Vicente Raja; but I want to be Luffy.
Research Fellow at the University of Murcia (Spain).
Associate Faculty at the Rotman Institute of Philosophy (Canada).
I'm happy to have recently learnt that no neuroscientist has ever believed in the localization of psychological functions in the brain, and that the arguments against such localization during the last ~200 years are basically attacking a straw man.
What a time to be alive 😂
🚨PREPRINT ALERT🚨
I'm really happy I'm part of this along with some fellows, some friends, and some heroes of mine! A 160 pages work in which 11 authors share our thoughts on the alternatives to the computer metaphor in neuroscience. It's here: 1/2
The Cambridge Elements in Ecological Psychology (by
@Segundo_Ortin
& yours truly) will be out in April!
If you want a primer on ecological psychology including history, theory, 50 years of experimental work, and future directions... Do not miss it!
🚨DIMENSIONS OF RADICAL EMBODIMENT🚨
Join us in Murcia (Spain) on 19-21 June, 2024 to talk about radical embodiment in philosophy, psychology, & neuroscience!
ABSTRACT DEADLINE: March 1st, 2024
Why joining us? See below! ⬇️ 1/3
This thread by
@gualtieropicc
is interesting because I think it's a good example of the way "mainstream" cognitive science and neuroscience reads ecological psychology. I'm going to make some comments on it, mainly focused on what direct perception is and is not. 🧵1/
Here is the thread I promised on ecological psychology (tentative, since I don’t actually know enough about it).
Tl;dr: what is right about ecological psychology is compatible with a neurocomputational and representational approach to cognition.
1/
Imagine you are a neuroscientist working on vision and you decide that *maybe* the current mainstream paradigm has limits. You decide to look outside to find cool ideas. It's possible you read Gibson, find those ideas, and publish them in PNAS: A 🧵1/11
I'm going to be a PI! 😱🥳
Surprisingly enough I got a grant to work on the relationship between brain and behavior from an ecological point of view. More ecological resonance to come during the next couple of years!
‼️ La
@AgEInves
publica la propuesta de resolución provisional de la convocatoria Proyectos de Generación de Conocimiento 2021.
3.079 ayudas a proyectos propuestos para financiación.
🔗
I'm likely biased, but I'd say Dimensions of Radical Embodiment () was a success! A lot of cool talks and cool people. Sun, conversations, marineras, and saladitos!
We should find some place to gather next year, right? 😁
Our Markov Blanket Trick is available online in Physics of Life Reviews!
@tonychemero
@mljanderson
@edbaggs
and Dinesh Valluri.
Still the raw version but it's great to see it out there! This is a little thread about it based on its highlights ... 1/7
New paper! 🥳
Luis Favela and I have spent the last two years putting together a special issue on dynamics and cognition in TopiCS. And its 1st paper is out! 🔥
The one and only Randall Beer writes "On the Proper Treatment of Dynamics in Cognitive Science"
Synthese's special issue on Explanations in Cognitive Science is now out (). My paper "Resonance and Radical Embodiment" is in it. I propose a building block for an ecological neuroscience. Check it out!
We've published a Cambridge Elements in Ecological Psychology! 🥳📷
@Segundo_Ortin
and I have tried to provide a short, but all-encompassing introduction. We hope it's useful both for getting familiar with the field & for teaching. It's free for 14 days!
I am delighted to announce that
@DioVicen
and I have published our Elements on Ecological Psychology! The book will be freely available during the next 14 days, so please download it and share it 😊
A thread of what you will find in the book: (1/n)
I've written a short piece on the problems I see with the computer metaphor in the cognitive sciences. I also consider an alternative: the resonance metaphor. This is part of a bigger project led by
@MangalamMadhur
&
@OtherFoovian
. Check it out here:
I'm very happy my latest paper "Embodiment and Cognitive Neuroscience: The Forgotten Tales" is already published in Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences. And I'm very happy for several reasons! See the thread below ⬇️
Do you want to know more about ecological psychology? I want to remind you I'll be talking about its roots and scope tomorrow, **Tuesday Jan 25th at 2.00PM EST/7.00PM GMT** in the Ecological Psychology Seminar Series: 1/2
It's official now: A book that revisits Harry Heft's works is coming in the Resources for Ecological Psychology Series (Routledge). I'll edit it with my friends Manuel Heras-Escribano and Miguel Segundo-Ortin. And we have a awesome list of contributors! Stay tuned 😁
A paper I wrote a couple of years ago and was published online finally got to an issue of the journal. I propose some "forgotten tales" of embodiment that I think would help the development of the neurosciences. 1/3
Incredible cutting-edge alternative offered by Meta. I don't think anyone has ever thought about bundling AI by using "internal models of how the world works"... 🙄
Chief AI Scientist Yann LeCun (
@ylecun
) is sketching an alternate vision for building human-level AI. LeCun proposes that the ability to learn “world models” — internal models of how the world works — may be the key. Learn more:
Is cognitive neuroscience nowadays going through the same debates cognitive psychology went through in the 90s? Representations, folk psychology categories, dynamical systems theory... Is it good or bad? And even more: is it structuralism vs functionalism once again?
I think one of the most crazy (and therefore most interesting) ideas in the life sciences is the hypothesis of plant vision. It seems plants might need to have eyes to do things like... mimicking the leaves of an artificial plant 🌱🌿☘️
@gmaemejota
Es que no falla... Comedoritos random con habitación llena de neones soltando la parida de turno. Ni cotiza que el tipo ha hecho cursos de criptomonedas.
I'll talk a lot about our **NEW BOOK** during the next weeks. It's about Harry Heft's works on ecological psychology and it has lots of cool collaborations. Stay tuned! In the meantime, here's the table of contents and a preview PDF 🥳🥳
In William James day, I want to remind my Phil. & CogsSci. friends that there's a space between sensations and concepts, between inputs and inferences. The space where most of our experience happens. The space James was trying to describe. A space we should care about.
Karl Friston also comments our "Markov blanket trick". It's a manuscript review that highlights our different perspectives. A clash between the Jamesian and the Helmholtzian traditions. I promise not to write a response to reviewers unless you ask me to 😁
So, here's the recording of the 1st Episode of the
@EcoPsychSeminar
. The quality of the video is not great, but hopefully the story I tried to tell is still delivered. One hour and half of ecological psychology. I hope you like it!
One Principle to rule them all, One Principle to find them, One Principle to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them, In the Land of Inference where the Shadows lie.
Advice to get ecological psychology (9):
Do you want to know how behavior relates to information, classical & variational mechanics, and conservative & dissipative systems? You must read this:
"[B]iological movement systems are exemplars of self-assembling information systems."
Biologists, psychologists, and philosophers argue about plant sentience in an special issue I edited with my friend Miguel Segundo-Ortin for the Journal of Consciousness Studies. A bunch of cool papers by a bunch of cool people. Check it out!
This text was written by Helmholtz in 1860. When I read it, I ask: Has cognitive science advanced just a bit in over 150 years?
"The psychic activities, by which we arrive at the judgment that a certain object of a certain character exists before us at a certain place..." 1/3
Random question:
If perceptual experience is based on the optimisation of an internal model (or controlled hallucination), why the optimisation process can't solve myopia, for e.g.?
Myopia is a relatively simple optical issue that an optimised internal model could solve. Why not?
I always read claims like "perception is controlled hallucination" or "neuroscience shows you have no free will" as feeding a modus tollens. If your theory leads you to these consequences, you have good reasons for doubting your theory.
I just published an **Open Access** (!) paper in the European Journal of Neuroscience 🥳💜
I do two things in this paper. First, I propose the notion of "motif" for the philosophical toolkit of the sciences of the mind. 1/
Our
@MINTLab_umu
just received very generous funding from the V.Kann Rassmussen Foundation to develop 4 different projects on plant behavior. And I'm lucky to be the PI of two of these projects. Check them out and stay tuned! 🤩
A good reminder there's a neurophysiologically relevant, philosophically interesting, and mathematically elegant alternative to model-based/inference-based approaches to perceptual and motor control. This has always been the case. 1/2
🚨TWO CALLS FOR PARTICIPATION🚨
@gui_cogsci
and I are organising two workshops at TB Berlin on June 8-9. One is the Berlin Workshop on Ecological Psychology. 3 keynote speakers and we expect a variety of contributions. Check it out and submit yours! 1/2
In a time where we find more a more frameworks trying to explain biological/cognitive activities by using tools from physics, mathematics, etc., it's good to remind that ecological psychology was there since the 1970s. From Kugler & Turvey (1987):
This is fantastic. You only need to read one page to understand what's the problem with inferential theories of perception. I wish I could be so clear. One more time, Bill Warren.
I'd say the fundamental feature of 20th century philosophy is not the linguistic turn nor the analytic/continental split. The fundamental feature of 20th century philosophy is that, for the first time in history, most philosophers only read other philosophers.
I'm quite happy to be kicking off the seminar series on ecological psychology! 🥳🥳
As I'll be the first one, I'll be talking about the big picture of the approach while trying to re-focus the debate on the *positive* aspects of the theory. See below and spread the word! 👇🗣️
🚨🚨🚨
We are very excited to announce the kick off of the series with a presentation from one of the real rock stars (literally and metaphorically😎) of Ecological Psychology
Vicente Raja
@DioVicen
will present a talk entitled "The Roots and Scope of Ecological Psychology"
Today I've lived a new experience: helping my 2 PhD students to get funding for their projects & to ensure their income for the next years. The merit is all theirs as brilliant and hard-working young researchers, of course. But today I feel a very special kind of happiness 😁
I read a lot of philosophical takes that would get a C in Phil 101 coming from scientists otherwise absolutely brilliant in their disciplines. I wonder why is that. Is it our fault? Philosophers don't properly engage with other disciplines? Other disciplines just ignore us? Why?
Necesitamos divulgación de filosofía de de la ciencia (y, ya puesto, de las ciencias cognitivas) de calidad y en castellano. Que al menos evite la vergüenza ajena. Algo como Overthink o incluso Adictos a la Filosofía, pero de lo nuestro.
Hay algo por ahí y me lo estoy perdiendo?
Our response to the commentaries on "The Markov Blanket Trick" is out 🥳 We were lucky enough to get a lot of good commentaries and really enjoyed writing our response. Are Markov blankets a trick or a treat? Well, this is what we think about it: 1/2
For my tweet
#1
.001, I want to begin a 🧵on one of the ideas that has made me think the most during the last few years:
"Behavior is regular without being regulated."
What does it mean? Let's try rehearsing an answer with a long quote:
"As in the case of perception..." 1/10
Still wondering if you should come to Murcia? Let me tell you why I think you should: Submit your abstract & you'll have the opportunity to meet our fantastic keynote speakers🤩
I'm sure you know them, but here's an (alphabetical) list of my favourite work from each of them ⬇️ 1/
🚨DIMENSIONS OF RADICAL EMBODIMENT🚨
Join us in Murcia (Spain) on 19-21 June, 2024 to talk about radical embodiment in philosophy, psychology, & neuroscience!
ABSTRACT DEADLINE: March 1st, 2024
Why joining us? See below! ⬇️ 1/3
The New Scientist is publishing an extended article on Planta Sapiens () in its forthcoming issue. And there's curious story about *cognition* and *physiology*. A 🧵1/10
The 5th paper of our topiCS special issue on dynamical systems is out! 🎊🎉🎊🎉
The one and only Tony Chemero tells us about abduction and deduction in dynamical cognitive science. Enjoy!
Advice to get ecological psychology (8):
Information is a tricky notion, also in eco. psych. If you want to understand ecological information, you shouldn't ask the typical question regarding how to measure it or its content, but you should ask what makes it informative.🧵1/11
The Routledge Handbook of Bodily Awareness edited by Adrian Alsmith & Mathew Longo will be out in Nov 30! Surrounded by an incredible amount of great chapters, you can find on it a paper on phantom limbs by
@mljanderson
,
@vitalfunctions
, and yours truly.
New paper by Edouard Machery reviewing replication failures in Embodied Cognition research: "these failures suggest treating the empirical literature with caution." .
Did you wake up today wanting to be a realist but you don't know how?
@gui_cogsci
and I tell you how (and why) you can be a realist about perception and about scientific knowledge... And for the same reasons!
And it is open access 🥳🥳
Brains are 𝐚𝐥𝐠𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐡𝐦𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐲 describable, 𝐢𝐧𝐩𝐮𝐭-𝐨𝐮𝐭𝐩𝐮𝐭 systems in which we can 𝐥𝐨𝐜𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐳𝐞 some regions that 𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐨𝐝𝐞 information and others that 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐝𝐮𝐜𝐞 behaviour.
⬆️The motifs of mainstream cog. (neuro)sci. Challenging them = anger.
Have you ever wondered how to apply dynamic systems theory to social cognition and interpersonal coordination?
The one and only Alexandra Paxton talks about it in a new paper of our topiCS special issue. Check it out, it's great! 🚨🤩
Advice to get ecological psychology (10):
You should read the Cambridge Elements in Ecological Psychology
@Segundo_Ortin
and I are currently writing and will be ready in a few months! 🥳🔥🎏🎊🎉
Luis Favela just published a new book on ecological psychology and neuroscience. The Ecological Brain is an absolute masterpiece if you want to understand what it takes to merge these two fields: 7/
@guardian
features our work on the dynamics of plant nutation (appeared in
@SciReports
, see the tweet below!). In an interview with Paco Calvo, notions such as plant intelligence and plant sentience are discussed.
Still a few days to download the Cambridge Elements in Ecological Psychology for free 🥳🥳
Check it out here:
Let me address some common reactions and myths regarding ecological psychology I've read these days. 1/
I use "motifs" to characterize the core tenets of the scientific frameworks of the sciences of the mind (e.g., ). Motifs are open-ended notions that shape research but do not fully determine it. So, yes, 𝗮𝗳𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗱𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗲𝘀 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗺𝗼𝘁𝗶𝗳𝘀 1/ ⬇️
Elements in Ecological Psychology - Day 1
- Some people are happy about it. Yay!
- A guy says a part I wrote was written by AI. Skills or ESL?
- A guy says "ecological information specifies affordances" is wrong acc. to eco. psych.🤯
This book was needed! Please read it! 😁
I am delighted to announce that
@DioVicen
and I have published our Elements on Ecological Psychology! The book will be freely available during the next 14 days, so please download it and share it 😊
A thread of what you will find in the book: (1/n)
I'm going to go ahead and say that if many of your readers systematically "misunderstand" what you mean by surprise, belief, inference, boundary, blanket, thing, and now sentience... Well, I humbly suggest maybe there's a writing pattern in your work you should revise 😇
I've made a list with resources to find experimental works in ecological psychology. It does not aim to be exhaustive and I'm sure I've forgotten many people (please help me expand it!). I hope it's useful for people interested in the ecological approach!
@dimitrisbolis
Ecological psychology has produced hundreds and hundreds of experimental studies in many areas of perception and action over 50 years. It's difficult to point out to a single place, so I'll list several resources and the names of some researchers worth following. 1/n
The other one is a gentle introduction to dynamical systems theory for psychology and philosophy students. A Workshop on Nonlinear Dynamics and Embodied Cognition. You can register here:
Please share widely! 2/2
Prof. Latash reminding us the central problem of motor control.
I take it as one of the realisations of ecological psychology: if you start with prior knowledge for perception &/or prescribed policies for motor control, your theory of perception and action is a non-starter.
A university in Spain is giving me a hard time because I signed a PDF in my tablet. It seems I didn't sign the **authentic** document because I didn't print the PDF to sign it with a proper ink-based pen. Can please someone explain to me the metaphysics of ink & paper?
I've just had a conversation with Madhur Mangalam in the podcast BeyondPhrenology. We've talked about William James, neurophysiology, ecological neuroscience, Marr levels, the FEP and other stuff.
I think it was fun 😁 Check it out!
@hugospiers
@PsychScientists
Me and
@DioVicen
have a manuscript under review on the issue of why affordances are a corollary of direct perception. I hope to be able to share it soon. But until then: the answer is right there in the first paragraph of the affordance chapter in Gibson 1979 :)
In 2015, I told my advisor I'd work on ecological resonance for my dissertation. It was a daring move. Reactions both inside & outside Eco. Psych. were like "whaaat?". Years later we're seen works like this one and I'm very happy. Future is interesting 😁
Eco. psychologists think that saying things like "the brain interprets, or reads, or infers..." or, in a more contemporary wording, "the brain encodes, or filters, or models, or stores..." is a bad way to do neurophysiology, as it is the same as appealing to mental powers. 6/
Advice to get ecological psychology:
(1) Please read Gibson 1950.
(2) Please notice mental/neural representations are not a relevant issue for the theory.
(3) Please understand affordances are not a foundational concept but a corollary of the theory.
Ex-computer scientist/engineer here. Why every time I read a dumb thing like "philosophy never influenced X" or "why do we need humanities?" or "I will make a human robot next year" comes from someone with an engineering background? Time for U's. to rethink their programs?
Join us in Berlin! 🥳
This is just a reminder the call for participation in the Berlin Workshop in Ecological Psychology is still open (until May 12th). Come present, ask, suggest, and discuss! And please spread the word! 🗣️🗣️
Our book on Harry Heft's work is out! A really interesting set of historical & theoretical contributions reflecting the impact of Harry's ideas. And it also has a chapter by Harry and an interview with him! 🥳(Check next tweet for a discount flyer ⬇️)
Chek out the 3rd paper of our topiCS special issue on dynamical systems! 🤩🤩🤩
Ann-Sophie Barwich & Gabriel J. Severino tell us about how to use dynamical systems theory to understand representational drift in olfaction 👃
When I think of ecological neuroscience, it's something close to what Tolman (1958) claims:
"... the psychological facts and laws are also to be gathered and established in their own right. A psychology cannot be explained by a physiology until one has a psychology to explain."
I think Bill Warren has been the spearhead of ecological psychology for a couple of decades now. Nobody else combines the knowledge, the capacity to communicate, and the ability to consistently provide experimental results Bill has. Always an inspiration. Well-deserved.
Congratulations to Bill Warren, who has been awarded the 2023 Ken Nakayama Medal by
@VSSMtg
! Bill has made foundational contributions to the study of perception and action, locomotion, crowd behavior, and even the philosophical underpinnings of our field.
Sometimes I talk about plants. And once I did it near the Baltic Sea in a port museum. Ever wondered about plant behavior, its complexity, and its relation to our own behavior? Am I one of those crazy guys who talks about plants minds? 😱 Check it out!
Call for help: can you point me to computational neuro. or AI research based on sophisticated ideas about perception? I'm thinking of ideas beyond the boring/basic "your brain builds up a model of the world" & "it's just your brain hallucinating everyting". Something out there?
Rorty famously saw the connection between authoritarianism and mental representations. With the rise of conservatism, my timeline is full of tweets on representations, disembodiment, and AI. Please stop.
The latest issue of Physics of Life Reviews is out and our Markov blanket trick is out with it! Good time to take a look at the really final version and to enjoy the 80s vibes of the journal logo.
Dines Valluri
@edbaggs
@tonychemero
@mljanderson
Good times to work on ecological psychology + neuroscience 😁
"The methods we developed here can be applied more broadly to enable a Gibsonian approach to visual physiology that extends beyond features that are present in standard head-fixed stimuli."
Ever wondered how dynamical systems theory is used and applied in embodied cognition research?
Join us in Berlin for a gentle introduction to these methods! Registration open until May 25th.
@gui_cogsci
@mentaculartimes
New paper! 🥳🍻
This one is very close to my heart: ecological resonance in a interception task. This is a poof of concept of the resonance framework we've developed during the last few years. With
@AudreyvdrMeer
@Ruudvdweel
and I. Sokolovskis. A🧵1/6
Do affordances influence categorization? Maybe! Our preprint on the effect of kind of stimuli (objects, pictures, or words) in categorization now published in the CogSci 2022 proceedings (w/
@robyn_e_wilford
(1st author), M. Hershey, and
@mljanderson
).
Just a friendly reminder you don't need to be an asshole when reviewing a paper 🤗
Also a reminder there's a strong positive correlation between being an asshole and writing a completely ignorant/useless review 🤗
@dimitrisbolis
Ecological psychology has produced hundreds and hundreds of experimental studies in many areas of perception and action over 50 years. It's difficult to point out to a single place, so I'll list several resources and the names of some researchers worth following. 1/n
@gui_cogsci
and I got a paper accepted in the European Journal for Philosophy of Science! 🥳
The paper (Two Species of Realism) is influenced by ecological psychology and the works of
@APotochnik
.
Until the published version is out, here's the preprint:
My ecological desideratum: I wish info.-processing people engaged with the **empirical** literature of ecological psychology as deeply as ecological psychologists engage with the info.-processing literature. This doesn't really happen, so discussions are greatly limited. 1/2
To finish this loooong thread I want to point out that the direct perception hypothesis is not just a theoretical position. There are over 50 years of experimental results that support it. You can find some of them in this other thread: . 24/24
@dimitrisbolis
Ecological psychology has produced hundreds and hundreds of experimental studies in many areas of perception and action over 50 years. It's difficult to point out to a single place, so I'll list several resources and the names of some researchers worth following. 1/n
On my way to CDMX! Last time I was there (right before the pandemic started) it was absolutely awesome 🤩 I'm very looking forward to this one, with
@melina_gastelum
@tonychemero
@JulianKiverste1
and many others!