Michael David Kirchhoff

Michael David Kirchhoff

@kirchhoffmd.bsky.social

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

313 followers499 following32 posts

Michael David Kirchhoff
@kirchhoffmd.bsky.social

nodesjournal.com/en/nodes27/ just out, in both English and Italian - some arguments on idealization, representation and computation. Features a few issues discussed in The Idealized Brain coming out in December 2026

nodesjournal.comNodes 27 -pp.128 Size: 20,5 x 26 cm Pink and black Risograph print Paper stock: Favini Shiro Echo, Favini Burano Desert BUY YEAR XV – 2026 Indice / Index Editoriale / Editorial Letter Ricerca, immaginazione e f...

Michael David Kirchhoff reposted

Princeton University
@princeton.edu

A study co-authored by Princeton researchers finds that human brains process spoken language in a way that "closely mirrors the layered architecture of advanced AI language models."

medicalxpress.comHow your brain understands language may be more like AI than previously thoughtA new study reveals that the human brain processes spoken language in a sequence that closely mirrors the layered architecture of advanced AI language models. Using electrocorticography data from part...
Michael David Kirchhoff
@kirchhoffmd.bsky.social

Day 4 of the Brain's Blog symposium of 'The Idealized Mind'. Attached are links to @coreymaley.net commentary and my response: philosophyofbrains.com/2025/12/04/c... philosophyofbrains.com/2025/12/04/a... Am I committed to there being no physical computers that compute?

philosophyofbrains.comCorey Maley: Comments on The Idealized Mind — The Brains BlogCOMMENTS ON THE IDEALIZED MIND, BY MICHAEL D. KIRCHHOFFCorey J. Maley Purdue University cjmaley@purdue.edu Michael Kirchhoff’s book The Idealized Mind has many original and thought-provoking ideas,…
Michael David Kirchhoff
@kirchhoffmd.bsky.social

Day 3 of the Brain's Blog symposium of 'The Idealized Mind'. Attached are links to Frances Egan's commentary and my response: philosophyofbrains.com/2025/12/03/s... philosophyofbrains.com/2025/12/03/a... Should we think that nervous systems compute? That's the topic of Day 3!

philosophyofbrains.comFrances Egan: Some Physical Systems (Literally) Compute — The Brains BlogSome Physical Systems (Literally) ComputeFrances Egan  Rutgers University  In his ambitious new book, Michael Kirchhoff argues that computational models cannot be literally true&nbsp…
Michael David Kirchhoff
@kirchhoffmd.bsky.social

Day 2 of the @philosophyofbrains.com symposium of The Idealized Mind. Attached are link to Zoe Drayson's commentary and my response. philosophyofbrains.com/2025/12/02/c... philosophyofbrains.com/2025/12/02/a... How can idealized models explain if they don't represent? Have a look in the links!

philosophyofbrains.comZoe Drayson: Challenging Kirchhoff on the Semantics of Models and Theories — The Brains BlogChallenging Kirchhoff on the Semantics of Models and TheoriesZoe DraysonThe bold claim at the heart of Kirchhoff’s (2025) The Idealized Mind is that some scientific theories are neither true nor fa…
Michael David Kirchhoff
@kirchhoffmd.bsky.social

philosophyofbrains.com/2025/12/01/i... Introduction to the book symposium on The Idealized Mind on the Brain's Blog. New post everyday with a commentator and response by me. Commentators are Zoe Drayson, Corey Maley, Karl Friston and Frances Egan

philosophyofbrains.comIntro to Michael Kirchhoff’s: The Idealized Mind — The Brains Blog“Milk production at a dairy farm was low, so the farmer wrote to the local university, asking for help. A multidisciplinary team of professors was assembled, headed by a theoretical physicist, and …
Michael David Kirchhoff
@kirchhoffmd.bsky.social

x.com/hellomrbhatt... Looking forward to diving into The Idealized Mind with Deepak Bhatt tomorrow on Business Talk

x.comDeepak Bhatt on X: "Delighted to share that our next episode features Dr. @MdKirchhoff, Associate Professor in the school of Liberal Arts from the University of Wollongong, diving into “The Idealized Mind” and how idealized models are reshaping the way we think about cognition. https://t.co/yXjoQc62cG" / XDelighted to share that our next episode features Dr. @MdKirchhoff, Associate Professor in the school of Liberal Arts from the University of Wollongong, diving into “The Idealized Mind” and how idealized models are reshaping the way we think about cognition. https://t.co/yXjoQc62cG

Michael David Kirchhoff reposted

Gang Chen
@gangchen6.bsky.social

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...

bioRxiv Neuroscience@biorxiv-neursci.bsky.social

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

Michael David Kirchhoff reposted

Adam Toon
@adamtoonphilos.bsky.social

Replying to @adamtoonphilos.bsky.social

Second: Michael D. Kirchhoff @kirchhoffmd.bsky.social explores the relationship between mental fictionalism and successful idealizations in the sciences: doi.org/10.1080/0951...

doi.orgIdealization and mental fictionalismCognitive scientists speak of codes, signals, encoding, decoding, computation, representation, and information-processing. The orthodox view is to take talk of neuronal signaling and computational ...

Michael David Kirchhoff reposted

Blake Richards
@tyrellturing.bsky.social

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 🧪

nature.comBrain-wide representations of prior information in mouse decision-making - NatureBrain-wide recordings in mice reveal that prior expectations are distributed through recurrent loops across all levels of cortical and subcortical processing.

Michael David Kirchhoff reposted

MIT Press
@mitpress.bsky.social

Replying to @mitpress.bsky.social

🏆 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

doi.orgPredictive Coding or Just Feature Discovery? An Alternative Account of Why Language Models Fit Brain DataAbstract. 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…

Michael David Kirchhoff reposted

Jakob Hohwy
@hohwy.bsky.social

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...

sites.google.comASPP 2025 MelbourneAustralasian Society for Philosophy and Psychology 2025 Conference Melbourne, November 24th - 25th, 2025

Michael David Kirchhoff reposted

Mark Alfano
@markalfano.bsky.social

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...

mq.edu.auPhD on the philosophy of networks of trustThis PhD scholarship is intended to benefit a researcher in empirically-oriented philosophy. Learn more and submit an expression of interest.
Michael David Kirchhoff
@kirchhoffmd.bsky.social

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'.

Michael David Kirchhoff
@kirchhoffmd.bsky.social

In The Idealized Brain, special attention is paid to the use of mathematical idealization in neural coding models and deep convolutional neural networks. In addition, implications are drawn for the use of information and probability theory - both of which are idealized formal languages

Michael David Kirchhoff
@kirchhoffmd.bsky.social

'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.

Michael David Kirchhoff
@kirchhoffmd.bsky.social

"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.comBeyond the extended mind: new arguments for extensive enactivism - SyntheseClark 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-...
Michael David Kirchhoff
@kirchhoffmd.bsky.social

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...

academia.eduIdealization and Mental FictionalismCognitive 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...

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