Philipp Haueis

The image shows why the patchwork of „cortical column“ failed to identify a cortical building block in the brain - drawing on the idea of blurry objects of research by @ufeest.bsky.social .
Now onwards to sending the manuscript out to publishers! (2/2)
#philsci #edusky #neuroskyence #cogsci

Image showing several uses of the term „cortical column“ and how it failed to bring a building block in the brain into focus for neuroscientists: the term does not describe discrete functional unit, but various kinds of structures in specific domains that vary in functional significance.

Finished last revisions my book „The Conceptual Fabric of Science“ - this is an image from the chapter on the epistemic utility of patchwork concepts for describing, classifying or explaining phenomena. (1/2)

Die neue Ausgabe der Zeitschrift für Praktische Philosophie (ZfPP) ist raus und damit der von Joseph Conrad, Stefan Knauss und mir herausgegebene Schwerpunkt "Die Klimakrise und die Praktische Philosophie". Hier ist der Link zur Ausgabe. Ich werde die Beiträge auch sukzessive einzeln posten.

Mega spannend! Aber sollte es hier nicht „mit Karen Barad“ anstatt „pace“ heißen?

There are 10 days left to submit a proposal for the 6th Biennial EENPS Conference (Bucharest, 18–19 September 2026).

Submission deadline: 15 February!

Talks and symposia across all areas of philosophy of science are welcome ☀️
eenps2026.sciencesconf.org

#philsci

🔔 We're launching our Bluesky account today! Can you help us spread the word by retweeting this post? 😀

#Theoria #diamondopenaccessjournal

As a final reminder, the deadline for commentary proposals for our BBS target article, "Metabolic considerations for cognitive modeling," is next Tuesday, February 3. For details, follow the link. Please share if you can

@phaueis.bsky.social

#philsci #cogsky #CognitiveNeuroscience

Developing Concepts for Neuroscience: A Philosophical Toolkit Whether and how concepts should be developed depends on the phenomena that neuroscientists aim to describe, classify, and explain. These epistemic goals shape when introducing novel terms like “defau...

Paper on developing concepts for neuroscience now published open access:

doi.org/10.1111/ejn....

We argue that the success and failure of concepts fundamentally depends on epistemic goals.
#cogsky #neuroskyence #cognitiveneuroscience #philsky #philsci #philosophysky #cogsci

such as describing, classifying and explaining phenomena in the brain. We use examples like „default mode network“, „cortical column“ and „hierarchy“ to show when developing concepts succeeds or fails to advance our understanding of the brain (2/2)
#neuroskyence
#philsky
#edusky
#cogsci

Image shows a brain, with arrows going from epistemic goals to three boxes labeled introducing concepts, revising concepts and retiring/revising concepts, because the goals shape when these forms of developing concepts succeed or fail to advance our neuroscientific understand the brain.

My paper on
„Developing concepts for neuroscience: a philosophical toolkit“ with Daniel Margulies was just accepted for publication @ejneuroscience.bsky.social

We argue that the success and failure of concepts to understand the brain fundamentally depends on our epistemic goals (1/2)

The Deadline for Commentary Proposals for our target article, "Metabolic considerations for cognitive modeling," is Tuesday, February 3, 2026. For details, follow the reposted link below:

@phaueis.bsky.social

#philsci #cogsky #CognitiveNeuroscience

The call for commentary proposals for @phaueis.bsky.social and my BBS target article is now posted. It appears that one can download the preprint via this page. Think about it:

More press about our BBS paper on metabolism and cognition:

aktuell.uni-bielefeld.de/2025/11/24/t...

#neuroskyence #cogsky #philsci

Bei Gehirnmodellen den Stoffwechsel mitdenken MCMP-Studie: Kognitive Theorien sollten metabolische Grenzen berücksichtigen

For German speakers, LMU just posted a press release on our BBS target article „Metabolic considerations for cognitive modeling“

www.lmu.de/de/newsroom/...

#cogsky #neuroskyence #philsky #philsci

#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...

You can access the preprint here: doi.org/10.1017/S014...

Also, consider writing a commentary if this falls in your area of expertise! (3/3)

#neuroskyence
#philsky
#philsci

Our philosophical framework has foundational implications for psychological models of mental effort, medium independence of computation and comparing biological cognition and AI (2/3)

Very exciting news to share! Me and @davidcolaco.bsky.social published a target article in BBs on metabolism and cognition! We argue that models of cognition should incorporate metabolism - either to evaluate if existing models are biologically plausible, or to generate new models (1/3)

One of my favorite papers! If you want to go further and delve intro the philosophy of science discussion: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
🐸🧠

A chalkboard showing a patchwork model of the gene concept. On the left is the classical gene patch, with the technique of cross-breeding, scale of whole organisms, and the property of patterns of inheritance. On the right is the molecular gene patch, with X Ray crystallography as technique, the molecular scale and the property of DNA. The patches partially overlap because the DNA is involved in intergenerational inheritance between parent and offspring, but also explains how proteins are produced while offspring develops.

This is why it’s fun to teach on your research: today we discussed a chapter of my book on patchwork concepts in science. The students asked if we try can build a patchwork, and so we used the case of “gene“ from the previous session, which I hadn’t analyzed explicitly before!
#philsci

This is also a live debate in philosophy of science about eliminativism vs. pluralism regarding concepts with multiple meanings
Attention and emotion are both cases

press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/bo...

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

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

The deadline is approaching! We wait for your applications till Monday, July 21st!

Philosopher Patrick McGivern, wearing a white shirt and blue jeans, explaining the „metabolic turn“, i.e. the importance of metabolism for understanding cognition

Finally, Patrick McGivern pronouncing the Metabolic Turn in philosophy of cognition, with work on the role of metabolism for non-neural cognition, such as bacteria chemotaxis (4/4)

Thanks to all speakers and participants for the great Q&A!

#philsky
#neuroskyence
#cognition
#metabolism

Philosopher Matthew Sims, wearing a black shirt and beige pants showing a slide on ctenophores, a creature with external passive sensory receptors and epithelial sheets for locomotion

Turning to evolution, Matthew Sims (in joint work w Marta Halina) explained how predictive brain models may have evolved from corollary discharge, which itself resulted from the need to distinguish external input from sensory feedback once nervous systems relied on sensorimotor integration (3/4)

Neuroscientist Jordan Theriault wearing a blue shirt and black pants pointing at a slide that shows the relation between glucose metabolism and signals measured with functional magnetic resonance imaging.

Next was a talk by @jtheriault.bsky.social presenting a metabolic model of „activity“ in neuroimaging, suggesting that stimulus elicited BOLD responses Track prediction error processing in the brain, but not baseline metabolic load related to processing predictions (2/4)

Philosopher David Colaço, eating a black suit jacket, white shirt and black tie in front of an image with a white balloon with „energy“ written in blue, a blue sky and white clouds on the back, some green tree canopies in front.

Had a great session on the relation between metabolism and cognition at BSPS Glasgow, organized by @davidcolaco.bsky.social . We presented joint work on using metabolism to constrain and generate cognitive models (1/2)

There’s also the Journal of Unsolved questions that only accepts failed experiments etc

www.mainz.uni-mainz.de/activities/j...

Agreed! I’m usually skeptical of edited volumes,but could see the value here bc many will know failure cases from their respective disciplines

The death of the cortical column? Patchwork structure and conceptual retirement in neuroscientific practice In 1981, David Hubel and Torsten Wiesel received the Nobel Prize for their research on cortical columns—vertical bands of neurons with similar functio…

I wrote on conceptual retirement here www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
This preprint also has more general thoughts on revising concepts (basis for one of the chapters): philsci-archive.pitt.edu/21213/