Matej Kohár
matejkohar.bsky.social
Matej Kohár
@matejkohar.bsky.social
Philosopher of cognition at TU Berlin, SF&F reader, metalhead.
Current project: https://www.merex-project.org/
Reposted by Matej Kohár
I'm very pleased to announce the CfA for the PLM Workshop on philosophy (and neuroscience) of memory, which is organised by my friend, bsky.app/profile/jona...: www.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/phil-lang/tr... Deadline for submissions: 30-11-25. It will be hosted by Ruhr University Bochum in mid Feb.
PLM Workshop Traces and Engrams: Philosophical and Neuroscientific Perspectives
www.ruhr-uni-bochum.de
November 12, 2025 at 9:25 AM
Reposted by Matej Kohár
When a typo in your Google search leads to new and exciting philosophical positions
September 22, 2025 at 9:25 PM
J.J. Gibson with some truth bombs in Ch. 3 of The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception:

"A special case of the ground is a floor."
"A stick is an elongated object."

More seriously, this attempt at constructing in effect a phenomenological taxonomy of the lived world is fascinating. #philsky
April 1, 2025 at 5:15 PM
New paper alert!
My take on solving the scaling-up problem (representation-hunger) using mechanistic compositionality is now out with JGPS! #philsci #philsky

doi.org/10.1007/s108...
The Scaling-Up Problem from a Mechanistic Point of View - Journal for General Philosophy of Science
This paper argues that the so-called scaling-up problem (representation-hunger problem) can be resolved within the mechanistic framework of explanation. Emphasising the problem’s character as an empir...
doi.org
March 24, 2025 at 8:10 AM
"The situation in France isn't as bad as people think it is. It's just that the French are stubbornly opposed to paying taxes, and so their governments keep on failing."

"Cogwheels" by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa (orig. publ. 1927)

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose...
December 22, 2024 at 9:48 PM
Reposted by Matej Kohár
The Economist’s Off The Charts newsletter sometimes shares the more fun sides of data. It’s not all a socio-economic snooze fest. This colour “Rorschach test” is an example, created by an AI and neuroscience researcher: ismy.blue
Here’s @alexselbyb.bsky.social results, what’s up with his brain?!
November 13, 2024 at 10:24 AM
Reposted by Matej Kohár
We --the MeReX-project-- are organizing a conference on mechanistic, computational, and representational explanation in cognitive neuroscience at TU Berlin in February 2025! 🧠

Come and join us all! Registration opens in about a week.

further info: www.merex-project.org

#philsci #neuroscience
October 23, 2024 at 8:25 PM
Read China Mieville's Embassytown recently. Highly recommended to anyone looking for linguistics inspired SF where the premise is not just "What if Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, amirite?".
October 20, 2024 at 2:37 PM
Academic pet-peeve: Writing "pace", when you mean "contra".
October 4, 2024 at 12:24 PM
And today marks another day in my professional life that I wish I had taken a stats class in my BA instead of Latin. Though I did enjoy watching the suffering of my Psychology studying friends with smug superiority at the time, they do get the last laugh after all...
September 30, 2024 at 1:07 PM
Just a few days left to submit an abstract for our February workshop on neuroscientific explanation in Berlin. The deadline is this Sunday (29th September).

For more info, visit: neuroexp2025.sciencesconf.org

#PhilosophyOfScience #neuroscience
NeuroExp 2025 - Explanation in Cognitive Neuroscience: From empirical case studies to philosophical analysis - Sciencesconf.org
neuroexp2025.sciencesconf.org
September 26, 2024 at 7:02 AM
I'm attending the #DKPhil (German Congress of Philosophy) in Münster this week and giving a talk on my recently published paper on virtual causation tomorrow afternoon.

If you are around, come have a look!
September 23, 2024 at 12:25 PM
My new paper on "Illusionism about virtual causation" is out now at Inquiry with Open Access. Check it out at: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
#philosophy #VR
Illusionism about virtual causation
The question whether there are virtual objects grows more salient, as virtual reality (VR) technology becomes commercially viable. Arguments for realism about virtual objects rely on virtual causat...
www.tandfonline.com
September 16, 2024 at 12:14 PM