Mitch Herschbach

Google Scholar profile for Jason Wei. Highlighted research keyword for "game-changing research"

No matter how important/influential a researcher you are, listing "game-changing research" as an area of interest is ridiculous

Action Network petition: Cancel ChatGPT Edu. Invest in Humans. In February 2025, the California State University system announced a $17 million contract with OpenAI to provide ChatGPT Edu to all faculty, staff, and students on its 22 CSU campuses as part of a larger “AI-Empowered University” initiative. This is the largest contract ever established between a university system and an artificial intelligence company. Despite the name, ChatGPT Edu is not educational technology. It is a general-purpose chatbot that is not designed, trained, or optimized for education. Beyond its privacy and security features, ChatGPT Edu is identical to the free online version of ChatGPT. ChatGPT Edu does not use reliable peer-reviewed sources to answer students' questions and is indifferent to whether its answers are correct. Experts argue that ChatGPT Edu is harmful to academic working conditions, diminishes the quality of teaching and learning, introduces new forms of discrimination, and is dangerous to students' mental health. Recent polling shows that CSU students share these concerns, with the majority of students expressing that they are worried about the negative impacts of generative AI on human creativity and the environment.

Cal State University’s deal with OpenAI — providing ChatGPT to all faculty, students, and staff — will expire in June 2026. Amid the prospect of layoffs in the CSU, we’re asking the chancellor not to renew this costly and demoralizing contract.

Link below and anyone can sign:

Poster advertising symposia on Frances Egan’s book ‘Deflating Mental Representation’ (13/04 - 15/04). More info: https://tinyurl.com/NMO-ISPSM and https://tinyurl.com/Phimisci-Egan

🔔✨Call for papers and symposia on Frances Egan’s (@francesegan.bsky.social) ‘Deflating Mental Representation’ (13/04 - 15/04) alongside Neural Mechanisms Online and Philosophy and the Mind Sciences (@phimisci.bsky.social)!

More info: tinyurl.com/NMO-ISPSM and tinyurl.com/Phimisci-Egan

#philsky

Invited speaker lineup is out for SPP 2026! More information on the meeting here: www.socphilpsych.org/meetings.html

Submissions accepted until Jan 16! Come hang in Baltimore; conference is at Johns Hopkins from June 17-20, 2026!

@socphilpsych.bsky.social
@joshrottman.bsky.social
#SPP2026

I doubt most of my students have privacy concerns about cloud storage. Seems inconsistent with their other choices about how they use tech. It’s more that I don’t find their generation especially tech savy. Eg too many not backing up files and losing them

It still baffles me when I have students who email me that they can't send me a document because it is on their computer left at home... 70% of teens have already had an AI companion but I somehow cloud storage hasn't reached universal adoption

🗣️ With the support of the @danafoundation.bsky.social, we are very excited to announce the Philosophy & Neuroscience Collaborative Mentorship Program! 🧠

For more details & submission requirements, visit: philandneuro.com/mentorship

(This is 1/2 announcements we will make over the next 1-2 weeks.)

Revising Simulation Theory Beyond Recognition: A Reply to Yousefi Heris (2024) - Erkenntnis (Yousefi Heris, Erkenntnis, 2024) offers a version of simulation theory, building on (Goldman, Simulating minds: The philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience of mindreading, Oxford University Press, 2...

📣From Mitchell Herschbach:

Revising Simulation Theory Beyond Recognition: A Reply to Yousefi Heris (2024)

I like McConnell’s.

I think it is for sure the best that’s sold in sizes larger than a pint.

And to be clear, the above wasn’t meant as a criticism—just genuinely curious if you’re committed to that claim. I worry it is mostly a debate about terminology

Did you get to pick the title? I don't see anything in the main text where you make the claim "The brain is not a machine", which is found in the title. I don't really care how we define the word "machine," but this issue has been coming up in discussions of enactivism and mechanistic phil sci

I have paper in progress laying out my own views on simulation theory and anti-localizationist accounts of brain function (which I presented on at the SPAN @socphilneuro.bsky.social l‬ meeting in May). If anyone wants to see a draft, just let me know! /3

The central issue is fleshing out the notion of simulation in the simulation theory (ST) of mentalizing, and how well it deals with more complex accounts of how mental functions relate to neural structures. I argue that Yousefi Heris's approach abandons what distinguishes ST from theory theory. /2

Revising Simulation Theory Beyond Recognition: A Reply to Yousefi Heris (2024) - Erkenntnis (Yousefi Heris, Erkenntnis, 2024) offers a version of simulation theory, building on (Goldman, Simulating minds: The philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience of mindreading, Oxford University Press, 2...

Proud to say I have my first publication is quite a long time! It is a critical discussion of Ali Yousefi Heris's recent paper "Mental simulation: From neural resemblance to representation" (which builds on my 2012 Synthese article on mirroring and simulation). doi.org/10.1007/s106...

YouTube video by nandert Cut & Cover for LA's K Line Northern Extension

Please ‪@metrolosangeles.bsky.social‬ consider this plan for the K Line Northern Extension!

A Neuro-Philosophical Approach to Understanding the Brain

Check out this great article about SPAN2025 written by the Dana Foundation!

dana.org/article/a-ne...

Not sure how many rugby (unions) fans are out there, but I've always found rucks to be philosophically really interesting and possibly confused (esp. conditions under which they begin vs. end). I can't tell if this is something philosophers would actually care about...

The disparity btwn what’s actually happening in Los Angeles and the way it’s being mischaracterized is one of the biggest stress tests of modern media in recent memory. Botted socials, AI, old clips, declining literacy—it’s like seeing a broken emergency response system hit by a storm.

I get that sentiment. but it really feels wrong to me to let students get good grades for turning in AI written papers. Writing their papers in Google Docs doesn't require any extra work on their part, but the version history at least provides something to go in cases where you suspect AI was used

PHOTOS | SPAN

SPAN2025 was truly amazing-- a genuine feeling of community and belonging with 3 days packed with incredible talks and wonderful people. Photos are on our website now!

www.philandneuro.com/photos

It was so excellent!! Thanks for your leadership in putting together such an awesome conference

It might just be that we’ve been doing this research long enough that we’re running out of names to easily demarcate all the relevant research programs. “4E” lumps together a bunch of thing and doesn’t even include “ecological”. “radical” is getting added to “embodied” and “enactive”…

Guess I should have read the Bruenig review before chiming in. No idea why they contrasted an abundance agenda with social welfare and other egalitarian ideals. I think this framing might be more of Thompson’s influence. It does seem like a mistake to make abundance a solitary policy goal

I can put that on my CV now right? Recognizing quotes from papers has to be a marketable skill…

But they also really care about scientific/technological innovation, and the welfare benefits they bring.

I think they’re saying there are certain beneficial outcomes for people that really do involve building/creating stuff, and just moving money around doesn’t create those benefits for people. Housing and energy infrastructure are their main building stuff examples.

I’ve heard especially Ezra talk about their view in the following way: liberal politicians have often simply touted their successes in terms of the amount of money devoted to a project, instead of the beneficial outcomes they’ve achieved—and that requires significant systemic changes

Is that the blindfold test paper?

PROGRAM | SPAN

The SPAN2025 full program is now available for viewing! Check out the complete list of speakers and remember, you can attend even if you aren't presenting! 🤩

www.philandneuro.com/program