existwell

Postdoctoral Fellowship Opportunity

We are looking for excellent MD Psychiatrist applicants to work & train at the CPCR at Johns Hopkins
@jhpsychedelics.bsky.social, the largest and most comprehensive psychedelic research program in the world.

Email Dr. Sandeep Nayak smn@jhmi.edu

Psychedelic 5-HT2A receptor agonism alters neurovascular coupling and differentially affects neuronal and hemodynamic measures of brain function - Nature Neuroscience Padawer-Curry et al. show that the hallucinogenic 5-HT2A receptor agonist DOI alters neurovascular coupling in mice, with implications for the interpretation of human fMRI studies of psychedelics.

Psychedelics alter neurovascular coupling, which means we need to critically re-evaluate fMRI findings of acute psychedelic effects
#neuroskyence
#PsychSciSky
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

On the second anniversary of Roland Griffiths' death, I'm taking the opportunity to reflect on the value of scientific curiosity and the virtue of constant curiosity about life in general that he seemed to me to so consistently embody.

It has been an absolute joy to learn from and engage with the brilliant @lilweb.bsky.social @rikepetzschner.bsky.social @danasmall.bsky.social. I am so proud of our collaboration on the future of #interoception and #RL. May you find as much inspiration in reading this paper as we did in writing it.

Title card for Mindscape AMA episode.

Mindscape Ask Me Anything | October 2025. Hopefully this one answers once and for all why the universe isn't a black hole if it was so densely packed at early times. #MindscapePodcast

www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2025...

Visual Hallucinations in Serotonergic Psychedelics and Lewy Body Diseases AbstractBackground and Hypothesis. Visual hallucinations (VH) are a core symptom of both Lewy body diseases (LBDs; eg, Parkinson’s disease and dementia wit

🧠 New Psychedelic Article in Schizophrenia Bulletin!

We argue that visual hallucinations in psychedelics and Lewy body disease may share common mechanisms ⇒ visual degradation & cortical excitation.

academic.oup.com/schizophreni...

Excited to see this spark discussion!
#Neuroscience #Psychedelics

Weirdness with Eric Schwitzgebel Podcast Episode · Overthink · 07/15/2025 · 57m

Terrific framing of my work on "weirdness" by Ellie and David, before after and during their interview of me on Overthink. Probably the best engagement with that dimension of my work that I've seen so far.

podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/w...

New in Philosophical Psychology: Derek Anderson & I review Feltz & Cokely’s Diversity and Disagreement (OUP, 2024). We applaud their empirical rigor linking personality & philosophical views, but question their (to our minds) overly hasty and sweeping philosophical conclusions.🧵

We need heroes. People to respect and emulate. People who inspire us to do our best and be our best. Jane Goodall was a hero, and she will remain one.

I think we can show that people with delusions vs people with lots of esoteric beliefs both have aberrant prediction errors, but for very different neurobiological reasons: one bottom up (patients) and one top-down (psychics)

exciting! can we request a mysterious indecipherable preview?

agreed about the profound psychological impact of getting new data to analyze...

I think Feltz & Cokely could say something like: if responses to the question in your study are systematically swayed by personality, then that introduces an obstacle to agreement, since these operative reasons couldn't be articulated.

(this ^ is a more minimal take on their much broader argument)

I don’t understand why one would think we are getting evidence against the reliability of intuitions when we find correlations between intuitions and personality traits

Suppose we run a study and find that 60% or people give one response, 40% give the opposite response…

1/

thank you for letting me know! I tagged them in a post on the thread as well-

Diversity and Disagreement This book details the discovery and exploration of one of the major scientific revelations that has emerged from the field of experimental philosophy

Book by Feltz & Cokely @ethicalinteraction.bsky.social

The book is OpenAccess, so can be accessed for free here!
link.springer.com/book/10.1007...

(Also, there may be a meeting on this book and the overall topic at Hopkins in the future. Please let me know if interested!)

(PDF) Diversity and disagreement: Agreeing to disagree about disagreement: Diversity and disagreement: from fundamental biases to ethical interactions, by Feltz & Cokely, Oxford, Oxford University Pre... PDF | Psychologists Feltz & Cokley cover an important, yet to our minds surprisingly under-studied and under discussed question: why do different kinds... | Find, read and cite all the research you ne...

full review available here: researchgate.net/publication/...

We recommend reading the book!

We conclude by reiterating our appreciation for the topic Feltz & Cokely have raised. We find it frankly bizarre that it isn't more discussed! They have done great empirical work and nice review of parts of the xphi lit. We view the implications discussion as an important one-

We find some problems with this stance, eg: 1) the difficulty of determining whether a given trait-view relation is epistemically virtuous or vicious remains, 2) the level of skepticism may be self-undermining, and 3) what about the small magnitude of effect?

Feltz & Cokely take a strong stance here. They argue that the empirical findings show that one’s endorsement of some philosophical claims is at least partially a function of one’s personality, which they argue undermines many projects in philosophy (by showing intuition faulty)

but WHAT, if anything, should such findings about psychological traits and philosophical views or answers to thought experiments mean, philosophically?

Here we diverge with Feltz & Cokely

Notably, in our survey of professional philosophers, most (~68%) of the sample thought that these kinds of associations between psychological factors and beliefs would have philosophical implications

(PDF) The psychology of philosophy: Associating philosophical views with psychological traits in professional philosophers PDF | Do psychological traits predict philosophical views? We administered the PhilPapers Survey, created by David Bourget and David Chalmers, which... | Find, read and cite all the research you need ...

We (Derek Anderson and I) also found that some additional psychological traits beyond personality predict some philosophical views in professors of philosophy:
www.researchgate.net/publication/...

In several topics with measurable thought experiments: free will, (side-effect effect (Knobe effect), and ethics - the authors show convincingly that personality traits (especially extraversion) reliably--though to a small degree--predicts responses on these thought experiments.

Feltz & Cokely conducted many of these studies themselves, but cite many others. They review work by Josh Knobe @xphilosopher.bsky.social,
Fiery Cushman (@fierycushman.bsky.social), and others in #xphi. The book is a great review of a lot of good work in experimental philosophy (#xphi).

Feltz & Cokley cover a fascinating question: why do different kinds of people tend to hold different kinds of philosophical views? While these associations tend to be of a small magnitude they have been shown in replicated studies to exist.

What should we make of the findings?

The entire book--Diversity and Disagreement: From Fundamental Biases to Ethical Interactions by Adam Feltz and Edward Cokely--is open access, so free to read!
It can be found here:
library.oapen.org/handle/20.50...

New in Philosophical Psychology: Derek Anderson & I review Feltz & Cokely’s Diversity and Disagreement (OUP, 2024). We applaud their empirical rigor linking personality & philosophical views, but question their (to our minds) overly hasty and sweeping philosophical conclusions.🧵

Mikayla Kelley, The Normative Function of Intentional Action - PhilPapers This essay identifies a normative function of the concept of intentional action. Specifically, I argue that the concept of intentional action functions to focus our evaluative concern on some doings r...

Mikayla Kelley has an important new paper on why human beings even have a concept of intentional action

The key question: What does this concept do in our lives?

Her answer: Since we can't possibly evaluate all actions, it helps us choose which ones to evaluate

philpapers.org/rec/KELTNF-3

10/ Led by former @hopkinsmedicine.bsky.social Megan Hosein and Zach Cordner, cochairs @fredbarrettphd.bsky.social and Trisha Suppes, CPCR’s Dr. Matthew Reid, @existwell.bsky.social, and Sarah Walser, Stu Charney, UT Austin’s D. Greg Fonzo, and Utah’s Dr. Ben Lewis