Juan Murillo Vargas (@jimurillo98) Bsky

Henry Schiller, Rational Learning - PhilPapers What is the difference between rational forms of learning and ‘arational’ forms of attitude change? I argue that rational learning occurs when a change in attitude is based on the acquisition ...

interesting paper on what makes a psychological event count as learning by henry schiller, who is not on bluesky. highly recommend it

philpapers.org/rec/SCHRLP-4

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14 Takeaways from the Virtual Pacific APA (guest post) - Daily Nous As reported in January, the American Philosophical Association (APA) recently began---and halted---an experiment with making one of its three divisional meetings each year a wholly-online conference. ...

The program chair of the Pacific APA Conference, held online this year, shares some reflections on and lessons from it...

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Frances Egan, Deflating Mental Representation | BJPS Review of Books Nico Orlandi reviews Deflating Mental Representation, by Frances Egan

New from the BJPS Review of Books

Deflating Mental Representation
– Frances Egan

Reviewed by Nico Orlandi

www.thebsps.org/reviewofbook...

#philsci #philsky

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Parallel by design? Meaning and grammar in single-stream and dual-stream neural network architectures A major current approach in theoretical linguistics proposes that there is only a partial, defeasible correspondence between syntax and semantics: meaning and grammar are autonomous, parallel compo...

New paper with Olivier Michalon. We ask whether transformers that separate syntax and semantics into parallel streams classify sentences better than single-stream models. They do not. We think this matters for how the autonomy of meaning and grammar should be explained. 1/6
doi.org/10.1080/0952...

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0. Preface -Psychosemantics - The Problem of Meaning in Philosophy of Mind - Jerry A. Fodor YouTube video by Derrida's Grammatology

finally, something to listen to when winding down for the day... www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-wE...

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Hi Bluesky! Suppose I was feeling brave and wanted to learn about how we/kids develop event cognitive capacities. Where should I start?

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Pragmatics of spatial descriptions: Sign language loci | Language | Cambridge Core Pragmatics of spatial descriptions: Sign language loci

New out in Language: an experimental and theoretical study of the pragmatics of spatial loci with Dorothy Ahn and Annemarie Kocab. Maybe you're not supposed to have favorite collaborations, but I'll just say I feel a deep gratitude for the opportunity to work with these two! doi.org/10.1017/S009...

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OSF

Is core knowledge actually core *perception*? In a forthcoming piece in BBS, @shariliu.bsky.social, Lisa Feigenson, & I comment on @daweibai.bsky.social et al.’s target article. osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/vnbep

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More Time and Effort, Same Curiosity: Expected Effort Does Not Impact Curiosity AbstractWhy do people feel curious about some questions but not others? Recent accounts of curiosity argue that curiosity should be highest when learning is likely to occur and likely to be rapid. However, it is less clear whether practical barriers to learning—for example, the effort required to gain information—matter for how curious we feel. In three preregistered experiments with a total of 419 participants, we test whether the expected degree of effort to obtain information impacts curiosity. In Experiments 1 and 2, we prompted adult participants to rate their curiosity about the answers to trivia questions. For each question, they were informed that they would receive the answer with minimal time and effort or with substantial time and effort. In Experiment 3, we additionally varied the probability that exerting effort would lead to information. Across studies, we found that effort affected decisions to seek information, but not self-reported curiosity. This suggests that subjective feelings of curiosity are unhindered by the practical costs of information search, though our decisions to actually pursue information are highly sensitive to these costs.

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Core Intuitions of Psychological Non-Contradiction: Infants Assume That Individual Agents Act and Communicate Coherently AbstractHumans generally posit that contrary mental states are unlikely to co-exist within a single mind. We tested the early ontogeny of this assumption in two domains: action and communication. Studies 1A and 1B tested whether 9-month-old infants assume that agents act coherently. Infants watched interactions between two hands whose owner(s) were invisible. In the contrary goals condition, the hand performed contrary actions—one hand reached for an object while the other impeded it. Later, during test trials, infants learned that the hands belonged to one or two people. Looking-time patterns across the contrary goals and a baseline conditions indicated that clear goal conflict led infants to infer two agents, suggesting they viewed it as unlikely for a single person to thwart their own goal. Study 2 tested whether infants assume communicative coherence, testing whether they assume that a single informant is unlikely to entertain and communicate conflicting information while two informants might do so. Informants pointed to indicate a toy’s location to 15-month-olds. When two different informants each pointed to a different place, infants did not follow one pointing gesture more than the other. However, when a single informant pointed successively to two locations, infants followed the second gesture, implying they viewed it as an updated, not contradictory, message. Thus, infants assumed that a single informant is unlikely to contradict themselves (i.e., by asserting that a toy is simultaneously in two locations). These findings reveal an early-emerging assumption of psychological coherence in infants’ representation of other minds, across both action and communication contexts.

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I'm teaching a grad class on concepts to psych/cog sci PhD students next fall. I want to include some relevant lexical semantics (e.g. lexicalism, decomposition), but most papers require some ling background. What's accessible to psych students and also meaty for a grad seminar?

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PNAS Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a peer reviewed journal of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) - an authoritative source of high-impact, original research that broadly spans...

Out today in PNAS: Young children are surprised when a stranger has “insider knowledge” about them—and even make on-the-fly inferences about how that person could have learned it. So much fun working on this with Aaron Chuey and @julianje.bsky.social!

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2525150123

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Love: also systematic and productive

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scenes from the MIT philosophy department

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THE 2026 BLOBSCARS!

It's time to celebrate the films of 2025!

podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/1...

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Society for Philosophy and Psychology (SPP)

🥁Now announcing the winner of the 2026 Stanton Prize:

Congratulations, Melissa Kibbe @levelsof.bsky.social!

⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️

This honor will be celebrated at the upcoming meeting of the SPP

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And the winner of the BJPS Popper Prize for 2025 is...

www.thebsps.org/auxhyp/bjps-...

#philsci #philsky

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Keynote speakers: Devon Bailey (University of Johannesburg), Louise Barrett (University of Lethbridge), Ali Boyle (LSE), Melina Gastelum Vargas (UNAM), Michael Kirchhoff (University of Wollongong), Yukie Nagai (University of Tokyo)

Call for abstracts for ISPSM’s 4th annual online conference. Philosophers working on any science of the mind (broadly construed) are welcome to submit. We particularly encourage submissions from underrepresented groups in the field.

It’s that time again! Delighted to announce the call for abstracts for ISPSM 2026 and our keynote speakers! ✨

Dates: 4-6 November 2026

Link for submissions: tinyurl.com/ISPSM-abstra...

Deadline for submissions: 31/07/2026

#philsky

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Philosophers have never successfully defined wetness. How do you know a climate model isn’t wet?

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Mental representation without neural representation: Understanding the evidence | Philosophy and the Mind Sciences Philosophy and the Mind Sciences (PhiMiSci) focuses on the interface between philosophy of mind, psychology, and cognitive neuroscience. PhiMiSci is a peer-reviewed, not-for-profit open-access journal...

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

Enjoyed writing this with the wonderful philosopher Bill Ramsey

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If you (or your students) would benefit from a summer institute that features introductory courses in theoretical linguistics and analytic philosophy, consider YALP, taking place June 29 - July 10 in Yerevan, Armenia. Spread the word!

linguistlist.org/issues/37-697

sites.google.com/view/yalp201...

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New theory of #consciousness just dropped… 👀

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Please make a terrible ruckus about this, if you live in Oregon

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The Nature of Belief Abstract. This book explores the fundamental and complex nature of belief, addressing various philosophical questions surrounding its essence. It examines

New and free online: @msgjonhere.bsky.social
& my edited collection of essays on belief with Oxford University Press:
academic.oup.com/book/62410

Table of Contents in thread

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Autism and the Pseudoscience of Mind The theory-of-mind-deficit explanation of autism proposes that autistics lack a theory of mind, that autism comprises a theory-of-mind deficit (strong version); or, that autistics often have diffic...

Just published in Psychological Inquiry!

I offer a sustained philosophical and empirical critique of the theory-of-mind-deficit explanation of autism.

The ultimate conclusion is that the research programme has become degenerative—and therefore pseudoscientific.

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

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The role of epistemic reasoning in mutual exclusivity inferences When encountering a novel word, adults and children as young as 12 months old often reason that it refers to a novel object rather than one with an ex…

Check out my new paper with @drbarner.bsky.social in JECP! We asked whether mutual exclusivity inferences involve epistemic reasoning about what a speaker knows, and whether children can infer speakers' knowledge of words from linguistic conventionality. (1/7) www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

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The Man Who Stole Infinity | Quanta Magazine In an 1874 paper, Georg Cantor proved that there are different sizes of infinity and changed math forever. A trove of newly unearthed letters shows that it was also an act of plagiarism.

One of the most infamous results in mathematics was plagiarized www.quantamagazine.org/the-man-who-...

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Intuitive theories of truth Cognitive science has recently begun exploring how people conceptualize and reason about truth. We offer the field a framework that can guide inquiry …

New paper: Intuitive theories of truth

We connect philosophical theories of truth with cognitive science. We suggest new avenues for research around questions of how people judge statements as truth apt, what makes them true, and whether to assert something as true.

Check it out!

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Posts by Juan Murillo Vargas