Mindcraft is a series of opinion posts on current issues in cognitive science by Brains Blog founder Gualtiero Piccinini. Do you agree? Disagree? Please contribute on the discussion board below! If you’d like to write a full-length response, please contact editor Dan Burnston. I have written an article proving that allocentric navigation of the sort enabled in vertebrates by the hippocampal-entorhinal complex under the conrol of the prefrontal cortex is in principle (under standard idealizations) computationally universal.

We are excited to announce that Wade Munroe will be joining us as one of our new associate editors! Wade is an Assistant Professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. His work focuses on the philosophy of language and thought. For the blog, Wade will host a series featuring work by early-career scholars. We’re thrilled to welcome Wade to the editorial team!

Signed Inner Speech Daniel Gregory ***What follows summarizes some ideas in my recent paper, ‘Inner speech and sign languages’ (Gregory 2026).*** When native speakers of voiced languages (such as English, Mandarin or Hindi) think about inner speech, they naturally tend to think of a mental state with an auditory phenomenology—something like an internal correlate of speech spoken aloud. But what about the inner speech of people whose native language is a sign language (such as American Sign Language, Indo-Pakistani Sign Language or Russian Sign Language)?

Do we know what we think before saying it to ourselves? Marta Jorba  Pompeu Fabra University LOGOS Research Group Self-talk, or talking to oneself, seems to present a puzzle. If, for instance, I tell myself, “I think I will read the Odyssey this summer”, it seems that, in order to have the intention to communicate this thought to myself, I must already know what I think.

Inner Speech, Speech Acts, and the Metaphysics of Language Wade Munroe There is scant mention of inner speech in the extensive literature on speech-act theory and recent work on the metaphysics of words and other linguistic entities. This is a substantial oversight. My post is a rallying cry: Inner speech shouldn’t be relegated to the periphery of our theorizing about language and its uses; it should be at the center.

Are there words in my head? Peter Langland-Hassan University of Cincinnati When we say something to ourselves in inner speech, do we produce words? We certainly talk as though we do. How can we say something in inner speech, if we produce no words? Where are the words we bring into being? Where else could they be than within the skull of the person doing the inner speaking?

Introduction to the Symposium Daniel Gregory Introduction Produce this sentence in inner speech (i.e., in your ‘inner voice’ or your ‘silent monologue’, as it is also sometimes known): ‘I think, therefore I am’. At the moment you produced that sentence in your mind, was it true? Setting aside the complications which philosophers have raised about every word in the sentence, the default answer is ‘yes’.

This week, we're excited to have a series of posts about inner speech, guest edited by Daniel Gregory! We have four great posters, Peter Langland-Hassan, Wade Munroe, Marta Jorba, and Daniel. We'll have an intro post from Daniel today, then one post each day the rest of the week. Join us, and feel free to chime in in the comments.

A guest post from Jack Copeland: If the ultra-secret logic machine they called Colossus shortened the Second World War by 6 months—and it was probably more—then 3 or 4 million lives were saved. Read about Colossus in “The Computer That Helped Win World War II”, an open access article in this month’s issue of Spectrum: Jack Copeland

Pain Intensities Kim Soland I’m honored to have my work selected for the Griffith award and grateful for the opportunity to share a summary of it here. Pains are standardly conceived as featuring a variety of phenomenal qualities and a singular magnitude: pain intensity. But there are circumstances in which pain’s sensory intensity may be phenomenally distinguished from its…

On Vehicle Indeterminacy in Memory Neuroscience Caitlin Mace University of Pittsburgh Neural representations are broadly understood to be individuable structures or processes in the brain that have a representational role in cognition or behavior. This representational role can be elucidated in a number of ways, such as by the causal role the structure or process plays (Egan 2020; Cao 2022), how the structure or process is used (Baker et al.

What does attention do to perception? Yoonhee Jung Ned Block (2010; 2015) challenges representationalism on the grounds that covert attention—the allocation of attention without eye movement—can alter the phenomenal character of perceptual experience without changing its representational content.[1] He considers an experiment developed by Carrasco and her colleagues in which subjects viewed two Gabor patches presented simultaneously in the periphery while maintaining fixation of their eyes on a central point (see Figure 1).

The Pluralistic Evolution of Factive Mindreading Gavin Robert FosterPurdue University The following is a significantly abridged version of a much-longer paper. As such, there are certain qualification and nuances that are lacking. For those interested in reading the current draft, please send me an email at foste362 at purdue dot edu. Feedback and questions are more than welcome! Most research on social cognition focuses on how we predict and explain the minds of others by attributing to them mental states such as beliefs or desires.

Hi Everyone, This week, we're excited to share a series of posts celebrating the 2026 meeting of the Southern Society for Philosophy and Psychology, which was held in Atlanta, Georgia this Spring. We'll first have a quick intro from this year's philosophy program coordinator, Josh Mugg. (Busy couple of weeks for Josh here on Brains! Check out the symposium on his book from a couple of weeks ago if you haven't yet.) Then we're excited to have posts from this year's graduate student travel award winners, as well as from Kim Soland, this year's winner of the Griffith award for best paper by an early-career scholar. Check out the posts all week!

Response to Commentators Joshua Mugg Response To Curry One goal of my project is to provide an empirically informed account of cognitive control that can be marshalled in defense of voluntarism of belief. Curry offers a dilemma for my account of control and voluntarism about belief. By his lights, I am engaged in a homuncular functionalist project of explaining human reasoning by positing smaller and dumber homunculi.

Comments on "From Human Reasoning to Belief" Aliya Rumana The holding power of dual-process theory in experimental process psychology is mysterious if we don’t consider the basic constraints on statistical testing. First, every study aims to reject the null hypothesis (H0) in favour of the alternative hypothesis (HA). Second, H0 claims that there is no difference in the cognitive process underlying observable behaviour—i.e., single-process theory (SPT)—whereas…

Commentary on "From Human Reasoning to Belief" Lesley Walker In Joshua Mugg's book, From Human Reasoning to Belief, he offers an empirically viable alternative to dual process theory and in doing so unifies three contentious cases of belief. The first are cases of wishful thinking, the second, cases of faith, and the third cases often labeled as the result of implicit attitudes.

DJ Homunculus Devin Sanchez Curry The first aim of Josh Mugg's From Human Reasoning to Belief is to propose a new, empirically viable theory of central cognition (and especially belief fixation and revision): the Soundboard Account of Human Reasoning. The book achieves this aim admirably, both detailing how extant evidence supports the Soundboard Account and laudably proposing specific ways to test the theory directly against its chief competitors (namely, dual process theories and Eric Mandelbaum's Spinozan theory).

Precis of "From Human Reasoning to Belief" Joshua Mugg Many thanks to the Brains Blog and Dan Burnston for the opportunity to discuss my book with Devin Curry, Aliya Rumana, and Lesley Walker. In this initial post, I will provide an overview of the book. Those interested in a longer overview can check out my contribution to The Nature of Belief, …

Hi All, This week, we're very happy to host a symposium on Josh Mugg's recent book, "From Human Reasoning to Belief"! Today, we'll have an intro post from Josh, followed by some really excellent comments from Devin Curry, Lesley Walker, and Aliya Rumana. On Friday, we'll have a response from Josh. Check it out, and feel free to join the discussion in the comments!

Hi Everyone, Be sure to check out the call for abstracts for a forthcoming conference on Biological Naturalism and Consciousness at UCLA! Details here: Call for Abstracts: Biological Naturalism about Consciousness November 5–6, 2026 · University of California, Los Angeles Can non-biological systems be conscious? If not, why not? These questions have taken on new weight as AI systems become increasingly sophisticated, not least because our answers bear on which entities might matter morally.

Post on “The Vector Grounding Problem” for the Brains Blog Dimitri Coelho Mollo & Raphaël Millière We first preprinted “The Vector Grounding Problem” in April 2023, about four months after the release of ChatGPT. By that point, large language models (LLMs) had started to capture the attention of philosophers, but there was still very little published work on the topic. The preprint languished on arXiv for longer than we initially planned, but it lived a life of its own and generated some interesting discussions.

Formats of representation in large language models Fintan Mallory Assuming that artificial neural networks (ANNs) can, through training, come to represent the data upon which they were trained, or more general features of that data, then two natural questions that arise are what are the vehicles of representation within the network and what is the format in which these vehicles are structured?

Realist Representational Explanations of Agency Should Require Some Unity of Purpose Nicholas Shea My paper is about what it takes for an AI system to be an agent. It is relevant to Sprevak and Fallon’s PhiMiSci Special Issue on Representation in the Neurosciences and AI because conditions on AI agency are often articulated in representational terms. Approaches to AI agency can be instrumentalist, for example when being an agent is understood in terms of representing goals and means to achieving goals, where representation is in turn understood to be a matter of displaying a certain pattern of behaviour.

‘Neuronal representation’ is not a defective concept: Ambiguity as a sign of science in progress Lotem Elber-Dorozko and Devin Gouvêa The term “neural representation” is extremely popular in cognitive neuroscience. Scientists often claim to have discovered neural properties that represent environmental features, such as specific visual objects or specific sounds. At the same time, both philosophers and scientists seem increasingly dissatisfied with this term.

The Evidence for Representations Ken Aizawa It is commonly said that one reason to postulate mental representations is in order to explain behavior. I take this reasoning to be an instance of abductive reasoning, not to be identified with inference to the best explanation.[1] Empiricists have long been skeptical of abductive reasoning that is supposed to provide evidence for unobservable entities.

Corey J. Maley Department of Philosophy Cognition, Agency, and Intelligence Center Purdue University cmaley@purdue.edu coreymaley.net The thesis of this paper is simple: structural representation and analog representation turn out to be two names for the same kind of representation. This may seem implausible, given that typical examples of structural representation (e.g., maps) are much more complex than typical cases of analog representation (e.g., liquid thermometers).

Representations are thought to be among the essential ingredients for explaining cognition. In cognitive psychology, behaviour and decision making are modelled in terms of computations performed over representations. In neuroscience, responses of single cells, neural populations, and structural features are claimed to function as representations for the agent in question. In AI, what machines learn is often characterized in terms of the kinds of representations those machines acquire and how they manipulate them.

We are very excited to introduce our next joint symposium with Philosophy of the Mind Sciences. This one highlights PhiMindSci's recent special issue on representation in neuroscience and AI. Tomorrow, we'll have an introductory post by Mark Sprevak that gives an overview of the special issue. Then we'll have posts on neuroscience the remaining days this week. Next week, we'll have AI-focused posts on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

Mindcraft is a series of opinion posts on current issues in cognitive science by Brains Blog founder Gualtiero Piccinini. Do you agree? Disagree? Please contribute on the discussion board below! If you’d like to write a full-length response, please contact editor Dan Burnston. A guest post by Jack Copeland: 2026 is the 50th anniversary of Gilbert Ryle’s death. One of Britain’s most celebrated philosophers of mind, Ryle was elected Waynflete Professor of Metaphysical Philosophy at Oxford in 1944.

Book Symposium on The Brain Abstracted in Philosophy of the Mind Sciences Philipp Haueis, Department of Philosophy and Institute for Studies of Science (ISOS), Bielefeld University, Germany The journal Philosophy of the Mind Sciences has just published a book symposium (LINK) of The Brain Abstracted: Simplification in the History and Philosophy of Neuroscience, by Mazviita Chirimuuta. The book has received both the 2024…

Hi Everyone, I'm very happy to announce that we will be collaborating on a number of posts with Philosophy and the Mind Sciences! PhilMindSci is an open access journal; you can read everything we discuss in full here: Our first post, today, will be by Philipp Haueis, describing the special issue just published on Mazviita Chirimuuta's The Brain Abstracted…

Hi All, We're happy to help announce the launch of the Cognition, Agency, & Intelligence Center. Please see information about their introductory conference below! Description: We are thrilled to invite you to attend the Interdisciplinary Conference in Cognitive Science, hosted by the Cognition, Agency, and Intelligence Center (CAIC) at Purdue University. The conference will take place April 2nd-3rd…

A Global Approach to Cognitive Dysfunction as a Framework for Neurodivergence Abel Wajnerman Pas and Jorge I. Fuentes  We propose a global approach to distinguishing between cognitive function and dysfunction as an appropriate framework for thinking about neurodivergence. It has been a commonplace in philosophy of psychiatry, at least since Wakefield (1992), to define mental disorders in terms of a descriptive element and an evaluative element.

Mnemonic agency?Marina Trakas  You forget your mother’s birthday. You remember telling your partner to pick up your child from school, but he insists you did not (and in fact, you didn’t). You are considering promoting an employee, and all the mistakes made by the default male candidate fade away, along with the accomplishments of women, Black employees, and other minorities.

The role of attentional biases in addictive decision-making Federico Burdman  Addiction is of interest to philosophers, among other things, because it raises a puzzle about rationality in practical agency. A common way to lay out the puzzle takes its cue from the standard definition of addiction as persistent drug use despite harmful consequences. Some people with addiction experience insight deficits and are unaware that they have an addiction or of its serious negative consequences (for a review of the evidence, see Raftery et al.

Rethinking autonomy in Alzheimer’s diseaseDominique Waissbluth Usually, people with Alzheimer’s disease are considered no longer capable of performing autonomous acts. This claim is not only common among loved ones, but also among carers. It is usually taken to be established after medical and legal assessments that state this inability. However, this all rests on a very restrictive idea of autonomy, which leaves no room for rethinking the various forms for patients to take part in various decision-making processes.

Are Psychopaths Responsible? Walter Sinnott-Armstrong  I will examine a question that sits at the intersection of moral psychology, philosophy, and criminal law: are psychopaths morally and legally responsible for what they do, and if not, what should we do with them? This is not only a theoretical problem about moral judgment, but also a deeply practical problem, because psychopaths are few in number yet responsible for a strikingly large proportion of serious crime.

A workshop Cognition and Agency in Mental Disorder was held on November 18th and 19th 2025, in Santiago de Chile at Universidad Alberto Hurtado. It was organized by Federico Burdman and the Santiago Mind and Cognition group. As an international guest, the workshop featured Walter Sinnott-Armstrong from Duke University. This week, we will have posts featuring some of the works presented there.

We are excited to announce that Alison Springle will be joining us as one of our new associate editors! Alison is an Assistant Professor at University of Miami, and works on a wide range of topics in philosophy of mind and science. For the blog, Alison will be working on promoting new collaborations and content-types for the blog, as well as contributing to our book symposia series.

We are thrilled to announce that Jorge Ignacio Fuentes Muñoz will be joining us at Brains as an Associate Editor. Jorge is an assistant professor at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, and will be overseeing content in philosophy of mind and neuroscience, as well as keeping us updated on philosophical happenings in South America. Please see below for a brief introduction from Jorge!

Hi All, In the next weeks and months, we'll be making some exciting new additions to the editorial team at Brains. Two new Associate Editors will be introduced this week! I want to take the chance to give a huge thanks to two of our recent Associate Editors who will be stepping down. Majid Beni and Trey Boone both did incredible work with Brains over the past couple of years.

Reply to Chirimuuta Mazviita Chirimuuta is sympathetic to my deflationary construal of scientists’ representational talk when they characterize their models, but she sees objectionable elements of eliminativism in my discussion of representation outside the domain of science. She says of me: “If she has to choose between the ontology of the manifest image, and that of the scientific image, it’s the manifest that will have to go.” But we don’t have to choose.

Comment on Deflating Mental Representation by Frances Egan A “Left Sellarsian” Response to a “Right Sellarsian” Proposal  “Now the idea that epistemic facts can be analysed without remainder—even ‘in principle’—into non-epistemic facts, whether phenomenal or behavioural, public or private, with no matter how lavish a sprinkling of subjunctives and hypotheticals is, I believe, a radical mistake—a mistake of a piece with the so-called ‘naturalistic fallacy’ in ethics” …

Reply to Mace and Roskies Caitlin Mace and Adina Roskies (hereafter, M&R) argue that the identification of vehicles in neuroscience depends intimately on the prior assignment of content, and so content cannot be relegated to an extra-theoretical gloss. Identifying neural vehicles is notoriously difficult and, they claim, subject to indeterminacy. To identify computational vehicles, experimenters look for neural signals whose activity appears to be correlated with some experimental variable taken to be the representational content, such as the onset of a cue, a stimulus feature, or some aspect of behavior.

Title: Vehicle realism, content pragmatism: Uneasy bedfellows Caitlin Mace and Adina L. Roskies  Frances Egan’s (2025) “Deflating Mental Representation” poses an interesting challenge to both realists and fictionalists about mental representation. In the book she argues for a pragmatic view of representational content and realism about representational vehicles.  The book as a whole is a deflationary take on the primary ways in which the concept of representation enters into cognitive science: in scientific theorizing about the brain, in folk psychological discourse, and in perception.

Reply to Oron Shagrir  Oron Shagrir argues that computation and content are more interconnected than my account allows. Computational individuation, he claims, is subject to indeterminacy, and at least in some cases the indeterminacy is resolved by appeal to content. If content is a gloss, as I argue, then according to Shagrir computational characterization is partly a gloss too.   Shagrir deploys an example to make the case for computational indeterminacy.

On Egan's Conception of Computation Oron Shagrir  In Deflating Mental Representation, Frances Egan advances an exemplary account that combines realism about the computational vehicles of mental representations with anti-realism regarding their content. While the more contentious thesis concerns content, my focus is on Egan's conception of computation, which has shaped much of the ongoing debate on physical computation in recent decades.

Brains Blog precis of Deflating Mental Representation  In the book I propose what I call a deflationary account of mental representation, characterized by three claims: (1) Construing a mental (or neural) state as a representation does not presuppose a special, substantive relation (or relations) – what we can call a representation relation – holding between the state and what the representation is about,

Join us this week for our first event of the year, another fantastic book symposium!  This time, we have Frankie Egan discussing her new book, Deflating Mental Representation.  We have three great commentaries from Oron Shagrir, Caitlin Mace and Adina Roskies, and Mazviita Chirimuuta, along with responses from Frankie.  Feel free to hop into the comments to discuss!