Michael David Kirchhoff

This is just not what LLMs are. If all they could do was reproduce their training set they wouldn't be able to do nearly all the things people regularly use them for. Please read the literature (e.g., here's a whole grade seminar I just taught - some good readings here: cogsci-llms.netlify.app )

How your brain understands language may be more like AI than previously thought A new study reveals that the human brain processes spoken language in a sequence that closely mirrors the layered architecture of advanced AI language models. Using electrocorticography data from part...

A study co-authored by Princeton researchers finds that human brains process spoken language in a way that "closely mirrors the layered architecture of advanced AI language models."

The December issue of TiCS is now online! tinyurl.com/42pysze4

Day 5 of the Brain's Blog symposium of 'The Idealized Mind'. Attached are links to Karl Friston's commentary and my response - a discussion about spherical cows and the FEP

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Corey Maley: Comments on The Idealized Mind — The Brains Blog COMMENTS ON THE IDEALIZED MIND, BY MICHAEL D. KIRCHHOFFCorey J. Maley Purdue University cjmaley@purdue.edu Michael Kirchhoff’s book The Idealized Mind has many original and thought-provoking ideas,…

Day 4 of the Brain's Blog symposium of 'The Idealized Mind'. Attached are links to @coreymaley.net commentary and my response:

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Am I committed to there being no physical computers that compute?

Frances Egan: Some Physical Systems (Literally) Compute — The Brains Blog Some Physical Systems (Literally) ComputeFrances Egan  Rutgers University  In his ambitious new book, Michael Kirchhoff argues that computational models cannot be literally true&nbsp…

Day 3 of the Brain's Blog symposium of 'The Idealized Mind'. Attached are links to Frances Egan's commentary and my response:

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Should we think that nervous systems compute? That's the topic of Day 3!

Zoe Drayson: Challenging Kirchhoff on the Semantics of Models and Theories — The Brains Blog Challenging Kirchhoff on the Semantics of Models and TheoriesZoe DraysonThe bold claim at the heart of Kirchhoff’s (2025) The Idealized Mind is that some scientific theories are neither true nor fa…

Day 2 of the @philosophyofbrains.com symposium of The Idealized Mind. Attached are link to Zoe Drayson's commentary and my response.

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How can idealized models explain if they don't represent? Have a look in the links!

Intro to Michael Kirchhoff’s: The Idealized Mind — The Brains Blog “Milk production at a dairy farm was low, so the farmer wrote to the local university, asking for help. A multidisciplinary team of professors was assembled, headed by a theoretical physicist, and …

philosophyofbrains.com/2025/12/01/i... Introduction to the book symposium on The Idealized Mind on the Brain's Blog. New post everyday with a commentator and response by me. Commentators are Zoe Drayson, Corey Maley, Karl Friston and Frances Egan

YouTube video by Business Talk The Idealized Mind: Rethinking Cognitive Science with Dr. Michael Kirchhoff

youtube.com/watch?v=R2P6... Great to be part of this podcast on The Idealized Mind hosted by Deepak Bhatt over on Business Talk. Interested in idealization, neuroscience and philosophy this should be interesting. Feedback welcomed!

Deepak Bhatt on X: "Delighted to share that our next episode features Dr. @MdKirchhoff, Associate Professor in the school of Liberal Arts from the University of Wollongong, diving into “The Idealized Mind” and how idealized models are reshaping the way we think about cognition. https://t.co/yXjoQc62cG" / X Delighted to share that our next episode features Dr. @MdKirchhoff, Associate Professor in the school of Liberal Arts from the University of Wollongong, diving into “The Idealized Mind” and how idealized models are reshaping the way we think about cognition. https://t.co/yXjoQc62cG

x.com/hellomrbhatt... Looking forward to diving into The Idealized Mind with Deepak Bhatt tomorrow on Business Talk

A little interview based on The Idealized Mind
www.rorotoko.com/11/20251113-...

2025: UOW’s new Liberal Arts Major to foster critical thinkers for a complex future - University of Wollongong – UOW

www.uow.edu.au/media/2025/u...

Thanks for sharing 😌

Hand holding a copy of "The Idealized Mind: From Model-Based Science to Cognitive Science" by Michael D. Kirchhoff.

Available #OpenAccess, Michael Kirchhoff's "The Idealized Mind" brings together ideas from the philosophy of cognitive science and the philosophy of science to reconcile scientific realism with model-based science: mitpress.mit.edu/978026255293...

Data only shows associations. Turning those into claims about mechanism or causation? That requires a Rosetta Stone of prior knowledge + theory. Resting-state fMRI is purely observational; correlation is its currency. From this, plenty of "theoretical toys" about brain function can be built...

Idealization and mental fictionalism Cognitive scientists speak of codes, signals, encoding, decoding, computation, representation, and information-processing. The orthodox view is to take talk of neuronal signaling and computational ...

Second: Michael D. Kirchhoff @kirchhoffmd.bsky.social explores the relationship between mental fictionalism and successful idealizations in the sciences: doi.org/10.1080/0951...

Brain-wide representations of prior information in mouse decision-making - Nature Brain-wide recordings in mice reveal that prior expectations are distributed through recurrent loops across all levels of cortical and subcortical processing.

Not that it comes as much of a surprise to many of us, but it's worth emphasizing once again - the 👏 brain 👏 uses 👏 distributed 👏 coding 👏. 😁

Two new papers from the #IBL looking at brain-wide activity:

www.nature.com/articles/s41...
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

#neuroscience 🧪

Predictive Coding or Just Feature Discovery? An Alternative Account of Why Language Models Fit Brain Data Abstract. Many recent studies have shown that representations drawn from neural network language models are extremely effective at predicting brain responses to natural language. But why do these…

🏆 Best Paper — Predictive Coding or Just Feature Discovery? An Alternative Account of Why Language Models Fit Brain Data: doi.org/10.1162/nol_...

Richard Antonello and @alexanderhuth.bsky.social

ASPP 2025 Melbourne Australasian Society for Philosophy and Psychology 2025 Conference Melbourne, November 24th - 25th, 2025

Come to Melbourne for the 2025 Conference of the Australasian Society for Philosophy and Psychology

Check out the great keynotes - submit your abstract

Come join this exciting community of researchers

Nov 24-25 - Register now!

#philosophy #neuroskyence #philsky

sites.google.com/monash.edu/a...

Looking forward to this podcast interview

www.facebook.com/share/1F58z3...

I am advertising two PhD positions in philosophy -- one for a domestic student, one for an international student. Both positions are 1 + 3 years, meaning that the first year is an MRes and the next three years are for the PhD.

www.mq.edu.au/research/phd...

New arguments are provided for thinking that models of mental or neural representation and models of neural computation are in fact idealized models. These models, of which there are many, may be useful but they aren't true

In The Idealized Brain, special attention is paid to the use of mathematical idealization in neural coding models and deep convolutional neural networks. In addition, implications are drawn for the use of information and probability theory - both of which are idealized formal languages

Exciting news. Following the publication of 'The Idealized Mind: From Model-based Science to Cognitive Science' (2025, MIT Press), I have signed a new contract for a completed and forthcoming book with MIT entitled 'The Idealized Brain: Uniting Philosophy of Science and Computational Neuroscience'.

Great to learn that it's useful for you!!

Idealization and mental fictionalism Cognitive scientists speak of codes, signals, encoding, decoding, computation, representation, and information-processing. The orthodox view is to take talk of neuronal signaling and computational ...

Now published

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Very interesting @williamngiam.github.io I'd love if you could share some references and very happy to keep this conversation going if you wish

If there is interest in more posts about the contents of the book, reach out and I'll create some posts. There is a book symposium organized on the Brains Blog (November) with commentaries from @francesegan.bsky.social, @coreymaley.net, @zoedrayson.bsky.social and Karl Friston. Truly grateful!