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The Beta version of my tool Psychopathology-Therapy Mapper is now updated to include 1. fixes to missing therapies and 2. additional supporting and critical sources for many therapies. Note about the development of this tool:  The tool is vibe-coded, but still required my fairly extensive full-stack development expertise to debug and implement. Debugging of the code and integration with Google blogger's very baroque proprietary blog template code required professional-level coding and software engineering theory. Implementation also required my professional training in psychology to identify obvious errors and problems with theory which mostly arose due to nomenclature problems (e.g. the clash of acronyms: Acceptance and Commitment Theory Vs Assertive Community Therapy and Mindfulness Therapy Vs Mindfulness-based Cognitive Therapy, among other problems. The AI also itself noticed that there is a lot of difficulty finding sources that are technically and broadly critical, and so the...

A Robotic Bat Dreaming of Electric Sheep AI giant Geoffrey Hinton has proposed that AI might already be emotional. It is an interesting philosophical and practical proposal, qua philosophy of information, philosophy of AI, and philosophy of psychology and emotions. (Yes. Those are all real subdisciplines of contemporary analytic philosophy and philosophy of science.) How would AI emotion work? There are lots of potential ways. It depends upon how one defines the concept [emotions]. It also depends upon what one includes in a neuroscientific and neuro-psychological explanation and conception of emotion. In cognitive neuropsychology there is a prevailing view that emotions are reducible to (or alternatively: supervene upon) just more cognitive information processing spread across sub-personal, neurological systems in the brain - from the limbic system to the motor cortex to the central executive and even the vagus nerve. The multiple realisability thesis for mind proposes that a mind l...

Cognitive and mental representation is a cornerstone concept in understanding how minds—both human and artificial—process and interact with the world. In philosophy, it addresses how mental states correspond to external realities; in cognitive science, it explores how the brain encodes information, such as through spatial maps; and in machine learning, it refers to how models like large language models (LLMs) transform data into usable forms. This article examines the propensity of philosophers and cognitive scientists to propose theories of representation, highlights contrasting perspectives, and explores the relevance of these ideas to machine learning systems, particularly LLMs. It also discusses challenges in determining whether LLMs use statistical representations akin to biological cognitive maps and addresses problems with conceptual analysis of representation, drawing on David Papineau’s Is Representation Rife? ( Papineau, 2004 ) and Stephen Stich’s What is a Theory of Mental ...

Nonverbal cues, such as facial expressions and body language, are foundational to human social interaction. They serve to convey emotions and intentions, regulate the flow of communication, and are integral to nearly every human endeavor (Riggio & Feldman, 2005; Bernieri et al., 1996). These silent signals often form the bedrock of first impressions and play a continuous role in the assessment and maintenance of social relationships (Bernieri et al., 1996). The American Psychological Association emphasizes the importance of understanding these cues for effective social functioning (American Psychological Association, 2018). While foveal (central) vision is typically associated with detailed scrutiny and focused attention, peripheral vision continuously monitors the broader environment, gathering information beyond the direct line of sight (Rooney et al., 2017; Rosenholtz, 2023). Many might perceive peripheral vision as merely a system for detecting movement in the "corner of t...