iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Michael David Kirchhoff @kirchhoffmd.bsky.social · 19/07/2026

Very grateful to Karl Friston and Colin Klein for providing praise statements on my forthcoming book The Idealized Brain. Coming out 15 December 2026. Check out the praise statements through the below link :-) mitpress.mit.edu/978026205492...

mitpress.mit.edu

The Idealized Brain

In The Idealized Brain, Michael Kirchhoff explores the challenges of using idealized modeling in computational neuroscience. The book spans work on neural co...

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Michael David Kirchhoff @kirchhoffmd.bsky.social · 24/06/2026

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.com

Nodes 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...

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Michael David Kirchhoff @kirchhoffmd.bsky.social · 27/03/2026

QS world rankings by subject #philosophy topuniversities.com/university-sub… I'm especially proud that Philosophy at UOW placed 6th in the world. Thanks to everyone who judged us this highly!

topuniversities.com

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Amy Kind @amylkind.bsky.social · 26/03/2026

It’s finally here!

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Michael David Kirchhoff @kirchhoffmd.bsky.social · 11/03/2026

Looking forward to participating in this session via the Asian Pacific Philosophy of Science Association

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Gary Lupyan @glupyan.bsky.social · 20/12/2025

This is just not what LLMs are. If all they could do was reproduce their training set they wouldn't be able to do nearly all the things people regularly use them for. Please read the literature (e.g., here's a whole grade seminar I just taught - some good readings here: cogsci-llms.netlify.app )

cogsci-llms.netlify.app

Cognitive Science of Large Language Models

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Trends in Cognitive Sciences @cp-trendscognsci.bsky.social · 15/12/2025

The December issue of TiCS is now online! tinyurl.com/42pysze4

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Michael David Kirchhoff @kirchhoffmd.bsky.social · 06/12/2025

Day 5 of the Brain's Blog symposium of 'The Idealized Mind'. Attached are links to Karl Friston's commentary and my response - a discussion about spherical cows and the FEP philosophyofbrains.com/2025/12/05/the… philosophyofbrains.com/2025/12/05/res��

philosophyofbrains.com

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Michael David Kirchhoff @kirchhoffmd.bsky.social · 04/12/2025

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.com

Corey Maley: Comments on The Idealized Mind — The Brains Blog

COMMENTS 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,…

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Michael David Kirchhoff @kirchhoffmd.bsky.social · 03/12/2025

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.com

Frances Egan: Some Physical Systems (Literally) Compute — The Brains Blog

Some Physical Systems (Literally) ComputeFrances Egan Rutgers University In his ambitious new book, Michael Kirchhoff argues that computational models cannot be literally true&nbsp…

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Michael David Kirchhoff @kirchhoffmd.bsky.social · 02/12/2025

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.com

Zoe Drayson: Challenging Kirchhoff on the Semantics of Models and Theories — The Brains Blog

Challenging 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…

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Michael David Kirchhoff @kirchhoffmd.bsky.social · 02/12/2025

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.com

Intro 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 …

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Michael David Kirchhoff @kirchhoffmd.bsky.social · 30/11/2025

youtube.com/watch?v=R2P6... Great to be part of this podcast on The Idealized Mind hosted by Deepak Bhatt over on Business Talk. Interested in idealization, neuroscience and philosophy this should be interesting. Feedback welcomed!

youtube.com

The Idealized Mind: Rethinking Cognitive Science with Dr. Michael Kirchhoff

YouTube video by Business Talk

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Michael David Kirchhoff @kirchhoffmd.bsky.social · 13/11/2025

A little interview based on The Idealized Mind www.rorotoko.com/11/20251113-...

rorotoko.com

RORO

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MIT Press @mitpress.bsky.social · 20/09/2025

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...

Hand holding a copy of "The Idealized Mind: From Model-Based Science to Cognitive Science" by Michael D. Kirchhoff.

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Gang Chen @gangchen6.bsky.social · 20/09/2025

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...

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Blake Richards @tyrellturing.bsky.social · 04/09/2025

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.com

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.

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Jakob Hohwy @hohwy.bsky.social · 11/09/2025

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.com

ASPP 2025 Melbourne

Australasian Society for Philosophy and Psychology 2025 Conference Melbourne, November 24th - 25th, 2025

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Michael David Kirchhoff @kirchhoffmd.bsky.social · 09/09/2025

Looking forward to this podcast interview

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Mark Alfano @markalfano.bsky.social · 08/09/2025

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.au

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.

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Michael David Kirchhoff @kirchhoffmd.bsky.social · 05/09/2025

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'.

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Michael David Kirchhoff @kirchhoffmd.bsky.social · 25/08/2025

'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.

Book cover for The Idealized Mind with the MIT Press, published in 2025. The image, created by my friend Chris Vernon, is a simplified artificial neural network (ANN). The fact that this ANN looks nothing like a real neural network is the picture developed in the book with implications for discussions about neural representation, neural computation and explanatory unification in the computational cognitive sciences

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Michael David Kirchhoff @kirchhoffmd.bsky.social · 23/08/2025

"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

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-...

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Michael David Kirchhoff @kirchhoffmd.bsky.social · 22/08/2025

'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

journals.uchicago.edu

The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science | Ahead of print

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Michael David Kirchhoff @kirchhoffmd.bsky.social · 21/08/2025

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.edu

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...

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