Michael David Kirchhoff
@kirchhoffmd.bsky.social
Professor in the School of Liberal Arts, University of Wollongong, Australia. Current research: The function and implication of using idealized methods to model the mind/brain in computational neurosience. Ongoing: FEP, 4E, metaphysical musings
Very grateful to Karl Friston and Colin Klein for providing praise statements on my forthcoming book The Idealized Brain. Coming out 15 December 2026. Check out the praise statements through the below link :-) mitpress.mit.edu/978026205492...
The Idealized Brain
In The Idealized Brain, Michael Kirchhoff explores the challenges of using idealized modeling in computational neuroscience. The book spans work on neural co...
mitpress.mit.edu
nodesjournal.com/en/nodes27/ just out, in both English and Italian - some arguments on idealization, representation and computation. Features a few issues discussed in The Idealized Brain coming out in December 2026
Nodes 27 -
pp.128 Size: 20,5 x 26 cm Pink and black Risograph print Paper stock: Favini Shiro Echo, Favini Burano Desert BUY YEAR XV – 2026 Indice / Index Editoriale / Editorial Letter Ricerca, immaginazione e f...
nodesjournal.com
QS world rankings by subject #philosophy topuniversities.com/university-sub… I'm especially proud that Philosophy at UOW placed 6th in the world. Thanks to everyone who judged us this highly!
topuniversities.com
Looking forward to participating in this session via the Asian Pacific Philosophy of Science Association
This is just not what LLMs are. If all they could do was reproduce their training set they wouldn't be able to do nearly all the things people regularly use them for. Please read the literature (e.g., here's a whole grade seminar I just taught - some good readings here: cogsci-llms.netlify.app )
Cognitive Science of Large Language Models
cogsci-llms.netlify.app
A study co-authored by Princeton researchers finds that human brains process spoken language in a way that "closely mirrors the layered architecture of advanced AI language models."
How your brain understands language may be more like AI than previously thought
A new study reveals that the human brain processes spoken language in a sequence that closely mirrors the layered architecture of advanced AI language models. Using electrocorticography data from part...
medicalxpress.com
Day 5 of the Brain's Blog symposium of 'The Idealized Mind'. Attached are links to Karl Friston's commentary and my response - a discussion about spherical cows and the FEP philosophyofbrains.com/2025/12/05/the… philosophyofbrains.com/2025/12/05/res���
philosophyofbrains.com
Day 4 of the Brain's Blog symposium of 'The Idealized Mind'. Attached are links to @coreymaley.net commentary and my response: philosophyofbrains.com/2025/12/04/c... philosophyofbrains.com/2025/12/04/a... Am I committed to there being no physical computers that compute?
Corey Maley: Comments on The Idealized Mind — The Brains Blog
COMMENTS ON THE IDEALIZED MIND, BY MICHAEL D. KIRCHHOFFCorey J. Maley Purdue University cjmaley@purdue.edu Michael Kirchhoff’s book The Idealized Mind has many original and thought-provoking ideas,…
philosophyofbrains.com
Day 3 of the Brain's Blog symposium of 'The Idealized Mind'. Attached are links to Frances Egan's commentary and my response: philosophyofbrains.com/2025/12/03/s... philosophyofbrains.com/2025/12/03/a... Should we think that nervous systems compute? That's the topic of Day 3!
Frances Egan: Some Physical Systems (Literally) Compute — The Brains Blog
Some Physical Systems (Literally) ComputeFrances Egan Rutgers University In his ambitious new book, Michael Kirchhoff argues that computational models cannot be literally true …
philosophyofbrains.com
Day 2 of the @philosophyofbrains.com symposium of The Idealized Mind. Attached are link to Zoe Drayson's commentary and my response. philosophyofbrains.com/2025/12/02/c... philosophyofbrains.com/2025/12/02/a... How can idealized models explain if they don't represent? Have a look in the links!
Zoe Drayson: Challenging Kirchhoff on the Semantics of Models and Theories — The Brains Blog
Challenging Kirchhoff on the Semantics of Models and TheoriesZoe DraysonThe bold claim at the heart of Kirchhoff’s (2025) The Idealized Mind is that some scientific theories are neither true nor fa…
philosophyofbrains.com
philosophyofbrains.com/2025/12/01/i... Introduction to the book symposium on The Idealized Mind on the Brain's Blog. New post everyday with a commentator and response by me. Commentators are Zoe Drayson, Corey Maley, Karl Friston and Frances Egan
Intro to Michael Kirchhoff’s: The Idealized Mind — The Brains Blog
“Milk production at a dairy farm was low, so the farmer wrote to the local university, asking for help. A multidisciplinary team of professors was assembled, headed by a theoretical physicist, and …
philosophyofbrains.com
youtube.com/watch?v=R2P6... Great to be part of this podcast on The Idealized Mind hosted by Deepak Bhatt over on Business Talk. Interested in idealization, neuroscience and philosophy this should be interesting. Feedback welcomed!
The Idealized Mind: Rethinking Cognitive Science with Dr. Michael Kirchhoff
YouTube video by Business Talk
youtube.com
x.com/hellomrbhatt... Looking forward to diving into The Idealized Mind with Deepak Bhatt tomorrow on Business Talk
Deepak Bhatt on X: "Delighted to share that our next episode features Dr. @MdKirchhoff, Associate Professor in the school of Liberal Arts from the University of Wollongong, diving into “The Idealized Mind” and how idealized models are reshaping the way we think about cognition. https://t.co/yXjoQc62cG" / X
Delighted to share that our next episode features Dr. @MdKirchhoff, Associate Professor in the school of Liberal Arts from the University of Wollongong, diving into “The Idealized Mind” and how idealized models are reshaping the way we think about cognition. https://t.co/yXjoQc62cG
x.com
Available #OpenAccess, Michael Kirchhoff's "The Idealized Mind" brings together ideas from the philosophy of cognitive science and the philosophy of science to reconcile scientific realism with model-based science: mitpress.mit.edu/978026255293...
Data only shows associations. Turning those into claims about mechanism or causation? That requires a Rosetta Stone of prior knowledge + theory. Resting-state fMRI is purely observational; correlation is its currency. From this, plenty of "theoretical toys" about brain function can be built...
bioRxiv Neuroscience@biorxiv-neursci.bsky.social · 11mo agoResting-State fMRI and the Risk of Overinterpretation: Noise, Mechanisms, and a Missing Rosetta Stone https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.09.16.676611v1
Second: Michael D. Kirchhoff @kirchhoffmd.bsky.social explores the relationship between mental fictionalism and successful idealizations in the sciences: doi.org/10.1080/0951...
Idealization and mental fictionalism
Cognitive scientists speak of codes, signals, encoding, decoding, computation, representation, and information-processing. The orthodox view is to take talk of neuronal signaling and computational ...
doi.org
Not that it comes as much of a surprise to many of us, but it's worth emphasizing once again - the 👏 brain 👏 uses 👏 distributed 👏 coding 👏. 😁 Two new papers from the #IBL looking at brain-wide activity: www.nature.com/articles/s41... www.nature.com/articles/s41... #neuroscience 🧪
Brain-wide representations of prior information in mouse decision-making - Nature
Brain-wide recordings in mice reveal that prior expectations are distributed through recurrent loops across all levels of cortical and subcortical processing.
nature.com
🏆 Best Paper — Predictive Coding or Just Feature Discovery? An Alternative Account of Why Language Models Fit Brain Data: doi.org/10.1162/nol_... Richard Antonello and @alexanderhuth.bsky.social
Predictive Coding or Just Feature Discovery? An Alternative Account of Why Language Models Fit Brain Data
Abstract. Many recent studies have shown that representations drawn from neural network language models are extremely effective at predicting brain responses to natural language. But why do these…
doi.org
Come to Melbourne for the 2025 Conference of the Australasian Society for Philosophy and Psychology Check out the great keynotes - submit your abstract Come join this exciting community of researchers Nov 24-25 - Register now! #philosophy #neuroskyence #philsky sites.google.com/monash.edu/a...
ASPP 2025 Melbourne
Australasian Society for Philosophy and Psychology 2025 Conference Melbourne, November 24th - 25th, 2025
sites.google.com
I am advertising two PhD positions in philosophy -- one for a domestic student, one for an international student. Both positions are 1 + 3 years, meaning that the first year is an MRes and the next three years are for the PhD. www.mq.edu.au/research/phd...
PhD on the philosophy of networks of trust
This PhD scholarship is intended to benefit a researcher in empirically-oriented philosophy. Learn more and submit an expression of interest.
mq.edu.au
Exciting news. Following the publication of 'The Idealized Mind: From Model-based Science to Cognitive Science' (2025, MIT Press), I have signed a new contract for a completed and forthcoming book with MIT entitled 'The Idealized Brain: Uniting Philosophy of Science and Computational Neuroscience'.
Now published www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
Idealization and mental fictionalism
Cognitive scientists speak of codes, signals, encoding, decoding, computation, representation, and information-processing. The orthodox view is to take talk of neuronal signaling and computational ...
tandfonline.com
'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.
