Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Matthias Michel

@matthiasmichel.bsky.social

1.7K followers 440 following 170 posts

Assistant professor at MIT, Department of Linguistics and Philosophy. Philosophy of science and cognitive science of consciousness.

Posts Media Videos Starter Packs

Pinned

Matthias Michel @matthiasmichel.bsky.social · Apr 21

Very happy to announce that our paper “Sensory Horizons and the Functions of Conscious Vision” is now out as a target article in BBS!! @smfleming.bsky.social and I present a new theory of the evolution and functions of visual consciousness. Article here: doi.org/10.1017/S014.... A (long) thread 🧵

Sensory Horizons and the Functions of Conscious Vision | Behavioral and Brain Sciences | Cambridge Core

Sensory Horizons and the Functions of Conscious Vision

doi.org

6 69 180

Reposted by Matthias Michel

Matan Mazor @matanmazor.bsky.social · 1d

Consciousness science as a marketplace of rationalizations

my commentary on @smfleming.bsky.social and @matthiasmichel.bsky.social's thought-provoking BBS paper, and more generally about the field.

osf.io/preprints/ps...

OSF

osf.io

2 18 42

Matthias Michel @matthiasmichel.bsky.social · 1d

The next session of the MIT Consciousness Club is on Thursday 16, 12pm-1:30pm. Rachel Denison will present “Attentional Distortions of Subjective Perception”. More information here: sites.google.com/view/mit-con....

MIT Consciousness Club

The MIT Consciousness Club aims to foster interdisciplinary research on consciousness at MIT and in the broader Boston area by organizing a monthly event featuring an expert talk on consciousness foll...

sites.google.com

3 23

Reposted by Matthias Michel

David Papineau @davidpapineau.bsky.social · 1d

I had a lot of fun exploring the insidious influence of dualist ideas with @evanmcgloughlin.bsky.social
Watch on Youtube Now: youtu.be/x0mjQmmzfCk

Meet the Philosopher of Mind Proving that Consciousness is Physical!

YouTube video by Giant's Shoulder

youtu.be

5 13

Reposted by Matthias Michel

onemorebrown @onemorebrown.bsky.social · 2d

Brownapalooza -The Consciousness Live! 100th Episode Spectacular Extravaganza!!

I recently realized that I am coming up on the 100th episode of Consciousness Live! The frequency of these has varied from year to year, sometimes having weekly conversations, sometime bi-weekly, or monthly, etc., but…

Brownapalooza -The Consciousness Live! 100th Episode Spectacular Extravaganza!!

I recently realized that I am coming up on the 100th episode of Consciousness Live! The frequency of these has varied from year to year, sometimes having weekly conversations, sometime bi-weekly, or monthly, etc., but overall I have been averaging one discussion a month for the last eight years. This made me start to think that I should do something fun for the 100th episode.

onemorebrown.com

1 7

Reposted by Matthias Michel

Sam Gershman @gershbrain.bsky.social · 2d

This is a great idea except for the fact that it's wrong. You can obtain the same learning speed across dramatically different interstimulus intervals (T) as long as the intertrial interval (I) is kept in a fixed ratio with the interstimulus interval (Gallistel & Gibbon, 2000).

1 4 22

Matthias Michel @matthiasmichel.bsky.social · 2d

This is great! I made a similar point about the scope of the multiple realizability claim in my commentary.

1 3

Reposted by Matthias Michel

Felipe De Brigard @felipedebrigard.bsky.social · 2d

I wrote a short commentary on Anil Seth's wonderful forthcoming paper in BBS. It is largely inspired by the work of Andy Clark, although some ideas I owe to Ned Block and Dan Dennett (probably not the same ideas!). I highly recommend Anil's paper to anyone interested in consciousness [1/2]

2 9 24

Reposted by Matthias Michel

Chaz Firestone @chazfirestone.bsky.social · 2d

This is a big one! A 4-year writing project over many timezones, arguing for a reimagining of the influential "core knowledge" thesis.

Led by @daweibai.bsky.social, we argue that much of our innate knowledge of the world is not "conceptual" in nature, but rather wired into perceptual processing. 👇

Screenshot of a paper abstract:

“Core knowledge” refers to a set of cognitive systems that underwrite early representations of the physical and social world, appear universally across cultures, and likely result from our genetic endowment. Although this framework is canonically considered as a hypothesis about early emerging conception — how we think and reason about the world — here we present an alternative view: that many such representations are inherently perceptual in nature. This “core perception” view explains an intriguing (and otherwise mysterious) aspect of core-knowledge processes and representations: that they also operate in adults, where they display key empirical signatures of perceptual processing. We first illustrate this overlap using recent work on “core physics”, the domain of core knowledge concerned with physical objects, representing properties such as persistence through time, cohesion, solidity, and causal interactions. We review evidence that adult vision incorporates exactly these representations of core physics, while also displaying empirical signatures of genuinely perceptual mechanisms, such as rapid and automatic operation on the basis of specific sensory inputs, informational encapsulation, and interaction with other perceptual processes. We further argue that the same pattern holds for other areas of core knowledge, including geometrical, numerical, and social domains. In light of this evidence, we conclude that many infant results appealing to precocious reasoning abilities are better explained by sophisticated perceptual mechanisms shared by infants and adults. Our core-perception view elevates the status of perception in accounting for the origins of conceptual knowledge, and generates a range of ready-to-test hypotheses in developmental psychology, vision science, and more.

6 46 120

Reposted by Matthias Michel

Dawei Bai @daweibai.bsky.social · 2d

Happy to share that our BBS target article has been accepted: “Core Perception”: Re-imagining Precocious Reasoning as Sophisticated Perceiving
With Alon Hafri, @veroniqueizard.bsky.social, @chazfirestone.bsky.social & Brent Strickland
Read it here: doi.org/10.1017/S014...
A short thread [1/5]👇

3 34 81

Reposted by Matthias Michel

hakwan lau @hakwan.bsky.social · 3d

this paper takes me by surprise a bit. of coz, we all know Ned's been thinking along these lines for decades: philpapers.org/rec/BLOBVC
but is he really gonna seriously publish a new paper on this now, given all the AI hype & debates re: how unscientific some popular views on C are these days?

1/

1 6 26

Reposted by Matthias Michel

Eric Schwitzgebel @eschwitz.bsky.social · 3d

New book in draft: AI and Consciousness [link in thread]
This book is a skeptical overview of the literature on AI and consciousness.
Anyone who emails me comments on the entire manuscript will be thanked in print and receive an appreciatively signed hard copy.

15 21 88

Reposted by Matthias Michel

Ned Block @neddo.bsky.social · 3d

Can Only Meat Machines be Conscious? New paper in Trends in Cognitive Sciences, free download until November 26 with this URL: authors.elsevier.com/a/1luwh4sIRv...

authors.elsevier.com

8 36 86

Reposted by Matthias Michel

Dawei Bai @daweibai.bsky.social · 8d

New paper: the ‘Double Ring Illusion’!
Does the visual system integrate *intuitive physics*? This new illusion developed by Brent Strickland and I offers a straightforward demonstration – one that you can experience yourselves!
Demos in thread👇
[1/6]

4 17 47

Reposted by Matthias Michel

Ian Phillips @ianbphillips.bsky.social · 6d

@neddo.bsky.social's very nice commentary on @matthiasmichel.bsky.social and @smfleming.bsky.social's BBS target article also arguing that conscious perception may form fast even if postdiction suggests it only "vulcanizes" slowly.

Ned Block @neddo.bsky.social · 7d

Hmmm…my reply is somewhat similar drive.google.com/file/d/1cIUk...

2025.Michel.Fleming.response.pdf

drive.google.com

1 2 9

Reposted by Matthias Michel

Vlad Ayzenberg @vayzenb.bsky.social · Jul 2

My paper with @stellalourenco.bsky.social ‬is now out in Science Advances!

We found that children have robust object recognition abilities that surpass many ANNs. Models only outperformed kids when their training far exceeded what a child could experience in their lifetime

doi.org/10.1126/scia...

Fast and robust visual object recognition in young children

The visual recognition abilities of preschool children rival those of state-of-the-art artificial intelligence models.

doi.org

2 36 110

Reposted by Matthias Michel

Sam Schwarzkopf @sampendu.bsky.social · 9d

Long time in the making: our preprint of survey study on the diversity with how people seem to experience #mentalimagery. Suggests #aphantasia should be redefined as absence of depictive thought, not merely "not seeing". Some more take home msg:
#psychskysci #neuroscience

doi.org/10.1101/2025...

11 35 110

Reposted by Matthias Michel

Steve Fleming @smfleming.bsky.social · 9d

@matthiasmichel.bsky.social and I are beavering away reading and responding to all the excellent commentaries on our BBS paper outlining an evolutionary account of visual consciousness.

In the meantime, if you missed our target article, it's available here:

www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Sensory Horizons and the Functions of Conscious Vision | Behavioral and Brain Sciences | Cambridge Core

Sensory Horizons and the Functions of Conscious Vision

www.cambridge.org

5 26

Reposted by Matthias Michel

Jorge Morales @jorge-morales.bsky.social · 11d

Imagine an apple 🍎. Is your mental image more like a picture or more like a thought? In a new preprint led by Morgan McCarty—our lab's wonderful RA—we develop a new approach to this old cognitive science question and find that LLMs excel at tasks thought to be solvable only via visual imagery. 🧵

Artificial Phantasia: Evidence for Propositional Reasoning-Based Mental Imagery in Large Language Models

This study offers a novel approach for benchmarking complex cognitive behavior in artificial systems. Almost universally, Large Language Models (LLMs) perform best on tasks which may be included in th...

arxiv.org

5 36 110

Reposted by Matthias Michel

Ian Phillips @ianbphillips.bsky.social · 11d

What does postdiction show about the speed of consciousness? In this forth. piece in BBS, I respond to @smfleming.bsky.social + @matthiasmichel.bsky.social's claim that postdiction shows consciousness is slow -- too slow for its purpose to be online action guidance. 1/3 philpapers.org/rec/PHIPAT-14

philpapers.org

2 4 17

Reposted by Matthias Michel

Julian Matthews @quining.bsky.social · 12d

🚨 Out now in @commspsychol.nature.com 🚨
doi.org/10.1038/s442...

Our #RegisteredReport tested whether the order of task decisions and confidence ratings bias #metacognition.

Some said decisions → confidence enhances metacognition. If true, decades of findings will be affected.

A picture of our paper's abstract and title: The order of task decisions and confidence ratings has little effect on metacognition.

Task decisions and confidence ratings are fundamental measures in metacognition research, but using these reports requires collecting them in some order. Only three orders exist and are used in an ad hoc manner across studies. Evidence suggests that when task decisions precede confidence, this report order can enhance metacognition. If verified, this effect pervades studies of metacognition and will lead the synthesis of this literature to invalid conclusions. In this Registered Report, we tested the effect of report order across popular domains of metacognition and probed two factors that may underlie why order effects have been observed in past studies: report time and motor preparation. We examined these effects in a perception experiment (n = 75) and memory experiment (n = 50), controlling task accuracy and learning. Our registered analyses found little effect of report order on metacognitive efficiency, even when timing and motor preparation were experimentally controlled. Our findings suggest the order of task decisions and confidence ratings has little effect on metacognition, and need not constrain secondary analysis or experimental design.

1 10 26

Reposted by Matthias Michel

Will Turner @renrutmailliw.bsky.social · 12d

New BBS article w/ @lauragwilliams.bsky.social and Hinze Hogendoorn, just accepted! We respond to a thought-provoking article by @smfleming.bsky.social & @matthiasmichel.bsky.social, and argue that it's premature to conclude that conscious perception is delayed by 350-450ms: bit.ly/4nYNTlb

OSF

bit.ly

1 7 22

Reposted by Matthias Michel

Patxi Elosegi @patxelos.bsky.social · 13d

1/Preprint Alert🔔: Across two experiments plus a computational model, we show the visual system compresses complex scenes into summary statistics that can guide behavior without conscious access to the task-defining features. We term this the Ensemble Blindsight effect.

1 7 29

Reposted by Matthias Michel

Kobe Desender @kobedesender.bsky.social · 17d

Introducing hMFC: A Bayesian hierarchical model of trial-to-trial fluctuations in decision criterion! Now out in @plos.org Comp Bio.
led by Robin Vloeberghs with @anne-urai.bsky.social Scott Linderman

Paper: desenderlab.com/wp-content/u... Thread ↓↓↓

#PsychSciSky #Neuroscience #Neuroskyence

3 30 50

Reposted by Matthias Michel

megan peters 🧠 @meganakpeters.bsky.social · 16d

Just accepted at BBS - a commentary on @smfleming.bsky.social and @matthiasmichel.bsky.social's Sensory Horizons article:
Reality monitoring decision policies and the slowness of consciousness
osf.io/preprints/ps...

OSF

osf.io

1 7 25

Reposted by Matthias Michel

hakwan lau @hakwan.bsky.social · 16d

paper is up~

This study examines performance evaluation in perceptual detection tasks using response-time-based signal detection theory (SDT) analysis. A defining feature of detection tasks is the asymmetry between trials with stimulus presence and absence, often reflected in ....

hakwan lau @hakwan.bsky.social · 17d

detection d' is generally overestimated, coz we tend to be too lazy to collect the necessary data in order to correct for the unequal variance between target present vs absent distributions. turns out we can do this for free - using reaction times data. so, let's do it~

osf.io/preprints/ps...

🧠📈

OSF

osf.io

1 8 28