Simon Brown

!!!!!!! Imagine showing up to your commencement and there's a random antipope there. www.rutherfordjohnson.com/pope-radisla...

Very cool result from Schmidbauer & Nieder. Importantly this seems to reflect genuinely faster visual processing if it doesn't sacrifice accuracy (though hard to tell). For me the most intriguing question raised by the result is what it tells us about the temporal profile of crows' experience

Our new paper is out: Toward a unified biology of vertebrate number sense @mirkuz12 @Dan10R3r10 @brennan_lab @Andrea07359090 @Dan10R3r10 @ElenaMiletto @Jovitope @b_butterworth @mirkuz12 @UniTrento #number #number_sense #number_neurons nature.com/articles/s42...

Imagine two people standing in the same spot, looking at the same Goya. They inspect exactly the same parts of the painting, but in a different order. Later, they talk about what they saw. Ignoring all other differences: are the memories they formed identical?

The way everything now has to be injected with AI reminds me of the era of when they put radium in everything from glassware and soft drinks to toothpaste, hair cream, and hemorrhoid creams for no reason other than "But it's so COOL!" en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radium_...

The Metro's important contribution to the stoppism debate (philarchive.org/rec/WILS-14 ): despite every station in central Delhi being closed all Saturday, trains ran through those stations so there was no curtailment or cancellation of train services www.ndtv.com/india-news/n.... Much to ponder.

The backstory: Ukrainian drones struck a Yandex supercomputer facility in Vladimir, taking it out. Suddenly, bot activity in US social media fell by 49%, confirming suspicions that this was the site of a massive Russian influence operation targeting US social media—mostly targeting MAGA.

In other words, a 10 percent contraction in one of Britain’s most successful exports. If it were steel or fish or other infinitely less profitable sectors, people would be having a meltdown.

"in 1974, he suffered a blow after being persuaded to invest in a Canadian company which claimed to have developed a process to cut carbon emissions. It turned out to be a scam" - there were already carbon-emissions-related scams in 1974!! www.bbc.com/news/article...

📣 Workshop: The Semantics and Format of Episodic Representations. 11–12 Jan 2027. NTU Singapore. Philosophers and psychologists working on memory, imagination, and mental representation. Schedule and details: www.ntu.edu.sg/soh/news-eve... #philsky #PhilMind #CogSci

This is great. It articulates a lot of things that I and my colleagues have been trying to put together, but does it better and more clearly, and draws a clear line between the privatization of research funding, university self-governance, and faculty/worker organizing. Well done. 1/5

Mountain chickadees rely on spatial memory to forage in unpredictable environments and on song to defend their territories. Watch #ProcB author Sofia Haley talk about research that suggests overall song output may be an indicator of cognitive ability: cassyni.com/events/Mw4c4... #ecology

My entry on Animal Thought for the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is now online! plato.stanford.edu/entries/anim...

Wtaf is this question my university just asked me about my project?

If we have to call them Type 1 / 2 instead of false positive and false negative, use this mnemonic: the boy who cried wolf caused both Type I & Il errors, in that order.

Chris Hill's review of my book in Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews ndpr.nd.edu/reviews/defl...

1/ Conscious AI and Biological Naturalism. A long time in the making, but the full collection is *out now* in Behavioural and Brain Sciences I deeply thank all my many commentators for their wise, broad, and deep opinions on this critical topic.I also thank them for their saintly patience. 🙏🏽

📖 New review out today in @natrevneuro.nature.com: Towards an integrative neuroscience of metacognition 🧠🧪 Full-text link to the paper is here: rdcu.be/9YK3mF7dYhFa

RIP 847 years ago Hildegarde von Bingen, abbess, mystic, theologian, musical composer, astronomer, pharmacist and doctor, and among many other things inventor/discoverer of the sacred language “Lingua ignota”, who died #onthisday in 1179 CE. (Pictured, her conception of the world as a "cosmic egg")

1/ How do we sustain mental continuity in the face of interruption? @xianl-explorer.bsky.social found that, while people listen to a story, posterior medial cortex expresses a slowly evolving "background" representation of the story's context, which survived through silence and interfering tasks.

Out today! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

India’s race to build data centres is reshaping the country’s power system, raising difficult questions about energy, water and public resources. M. Rajshekhar writes www.theindiaforum.in/environment/...

🚨 PhD position in human, nonhuman primate, and/or dog cognition! I am thrilled to be reviewing applicants this year for a new PhD student to join the Social & Cognitive Origins Group in the Department of Psychological & Brain Sciences at Johns Hopkins @jhu.edu @jhuartssciences.bsky.social 1/

Methods in the Philosophy of Science: A User's Guide, edited by the inestimable @phieveigl.bsky.social (and me!), has 27 chapters from super-cool philosophers of science explaining how they do their thing, and is now open access! Our baby is free! #philsci direct.mit.edu/books/oa-edi...

Yelling "stop the boats!" as I charge in to rob this NatWest at gun point so that I can later call the Home Secretary as a character witness and the BBC will spend two weeks telling all my potential future jurors how legitimate my concerns were.

I enjoyed speaking to Dr Jahnavi Phalkey about India’s place in the history of modern science, the ways in which that history has been constructed, & how the pursuit of nuclear physics became intertwined with a newly independent nation’s efforts to define its own identity. linktr.ee/thehpspodcast

Another exciting new addition to the philosophy of social norms: Simon Fitzpatrick @simonfitzpatrick.bsky.social 's new SEP article on Animal Normativity: plato.stanford.edu/entries/anim...

On this day in 2018. Kieran @kjhealy.co ‘s obituary will include the MacArthur essay and “Fuck Nuance,” but for a particular niche audience of connoisseurs, this is his masterpiece.

Is it unfair to suspect that this Indian market research company is secretly connected to Palantir?

#PhilosophyJobs

Two married professors and their son are being held in ICE detention, despite being legal permanent residents and having no criminal records. All, apparently, because their mom/MIL was a translator for the Iranian hostage takers in 1979, before they were even born. www.thenation.com/article/soci...

I see a lot of you talking about "dopamine" and I wish you'd go back to talking about your astrological signs because at least then you wouldn't be confusing yourself about a real thing

Philosophers, spread the word! The next Special Issue of The Philosophical Quarterly will be 'Philosophy and Climate Change' - Guest Editor Stephen Gardiner, call for papers here: academic.oup.com/pq/pages/cal...

A trillion insects are farmed now/yr, some emit as much as beef (mostly via temp control), & it's an inefficient feed conversion rate. They also have major risks, like largely inevitable escapes of invasive species. It's a bad idea. My analysis for Project Drawdown: drawdown.org/explorer/dep...

Aquamanile in the Form of Aristotle & Phyllis late 14th or early 15th century South Netherlandish (Met Museum) Tableware explainer: Aristotle, tutor of Alexander the Great, allowed himself to be humiliated by Phyllis as a lesson to the young ruler.

Now opening nominations for the Best Image of Climate Politics in a Nutshell 🌎

Absolutely wild. Read that again: the *actual* costs of *just wildfire smoke* are higher than the currently projected costs of *all climate impacts combined*.

Taken together, these rules are expected to add significant red tape for foreign students, researchers, and international journalists — and significant costs as well. DHS's own estimate is that the rule will impose costs to U.S. and non-U.S. parties of up to $443 million a year.

Now officially published: our paper "Sensory horizons and the functions of conscious vision" w/ @smfleming.bsky.social, with the commentaries, and our response: Article: www.cambridge.org/core/journal... Commentaries: www.cambridge.org/core/journal... Response: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

The Mayor of London is being made a Lord. No one seems to be addressing how this will affect the completely distinct office of Lord Mayor of London (currently Lady Mayor)

Delighted to learn that our project 'Ecological validity in comparative cognitive science' (co-led by @segundo-ortin.bsky.social and yours truly) has been funded! 👇

Join us in Vienna! We are looking for a PhD student and a Postdoc to investigate innovation in corvids within the “Comparative ecological innovation styles” project funded by @fwf-at.bsky.social. More info: barbaraklump.com Application deadline July 24th. Please share widely!

🐒 Work with primates? Have you observed 3 or more individuals grooming together? Polyadic grooming is barely documented and we know little about its distribution. Please take 1–2 minutes to fill out this short survey and share: forms.gle/cLPB1mnwrjJo...