My favourite souvenir from last week’s conference: me looking back at my PhD student, @miguelborrajo.bsky.social, whose work criticises AI animal translation projects, as Louise Barrett sarcastically comments on anthropocentric animal cognition.
Miguel Borrajo
@miguelborrajo.bsky.social
PhD assistant and lecturer at UAM. Member of METIS group (UNED). Researching animal cognition, AI, and embodied models of the mind. Focused on the intersection of technologies and cognitive processes. Music enthusiast and creative sound designer.
Day 3 and final day of the Embodied Cognition and Comparative Psychology Conference with @susanamonso.com, @miguelborrajo.bsky.social and myself presenting. It has been a wonderful (and exhausting) experience. @isanchezmoreno.bsky.social and Gabriel Corda in the last photo too! ✨🐾
Next week I will be keynoting at this. My wonderful PhD students @miguelborrajo.bsky.social, @isanchezmoreno.bsky.social, and @josepgasol.com will also be presenting. Fun times!
Miguel Segundo Ortin@segundo-ortin.bsky.social · 4mo ago[CONFERENCE ALERT] May 5-7, EMBODIED COGNITION AND COMPARATIVE PSYCHOLOGY Universidad de Murcia (Spain) Invited speakers: Louise Barrett, Lucia Jacobs, Susana Monsó, Paco Calvo, Matt Sims & Aditya Ponkshe. Check out the full program here: embodiedcomparativepsychology.square.site/program
No, they really haven't. Calling spectral peaks vowels is as inane as saying that because my washing up gloves are also yellow, they have the same nutritional content as a banana. Zero evidence of vowel-like function. It's pure clickbait, and a new low in irresponsible claims from this group 🙄🐳🦑🧪
Project CETI@projectceti.bsky.social · 9mo agoCETI scientists have discovered vowel and diphthong-like patterns in sperm whale communication! Read: bit.ly/3WSn9rc By: @begus.bsky.social, Ronald Sprouse, Andrej Leban, Miles Silva & Shane Gero. @ucberkeleyofficial.bsky.social, @umich.edu, @carleton.ca, @csail.mit.edu Animation: Meghan Fenske
My new installation Alaka’i 1777, which imagines the lost song culture of the Kauaʻi ʻōʻō, debuts in NYC 6/21-22! Come hear real-time simulations of extinct birdsongs in 24-channel spatial audio 🦜 Made possible by @cornellbirds.bsky.social @culturalevolsoc.bsky.social @divintelligence.bsky.social
Heading to St Andrews this Sunday for the @divintelligence.bsky.social ! Three weeks with researchers and artists exploring what intelligence is and how it evolves. Really excited and grateful for this chance to learn, share, and connect. 🐳 👾 🐝 🌱
✦ 1. ¿Alguna vez te has preguntado si el tiempo es ilusorio? ¿O si el futuro está abierto? Mi #HiloTesis explora si la biología puede ayudarnos en estas disputas metafísicas sobre la naturaleza del tiempo. @crueuniversidades.bsky.social @filarramendi.bsky.social ky.social @uneduniv.bsky.social
Con la participación también de mis brillantes doctorandos @isanchezmoreno.bsky.social y @miguelborrajo.bsky.social. ¡Orgullo máximo!
Mañana a las 10 estaré en directo en Carne Cruda hablando de comunicación animal, con apariciones también de mis doctorandos @isanchezmoreno.bsky.social y @miguelborrajo.bsky.social.
Carne Cruda
Programa de radio online Carne Cruda. Premio Ondas al Mejor Programa de Radio 2012. La República Independiente de la Radio se emite online con eldiario.es. Escucha el programa en www.carnecruda.es y ...
youtube.com
Encantado de haber presentado mi trabajo sobre el uso de la IA en la comunicación animal para el programa de Carne Cruda junto con @isanchezmoreno.bsky.social y @susanamonso.com Pocas cosas tan emocionantes como hacer sonar a los cachalotes en directo! 🌊🐋🌌
Susana Monsó@susanamonso.com · last yr.Un placer enorme, como de costumbre, colaborar con Carne Cruda.
1/ Last week, @isanchezmoreno.bsky.social and I presented our posters at ARED in Stirling. We were lucky to exchange ideas with brilliant philosophers working on animal communication, like @giuliapalazzolo.bsky.social, Mike Dacey or Luca Di Vincenzo
Last Tuesday I spoke at PhiLanSci 2025, hosted at my home university @uam.es Felt like playing at home — I shared some thoughts on epistemic limits in AI-based animal communication research. Grateful for the exchange. This weekend: ARED conf. at @stir.ac.uk ⟡ ꙮ 𓆉 @losnerbriones.com thanks 📷✨
Today I'll be giving a talk entitled "Characterizing Exclusion in Evidence-Based Policy: The Case of Distributive Policies" at the PhilLanSci UAM 2025 Conference, held at the Autonomous University of Madrid. It's based on the first paper for my PhD dissertation. See you there!
Please enjoy these delightful images from a 1993 paper on walrus vision, showing estimated visual fields in different poses (I especially love how they look like alternate covers for a scifi novel about space walruses with ray-shooting eyeballs) Source: www.aquaticmammalsjournal.org/wp-content/u...
I’ll be presenting ideas from my current draft at the ARED Conference, held at @stir.ac.uk — focusing on the epistemological models behind AI-driven attempts to “translate” sperm whale vocalizations. 🐋📡 My colleague @isanchezmoreno.bsky.social will be there, talking about dogs and speech buttons. 🐕
METIS research group@metisuned.bsky.social · last yr.📣Miguel Borrajo Reinaldo (UAM) and Ignacio Sánchez-Moreno (UNED) will present their work on the philosophy of animal communication at the Rational Animal (ARED) conference, held at the Stirling University ➡️https://ared-conference.stir.ac.uk/
Two days left to support SoundLab: an #openaccess web app for visualizing & analyzing sounds. This will be a useful & fun tool for all, especially if you're a #bioacoustics researcher, a birdsong or music fan, or teach about sound waves! 🐸🐦⬛🐋 Small donations help! 👉 www.indiegogo.com/projects/sou...
great open access paper by Ali Boyle and Simon Brown in the naturalistic section of Philosophy Compass, which I edit.
Episodic Memory in Animals
Do animals have episodic memory—the kind of memory which gives us rich details about particular past events—or is this uniquely human? This might look like an empirical question, but is attracting in...
compass.onlinelibrary.wiley.com
I’ve just discovered coyote chorusing thanks to the latest @manymindspod.bsky.social episode and I think I’m going to be forever haunted by this sound
February 21, 2022: Coyote Chorus at the North Nest
YouTube video by Raptor Resource Project
youtu.be
New episode!! 📣📣 A chat w/ @arikkershenbaum.bsky.social about vocal communication in animals. The tree of life is a noisy place, bursting with howls, grunts, whines, snorts, and songs. What does it all mean? Does any of this hubbub merit the label of "language"? Listen: disi.org/howl-grunt-s...
👋📜 NEW PAPER !! 👥 My colleague JAPE (known as José Antonio Pérez-Escobar) and Jordi Fairhurst coauthor this paper on 'Hinging Prejudices and Stereotypes in Mathematics'. 📍Just published in: Topoi. 🔗 LINK: doi.org/10.1007/s112... #philosophy #philsci #philmath
Hinging Prejudices and Stereotypes in Mathematics - Topoi
This paper develops a theoretical framework to better understand how implicit biases about social identity (e.g., gender, race, class, seniority, or institutional affiliation) may influence different ...
doi.org
Proud supervisor moment! So exciting to see Miguel’s ideas shaping up so nicely. 🤩💪
Miguel Borrajo@miguelborrajo.bsky.social · last yr.Last Tuesday I gave a talk at the METIS seminar on how AI is transforming animal communication research. Thanks to METIS for the opportunity, and to everyone who attended for the feedback and support. A pleasure sharing ideas! 🐋 #AI #AnimalCommunication #AnimalCognition
Last Tuesday I gave a talk at the METIS seminar on how AI is transforming animal communication research. Thanks to METIS for the opportunity, and to everyone who attended for the feedback and support. A pleasure sharing ideas! 🐋 #AI #AnimalCommunication #AnimalCognition
The most achingly beautiful explanation of what science is, from @edyong209.bsky.social: “the idea that much of the world is hidden from us, that we don’t perceive it and don’t understand it, and that it is worth understanding and it is necessary to understand.” www.nytimes.com/2025/02/22/m...
‘The Interview’: Ed Yong Wants to Show You the Hidden Reality of the World
The Pulitzer Prize-winning science writer talks about burnout from covering the pandemic and how bird-watching gave him a new sense of hope.
nytimes.com
Looking forward to the METIS seminar on February 25, where I’ll explore how AI is used in cetacean communication research. Drawing on Ian Hacking’s concept of observation, I examine what kind of epistemic access AI offers and how it frames our interaction with sperm whale vocalizations. 🐳
METIS research group@metisuned.bsky.social · last yr.👋🏽Next Tuesday, February 25, at 11:30 (CET), join us at the METIS seminar for the talk by Miguel Borrajo @miguelborrajo.bsky.social (UAM) on “AI, cetacean communication, and the limits of philosophical observation.” More info here ➡️ blogs.uned.es/metis/semina...
Does the culture you grow up in shape the way you see the world? In a new Psych Review paper, @chazfirestone.bsky.social & I tackle this centuries-old question using the Müller-Lyer illusion as a case study. Come think through one of history's mysteries with us🧵(1/13):
A thread explaining our new discovery about humpback whale song published today in Science... We found key statistical properties that characterise all human languages in another species for the first time. We have more in common with whales than we previously thought! doi.org/10.1126/scie...
Be a human being. Do not participate in making the world worse. That should be enough, but obviously for some people it is not, so I'll give some examples.
Vocal communication in corvids: a systematic review. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti.... In our new paper we review 130 papers and summarise empirical evidence for socioecological factors affecting vocal communication, as well as evidence for vocal learning in different corvid species.
Vocal communication in corvids: a systematic review
Vocal communication is broadly distributed in a wide range of nonhuman animal species and is hypothesized to play an important role in mate attraction…
sciencedirect.com
"... we need better tests for AI sentience... we need more research into animal cognition and behaviour, to uncover as many independently evolved instances of sentience as we possibly can." aeon.co/essays/to-un...
To understand AI sentience, first understand it in animals | Aeon Essays
As the power of AI grows, we need to have evidence of its sentience. That is why we must return to the minds of animals
aeon.co