Category: Science
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Statistics is not measurement
“Statistics is not measurement: The inbuilt semantics of psychometric scales and language-based models obscures crucial epistemic differences” This article provides a comprehensive critique of psychology’s overreliance on statistical modelling at the expense of epistemologically grounded measurement processes. It highlights that statistics deals with structural relations in data regardless of what these data represent, whereas measurement…
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Why collective behavioursself-organize to criticality
“Why collective behaviours self-organize to criticality: a primer on information-theoretic and thermodynamic utility measures” Collective behaviours are frequently observed to selfâorganize to criticality. Existing proposals to explain these phenomena are fragmented across disciplines and only partially answer the question. This primer compares the underlying, intrinsic, utilities that may explain the selfâorganization of collective behaviours near…
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Stubborn Goals: the adaptive value
“The adaptive value of stubborn goals” Humans exhibit a striking tendency to persist with chosen goals. This strong attachment to goals can often appear irrational â a perspective captured by terms such as perseverance or sunk-cost biases. In this review, we explore how goal commitment could stem from several adaptive mechanisms, including those that optimise…
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Blocking of associative learning by explicit descriptions
“Blocking of associative learning by explicit descriptions” People given written descriptions often learn and decide differently from those learning from experience, even in formally identical tasks. This paper presents two experiments detailing how telling participants about the value of one stimulus impacts a keystone learning effect â blocking. The paper investigates if descriptions can be…
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Fast, slow, & metacognitive
“Fast, slow, and metacognitive thinking in AI” Inspired by the âthinking fast and slowâ cognitive theory of human decision making, we propose a multi-agent cognitive architecture (SOFAI) that is based on âfastâ/âslowâ solvers and a metacognitive module. We then present experimental results on the behavior of an instance of this architecture for AI systems that…
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Computational Framework for cognitive biology
“Toward a computational framework for cognitive biology: Unifying approaches from cognitive neuroscience and comparative cognition” Progress in understanding cognition requires a quantitative, theoretical framework, grounded in the other natural sciences and able to bridge between implementational, algorithmic and computational levels of explanation. This review article reviews recent results in neuroscience and cognitive biology that, when combined, provide key components…
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Brain-body physiology
“Brain-body physiology: Local, reflex, and central communication” Behavior is tightly synchronized with bodily physiology. Internal needs from the body drive behavior selection, while optimal behavior performance requires a coordinated physiological response. Internal state is dynamically represented by the nervous system to influence mood and emotion, and body-brain signals also direct responses to external sensory cues,…
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Divergent Perception: Framing Creative Cognition
“Divergent Perception: Framing Creative Cognition Through the Lens of Sensory Flexibility” âSavoir regarder est un moyen d’inventer.â Salvador Dali. Creativity is a cornerstone of human evolution and is typically defined as the multifaceted ability to produce novel and useful artifacts. Although much research has focused on divergent thinking, growing evidence underscores the importance of perceptual…
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Towards embodied intelligence
“Intelligent soft matter: towards embodied intelligence” Intelligent soft matter lies at the intersection of materials science, physics, and cognitive science, promising to change how we design and interact with materials. This transformative field aims to create materials with life-like capabilities, such as perception, learning, memory, and adaptive behavior. Unlike traditional materials, which typically perform static…
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Known and Unknown Biases
“Known and Unknown Biases: A Framework for Contextualising and Identifying Bias in Animal Behaviour Research“ (This article discusses the bias in animal behaviour research, but – as known to most readers, I hope – humanes too are members of the animal kingdom đ Biases in animal behaviour research are inevitable consequences of our societal and…
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A Model of Creative Thinking
“Adaptive Decision-Making âFastâ and âSlowâ: A Model of Creative Thinking” The late Daniel Kahneman introduced the concept of fast and slow thinking, representing two distinct cognitive systems involved in decision-making (DM). Fast thinking (System 1) operates intuitively and spontaneously. In contrast, slow thinking (System 2) is characterized by deliberation and analytical reasoning. Following Kahneman’s view, called the…
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Climate Change, A Geoscience Perspective
Climate Change, A Geoscience Perspective This open access book on climate change assesses past climatic change from a geoscience perspective and directly and effectively addresses common misconceptions on climate and climate change. A geoscience perspective on the multiple causes, rates, and consequences of climate change is essential context to assess modern climate change and our…
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The Idealized Mind
The Idealized Mind:Â From Model-Based Science to Cognitive Science.The open access edition of this book was made possible by generous funding and support from MIT Press Direct to Open A defense of scientific realism based on the role of idealization in the cognitive sciences. We study nature, including the mind and brain, by building scientific models.…
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Pathfinding: a neurodynamical account of intuition
Pathfinding: a neurodynamical account of intuition We examine the neurobiology of intuition, a term often inconsistently defined in scientific literature. While researchers generally agree that intuition represents âan experienced-based process resulting in a spontaneous tendency toward a hunch or hypothesis,â we establish a firmer neurobiological foundation by framing intuition evolutionarily as a pathfinding mechanism emerging…
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Top-down and bottom-up neuroscience
“Top-down and bottom-up neuroscience: overcoming the clash of research cultures“ As scientists, we want solid answers, but we also want to answer questions that matter. Yet, the brainâs complexity forces trade-offs between these desiderata, bringing about two distinct research approaches in neuroscience that we describe as âtop-downâ and âbottom-upâ. Bottom-up neuroscience The bottom-up research culture…
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Responsible Modeling
Responsible modelling and the ethics of mathematics for decision support Mathematical models are used to inform decisions across many sectors including climate change, finance, and epidemics. But models are not perfect representations of the real world â they are partial, uncertain and often biased. What, then, does responsible modelling look like? And how can we…
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Complexity data science
“Complexity data science: A spin-off from digital twins “ Digital twins offer a new and exciting framework that has recently attracted significant interest in fields such as oncology, immunology, and cardiology. The basic idea of a digital twin is to combine simulation and learning to create a virtual model of a physical object. In this paper,…
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misguidedly radical ideas?
“Is bad philosophy holding back physics?“ Carlo Rovelli states:“My hunch is that it is at least partly because physicists are bad philosophers. Scientistsâ opinions, whether they realize it or not (and whether they like it or not), are imbued with philosophy. And many of my colleagues â especially those who argue that philosophy is irrelevant…
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The power of mathematical models for better policy decisions
“Harnessing the power of mathematical models for better policy decisions” sets out four practical recommendations to help policymakers across a wide range of policy areas effectively capitalise on, and sidestep pitfalls of, using mathematical models for decision-making. Decision-makers are often keen to “follow the science” in highly-charged contexts such as climate policy, pandemic response, economic…
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Power of the Invisible
“The Power of the Invisible: The Quantessence of Reality” from Sander Bais There are two possible outcomes: if the result confirms the hypothesis, then youâve made a measurement. If the result is contrary to the hypothesis, then youâve made a discovery. Enrico Fermi Quantum Physics is the solid basis of most of our understanding of…
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