Juan Murillo Vargas

This was the sort of thing I was looking for--thank you!!

Maybe not the best example; but I'm curious about whether there's stuff testing kids' competence with different modal flavours' entailment properties.

Was thinking about this in connection with the literature on kids judging that e.g., both improbable and immoral events are impossible (2/2).

Random Q: has anyone tested whether 3 - 5 year-olds understand that epistemic modals but not other flavours of modality give rise to epistemic contradictions?

E.g., do 3 - 5 year-olds think "it might be raining but it's not" and "it could be raining but it's not" are equally fine? (1/2)

Type theory in human-like learning and inference Humans can generate reasonable answers to novel queries (Schulz, 2012): if I asked you what kind of food you want to eat for lunch, you would respond with a food, not a time. The thought that one woul...

(some of the ideas build on the a suggestion that can be summarized as "the language of thought is typed", see more here:

arxiv.org/abs/2210.01634)

fun pre-print for your start of week reading:

"People Make Graded Judgments About The Inconceivable"

(by Hu, Sosa, and me)

doi.org/10.31234/osf...

🚨Super excited that Dartmouth's Society of Fellows is hiring a postdoc with the Program in Cognitive Science 🚨 Specialization in computational and empirical approaches to artificial and natural intelligence, including perception, representation, and complex planning: apply.interfolio.com/176946

The call for commentaries on our "Core Perception" paper is now live! We would love to know what you think about this new perspective on the nature of early emerging knowledge.

Details here: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Proposals due Dec 29!

This paper with @aaronstevenwhite.io is finally published! Check it out here: doi.org/10.1007/s110...
(Or, if you don't have institutional access, you can download it from lingbuzz: ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/007...)

New pre-print with @drbarner.bsky.social! We ask how children come to understand age. We find that young children use numerical age and facial morphology to identify who’s older, not just size, and point to acquiring a number system as key to developing an understanding of age.
osf.io/gvb46

Clayton Littlejohn, Disinformation is for Degrading the Value of Information, not Confirming Falsehoods - PhilPapers According to a recent account of disinformation, disinformation is content that “generates ignorance” (Simion 2024a; 2024b). The view improves upon previous accounts that focused upon the potential fo...

I have news. Wonderful news.

New paper on #disinformation. The title is the thesis. Think of disinformation as content that functions to optimise the decisions of the audience for the disinformant. This doesn't require deception or content that induces false belief.

philpapers.org/rec/LITDIF

“Murder is wrong, but I don’t disapprove of it”

Expressivist theories of moral language seem to suggest that this sentence should make no sense — but a new paper in Cognition finds that people actually *do* find this sentence largely acceptable

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Studies with impossible languages falsify LMs as models of human language According to Futrell and Mahowald [arXiv:2501.17047], both infants and language models (LMs) find attested languages easier to learn than impossible languages that have unnatural structures. We review...

Check out commentary on the @futrell.bsky.social and @kmahowald.bsky.social BBS Target Article where Jeff Mitchell and myself review the evidence on LLMs learning impossible languages:
arxiv.org/abs/2511.11389

New paper from @tashaunalb.bsky.social, Roger Strong, and me! We find that the ability to split attention between non-contiguous locations develops quite late - between 6 and 8 years of age! Now out in APP. #visionscience #psychscisky #devpsych link.springer.com/epdf/10.3758...

My Visual Attention in Crisis paper has finally appeared, along with 30 commentaries and response. I argue that it’s time to rethink attention from the ground up, and suggest key phenomena and possible directions. Requires access, alas. doi.org/10.1017/S014...

In my professional opinion, ChatGPT is not conscious and does not have psychological states like beliefs and desires (yes I’m aware of the arguments to the contrary)

Looking for a funded Ph.D. in #CogSci in an interdisciplinary, research-first program? Apply to CEU!

cognitivescience.ceu.edu/admission

Deadline February 4, 2026. Please share with any interested students!

#PsychSciSky #DevPsych #CogPsych

New mentorship program for interdisciplinary crossover philosophy-neuroscience work, from #SPAN. Check it out and apply!

Mereological Syntax: Phrase Structure, Cyclicity, and Islands An argument for replacing Chomsky’s set-theoretic Merge view of syntax with a theory of syntax based on mereological objects.Mereology is the study of part

At last! Open Access version of the book on MIT's site. One for the syntax nerds. I argue we need to replace Merge, that there are no Phases, and that we need to rethink the basic theoretical typology of Islands. Feel free to download with abandon! 🐦🐦 #syntax direct.mit.edu/books/oa-mon...

🚨🚨🚨
Our 52nd Annual Meeting will be held from June 18–20, 2026 at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, MD, with a pre-conference on Mental Control and Agency held at JHU on June 17
🚨🚨🚨

We are currently inviting submissions of papers (talks and posters)!

There’s more. She reviews “Steffan Yabble” here.

The science of consciousness The MIT Consciousness Club, led by professors Matthias Michel and Earl Miller, explores how neurological activity gives rise to human experience.

MIT News article about the MIT Consciousness Club: news.mit.edu/2025/science.... Next session is this Thursday, 12pm-1:30pm. You can learn more here: sites.google.com/view/mit-con....

mancept? oh you mean the manguage of thought

Fodor should have called it manguage

Ad for Chaz's talk at Brown

Ad for Chaz's talk at MIT

Excited to head north this week for some talks! Come say hi if you're nearby :)

Wednesday (11/12) @ Brown: events.brown.edu/copsy/event/...

Thursday (11/13) @ MIT: bcs.mit.edu/events/collo...

lots of invigorating discussion this year at #BUCLD2025. Unsurprisingly, LLMs as models & as tools made many appearances w/a wide range of views/claims/caveats ab what they can(not) tell us ab language development
I'm still chewing on a few things that seemed to get short shrift 1/4 🐦🐦

You can't live your life based on hate - that way lies madness and bitterness - but allowing yourself to slip into hater mode from time to time is a lovely little treat, like a drunk cigarette or a decadent slice of cake

there was some discussion on here recently about the scientific legitimacy of cognitive dissonance research. as someone who has spent years investigating this literature, i wanted to make a thread to explain why pessimism is not justified by careful inspection of the evidence

1/

Good news everyone: #Duke Summer Seminars in Neuroscience and Philosophy (SSNAP) are back!! We are now accepting applications for SSNAP 2026, which will take place from May 26 to June 6, 2026. #neuroscience #philosophy #brain Please spread the word! ssnap.submittable.com/submit