Petteri Saarinen

Mario Biagioli (1955–2025) Over the years I have gained a reputation for being extremely negative about Galileo Galilei and his supposed achievements and contributions to the evolution of science. As I point out from time to…

Some personal thoughts on the recent death of the historian of science, Mario Biagioli #histsci
thonyc.wordpress.com/2025/05/23/m...

How the human brain is like a murmuration of starlings | Aeon Essays The brain is much less like a machine than it is like the murmurations of a flock of starlings or an orchestral symphony

The Entangled Brain by @pessoabrain.bsky.social aeon.co/essays/how-t...

Iceland beating May heat record by 7 degrees signals the end game for AMOC. It’s the end of wheat farming in Finland. And barley, and rye. Yet this post is the only mention you will see about it anywhere.

How history of philosophy can help us in times of extreme suffering From Cafe Central to the University of Vienna, philosopher Martin Kusch takes us for a walk through Vienna's intellectual scenes. Examining how past philosophers like Wittgenstein worked through issue...

From Café Central to the University of Vienna, philosopher @martinkusch.bsky.social takes us for a walk through Vienna's intellectual scenes. Examining how past #philosophers like Wittgenstein worked through issues of their time, Kusch finds the tools to tackle troubles of our own. ⤵️ #philsky 🗃🧠

Principles of Biological Autonomy Francisco Varela’s Principles of Biological Autonomy was a groundbreaking text when it was first published in 1979, putting forth a novel theory of how...

Today is publication day! A new edition of Francisco J. Varela's (long hard-to-obtain) 1979 classic Principles of Biological Autonomy in a new annotated edition by Ezequiel Di Paolo and Evan Thompson, with a Foreword by Amy Cohen Varela. mitpress.mit.edu/978026255140...

In relation to the COGITATE study, here's a blogpost I wrote a while ago:

What questions should a real theory of consciousness encompass? www.wiringthebrain.com/2023/09/what...

Hakwan Lau has laid out his concerns about animal consciousness very directly here, so here's my reply.🧵 Yes, I do think many studies in comparative psychology that never set out to "directly address" the topic of phenomenal consciousness have in fact provided valuable evidence. (1/4)

Man smiling in jacket

The latest issue of Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science features "An Unpublished Article by David Bohm."

Edited by Chris Talbot.

Link: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

OK I had announced this before but forgot to say that Andrew Gelman would be joining Nancy Cartwright and myself as well. Short idea talks, lots of panel discussion and Q&A.

Join us on April 25th to discuss RCTs, replications, and scientific inference.

sites.google.com/view/cepbi/t...

The #consciousness debates continue!

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

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Everyone expected that AI would bring about the end of the world.

No one expected that all it would take was ChatGPT spitting out this formula.

Leibniz memorial coin that shows stars, the sun, God as a triangle w days and tables of binary numbers

Philosopher and mathematician Leibniz had a memorial coin made to show that the binary number system which he developed is closely related to his metaphysics. Zero is a void. God is a one who creates entities in this void. Each creature, say a leaf, could be a long chain of zeros and ones.

Alchemy - Yale University Press London Flush with hundreds of illustrations, this book revisits the histories of chemistry, medicine, ideas, and culture through the lens of alchemy   The craf...

Well, this seems now to be official. Trust me, it is a beautiful thing.
yalebooks.co.uk/book/9780300...

"Spener’s insight is that the reliability of introspective methods is not reducible to the reliability of introspection. Introspection is just one ingredient in the recipe. The supporting cast—experimental designs, measurement tools, statistical techniques—does just as much of the
heavy lifting."

This reminded me that I used this quote to start my review of Maja Spener's recent book "Introspection". You can find the review here: shorturl.at/nUnNe. The review should come out in MIND fairly soon.

The updated version of the IIT-Concerned letter has now been published in NN, thanks to the herculean efforts of the corresponding authors (thank you!!!). Here's the link. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Still, the process was frustrating. When the letter was first posted in the archive (1/n)

i used to have blog on consciousness. i just uploaded my final post there, in which i responded to Alex Gomez-Marin & Anil Seth's recent commentary on the scientific status of IIT.

inconsciousnesswetrust.blogspot.com/2025/03/fina...

so long, folks.

the world is going nuts. pls take care.

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New version of "the letter" in Nature Neuroscience. Like many others in the field, I signed because I believe that IIT threatens to deligitimize the scientific study of consciousness: www.nature.com/articles/s41....

1/ "A science of consciousness beyond pseudo-science and pseudo-consciousness" is out now! it was a joy to coauthor this commentary with Àlex Gómez-Marin @behaviOrganisms for @NatureNeuro, in which we try find some positive lessons in the clash over IIT www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Here is the latest on our concerns about IIT as a theory of consciousness - this was long in gestation and has evolved since the preprint. I signed because I was not convinced by the claims of hegemony based on the adversarial collaboration

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

Why Tononi’s Defense of IIT Fails to Convince Me I am one of the co-signers of the letter labeling IIT as “pseudoscience” for numerous reasons. These include a definition of…

Why Tononi et al's defense of IIT fails to convince me. medium.com/@kording/86f...

F.P. Ramsey’s grave finally has a refurbished headstone! Thank you British Wittgenstein Society for doing all the work and for allowing me to contribute in a more mundane way.

We have never been Cartesian - Synthese Humanism is the traditional approach in many disciplines, including history, philosophy, anthropology, and sociology. Humanists tend to assume that there is an important distinction between the knowin...

"We have never been Cartesian" - new Open Access article that defends humanism in response to Latour's "We have never been Modern" by drawing on anti-Cartesian currents in recent philosophy of mind (esp. mental fictionalism). Comments welcome! #philsky #STS link.springer.com/article/10.1...

The Memory Palace is back! We’re starting with a fantastic post from Alberto Guerrero-Velazquez on a recent conference and the consequences of restricting philosophy of memory to English. A great read and a great project!

#philsky #philscisky

François Kammerer, Defining consciousness and denying its existence. Sailing between Charybdis and Scylla - PhilPapers Ulysses, the strong illusionist, sails towards the Strait of Definitions. On his left, Charybdis defines “phenomenal consciousness” in a loaded manner, which makes it a problematic entity from a physi...

The mystery of consciousness demands radical solutions. One radical option: Deny it exists.
philpapers.org/rec/KAMDCA-2...

I've written a commentary for Cell Systems arguing that biology needs to find a way to communicate its complexity from the outset, rather than starting with simple but misleading narratives.
It's free to view and download here (until 1 April).
authors.elsevier.com/a/1karS8YyDf...

Little reminder that I am adding all new publications from Neuroscience of #Consciousness in this thread!

Check it out!

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90 Best Philosophy Blogs in 2025 90 Best Philosophy Blogs ⋅ 1. A Philosopher's Blog ⋅ 2. American Philosophical Association Blog ⋅ 3. Edward Feser - Philosophy Blog ⋅ 4. The Brains Blog ⋅ 5. Philosophical Disquisitions

Wow! Feedspot just put me at #33 in their rankings of the "90 Best Philosophy Blogs". There are a lot of good sites on this list so it's quite an honor. Discover them all here:

bloggers.feedspot.com/philosophy_b...

#Philosophy #PhilSky

Open Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science The Open Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science is a new, multidisciplinary guide to understanding the mind: a freely-available, growing collection of peer-reviewed articles introducing key topics to a bro...

The MIT Open Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science is a growing resource, expertly edited and designed, with high quality contributors (OK OK I am one of them) oecs.mit.edu

The Metaphysics of Gender Cambridge Core - Philosophy: General Interest - The Metaphysics of Gender

Next title out in the Elements in Metaphysics series: E. Díaz León on The Metaphysics of Gender. Free to access until 25th February! www.cambridge.org/core/element...