📣 Join the K/Creative Ape Team 🤓 2 PhDs on Creativity in Wild Chimpanzees & Bonobos; w myself & the v awesome @kathelijnekoops.bsky.social @snf-fns.ch Uni Zurich @uniofstandrews.bsky.social @efp2026.bsky.social @ips-primatenews.bsky.social @primatesocietygb.bsky.social @primbehavecol.bsky.social 🐵🧪

This on top of the 'grue-jays' news makes me worried epistemologists have been given power to secretly carry out their schemes. Expect an uptick in stopped clocks, fake barns, brains in vats etc.

#IgNoble prize winner: Painting cows with zebra-like striping reduces biting fly attacks. 💡Painting black-and-white stripes can increase cattle welfare without the use of pesticides, proposing a solution for the problem of pesticide resistance in the environment. 🧪🌍🪰🦓🐮 doi.org/10.1371/jour...

While the new NOFO doesn't exclude animal experiments, it doesn't foreground them. Instead, it elevates human-relevant and computational approaches through its data and modeling requirements. The shift in tone and framing is subtle, but the priorities are noticeably shifting. #scipol #NAMs

Don't sleep on the good news, folks. It's rare these days. www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-ind...

I'm delighted to share that, together with @crowbrain.bsky.social our paper on time estimation in crows is now published in @natcomms.nature.com We found that crows not only keep track of time, but individual neurons prefer different time durations 🐦⏱️🧠 Check it out: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Sign of the times: A Columbia grad student handcuffed on the street by people claiming to be federal agents, later released, and it's still unclear whether they were feds or not Official university statement: president.columbia.edu/news/reminde...

My new Centre for Animal Sentience will launch on 30 Sept with a public event on "How AI is helping - and harming - animals" and you can register for a free ticket now. Please join us! www.lse.ac.uk/events/how-a...

Long overdue egg update 🐥

Great to have another paper with @chazfirestone.bsky.social @ianbphillips.bsky.social and the brilliant Hanbei Zhou out! In this paper we demonstrate that stimuli within events are perceived further apart in time — an event-based analog of “object-based warping”. psycnet.apa.org/record/2026-...

Methane panel starting in just over an hour. Still time to register: us02web.zoom.us/webinar/regi...

Really happy to have a new paper forthcoming at PPR! Ever wondered if there’s any point in feeling regret? In this paper, I argue that regret is valuable because it helps us overcome temptation. Check it out: philpapers.org/rec/GOHRLA

My paper on rethinking the role and place of trust in science is at last published. It’s the basis for part of the last chapter of my new book on trust and science.

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... "... observers perceive scene images achromatized in the peripheral region (chimera images) as full-color images... inattentional noise increases the occurrence of strong color signals that exceed the internal color detection criterion..." Nishida lab 🧠📈

US colleagues in #philsci #sts #histsci #histmed, please encourage your students to consider the Gates Cambridge Scholarships. Deadline for US residents is October 15th. They need to first apply for admission to the Department of HPS for MPhil or PhD (2026 entry) www.hps.cam.ac.uk/study/postgr...

'The Idealized Mind: From Model-based Science to Cognitive Science' published by MIT Press. Claims: models of the mind are idealized models; this is consistent with scientific realism; yet, it blocks realism about neural representation and neural computation based on evidence from neuroscience.

When an animals' groupmates go out of sight, do they also go out of mind? In a new paper in Proc B @royalsocietypublishing.org, Luz Carvajal and I show that a bonobo (Kanzi) can keep mental tabs on the whereabouts of multiple hidden social partners royalsocietypublishing.org/eprint/4GI7G...

‼️ Join #LSEPhilosophy! We are hiring an Assistant Professor of #Philosophy with focus on #Sustainability Application deadline: 3 November 2025 More information: jobs.lse.ac.uk/Vacancies/W/... #London #PartOfLSE #hiring #jobs

Have you been wondering what we've been doing in our TWCF @templetonworld.bsky.social project on animal joy? This video wonderfully produced by Richard Sergay @storiesofimpact.bsky.social explains all! www.youtube.com/watch?v=2TkY...

A necessary connexion?

At first, I felt like I had freaking super powers. Like a PI with a nearly infinite supply of talented lab members, who worked at 1000x speed. It was exhilarating. But then, the cracks started to show. TL;DR: If Claude were my grad student, I'd kick them out of my lab.

Feeling very excited, grateful, and fortunate to be moving to India today to become an Assistant Professor in Philosophy at Ashoka University! In other news, just learned about the importance of the slogan 'Simon Go Back' to the Indian independence movement

Fascinated by how 'philosopher' is used outside academia. This N London park is named after a group of mid-C20th retirees who met regularly to chat, play sports, and help the community (including supervising air raid shelters during the Blitz) hornseyhistorical.org.uk/the-priory-p...

Heat map of most of my cycle journeys over the last year. Much to be done, but thanks to @hackneylcc.bsky.social @cycleislington.uk and others, much of the city feels incredibly safe already. Cycling as my primary mode of transport has saved 100s of hours and probably over £1000 this year alone

We're looking forward to attending the 12th Annual #3Rs Symposium hosted by @jhucaat.bsky.social , @hopkinsmedicine.bsky.social , USDA, & NIH. 🧪 📅 Sep 10-11 & 17-18 🕙 10 am - 1:30 pm ET 💻 Virtual www.eventbrite.com/e/12th-annua...

Two job ads for people in philosophy in my dept (www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DOD999/a... and www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DOD995/a...). Ever heard of this thing called AI? You probably haven't it's pretty niche. But if you have maybe apply? Also this even more niche thing (sustainability) so that too.

Confidence in absence as confidence in counterfactual visibility: a CogSci proceedings paper with star MSc student Maya Schipper, is now out on PsyArXiv: osf.io/preprints/ps... 🧵👇

Happy Approximation to Pi Day (22/7)! 🥳 Suggested ways to celebrate include eating approximations to pie, such as tarts, flans, quiches, pastries, turnovers,... 🥧

Cambridge Elements are free to download until 7/25-check out my little book How To Study Animal Minds. I had fun writing this one, and I'll never forget how nervous I was in front of a bunch of scientist friends, including Sara Shettleworth, hearing their thoughts on the draft! tinyurl.com/3yy6a52c

For everyone who has ever asked, on seeing my Baltimore homicide charts, "How did they do that?"

Happy to share this updated Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on 'Associationist Theories of Thought' with @ericman.bsky.social. Among other things, we included a new major section on reinforcement learning. Many thanks to Eric for bringing me on board! plato.stanford.edu/entries/asso...

"Jonathan Caravello...was reportedly “piled on by multiple agents all at once” as “he tried to help a man in a wheelchair” who was having difficulty moving after...[ICE] agents threw canisters of tear gas" our colleague is still missing as of the last info I got dailynous.com/2025/07/12/p...

I recently had the chance to sit on an expert panel for the first ever citizens' assembly on animal welfare - I've written here about my experience theconversation.com/how-citizens...

Who says you can't study cognition in vitro? 🧠 This new preprint describes short- and long-term potentiation, as well as reinforcement learning, in paired human brain #organoids. By Rountree et al. of @28bio.bsky.social & @tulaneu.bsky.social #neuroskyence 🧪 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

🏆 We are pleased to announce the 2025 Lakatos Award winner Mazviita Chirimuuta, who receives the award for her book “The Brain Abstracted: Simplification in the History and Philosophy of Neuroscience” Congratulations! 👏 👉More about the award: www.lse.ac.uk/philosophy/b...

It's here! It's finally here! It's Daniel Hannan Day! The future he promised everyone a mere 2 days before the Brexit referendum is so exciting, I think my heart may burst with joy when I step outside and experience it for myself. (Read it. You deserve a laugh.) www.reaction.life/p/britain-lo...

My latest Aronov lab paper is now published @Nature! When a chickadee looks at a distant location, the same place cells activate as if it were actually there 👁️ The hippocampus encodes where the bird is looking, AND what it expects to see next -- enabling spatial reasoning from afar bit.ly/3HvWSum

This is nuts. We shouldn’t have to be fighting needless battles like this. So annoying. Just like the coal mine farce, mad ideas like this just get in the way of sensible policy making for improving lives and dealing with climate.

I am so excited to share that our paper 'A neural basis for distinguishing imagination from reality' is now published in @cp-neuron.bsky.social! 🧠✨ See thread below! doi.org/10.1016/j.ne...

We had a sneak peak today in team meeting. Looks set to be fascinating talk (1) documenting deep uncertainty within Animal Welfare Science about what they are studying, (2) developing potential implications (e.g. showing ambiguity allows industry to distort debate) & (3) proposing ways forward

My Canadian university, Queen's, is offering TWENTY 4-year funded PhDs (40k CAD/yr) for a student of ANY citizenship who has been accepted at a top 100 US university but have had offer rescinded OR are reconsidering offer due to US policy. Details found here👇 www.queensu.ca/grad-postdoc...

Looking forward to talking to UFAW about one of my main preoccupations, defining animal welfare

New outfit? Maybe. Hermit crab tries on a larger shell. Does it fit? Is it comfortable? Is it too heavy? (In the end, he goes back to the old one.) #VancouverIsland #HermitCrabs #IntertidalInvertebrates #Invertebrates #MarineLife #DailyHermit

All Souls College, University of Oxford is advertising a senior academic position in philosophy. Closing date: 19 September 2025. #PhilJobs, #Philosophy, @jowolff.bsky.social, @birchlse.bsky.social www.asc.ox.ac.uk/senior-resea...

However, as scientists we are highly allergic to Type 1 errors. We prefer to not say whether human-caused climate change was involved until we have extremely precise data in the published literature we can cite. As a result, we often commit Type 2 errors. A good discussion of this bias here:

Hugely important new work for our understanding of consciousness!

Submit a comment by Monday 5/19 to the Federal Register on proposed changes to the Endangered Species Act: www.federalregister.gov/documents/20... This article ⬇️ (by ecologist + law professor) has the info you need. Text of my public comment is below.

You can now submit a commentary on our paper here: www.cambridge.org/core/journal.... We're very much looking forward to reading your commentaries and discussing our hypothesis with you!

Those who are uncomfortable with this Labour immigration announcement, but think it's necessary to satisfy Reform voters, this is for you. You will not satisfy. You will never satisfy.