Michael David Kirchhoff
@kirchhoffmd.bsky.social
Associate Professor in the School of Liberal Arts, University of Wollongong, Australia.
Current research: The function and implication of using idealized methods to model the mind/brain in computational neurosience. Ongoing: FEP, 4E, metaphysical musings
Current research: The function and implication of using idealized methods to model the mind/brain in computational neurosience. Ongoing: FEP, 4E, metaphysical musings
Pinned
'The Idealized Mind: From Model-based Science to Cognitive Science' published by MIT Press. Claims: models of the mind are idealized models; this is consistent with scientific realism; yet, it blocks realism about neural representation and neural computation based on evidence from neuroscience.
A little interview based on The Idealized Mind
www.rorotoko.com/11/20251113-...
www.rorotoko.com/11/20251113-...
RORO
www.rorotoko.com
November 13, 2025 at 7:49 PM
A little interview based on The Idealized Mind
www.rorotoko.com/11/20251113-...
www.rorotoko.com/11/20251113-...
Reposted by Michael David Kirchhoff
Available #OpenAccess, Michael Kirchhoff's "The Idealized Mind" brings together ideas from the philosophy of cognitive science and the philosophy of science to reconcile scientific realism with model-based science: mitpress.mit.edu/978026255293...
September 20, 2025 at 9:40 PM
Available #OpenAccess, Michael Kirchhoff's "The Idealized Mind" brings together ideas from the philosophy of cognitive science and the philosophy of science to reconcile scientific realism with model-based science: mitpress.mit.edu/978026255293...
Reposted by Michael David Kirchhoff
Data only shows associations. Turning those into claims about mechanism or causation? That requires a Rosetta Stone of prior knowledge + theory. Resting-state fMRI is purely observational; correlation is its currency. From this, plenty of "theoretical toys" about brain function can be built...
Resting-State fMRI and the Risk of Overinterpretation: Noise, Mechanisms, and a Missing Rosetta Stone https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.09.16.676611v1
September 20, 2025 at 1:13 AM
Data only shows associations. Turning those into claims about mechanism or causation? That requires a Rosetta Stone of prior knowledge + theory. Resting-state fMRI is purely observational; correlation is its currency. From this, plenty of "theoretical toys" about brain function can be built...
Reposted by Michael David Kirchhoff
Second: Michael D. Kirchhoff @kirchhoffmd.bsky.social explores the relationship between mental fictionalism and successful idealizations in the sciences: doi.org/10.1080/0951...
Idealization and mental fictionalism
Cognitive scientists speak of codes, signals, encoding, decoding, computation, representation, and information-processing. The orthodox view is to take talk of neuronal signaling and computational ...
doi.org
September 15, 2025 at 1:15 PM
Second: Michael D. Kirchhoff @kirchhoffmd.bsky.social explores the relationship between mental fictionalism and successful idealizations in the sciences: doi.org/10.1080/0951...
Reposted by Michael David Kirchhoff
Not that it comes as much of a surprise to many of us, but it's worth emphasizing once again - the 👏 brain 👏 uses 👏 distributed 👏 coding 👏. 😁
Two new papers from the #IBL looking at brain-wide activity:
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
#neuroscience 🧪
Two new papers from the #IBL looking at brain-wide activity:
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
#neuroscience 🧪
Brain-wide representations of prior information in mouse decision-making - Nature
Brain-wide recordings in mice reveal that prior expectations are distributed through recurrent loops across all levels of cortical and subcortical processing.
www.nature.com
September 4, 2025 at 2:40 PM
Not that it comes as much of a surprise to many of us, but it's worth emphasizing once again - the 👏 brain 👏 uses 👏 distributed 👏 coding 👏. 😁
Two new papers from the #IBL looking at brain-wide activity:
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
#neuroscience 🧪
Two new papers from the #IBL looking at brain-wide activity:
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
#neuroscience 🧪
Reposted by Michael David Kirchhoff
🏆 Best Paper — Predictive Coding or Just Feature Discovery? An Alternative Account of Why Language Models Fit Brain Data: doi.org/10.1162/nol_...
Richard Antonello and @alexanderhuth.bsky.social
Richard Antonello and @alexanderhuth.bsky.social
Predictive Coding or Just Feature Discovery? An Alternative Account of Why Language Models Fit Brain Data
Abstract. Many recent studies have shown that representations drawn from neural network language models are extremely effective at predicting brain responses to natural language. But why do these…
doi.org
September 13, 2025 at 9:40 PM
🏆 Best Paper — Predictive Coding or Just Feature Discovery? An Alternative Account of Why Language Models Fit Brain Data: doi.org/10.1162/nol_...
Richard Antonello and @alexanderhuth.bsky.social
Richard Antonello and @alexanderhuth.bsky.social
Reposted by Michael David Kirchhoff
Come to Melbourne for the 2025 Conference of the Australasian Society for Philosophy and Psychology
Check out the great keynotes - submit your abstract
Come join this exciting community of researchers
Nov 24-25 - Register now!
#philosophy #neuroskyence #philsky
sites.google.com/monash.edu/a...
Check out the great keynotes - submit your abstract
Come join this exciting community of researchers
Nov 24-25 - Register now!
#philosophy #neuroskyence #philsky
sites.google.com/monash.edu/a...
ASPP 2025 Melbourne
Australasian Society for Philosophy and Psychology 2025 Conference
Melbourne, November 24th - 25th, 2025
sites.google.com
September 11, 2025 at 11:20 AM
Come to Melbourne for the 2025 Conference of the Australasian Society for Philosophy and Psychology
Check out the great keynotes - submit your abstract
Come join this exciting community of researchers
Nov 24-25 - Register now!
#philosophy #neuroskyence #philsky
sites.google.com/monash.edu/a...
Check out the great keynotes - submit your abstract
Come join this exciting community of researchers
Nov 24-25 - Register now!
#philosophy #neuroskyence #philsky
sites.google.com/monash.edu/a...
Looking forward to this podcast interview
September 9, 2025 at 2:38 AM
Looking forward to this podcast interview
Reposted by Michael David Kirchhoff
I am advertising two PhD positions in philosophy -- one for a domestic student, one for an international student. Both positions are 1 + 3 years, meaning that the first year is an MRes and the next three years are for the PhD.
www.mq.edu.au/research/phd...
www.mq.edu.au/research/phd...
PhD on the philosophy of networks of trust
This PhD scholarship is intended to benefit a researcher in empirically-oriented philosophy. Learn more and submit an expression of interest.
www.mq.edu.au
September 8, 2025 at 7:33 AM
I am advertising two PhD positions in philosophy -- one for a domestic student, one for an international student. Both positions are 1 + 3 years, meaning that the first year is an MRes and the next three years are for the PhD.
www.mq.edu.au/research/phd...
www.mq.edu.au/research/phd...
Exciting news. Following the publication of 'The Idealized Mind: From Model-based Science to Cognitive Science' (2025, MIT Press), I have signed a new contract for a completed and forthcoming book with MIT entitled 'The Idealized Brain: Uniting Philosophy of Science and Computational Neuroscience'.
September 5, 2025 at 7:41 AM
Exciting news. Following the publication of 'The Idealized Mind: From Model-based Science to Cognitive Science' (2025, MIT Press), I have signed a new contract for a completed and forthcoming book with MIT entitled 'The Idealized Brain: Uniting Philosophy of Science and Computational Neuroscience'.
'The Idealized Mind: From Model-based Science to Cognitive Science' published by MIT Press. Claims: models of the mind are idealized models; this is consistent with scientific realism; yet, it blocks realism about neural representation and neural computation based on evidence from neuroscience.
August 25, 2025 at 9:04 AM
'The Idealized Mind: From Model-based Science to Cognitive Science' published by MIT Press. Claims: models of the mind are idealized models; this is consistent with scientific realism; yet, it blocks realism about neural representation and neural computation based on evidence from neuroscience.
"Beyond the Extended Mind: New arguments for extensive enactivism". Published earlier this year in Synthese (Lorena Sganzerla, Daniel D. Hutto and Michael D. Kirchhoff)
link.springer.com/article/10.1...
Lot's of major implications for theorizing about the mind, brain and the nature of cognition
link.springer.com/article/10.1...
Lot's of major implications for theorizing about the mind, brain and the nature of cognition
Beyond the extended mind: new arguments for extensive enactivism - Synthese
Clark and Chalmers (Analysis 58:7–19, 1998) landmark paper, The Extended Mind, launched a thousand ships and changed the contours of the larger sea of theorizing about cognition. Over the past twenty-...
link.springer.com
August 23, 2025 at 9:06 AM
"Beyond the Extended Mind: New arguments for extensive enactivism". Published earlier this year in Synthese (Lorena Sganzerla, Daniel D. Hutto and Michael D. Kirchhoff)
link.springer.com/article/10.1...
Lot's of major implications for theorizing about the mind, brain and the nature of cognition
link.springer.com/article/10.1...
Lot's of major implications for theorizing about the mind, brain and the nature of cognition
'The Literalist Fallacy and the Free Energy Principle: Model-building, Scientific Realism, and Instrumentalism' (Kirchhoff, Kiverstein & Robertson) has finally made its way into the ahead of print stage with The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science.
www.journals.uchicago.edu/toc/bjps/0/0
www.journals.uchicago.edu/toc/bjps/0/0
The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science | Ahead of print
www.journals.uchicago.edu
August 22, 2025 at 8:58 AM
'The Literalist Fallacy and the Free Energy Principle: Model-building, Scientific Realism, and Instrumentalism' (Kirchhoff, Kiverstein & Robertson) has finally made its way into the ahead of print stage with The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science.
www.journals.uchicago.edu/toc/bjps/0/0
www.journals.uchicago.edu/toc/bjps/0/0
Pre-print of my new paper "Idealization and Mental Fictionalism" accepted for publication in Philosophical Psychology. Thesis: fictionalism about mental representation is not explanatorily useful. Reason: fails the benchmark test of a useful idealization.
www.academia.edu/127076112/Id...
www.academia.edu/127076112/Id...
Idealization and Mental Fictionalism
Cognitive scientists speak of codes, signals, encoding, decoding, computation, representation and information-processing. The orthodox view is to take talk of neuronal signalling and computational pro...
www.academia.edu
August 21, 2025 at 9:14 AM
Pre-print of my new paper "Idealization and Mental Fictionalism" accepted for publication in Philosophical Psychology. Thesis: fictionalism about mental representation is not explanatorily useful. Reason: fails the benchmark test of a useful idealization.
www.academia.edu/127076112/Id...
www.academia.edu/127076112/Id...