impact! Interdisciplinary work across science of science, philosophy of science, math with creative Purdue/Argonne/CMU/Chicago/Princeton collaborators! *pls repost*! careers.purdue.edu/job/Postdoc-...

Not that I could afford to subscribe, but I miss daily newspapers.

A while ago, I posted a set of notes about the Bayesian approach to inquiry and how it can help us think about questions raised in the recent literature on zetetic epistemology. I’ve now corralled that material into something like a first draft of a book. I hope it might be of interest to others.

Ramsey coming up with his mature theory of induction in the middle of a talk

i've updated my history of AI poster. new version is on my website. 🥳

🎅Festive news in mental fictionalism!🎅Second: Bruno Mölder asks "Can mental fictionalism avoid cognitive collapse?" Merry Christmas! doi.org/10.1080/0951... @journalphp.bsky.social #philsky #philmind #cogsci

“textual ruins” ❤️ www.nytimes.com/2025/12/19/o...

Latest papers: Gavin Robert Foster offers an ontogenetic challenge to mental fictionalism in this open access paper doi.org/10.1080/0951... #philsky #philpsy

Purdue grad student @gibbonitathought.bsky.social throwing some real shade at mental fiction

⚙️ New Publication ⚙️ @okaydaniellle.bsky.social's new paper 'Computationalism, implementation, and the literal interpretation of computational models in neuroscience: distinctions with a difference' is forthcoming in Philosophy and The Mind Sciences. Preprint here: philpapers.org/rec/DANCIA-3

🔥 New Publication 🔥 @gibbonitathought.bsky.social and @evanwestra.bsky.social have a forthcoming book review in MIND 🥳 Read it here: philpapers.org/rec/FOSROA

🚨 @gibbonitathought.bsky.social have a new review of Emma Borg's Acting for Reasons: In Defence of Common-sense Psychology. TLDR we're big fans. We also use the review as a chance to riff on the relation between reasoning and mindreading. Check it out!

Delighted to share (with @evanwestra.bsky.social) a preprint of our review of Emma Borg’s Acting for Reasons, forthcoming in Mind. It was a pleasure to read and engage with. We suggest the thesis of the book could be supplemented by considering regulative accounts of FP. philarchive.org/rec/FOSROA

Respect for Ahmed al Ahmed. #hero

As a reminder, our deadline for Association Association submissions is Monday. Please consider applying

Brilliant talk by Justin Wood (Indiana) on his "digital twin studies" - raising newborn chicks, and artificial neural networks, in the same (virtual) environments - fantastic new perspective on the nature/nurture debate #CIFARwinterschool #TWCF www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...