Book Symposium on The Brain Abstracted — The Brains Blog Book Symposium on The Brain Abstracted in Philosophy of the Mind Sciences Philipp Haueis, Department of Philosophy and Institute for Studies of Science (ISOS), Bielefeld University, Germany The jou…

I wrote a summary of our author meets critics special issue @phimisci.bsky.social at the brains blog: philosophyofbrains.com/2026/03/23/b...

#philskyence #edusky #cogsci #neursoskyence

Teaching: Phil of neuroscience class: 15 students, philosophy of AI class: 95 students. Huge change to when I studied. The neuro-hype is over. The brain is too complicated to figure out, haha! So everybody is working on AI until the next winter.
#philsky, #cogsci, #neuroskyence, #ai

Philipp Haueis, The death of the cortical column? Patchwork structure and conceptual retirement in neuroscientific practice - PhilPapers In 1981, David Hubel and Torsten Wiesel received the Nobel Prize for their research on cortical columns—vertical bands of neurons with similar functional properties. This success led to the view that ...

Sorry first one was supposed to be this one philpapers.org/rec/HAUTDO-7

I distinguish retirement from (permanent) abandonment here: philsci-archive.pitt.edu/21213/

This looks great! I have a few papers (and a chapter in my forthcoming book) on conceptual retirement, which sounds close to your idea of recovery

philarchive.org/rec/HAUTLO-3

Matthew Shields, Diving for pearls: conceptual abandonment, conceptual engineering, and the limits of thought and language - PhilPapers References to conceptual abandonment are ubiquitous in philosophy. I argue that making a case for abandonment is much harder than philosophers have realized and that this difficulty has striking, broa...

I have a new paper coming out on conceptual abandonment: philpapers.org/rec/SHIDFP-2. Abandonment is a ubiquitous strategy in the history of philosophy – philosophers have advocated getting rid of folk psychological concepts, the concept of harm, the concept of democracy, among many others.

Photo showing Philipp Haueis in front of an audience pf philosophers, behind him a slide with a conceptual model of the term „cortical column“ in neuroscience, showing a Greek temple to illustrate that neuroscientists in the 1970s thought that the brain was similarly organized into vertical pillars.

Ingas a great time presenting and discussing my work on patchwork concepts and the dynamics of scientific understanding at the HPS department in Athens. Thanks to all participants for the great feedback and Theodore Arabatzis for hosting me!
#philsci #edusky #cogsci #philskyence

Book Symposium on The Brain Abstracted — The Brains Blog Book Symposium on The Brain Abstracted in Philosophy of the Mind Sciences Philipp Haueis, Department of Philosophy and Institute for Studies of Science (ISOS), Bielefeld University, Germany The jou…

I wrote a summary of our author meets critics special issue @phimisci.bsky.social at the brains blog: philosophyofbrains.com/2026/03/23/b...

#philskyence #edusky #cogsci #neursoskyence

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

I had the honor to edit wonderful commentaries by @okaydaniellle.bsky.social, @zoedrayson.bsky.social, @neuroai.bsky.social, @jake-browning.bsky.social, @nicohinrichs.bsky.social,
@andreablomkvist.bsky.social and colleagues, as well as Nedah Nemati

#cogsci, #philsky, #neuroskyence, #edusky

More good news: the special issue on “The Brain Abstracted” by the great Mazviita Chirimuuta just dropped @phimisci.bsky.social.

Check it out here:

philosophymindscience.org/index.php/ph...

(1/2)

Academic events in Berlin (2/2):
Book launch of „Biomedical Visions“ at ICI Berlin, organized by @alfredfreeborn.bsky.social and many others, with my Bielefeld colleague Lara Keuck amongst others!

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

@nmwilkinson.bsky.social our BBS target article on metabolism and cognition is also relevant here, especially the section on medium independence of computation and energy use in AI:

www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

We don’t talk about consciousness though

“I’m much more concerned about the loss of natural intelligence than I am about the advent of artificial intelligence. And if artificial intelligence takes over, it is the fault of natural intelligence.“
Fran Lebowitz

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...