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Peter Schulte

@peterschulte.bsky.social

Associate professor of philosophy at Umeå University; philosophy of mind & cognitive science, metaphysics; author of Mental Content (Cambridge UP)

543 Followers  |  380 Following  |  5 Posts  |  Joined: 07.10.2023  |  1.6133

Latest posts by peterschulte.bsky.social on Bluesky

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I get that the news cycle is packed right now, but I just heard from a colleague at the Smithsonian that this is fully a GIANT SQUID BEING EATEN BY A SPERM WHALE and it’s possibly the first ever confirmed video according to a friend at NOAA

10 YEAR OLD ME IS LOSING HER MIND (a thread 🧵)

24.09.2025 20:30 — 👍 29611    🔁 9963    💬 730    📌 1550
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Neurocognitive Foundations of Mind This volume provides a cohesive and comprehensive case that cognitive neuroscience is maturing into an integrated, interdisciplinary science that is transforming our understanding of the mind. The ris...

😊 So proud this is out now:
"Cognitive ontology in terms of cognitive homology: The role of brain, behavior, and environment for individuating cognitive categories" #philsci #CognitiveNeuroscience

Thanks to @marielgoddu.bsky.social and to @gualtiero.bsky.social!

www.routledge.com/Neurocogniti...

19.09.2025 12:18 — 👍 25    🔁 5    💬 0    📌 3
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Causal Bases of Potentialities in the Life Sciences | 21 | Extrinsical Potentialities are properties that can manifest. Many potentialities are instantiated in virtue of having causal bases that are possible causes for their

Our open access chapter “Causal Bases of Potentialities in the Life Sciences” (with María Ferreira Ruiz, Marie I. Kaiser & @javiersuarez.bsky.social) is now published in Inductive Metaphysics (Routledge, 2025). Read it here: www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/oa-...

16.09.2025 05:58 — 👍 8    🔁 1    💬 0    📌 1

Yes, that's an adequate one-word summary of the answer, I have to admit 🙂

10.09.2025 13:47 — 👍 2    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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Millikan vs. Millikan: biosemantics and the role of the consumer - Synthese Millikan’s biosemantics is commonly characterized as a “consumer theory” of representational content. Proponents of this characterization interpret Millikan as privileging representation consumers ove...

New paper: Is Millikan's biosemantics a consumer theory? THE ANSWER MIGHT SURPRISE YOU!

doi.org/10.1007/s112...

29.08.2025 14:05 — 👍 14    🔁 3    💬 0    📌 1
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Finally reading @peterschulte.bsky.social Mental Content in my summer project to work through some Cambridge Elements. It is extremely well written: straightforward but nonetheless teaching important distinctions and arguments without unnecessary complexity.

30.08.2025 09:21 — 👍 8    🔁 1    💬 2    📌 0

Thanks for the kind words, much appreciated! Glad to hear that you find the Element useful 🙂

10.09.2025 11:31 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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Millikan vs. Millikan: biosemantics and the role of the consumer - Synthese Millikan’s biosemantics is commonly characterized as a “consumer theory” of representational content. Proponents of this characterization interpret Millikan as privileging representation consumers ove...

New paper: Is Millikan's biosemantics a consumer theory? THE ANSWER MIGHT SURPRISE YOU!

doi.org/10.1007/s112...

29.08.2025 14:05 — 👍 14    🔁 3    💬 0    📌 1
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Karl Gustav Bergman, Teleosemantics and universal hybridity - PhilPapers According to Ruth Millikan, some representations are hybrid: they have both descriptive and directive content, both mind-to-world and world-to-mind direction of fit. Millikan calls them “pushmi-pullyu...

Happy to report that my paper "Teleosemantics and universal hybridity" has now been accepted for publication in Erkenntnis. Preprint below: philpapers.org/rec/BERTAU

01.07.2025 11:35 — 👍 7    🔁 5    💬 0    📌 0
NSF Grant Termination Information Collection Form

Please use this form to submit information identifying specific NSF grants that have been cancelled for any reason after January 20, 2025.


We are tracking these grants to increase transparency, organize affected PIs, and facilitate responses, including via litigation. Please share the form as widely as possible with your networks. 


We are actively building a pipeline to organize these terminations and will soon have a tracker akin to our NIH grant tracker at https://airtable.com/appjhyo9NTvJLocRy/shrNto1NNp9eJlgpA


WE WILL NOT DISCLOSE THE IDENTITY OF ANYONE WHO USES THIS FORM TO PROVIDE INFORMATION. We will keep your identity confidential.


These resources are maintained by Noam Ross of rOpenSci and Scott Delaney of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, with input and support from additional volunteers. For any questions, please contact Scott Delaney on Signal (sdelaney.84).


THANK YOU FOR YOUR ASSISTANCE!

NSF Grant Termination Information Collection Form Please use this form to submit information identifying specific NSF grants that have been cancelled for any reason after January 20, 2025. We are tracking these grants to increase transparency, organize affected PIs, and facilitate responses, including via litigation. Please share the form as widely as possible with your networks. We are actively building a pipeline to organize these terminations and will soon have a tracker akin to our NIH grant tracker at https://airtable.com/appjhyo9NTvJLocRy/shrNto1NNp9eJlgpA WE WILL NOT DISCLOSE THE IDENTITY OF ANYONE WHO USES THIS FORM TO PROVIDE INFORMATION. We will keep your identity confidential. These resources are maintained by Noam Ross of rOpenSci and Scott Delaney of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, with input and support from additional volunteers. For any questions, please contact Scott Delaney on Signal (sdelaney.84). THANK YOU FOR YOUR ASSISTANCE!

🚨Report your NSF grant terminations! 🚨

We are starting to collect information on NSF grant terminations to create a shared resource as we have for NIH. The more information we collect, the more we can organize, advocate, and fight back! Please share widely!

airtable.com/appGKlSVeXni...

19.04.2025 00:11 — 👍 643    🔁 668    💬 7    📌 51
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Harvard Will Not Comply With a List of Trump Administration Demands Federal officials said Harvard must enact “merit-based reform” in hiring and admissions, among other things. Harvard called the demands unlawful.

Yay Harvard!!!!!!! Well done! Other universities should do the same.
www.nytimes.com/2025/04/14/u...

14.04.2025 18:48 — 👍 102    🔁 21    💬 0    📌 1
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The Scaling-Up Problem from a Mechanistic Point of View - Journal for General Philosophy of Science This paper argues that the so-called scaling-up problem (representation-hunger problem) can be resolved within the mechanistic framework of explanation. Emphasising the problem’s character as an empir...

New paper alert!
My take on solving the scaling-up problem (representation-hunger) using mechanistic compositionality is now out with JGPS! #philsci #philsky

doi.org/10.1007/s108...

24.03.2025 08:10 — 👍 21    🔁 6    💬 2    📌 0
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The 253 Most Cited Works in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

The 253 most-cited works in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: (1) Rawls, A Theory of Justice; (2) Kripke, Naming and Necessity; (3) Parfit, Reasons and Persons; (4) Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia; (5) Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations
schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com/2025/03/the-...

28.03.2025 19:41 — 👍 19    🔁 4    💬 1    📌 0
What makes a theory of consciousness unscientific? - Nature Neuroscience Theories of consciousness have a long and controversial history. One well-known proposal — integrated information theory — has recently been labeled as ‘pseudoscience’, which has caused a heated open ...

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)

13.03.2025 12:30 — 👍 59    🔁 20    💬 7    📌 5

Dear Volodymyr Zelenskyy, dear Ukrainian friends, you are not alone.

28.02.2025 19:31 — 👍 23278    🔁 5822    💬 445    📌 280

You beat me to it 🙂Thanks for the endorsement!

28.02.2025 20:23 — 👍 2    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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Marc Artiga, Peter Schulte & Nir Fresco, Some Proper Functions are Distal - PhilPapers

Check out this paper that I completely agree with: @marcartiga.bsky.social, @peterschulte.bsky.social & Nir Fresco argue against @harrif.bsky.social and Justin Garson's thesis that proper functions must be proximal functions.

philpapers.org/rec/ARTSPF

28.02.2025 15:00 — 👍 6    🔁 6    💬 3    📌 0
NeuroExp2025 | Merex

🚀 NeuroExp 2025 goes live! 🧠🎥

Due to high demand, we’re streaming keynote lectures LIVE (Feb 19-21, #TUBerlin)!

📡 Livestream 🔗 link available on our website on the morning of the conference: www.merex-project.org/neuroexp2025

#CognitiveNeuroscience #philsky #philsci #cogsci

16.02.2025 20:11 — 👍 9    🔁 4    💬 0    📌 1

OK folks, I have now created a google form that allows people to sign to show their support for my open letter to the President of the Royal Society. Please sign and share widely: forms.gle/miDciq35oxyw...

11.02.2025 16:47 — 👍 144    🔁 140    💬 22    📌 23
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We Can Make an Impact. SAVE CARDIFF UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF ENGLISH, COMMUNICATION AND PHILOSOPHY

A petition in support of the School of English, Communication, and Philosophy at Cardiff, who are being threatened with job cuts that would be devastating for staff, students, and the university

04.02.2025 13:55 — 👍 76    🔁 64    💬 2    📌 5
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Explanation in Biology Cambridge Core - Philosophy: General Interest - Explanation in Biology

Free download for two weeks

18.01.2025 18:03 — 👍 92    🔁 34    💬 2    📌 2
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Neurophenomenal Structuralism and the Role of Computational Context Neurophenomenal structuralism posits that conscious experiences are defined relationally and that their phenomenal structures are mirrored by neural structures. While this approach offers a promising ...

Thrilled to share a new preprint on Neurophenomenal Structuralism (NPS) by @adriendoerig.bsky.social & myself! We show why neural structures alone aren’t enough to capture conscious contents. We must consider computational context! (arxiv.org/abs/2412.20873). A Thread (1/15):

15.01.2025 13:28 — 👍 12    🔁 3    💬 3    📌 1
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😎 SPAN2025 Keynotes, invited symposia speakers, and sponsored symposia just dropped! Take a look at who will be at SPAN2025 and then submit your abstract so you can be there too!

More invited speakers will be announced soon. Visit our website for all the details: philandneuro.com

05.01.2025 19:52 — 👍 33    🔁 23    💬 0    📌 5
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Protest gegen Sparpläne: Demonstrieren Sie mit uns für die Wissenschaft! #SaveBrainCity – unter diesem Motto ruft die Berliner Wissenschaft zum Protest auf. Der Grund ist der Berliner Sparhaushalt, von dem die Wissenschaft besonders hart getroffen wird.

www.tagesspiegel.de/wissen/prote...

16.12.2024 19:09 — 👍 2    🔁 1    💬 0    📌 0

I have put together a starter pack of philosophers working on or with biological functions go.bsky.app/KW2mXWe

Please let me know if I missed anyone. ☺️

#philpsy, #philsci, #philosophy, #philsky

24.11.2024 15:52 — 👍 23    🔁 8    💬 5    📌 1
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The Brains Blog Fabian Hundertmark, Bielefeld UniversityJakob Roloff, Justus-Liebig-University GießenFrancesca Bellazzi, University of Oslo, ERC Project Assembling Life (no.101089326) 1. Introduction Functions are…

“Do we need to rethink biological functions?” With @jroloff.bsky.social & @frabellazzi.bsky.social, I respond to Dong & @gualtiero.bsky.social’s critique of the selected effects theory. We argue: Selection is inescapable! Part 1 now on @philosophyofbrains.com: philosophyofbrains.com/2024/12/10/s...

11.12.2024 18:16 — 👍 10    🔁 4    💬 1    📌 1

Thanks, @fhundertmark.bsky.social and @keithwilson.eu! (I have an unfinished paper on olfaction that I haven't managed to get back to for several years, so in a wider sense, I'm "working on" the topic 😉)

01.12.2024 13:26 — 👍 3    🔁 1    💬 1    📌 0

@peterschulte is following 19 prominent accounts