Corey J. Maley

My piece on Medium about brains and analog computation (reposted so I can pin it). medium.com/the-spike/brai…

@barbarikon @braneloop @sebkrier @AlexLerchner Representation itself is non-physical, but that’s trivial, because it’s a relation that can have non-physical relata. Just like “<“ is a non-physical relation between the number three and the number four.

@CoreyJMaley @braneloop @sebkrier @AlexLerchner Is representation ever non-physical?

An excellent paper for anyone interested in rigorous physicalist argument against computational functionalism. Alex is a fantastic, careful thinker and influenced my views a lot; we're working on a broader blog post breaking these concepts down, stay tuned! 🐙

@barbarikon @braneloop @sebkrier @AlexLerchner Do you mean “is a representation ever non-physical”? Maybe. But then the representational properties would be non-physical, and thus not manipulable.

@braneloop @sebkrier @AlexLerchner Hey, thanks Jorge! This one is a bit more detailed, but relevant too. link.springer.com/article/10.100…

@sebkrier When writing the blog post do engage with @CoreyJMaley's work, in particular with onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.111… which I think everyone that reads @AlexLerchner's paper would find an interesting and valuable read.

@elonmusk Delete your account.

Grok 4.20 is BASED. The only AI that doesn’t equivocate when asked if America is on stolen land. The others are weak sauce.

Last week, I was invited to give the Spring Convocation Keynote at St. Bonaventure University. I spoke on the topic of "Education in the Age of Artificial Intelligence." This moment is an opportunity to think carefully about what is valuable about education and why.

New paper “Structural Representation is Analog Representation” forthcoming! philsci-archive.pitt.edu/27929/

@PAHoyeck @MindMechanical @ItsAndyRyan Oh, my apologies. I didn’t catch that.

@CoreyJMaley @MindMechanical @ItsAndyRyan I did say in the comments that I thought it was the best argument against the view that we can't know that there's an external world. I also happily discussed that argument with people who were interested.

"The supposition that we are actually brains in a vat, though it violates no physical law [...] cannot possibly be true. It cannot possibly be true because it is, in a certain way, self-refuting." —Hilary Putnam, Brains in a Vat

@MindMechanical @PAHoyeck @ItsAndyRyan It’s bizarre to then say, “well why is that landscape the best one?” or “so how is that dish made?” And then just rude to respond by saying it’s gotta be nonsense because it can’t be summarized on one page. Calculus isn’t difficult, but it takes more than one page to explain it

@MindMechanical @PAHoyeck @ItsAndyRyan What are you talking about? I can’t find a single place where the OP said anything like “this is the best argument. In some posts, sure, people summarize arguments, or give recipes, or whatever. In other posts, people show a photo of a landscape they like, or food they enjoyed.

Charlie Kirk was killed by a rando and no high profile democrat supported it. Renee Good was killed by the government and every high profile republican supported it.

@JRBneuropsiq @PessoaBrain Here’s a short piece I wrote on this topic: frontiersin.org/journals/compu…

@PessoaBrain I'm really into "biological" but not completely into "computacional". Clearly, human consciousness is not a case of digital computation, so I'm totally sure what computation could really mean in the realm of neurobiology. What would be the best resources to understand this?

𝗢𝗻 𝗯𝗶𝗼𝗹𝗼𝗴𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗹 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗮𝗿𝘁𝗶𝗳𝗶𝗰𝗶𝗮𝗹 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘀𝗰𝗶𝗼𝘂𝘀𝗻𝗲𝘀𝘀: 𝗔 𝗰𝗮𝘀𝗲 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗯𝗶𝗼𝗹𝗼𝗴𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗹 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗽𝘂𝘁𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹𝗶𝘀𝗺 Excellent paper discussing how considering biology is important to understand consciousness. doi.org/10.1016/j.neub…

Day 4 of the Brain's Blog symposium of 'The Idealized Mind'. Attached are links to @CoreyJMaley's commentary and my response: philosophyofbrains.com/2025/12/04/com… philosophyofbrains.com/2025/12/04/aut… Am I committed to there being no physical computers that compute?

@davidbessis @BillHeyman How so? Do you mean that, at subatomic scales, phenomena we take as continuous (e.g, voltage) are actually discrete?

@CoreyJMaley @BillHeyman We *model* values as real numbers, but this is in clear violation of, say, how matter behaves on small scales.

If "real" numbers are so "real", then why can't we implement them on computers?

@davidbessis @BillHeyman What’s wrong with the claim that they do? We may not be able to read/write continuously-variable quantities with infinite precision, but in, say, electronic analog computers, the values are real numbers, right? Or does “implement” imply reading/writing with perfect precision?

@BillHeyman Analog computers don't implement real numbers. We often *think* of them as doing that, but that's a superstition.

This is a disgraceful message. There was a soldier that I served with in the army that later was killed in Mosul, Iraq that said the reason he joined the military was because he believed that it was the greatest force for good that the world has ever known. He said the military not only taught its soldiers to be lethal but it also taught us to be compassionate and empathetic and care about not only the American people but also freedom loving and seeking people from all over the globe. This is the true warrior ethos that so many of us veterans know and love. I’m thinking about him a lot tonight and will be damned if sons of bitches like Trump and Hegseth will transform our great military into something resembling the Russians. His memory and service must not be in vein.

The future is analog (computation). CC @CoreyJMaley

@GordonBrianR I couldn’t agree more!

@langofmind I think this paper-reading norm is shifting. But setting that aside, it should be a work in progress. If something’s not clear, the person should be able to try to explain it differently, and change it. Same as in science, like if someone presents data in a way that is confusing.

I really don't understand this. Does this mean they can't express the ideas any other way? If someone asked for clarification, they can't explain it in other words? This seems necessarily false, given the expressive capacity of human language!

@PessoaBrain @JeffYoshimi @okdaniellle Agreed! 😉

@JeffYoshimi @CoreyJMaley @okdaniellle But the answer is clearly "no" 🤣

Is computation necessarily independent of its physical implementation? Now there’s a whole symposium on this question in the journal Mind & Language!

Zoe Drayson says “yes”: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/mi… I say “no”: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/mi… And Danielle Williams says “it depends on what you mean”: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/mi… Read all about it!