Kim Soland: Pain Intensities

Pain Intensities Kim Soland I’m honored to have my work selected for the Griffith award and grateful for the opportunity to share a summary of it here. Pains are standardly conceived as featuring a variety of phenomenal qualities and a singular magnitude: pain intensity. But there are circumstances in which pain’s sensory intensity may be phenomenally distinguished from its…

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Caitlin Mace: Vehicle Indeterminacy in Memory Neuroscience

On Vehicle Indeterminacy in Memory Neuroscience Caitlin Mace University of Pittsburgh Neural representations are broadly understood to be individuable structures or processes in the brain that have a representational role in cognition or behavior. This representational role can be elucidated in a number of ways, such as by the causal role the structure or process plays (Egan 2020; Cao 2022), how the structure or process is used (Baker et al.

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Yoonhee Jung: Beyond Veridicality

What does attention do to perception? Yoonhee Jung Ned Block (2010; 2015) challenges representationalism on the grounds that covert attention—the allocation of attention without eye movement—can alter the phenomenal character of perceptual experience without changing its representational content.[1] He considers an experiment developed by Carrasco and her colleagues in which subjects viewed two Gabor patches presented simultaneously in the periphery while maintaining fixation of their eyes on a central point (see Figure 1).

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Gavin Robert Foster: The Pluralistic Evolution of Mindreading

The Pluralistic Evolution of Factive Mindreading Gavin Robert FosterPurdue University The following is a significantly abridged version of a much-longer paper. As such, there are certain qualification and nuances that are lacking. For those interested in reading the current draft, please send me an email at foste362 at purdue dot edu. Feedback and questions are more than welcome! Most research on social cognition focuses on how we predict and explain the minds of others by attributing to them mental states such as beliefs or desires.

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This Week: Featured Posts from the Southern Society for Philosophy and Psychology, 2026 Meeting!

Hi Everyone, This week, we're excited to share a series of posts celebrating the 2026 meeting of the Southern Society for Philosophy and Psychology, which was held in Atlanta, Georgia this Spring. We'll first have a quick intro from this year's philosophy program coordinator, Josh Mugg. (Busy couple of weeks for Josh here on Brains! Check out the symposium on his book from a couple of weeks ago if you haven't yet.) Then we're excited to have posts from this year's graduate student travel award winners, as well as from Kim Soland, this year's winner of the Griffith award for best paper by an early-career scholar. Check out the posts all week!

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Joshua Mugg: Response to Commentators

Response to Commentators Joshua Mugg Response To Curry One goal of my project is to provide an empirically informed account of cognitive control that can be marshalled in defense of voluntarism of belief. Curry offers a dilemma for my account of control and voluntarism about belief. By his lights, I am engaged in a homuncular functionalist project of explaining human reasoning by positing smaller and dumber homunculi.

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Aliya Rumana: Comments on “From Human Reasoning to Belief”

Comments on "From Human Reasoning to Belief" Aliya Rumana The holding power of dual-process theory in experimental process psychology is mysterious if we don’t consider the basic constraints on statistical testing. First, every study aims to reject the null hypothesis (H0) in favour of the alternative hypothesis (HA). Second, H0 claims that there is no difference in the cognitive process underlying observable behaviour—i.e., single-process theory (SPT)—whereas…

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Lesley Walker: Commentary on “From Human Reasoning to Belief”

Commentary on "From Human Reasoning to Belief" Lesley Walker In Joshua Mugg's book, From Human Reasoning to Belief, he offers an empirically viable alternative to dual process theory and in doing so unifies three contentious cases of belief. The first are cases of wishful thinking, the second, cases of faith, and the third cases often labeled as the result of implicit attitudes.

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Devin Sanchez Curry: DJ Homunculus

DJ Homunculus Devin Sanchez Curry The first aim of Josh Mugg's From Human Reasoning to Belief is to propose a new, empirically viable theory of central cognition (and especially belief fixation and revision): the Soundboard Account of Human Reasoning. The book achieves this aim admirably, both detailing how extant evidence supports the Soundboard Account and laudably proposing specific ways to test the theory directly against its chief competitors (namely, dual process theories and Eric Mandelbaum's Spinozan theory).

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Joshua Mugg: Precis for “From Human Reasoning to Belief”

Precis of "From Human Reasoning to Belief" Joshua Mugg Many thanks to the Brains Blog and Dan Burnston for the opportunity to discuss my book with Devin Curry, Aliya Rumana, and Lesley Walker. In this initial post, I will provide an overview of the book. Those interested in a longer overview can check out my contribution to The Nature of Belief, …

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This week: Symposium on Joshua Mugg’s “From Human Reasoning to Belief”

Hi All, This week, we're very happy to host a symposium on Josh Mugg's recent book, "From Human Reasoning to Belief"! Today, we'll have an intro post from Josh, followed by some really excellent comments from Devin Curry, Lesley Walker, and Aliya Rumana. On Friday, we'll have a response from Josh. Check it out, and feel free to join the discussion in the comments!

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CFA: Biological Naturalism about Consciousness

Hi Everyone, Be sure to check out the call for abstracts for a forthcoming conference on Biological Naturalism and Consciousness at UCLA! Details here: Call for Abstracts: Biological Naturalism about Consciousness November 5–6, 2026 · University of California, Los Angeles Can non-biological systems be conscious? If not, why not? These questions have taken on new weight as AI systems become increasingly sophisticated, not least because our answers bear on which entities might matter morally.

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Coelho Mollo and Millière: The Vector Grounding Problem

Post on “The Vector Grounding Problem” for the Brains Blog Dimitri Coelho Mollo & Raphaël Millière We first preprinted “The Vector Grounding Problem” in April 2023, about four months after the release of ChatGPT. By that point, large language models (LLMs) had started to capture the attention of philosophers, but there was still very little published work on the topic. The preprint languished on arXiv for longer than we initially planned, but it lived a life of its own and generated some interesting discussions.

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Mallory: Representation in LLMs

Formats of representation in large language models Fintan Mallory Assuming that artificial neural networks (ANNs) can, through training, come to represent the data upon which they were trained, or more general features of that data, then two natural questions that arise are what are the vehicles of representation within the network and what is the format in which these vehicles are structured?

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Shea: Representation and Agency

Realist Representational Explanations of Agency Should Require Some Unity of Purpose Nicholas Shea My paper is about what it takes for an AI system to be an agent. It is relevant to Sprevak and Fallon’s PhiMiSci Special Issue on Representation in the Neurosciences and AI because conditions on AI agency are often articulated in representational terms. Approaches to AI agency can be instrumentalist, for example when being an agent is understood in terms of representing goals and means to achieving goals, where representation is in turn understood to be a matter of displaying a certain pattern of behaviour.

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Elber-Dorozko and Gouvêa: Ambiguity in the Concept of Representation

‘Neuronal representation’ is not a defective concept: Ambiguity as a sign of science in progress Lotem Elber-Dorozko and Devin Gouvêa The term “neural representation” is extremely popular in cognitive neuroscience. Scientists often claim to have discovered neural properties that represent environmental features, such as specific visual objects or specific sounds. At the same time, both philosophers and scientists seem increasingly dissatisfied with this term.

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Aizawa: Evidence for Representation

The Evidence for Representations Ken Aizawa It is commonly said that one reason to postulate mental representations is in order to explain behavior. I take this reasoning to be an instance of abductive reasoning, not to be identified with inference to the best explanation.[1] Empiricists have long been skeptical of abductive reasoning that is supposed to provide evidence for unobservable entities.

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Corey Maley: Structural and Analog Representation

Corey J. Maley Department of Philosophy Cognition, Agency, and Intelligence Center Purdue University cmaley@purdue.edu coreymaley.net The thesis of this paper is simple: structural representation and analog representation turn out to be two names for the same kind of representation. This may seem implausible, given that typical examples of structural representation (e.g., maps) are much more complex than typical cases of analog representation (e.g., liquid thermometers).

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Mark Sprevak and Francis Fallon: Intro to the Symposium

Representations are thought to be among the essential ingredients for explaining cognition. In cognitive psychology, behaviour and decision making are modelled in terms of computations performed over representations. In neuroscience, responses of single cells, neural populations, and structural features are claimed to function as representations for the agent in question. In AI, what machines learn is often characterized in terms of the kinds of representations those machines acquire and how they manipulate them.

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Brains and PhiMindSci: Joint Symposium on Representation

We are very excited to introduce our next joint symposium with Philosophy of the Mind Sciences. This one highlights PhiMindSci's recent special issue on representation in neuroscience and AI. Tomorrow, we'll have an introductory post by Mark Sprevak that gives an overview of the special issue. Then we'll have posts on neuroscience the remaining days this week. Next week, we'll have AI-focused posts on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

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Gilbert Ryle 1900–1976

Mindcraft is a series of opinion posts on current issues in cognitive science by Brains Blog founder Gualtiero Piccinini. Do you agree? Disagree? Please contribute on the discussion board below! If you’d like to write a full-length response, please contact editor Dan Burnston. A guest post by Jack Copeland: 2026 is the 50th anniversary of Gilbert Ryle’s death. One of Britain’s most celebrated philosophers of mind, Ryle was elected Waynflete Professor of Metaphysical Philosophy at Oxford in 1944.

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Book Symposium on The Brain Abstracted

Book Symposium on The Brain Abstracted in Philosophy of the Mind Sciences Philipp Haueis, Department of Philosophy and Institute for Studies of Science (ISOS), Bielefeld University, Germany The journal Philosophy of the Mind Sciences has just published a book symposium (LINK) of The Brain Abstracted: Simplification in the History and Philosophy of Neuroscience, by Mazviita Chirimuuta. The book has received both the 2024…

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Introducing: Brains and Philosophy and the Mind Sciences

Hi Everyone, I'm very happy to announce that we will be collaborating on a number of posts with Philosophy and the Mind Sciences! PhilMindSci is an open access journal; you can read everything we discuss in full here: Our first post, today, will be by Philipp Haueis, describing the special issue just published on Mazviita Chirimuuta's The Brain Abstracted…

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Introductory Conference: Purdue Cognition, Agency, & Intelligence Center.

Hi All, We're happy to help announce the launch of the Cognition, Agency, & Intelligence Center. Please see information about their introductory conference below! Description: We are thrilled to invite you to attend the Interdisciplinary Conference in Cognitive Science, hosted by the Cognition, Agency, and Intelligence Center (CAIC) at Purdue University. The conference will take place April 2nd-3rd…

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A Global Approach to Cognitive Dysfunction as a Framework for Neurodivergence 

A Global Approach to Cognitive Dysfunction as a Framework for Neurodivergence Abel Wajnerman Pas and Jorge I. Fuentes  We propose a global approach to distinguishing between cognitive function and dysfunction as an appropriate framework for thinking about neurodivergence. It has been a commonplace in philosophy of psychiatry, at least since Wakefield (1992), to define mental disorders in terms of a descriptive element and an evaluative element.

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Mnemonic agency? 

Mnemonic agency?Marina Trakas  You forget your mother’s birthday. You remember telling your partner to pick up your child from school, but he insists you did not (and in fact, you didn’t). You are considering promoting an employee, and all the mistakes made by the default male candidate fade away, along with the accomplishments of women, Black employees, and other minorities.

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The role of attentional biases in addictive decision-making 

The role of attentional biases in addictive decision-making Federico Burdman  Addiction is of interest to philosophers, among other things, because it raises a puzzle about rationality in practical agency. A common way to lay out the puzzle takes its cue from the standard definition of addiction as persistent drug use despite harmful consequences. Some people with addiction experience insight deficits and are unaware that they have an addiction or of its serious negative consequences (for a review of the evidence, see Raftery et al.

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Rethinking autonomy in Alzheimer’s disease

Rethinking autonomy in Alzheimer’s diseaseDominique Waissbluth Usually, people with Alzheimer’s disease are considered no longer capable of performing autonomous acts. This claim is not only common among loved ones, but also among carers. It is usually taken to be established after medical and legal assessments that state this inability. However, this all rests on a very restrictive idea of autonomy, which leaves no room for rethinking the various forms for patients to take part in various decision-making processes.

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Are Psychopaths Responsible? 

Are Psychopaths Responsible? Walter Sinnott-Armstrong  I will examine a question that sits at the intersection of moral psychology, philosophy, and criminal law: are psychopaths morally and legally responsible for what they do, and if not, what should we do with them? This is not only a theoretical problem about moral judgment, but also a deeply practical problem, because psychopaths are few in number yet responsible for a strikingly large proportion of serious crime.

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This week: Agency and Mental Disorder

A workshop Cognition and Agency in Mental Disorder was held on November 18th and 19th 2025, in Santiago de Chile at Universidad Alberto Hurtado. It was organized by Federico Burdman and the Santiago Mind and Cognition group. As an international guest, the workshop featured Walter Sinnott-Armstrong from Duke University. This week, we will have posts featuring some of the works presented there.

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