Mariel Goddu

Image: A variation on Benjamin Franklin’s “Join, or Die” engraving, originally published in the Pennsylvania Gazette in 1754. Each segment of the snake has the name of a university sent Trump’s “compact”: Texas, AZ, Vanderbilt, USC, Dartmouth, UVA, Brown, Penn, MIT.

Shared courtesy of my Penn History colleague, Ben Nathans

Read President of M.I.T. Sally Kornbluth's full letter here:
orgchart.mit.edu/letters/rega...

"The document...includes principles with which we disagree, including those that would restrict freedom of expression and our independence as an institution"

M.I.T. Rejects a White House Offer for Special Funding Treatment

Heck yeah, M.I.T!
www.nytimes.com/2025/10/10/u...

&Here’s the full TOC of this extremely rad volume:

Our chapter on cognitive homologies *in print* ! 🤩
@beakr.bsky.social @gualtiero.bsky.social
Thread & link 🔗 below👇

Happy to share that our BBS target article has been accepted: “Core Perception”: Re-imagining Precocious Reasoning as Sophisticated Perceiving
With Alon Hafri, @veroniqueizard.bsky.social, @chazfirestone.bsky.social & Brent Strickland
Read it here: doi.org/10.1017/S014...
A short thread [1/5]👇

First day of 23rd grade 🚌
(2nd yr of 2nd PhD)

Annual reminder: It’s never too late to do what makes you happy!

Check out our chapter (led by @beakr.bsky.social) on cognitive ontology here! : philpapers.org/archive/KRIC...

We propose a developmental approach to 'cognitive homologies' –– (cognitive capacities that are "the same across species") –– as a means for carving up cognition.

Our approach adopts...

Fall Term 2025 (Sept 22-Dec 12)
-Teaching Assistant, Mathematical Logic
-Epistemology
-Proseminar
-Paper: "Intuitive physics is for action"

the approach because it offers a novel route to identifying/categorizing cognitive capacities in a way that's more in line with evolutionary biology & relies less on anthropocentric categories grounded in human introspection.

Here's to connecting cognitive science with the life sciences!

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which we are starting to address in a sequel chapter (stay tuned!)

This (current) chapter provides a few proof-of-concept examples, such as the (arguably) homologous development of episodic memory in various infant mammals.

While there's still a lot to be worked out, we're excited about

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cognitive character identity mechanisms are different from ChIMs for morphological traits: much of cognitive development occurs *postnatally*.

This means that cognitive ChIMs frequently involve the organism's own goal-directed behavior!

This raises a lot of interesting puzzles, some of

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Our account of 'cognitive homologies' adopts this developmental approach to *COGNITIVE* traits.

We argue that cognitive capacities can be individuated (and thus identified across species) in terms of the developmental mechanisms that give rise to them: *cognitive* ChIMs!

But crucially,

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are highly complex and causally non-redundant, they're extremely important for typical trait development –– & thus are conserved through evolution.

(Mess up a ChIM, and you mess up a whole trait: a body part might fail to grow, for example –– or grow in the wrong place!)

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distinctive causal profile: they have a "bowtie" 🎀 causal structure, wherein variable inputs are processed through a single node to produce a variety of outputs.

(A nice analysis of 🎀s from @laurennross.bsky.social here:
core.ac.uk/download/pdf...)

Since ChIMS (Character Identity Mechanisms)

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Character identity mechanisms: a conceptual model for comparative-mechanistic biology - Biology & Philosophy There have been repeated attempts in the history of comparative biology to provide a mechanistic account of morphological homology. However, it is well-established that homologues can develop from div...

...the concept of "Character Identity Mechanisms" ("ChIMs") from DiFrisco, Wagner, & Love to individuate cognitive capacities.

ChIMs are specific developmental mechanisms that play an outsized role in the development of specific traits. This is due to their

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link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Check out our chapter (led by @beakr.bsky.social) on cognitive ontology here! : philpapers.org/archive/KRIC...

We propose a developmental approach to 'cognitive homologies' –– (cognitive capacities that are "the same across species") –– as a means for carving up cognition.

Our approach adopts...

Neurocognitive Foundations of Mind This volume provides a cohesive and comprehensive case that cognitive neuroscience is maturing into an integrated, interdisciplinary science that is transforming our understanding of the mind. The ris...

😊 So proud this is out now:
"Cognitive ontology in terms of cognitive homology: The role of brain, behavior, and environment for individuating cognitive categories" #philsci #CognitiveNeuroscience

Thanks to @marielgoddu.bsky.social and to @gualtiero.bsky.social!

www.routledge.com/Neurocogniti...

Oh boy! The plot thickens. (But that video though...)

I only need it as a proof-of-concept kind of example to gesture at ways people tend to characterize various non-human behaviors as "mechanical," "instinctual" or "autopilot", but I'll include your link as a "cf" in the footnote–– thanks!

Update: it's the Great Golden Digger Wasp, the repetitive behavior is females' burrow inspection behavior, and the thing that prompts it is moving her prey

(h/t @evanwestra.bsky.social for that info & this video)

www.youtube.com/watch?si=gUN...

HERO! Thank you!!
Also, this video is fantastic & 100% going in a footnote

Does anyone know that famous spider[?] cognitive scientists always give as an example of "dumb" behavior––
something like, it makes a burrow, but then if you move a blade of grass in front of the hole it freaks out and rehearses the entire burrow-building routine again?

What creature is this!

don’t develop a dogged focus on the implications of change on the mundane rhythms of everyday life —

the future will continue to feel distant, intangible and somehow ‘other,’ and this weakness may grow into a critical failure of our generation.”

Opinion | The Future Will Be Mundane

Nice thought piece re: visions of the human future (🎁 article)

www.nytimes.com/2025/08/16/o...

“If we don’t start thinking about the future as an extension of the present — and if we

This is a fresh (to me) and apt perspective on this topic. Great work!

3 weeks, 3000 miles
(*now accepting recs along this route!)

general uncertainty — i.e., with respect to that exact lack of consensus.

PS Thanks so much for engaging here and with the piece !

Again, my personal views are very much aligned with yours. But: I think there is much less theoretical consensus re: the “boundaries of sentience” than you assume!

So: general point agreed, re: not adopting inflated language - but I do think it’s right in this case to say that there IS profound,

Submit yours here!! Feel free to borrow from mine! www.regulations.gov/document/EPA...

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We are counting on you to make the right choice –– for ourselves, now, but also for our children and generations to come.

Yours sincerely,
Mariel Goddu

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