This week, I revisit the classic inverting goggles experiments. How does the brain adapt when the world gets flipped upside-down? Does it rebuild an representation — or simply adjust its predictions? 🧪 What are we really doing when we say we’re seeing? suzitravis.substack.com/p/is-seeing-...

Is Seeing Really Believing?

What happens when our senses disagree?

suzitravis.substack.com

We talk about meaning all the time. It feels obvious that meaning is something we have. Probably in the brain. Somewhere. But it’s not clear what “means” really means in this context. What is meaning? And where does it really come from? 🧪 suzitravis.substack.com/p/looking-fo...

Looking for Meaning

...in all the wrong places

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The usual story is: the brain takes in information, represents it, and uses that representation to take action. But what if we’ve got it backwards? This week, I wrote a gentle intro to enactivism -- What if minds aren’t things we have but things we do? 🧪 suzitravis.substack.com/p/does-the-m...

Does the Mind Need a Body?

How enactivism tries to explain where meaning comes from.

suzitravis.substack.com

You can think about a dog. Or a snake. Or why freedom of speech matters. Your brain can think about all sorts of things. Even things that aren’t there — or things that aren't even things. But how? How can brain activity be about anything? 🧪 #consciousness suzitravis.substack.com/p/what-gives...

What Gives Brain Activity Meaning?

Can teleosemantics explain how mental representations get their meaning?

suzitravis.substack.com

You see a dog. Something happens in your brain. We say your brain “represents” the dog. But is that really what’s happening? We know your brain isn’t creating literal pictures — so what is it doing? 🧪 #neuroscience #consciousness #philosophyofmind suzitravis.substack.com/p/representa...

Does your Brain Represent the Outside World?

The Rise (and Trouble) of Representationalism in Neuroscience

suzitravis.substack.com

LLMs can describe what it feels like to pet a dog — without eyes, ears, or hands. Some say they don’t understand because they lack grounding in the world. But not everyone’s convinced. Do LLMs have a grounding problem? Or are we asking the wrong question? 🧪 suzitravis.substack.com/p/the-ground...

Could a Language Model Know What a Dog Is?

The Grounding Problem and How Words Get Their Meaning

suzitravis.substack.com

In 1972, NASA pinned a message to a spaceship, hoping one day an alien life form might find it and understand it. The plaque was full of symbols. Those symbols mean something to us. But could an alien understand them too? What gives a symbol its meaning? 🧪 suzitravis.substack.com/p/how-to-tal...

How to Talk to Aliens

The Hitchhiker's Guide to Symbols

suzitravis.substack.com

This week, I wrote an essay on Searle’s Chinese Room. This thought experiment might be the most famous thought experiment of the 20th century. But is it any good? And can it tell us whether LLMs could ever really understand? 🧪 #consciousness #ai #philosophy suzitravis.substack.com/p/searles-ch...

Hello? Is There Anybody in There?

John Searle's Chinese Room Thought Experiment

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Brains predict. LLMs predict. But does that mean they’re doing the same thing? We used to think intelligence was all about reasoning. Then we said it was biological. Now we’re told maybe it’s about... prediction? 🧪 #ai #consciousness suzitravis.substack.com/p/if-it-pred...

If It Predicts, Is It Intelligent?

The trouble with words

suzitravis.substack.com

Could a neural network ever grow like a brain? Would it matter? What happens when we stop trying to build artificial brains — and we start trying to grow them? It's worth asking, because the line between what's built and what grows is starting to blur. 🧪 suzitravis.substack.com/p/how-to-bui...

How to Build a Brain

The difference between building and growing brains

suzitravis.substack.com

It’s a tempting idea, isn’t it?: consciousness is just what happens when things get complicated enough. Like it’s an automatic bonus that comes with a powerful brain — or a powerful AI. But the science tells a messier story. 🧪 #consciousness suzitravis.substack.com/p/does-consc...

Does Consciousness Come Along for the Ride?

Information and Complexity: Essay 6

suzitravis.substack.com

Complexity is difficult to define — which is odd, really, because it seems pretty easy to recognise -- we know complexity when we see it, right!? So, why is it so hard to define? This week, I explore why complexity is so complex. 🧪 suzitravis.substack.com/p/why-is-com...

Why is Complexity So Complex?

Information and Complexity: Essay 5

suzitravis.substack.com

What if consciousness can only exist in a universe where entropy increases? Entropy explains why eggs break and time moves forward — but could it also explain memory, life, and consciousness? 🧪 suzitravis.substack.com/p/could-entr...

Could Entropy Explain Consciousness?

Entropy, time, and why experience only goes one way

suzitravis.substack.com

This week, I explore Maxwell’s Demon, a famous thought experiment that puzzled physicists for more than a century. Solving it changed how we understanding what information really is. 🧪 #consciousness suzitravis.substack.com/p/maxwells-d...

Information Isn't Free. Even Demons Must Pay

Information and Complexity: Essay 3

suzitravis.substack.com

Today, if you tune into a podcast on the mind, you won’t hear much about what the mind is made of. Instead, the focus is on what it does. How did we get here? This week, I explore how we went from the mind as soul to the mind as information processing. 🧪 suzitravis.substack.com/p/history-of...

A Short History of the Mind (and some of the Weird Things We've Thought About It)

Information and Complexity: Essay 2

suzitravis.substack.com

Was inspired to reflect on my own thoughts on the topic after reading the attached.

Consciousness Beyond Matter: — Recursive Generative Emergence

A Meditation after reading Suzi Travis’s "Does the Matter Matter?".

rgemergence.com

Suzi Travis@suzitravis.bsky.social · 2y ago

If physics explains everything, why do we need biology to understand life and psychology to understand human behaviour? What's left if physics covers everything? And what does this have to do with the possibility of artificial minds? 🧪 #consciousness suzitravis.substack.com/p/consciousn...

If physics explains everything, why do we need biology to understand life and psychology to understand human behaviour? What's left if physics covers everything? And what does this have to do with the possibility of artificial minds? 🧪 #consciousness suzitravis.substack.com/p/consciousn...

Consciousness: Does the Matter Matter?

Information and Complexity: Essay 1

suzitravis.substack.com

There is no now.

When you catch a ball, are you seeing it in real time or guessing where it will be? The brain is too slow to react instantly, so it relies on predictions to stay ahead. If this is true, it raises some strange questions: When exactly are we? 🧪 #consciousness suzitravis.substack.com/p/when-does-...

When Does Consciousness Happen?

How do you catch a ball without it hitting you in the face?

suzitravis.substack.com

Information feels both abstract and tangible. We can't hold information in our hands, but we store it on hard drives. Every time we create or alter information—even just saving a file—it requires energy. This raises the question: is information physical? suzitravis.substack.com/p/is-informa...

Is Information Physical?

but, hold up, what is physical?

suzitravis.substack.com

What’s the right level of focus when studying something as complex as the brain? Should we zoom out to things like behaviour or dive deep into the molecular and cellular? What can we safely ignore in our quest to understand? And what might we lose if we do? 🧪 suzitravis.substack.com/p/the-proble...

The Problem with Complex Things

Is it's Someone Else's Problem

suzitravis.substack.com

Fantastic news that Andy Clark is the inaugural winner of the #DennettPrize, in honour of Daniel Dennett. Congrats Andy 🍾🍾🍾 super-well deserved @sussexuni.bsky.social hardproblem.it/projects/the...

Happy New Year! This week, I start a mini-series of little essays about BIG questions. From genes to butterfly migration routes to human brains - there seems to be more information in biological systems than what's in their genes. But how is this possible? 🧪 suzitravis.substack.com/p/what-is-in...

What is Information and Where Does it Come From?

Starting 2025 with a Little Series about Big Questions

suzitravis.substack.com

Can you trust your own experiences? This week it's Dennett vs Qualia -- the latest in our series on the thought experiments in the philosophy of mind. 🧪 #consciousness suzitravis.substack.com/p/coffee-wit...

Coffee With a Shot of Qualia?

Thought Experiments [Part 6]

suzitravis.substack.com

Useful. “A memory system that focuses on what’s useful right now (rather than storing everything perfectly) gives us an incredible advantage.”

Suzi Travis@suzitravis.bsky.social · 2y ago

Do you think your memories are reliable? Science suggests our brain's tendency to misremember might be its secret superpower. False memories are not a flaw in the system at all. 🧪 suzitravis.substack.com/p/false-memo...

Do you think your memories are reliable? Science suggests our brain's tendency to misremember might be its secret superpower. False memories are not a flaw in the system at all. 🧪 suzitravis.substack.com/p/false-memo...

False Memories are Exactly What You Need

Why our imperfect memory system is a feature, not a bug

suzitravis.substack.com

If you could erase your most painful memories, would you? What parts of you would be lost if you did? 🧪 #neuroscience #memory This week, I explore the science and the fiction of memory manipulation. suzitravis.substack.com/p/eternal-su...

Yes, We Can Delete Memories. But...

The Science and the Fiction of Memory Manipulation

suzitravis.substack.com

We know memories aren't stored like computer files. They are actively reconstructed each time we recall them. But if memory is reconstructed, how much can we trust them? What if our most remembered memories are the ones that have been changed the most? 🧪 suzitravis.substack.com/p/memory-is-...

Memory Is Your Brain Making Things Up

Why Memory is not Like Computer Files

suzitravis.substack.com

Mary's Room thought experiment has been used to argue that science can't explain consciousness. But what if science already knows what would happen to Mary? And what does this tell us about consciousness? 🧪 #consciousness suzitravis.substack.com/p/marys-room...

Mary's Room: Has the Answer Been in Her Textbook All Along?

Thought Experiments [Part 5]

suzitravis.substack.com