New paper in Philosophical Studies (with @stephanhartmann.bsky.social):
We answer recent critiques of probabilistic measures with a coherence-based approach: explanatory power = how well the explanatory package coheres with the explanandum vs its negation.
doi.org/10.1007/s110...
Happy to chat about this sometime, as I hold a lot of materials that were not published, even in WRD/JBP
(I mean this question seriously) Did you experiment with the controls attempted in the historical record, such as moon phase?
New work w/ Zach Kelso and @madeleinecsnyder.bsky.social
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Our negative results on classical conditioning in planarian flatworms. This was surprising, given the long history of work (including sensational findings of memory transfer and retention through decapitation).
With @haicinnamon.bsky.social yes
It's the second time in a week I can remind someone that you can take the chain off a chainsaw, turn it on, and swing it around. It's shocking but "basically" harmless (note: do not do this)
Several people seemed interested in my Philosophy of Scientific Communication course, so here is my schedule of readings. Thanks to everyone for their help; I hope to get to additional topics mentioned using these as the anchors:
I have been explicitly forbidden from playing Lingua Ignota's "Sinner get ready" at get togethers.
Does Anohni's "Hopelessness" count
Or Grief's "Dismal"
I am geographically predisposed to like Springsteen and don't have a means of assessing 'better,' but these albums are both quite bleak and angsty in their own ways
As a proxy, I do have this:
Yes, but it is archived in my "important shirts" bin on another continent.
What are we explaining, and is it what we are trying to explain?
(Available open access)
Despite the framing of this post, living in Germany and knowing about professional wrestling meant that it took me an embarrassing amount of time to process this response
🔥 This wonderful workshop on Scientific Progress via Model Transfer perfectly organized by Karim Baraghith and our own Edoardo Peruzzi started. 2 days of talks and posters that discuss the case of cultural evolution as a case of model transfer. But is it also progressive? @modeltransfer.bsky.social
I don't want to get too political, but I think it might be Sylvester. I found an article from a (reported by wikipedia) neo-conservative think tank about Sylvester the Cat.
To whom is this speech bubble assigned
Because it is subtle, PEST is insidious. It involves appeals to good evidence, and there may be no clear marker that someone has erred. Likewise, it is consequential. Shifts can wreak havoc on a research program or lead to people defending targets that they should not.
Through the analysis of three candidate cases of PEST (turmeric preventing cancer, aggression, and memory transfer), I address the conditions under which it occurs. I also address why it should not be surprising that it happens.
In PEST, the explanatory target shifts to another, where the original and shifted targets are manifestly different. Nonetheless, the explaining is treated as for the original target or one equivalent to it, as the agent does not recognize the change.
Sometimes we try to explain one thing but end up explaining something else. In this paper, I address when this is a problem, which I call the “Problem of Explaining Shifting Targets” (PEST).
#philsci #cogsky
(Available open access)
Academic events in Berlin (1/2): Integrating explanatory paradigms in neuroscience at TU Berlin , organized by @beakr.bsky.social, with talks by @francesegan.bsky.social @gualtiero.bsky.social , @tonychemero.bsky.social, @okaydaniellle.bsky.social
my collaborator @davidcolaco.bsky.social and more
Pre-peer reviewed study by Sam Gershman's lab (Harvard) suggesting associative learning in the protozoan S. coeruleus. Let the debates regarding whether the necessary controls to establish "true" AL were used begin. This is top notch experimental design. Good on them!
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
A tad late, but these concerns are good ones to have and are addressed in the linked paper as well as here in an earlier article of mine:
www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
I will be a speaker at "Atypical cases of memory" this may. I intend to make my talk weird:
I apologize if I have said this before or if it's inappropriate, but you die on curious hills
There is, but I will say more (via a syllabus) once I go through everything and determine whether it works as pedagogical materials
What do eyes mean
Lastly, I am always looking to add to my example gallery: pairs of research and popular articles, where the latter is interestingly (or worryingly) different in its claims when compared to the former. Bonus if they are written by the same author(s). Most of my examples are memory/mind/brain.
