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Ever since leaving Twitter, I seem to be getting worse and slower with online-profile maintenance (keeping up with updates, inane self-promotion, etc, etc.). But this seems a consequence of my increasing enjoyment of being focussed on thinking, writing, and -frankly- starting to give a toss about some of the social buzz that seems to revolve around itself, more and more. Instead, I cannot stop reading and rediscovering curiosity and new things to explore. (After 2 years of semi-draught, the floodgates are open again.) Has anything happened this year, this summer, at all? Yes, quite a lot actually. But academia would not be academia if it did not take its time to see daylight. A few things this summer: (1) I was on Mind Chat with Philip Goff and Keith Frankish. We had a blast! Youtube link and Apple Podcast (2) I had the utter joy to join a grad workshop in honor of the wonderful Hasok Chang's new book "Realism for Realistic People" in Copenhagen (Symposium link) (2) Then I got admittedly a little starstruck by being on the same panel as Jean-Pierre Changeux (!) at FENS 2022 in Paris. I remember reading him when I first got obsessed with GPCSs... and then thinking about the brain via evolutionary developments and... getting from there to the mind. We talked about interdisciplinarity, the exchange between neuroscience and philosophy, and the audience had such great questions. Symposium link "Are we equipped to work interdisciplinary?" by the dream-team of Markus Kunze, Igor Branchi, and Isabella Sarto-Jackson (and feat. discussant Sidney Carls-Diamante). (3) I was on holiday. For the first time since 2013. No emails. By the rural beachside in the Netherlands. It was heaven. I need to live less online. (3) New papers soon coming. One is accepted (with the awesome Barry C. Smith for Philosophy Compass, we talk about how to study smell philosophically), the other paper ... is looking like it is coming out even sooner! With my colleague Lisa Lloyd on machine learning in olfaction. Oh yeah. Stay tuned!
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Lab Update: After a rocky start... (lab renovation delays, supply chain issues, and ESPECIALLY technical issues in instrument set-up... that's what happens when you do custom built - very much fun but also time-consuming)... ... the instruments finally talk to each other! (The trigger finally is integrated, all controllable from one program (screw you, MatLab engine compatibility issues who have cost us some sanity).) The proof of principle study/experiment is happening. There's a lot of excitement, relief, and energy coming together this summer! Stay tuned!  New essay on Aeon, asking a simple question: "Looking at the women routinely vanishing to the margins of my field, a question began to form in my mind: when conceived of as a lineage of women thinkers, what would the philosophy of science have looked like today?" The history of ideas still struggles to remember the names of notable women philosophers. Mary Hesse is a salient example.  John Bickle and I have a chapter in the new edited volume by Ben Young and Carolyn Dicey Jennings: Mind, Cognition, and Neuroscience ! The book features a number of interesting chapters by renowned authors in the field. Here is a link the Bickle/Barwich's "Introduction to Molecular and Cellular Cognition" ResearchGate Academia.edu  The Tools of Neuroscience Experiment, ed. by John Bickle, Carl Craver, and moi. It's coming out with Routledge, this December 31, 2021. Below you find the flyer with discount code and info about ordering review copies! It's happening!  Dear friends of artificial noses, or noses plugged, Feel free to join the inaugural MIT Osmocosm virtual conf: www.osmocosm.org TOMORROW TILL SATURDAY Thu 28th-Sat 30th october over zoom 9am-4pm Totally free and so many great speakers from scitech folks, artists, designers, medical and law professionals and students from all ages, disciplines and four continents! Come listen or participate in the ideathons as we try to create dog-inspired medical scentphones that can detect Covid in 0.4sec with 99% accuracy for every corner of the planet!” There’s people who talk smells, dogs, bioelectronic noses, and other stuff. At least one familiar name, too. Cheers, Ann  The copy edits arrived! (Thus: more on that front in time!) The Tools of Neuroscience Experiment: Philosophical and Scientific Perspectives Ed. by John Bickle, Carl Craver, Ann-Sophie Bawich Forthcoming (December 2021?) with Routledge! This volume establishes the conceptual foundation for sustained investigation into tool development in neuroscience. Neuroscience relies on diverse and sophisticated experimental tools, and its ultimate explanatory target--our brains and hence the organ driving our behaviors--catapults the investigation of these research tools into a philosophical spotlight. --> The book also contains a co-authored chapter with Lu Xu where we will give a first person account on how she used SCAPE microscopy to investigate mixture coding in olfaction, discovering a hitherto unknown coding mechanism at the periphery!  Admittedly, it's been a bit quiet this summer. But a few things have been brewing... With a deleted Twitter account and avoidance of any things online (yes, that includes email), I had time to read, think, write, and do a number of things that have piled on and were postponed for a year now (pandemic-related). I also did that sports thing I plan each new year. First good news: the lab is now really coming to a start. (We'll call it THE STINK TANK.) The renovations are moving toward the end. Currently, the estimate is the end of August. The olfactometer is close to being finished. The EEG has already arrived. AND my first graduate student and two undergraduate interns will join me this Fall. Lots of things we need to figure out, tinkering and testing, before we can go ahead with ideas. But this is an exciting start after a year's wait and uncertainty. You can see the current lab status pictures below. Second good news: there will be a TEDxCambridge talk online this Fall/Winter... I cannot hide how excited I am about this. The team has been amazing and I learned ... SHIT TONS (official metric). More on that in time, too. Picture below, too. I may include that one in my tenure file... The third good news is that John Bickle, Carl Craver, and I have submitted our edited volume on Experimental Tools in Neuroscience to Routledge. It might come out already Winter 2021!! For this, Lu Xu (Firestein lab, Columbia) and I co-wrote a first hand account on her application of SCAPE microscopy in odor mixture coding (pointing toward the cognitive foundations of tool use). Additionally, a new paper is coming out soon (Perspectives on Science, proofs have been sent off), another co-authored one is under review. Oh yeah... and my criticism of the arguments behind this recent revival of panpsychism in some corners of the philosophy of mind (and Phil Twitter) is coming out as a book chapter soon, too. I promised, I'd write about it. So stay tuned. ;-) Summer has been busy. So, hopefully, things keep moving well. Fingers crossed! Meanwhile, stay safe, well, and sane ;-) |
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January 2025
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