Wiktor Rorot

We are super happy to announce the fifth edition of our Transatlantic Behavioural Neuroscience School, that will be held Aug 11-22nd in Poland! Join us to learn everything you need to build your behavioural setup with open source tools!

Theorizing the Mind: Creating a Functional Atlas of Scientific Theories Marcin Miłkowski, Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, Polish Academy of Sciences Have you ever wondered how scientists come up with theories about how our minds work or what’s happening in our brains? From understanding how we learn and remember, to explaining emotions, to developing treatments for mental health conditions, scientific theories are the essential roadmaps that guide discovery. But what makes a scientific theory in these fields a good one? And how can we make sure scientists are building the best possible theories to help us understand ourselves and improve our lives? Our Goal: Our goal is to create the first systematic map of the different jobs that scientific theories do when studying the brain and mind. Just like a builder needs different tools for different tasks (a hammer isn’t great for sawing wood!), scientists use different kinds of theories for different purposes – some are for classifying things, others for predicting what will happen, and some for explaining why things happen. Our project will provide a clear guide to what makes each type of theory effective and trustworthy for the job it's designed to do. What We'll Be Doing: Think of us as cartographers looking at how science itself works deep down. We will: ● Study Real Science in Action: We'll look closely at how theories are actually used and developed in leading research on the brain and mind. This involves careful philosophical thinking combined with looking at examples from scientific practice. ● Analyze Scientific Language: Using modern computer tools, we'll examine thousands of scientific articles and discussions. This helps us see broad patterns in how scientists talk about, use, and judge theories. It’s like looking at the fingerprint of scientific theorizing to see what’s common and what stands out. ● Build a Functional Atlas for Theories: Based on what we learn, we will …

My project Theorizing the Mind has been funded by the National Science Center.

#philsci #cogsky #CognitiveNeuroscience

@phaueis.bsky.social and I have had our paper, “Metabolic considerations for cognitive modeling,” accepted as a target article in Behavioral and Brain Sciences.

www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Book cover of "The Riddle of Organismal Agency: New Historical and Philosophical Reflections" (Routledge, 2024). The book belongs to the "History and Philosophy of Biology" series. The editors are Alejandro Fábregas-Tejeda, Jan Baedke, Guido I. Prieto, and Gregory Radick. The design features a geometric pattern of interlocking, multicolored triangles and rectangular prisms in shades of red, yellow, teal, white, and pink. The Routledge logo appears in the lower right corner.

"The Riddle of Organismal Agency" is now available as a paperback version! Edited by @alejandrofabregastejeda.com, Jan Baedke, Guido Prieto and Gregory Radick, the volume puts together reflections from #HistSci and #PhilSci on the topic of organismal agency.
#HPBio
www.routledge.com/The-Riddle-o...

And to @birchlse.bsky.social @evaroseread.bsky.social @simonabbrown.bsky.social @dzakharova.bsky.social @merikatariina.bsky.social for the 2024 Animal Minds ECR workshop at LSE where I presented an initial version of the paper!

Lots of thanks to @alejandrofabregastejeda.com, @sabinaleonelli.bsky.social, @davdjacobharrison.bsky.social, @laukas.bsky.social, Roman Frigg, Guido I. Prieto, Julia Sánchez-Dorado, and Lorenzo Sartori for discussions and comments on the previous draft!

What role heuristics play in model organism research? How can the DEKI capture the development of MOs? Is basal cognition introducing novel MOs for neuroscience? This is what I try to explore in the new preprint: philsci-archive.pitt.edu/27054/

School of Ideas in Neuroscience 2025 has started today with a talk by @phaueis.bsky.social!

Applications are still open!

We’re waiting for the applications to the School of Ideas in Neuroscience only until Monday!! Come hang out, it’s always fun

Applications are open for another week, do not miss out!!

Poster for the School of Ideas in Neuroscience, it depicts a multiplied white vintage scientific diagram (voltage changes in different potassium and chloride concentrations) on a grainy yellow-green (with a tint of red) gradient. The text includes the name and dates of the school, as well as the list of confirmed guests: Angie Salles, Nedah Nemati, Philip Haueis, Axel Cleeremans, Detlev Arendt, Sara Solla, Jonathan Whitlock, and the list of sponsors.

We’ve just opened the applications for this year’s School of Ideas in Neuroscience which will happen September 8-13 in Warsaw, Poland! We have an exciting lineup of guests and all we need now is some participants, so consider joining us and sharing the invitation :)
nenckiopenlab.org/the-school-o...

So exciting!! I wish I could comeeee

Last year we met in the beautiful Dolomites to talk about “naturalistic” behaviour - now the brilliant organizers have put together a preprint which summarizes those discussions. Very much recommended! It definitely changed how I think about behaviour

The open access version of A Drive to Survive is now available to download for free!

direct.mit.edu/books/oa-mon...

(If you've already read the preprint, I'd really appreciate a download of the official version... for the *metrics*)

- also it has way less typos.

Cognitive offloading and the causal structure of human action - Synthese The hypothesis of extended cognition (HEC) casts human cognition as constitutively dependent on its bodily and environmental context. Drawing on recent empirical work on ‘cognitive offloading’, HEC’s ...

Really cool paper on how to think of actions involved in extended cognition (finally somebody putting philosophy of action to a good use): link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Exciting mail day! I received two new books with my contributions. In the volume on Conceptual Engineering, edited by Piotr Stalmaszczyk, I co-authored a chapter with my PhD student @wikror.bsky.social on predictive understanding, using empirical evidence from scientific writing and peer review. 1/2

A Drive to Survive now has a cover! Thanks to my friend Toby Logan saving the day with his design skills.

Unfortunately the release has been delayed another two months, but the pre-print can be downloaded here osf.io/preprints/ps... or I’m happy to email a PDF to anyone interested!

When AI Systems Fail: A Personal Account of the Crisis at Poland’s Leading Philosophy Institute As the Chair of Logic and Cognitive Science at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences (IFiS PAN), I find myself in an unprecedented situation. Our institute, on…

I realized that there was no story in English that would explain what happened to my institute, so I decided to write up this blog entry, which shows how low-quality AI systems fail to assess research quality: marcinmilkowski.pl/2024/11/20/w...

Many thanks to @mmilkowski.bsky.social and Przemysław Nowakowski for presenting their work in progress in our Digital Methods reading group today!

👉Check out the paper by @wikror.bsky.social and @mmilkowski.bsky.social highlighting the research conducted by Marcin’s group:
doi.org/10.31234/osf...

This paper, along with several other fascinating contributions, has just been published in the book “Conceptual Engineering: Methodological and Metaphilosophical Issues” edited by Piotr Stalmaszczyk. Highly recommended! And you can still view freely the final version of our chapter on Psyarxiv :)

Coming out soon🤩: “The Riddle of Organismal Agency: New Historical and Philosophical Reflections”, edited by ROTO members Jan Baedke, Guido Prieto and @afabregastejeda.bsky.social together with Gregory Radick. www.routledge.com/The-Riddle-o...
#PhilSci #HistSci #HPBio

We’re doing it again, come to Warsaw in July for a week filled with ideas and amazing guests!!

We are super happy to announce our School of Ideas in Neuroscience 2024! Come to Warsaw to discuss the most exciting theories and ideas with neuroscientists & philosophers! We provide beautiful surroundings, great atmosphere and a lot of time to think together! nenckiopenlab.org/school-of-id...

Sinai Postdoctoral Organizing Committee-UAW Strike Support postdoctoral researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai on Unfair Labor Practice (ULP) strike

Our postdoc strike at Mount Sinai has now been going for a full week, which means a potential week of no wages. Please donate to our emergency fundraiser or share. Thank you for your support! t.co/Sxqyui9oXZ

And what’s more, such concepts may be useful for current debates - as we argue predictive understanding is for explainable AI!

We argue that when discussing “understanding” in phil sci and epistemology philosophers have overlooked its predictive aspect - one that practitioners of science refer to systematically. Text mining allows the discovery of concepts and enables a broad look on how they’re used.

We introduce methodological basics of digital philosophy and show how they tie (in our view seamlessly!) with broader practices of conceptual engineers, and then provide a proof-of-principle.

With @mmilkowski.bsky.social we have just preprinted our draft on text mining for conceptual engineering! You can find the paper here: osf.io/preprints/ps...

We are happy to announce the second Workshop of Ideas in 2024! On April 19-21th in Warsaw, we will discuss the origins of order in behaviour. Is instinct a useful term in modern neuroscience?
How do genes influence and constrain behavioural development?
nenckiopenlab.org/origins_of_order