Tomas Marvan 🇪🇺
NCCs & theories of consciousness, philosophy in neurobiology
Senior research fellow & head of the Dept. of Analytic Philosophy at the Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague
sites.google.com/view/tommarvan/homepage
- Reposted by Tomas Marvan 🇪🇺There are 10 days left to submit a proposal for the 6th Biennial EENPS Conference (Bucharest, 18–19 September 2026). Submission deadline: 15 February! Talks and symposia across all areas of philosophy of science are welcome ☀️ eenps2026.sciencesconf.org #philsci
- Imagine stimulating someone with 1,000 sounds below their perceptual threshold. Would they consciously hear anything? My hunch is no - but Leibniz argued yes: these ‘minute perceptions’ might aggregate and cross the threshold for conscious awareness together. A fascinating question for lab testing!
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- Reposted by Tomas Marvan 🇪🇺We'd love to welcome you to Barcelona for the next PLM Conference. Only hours left until submission deadline!! 🚨🚨 Plenary speakers: • Elisabeth Camp • Michael Martin • Kristina Musholt • Dan Zeman eventum.upf.edu/142984/plm8 @logos-group.bsky.social @biap.bsky.social @upf.edu
- Reposted by Tomas Marvan 🇪🇺Aesthetics as Philosophy of Perception is 10 year old!! And what better way to celebrate than to come to Prague in May for the 14th Ernst Mach Workshop on aesthetic attention, where I will be keynoting (with Paloma Atencia Linares). More info: philevents.org/event/show/1...
- Wait, "taxonandum" is not a word? Too bad...
- Call for abstracts - Ernst Mach Workshop on Aesthetic Attention w/ Paloma Atencia-Linares and Bence Nanay, deadline March 20 emw.flu.cas.cz?p=98
- Reposted by Tomas Marvan 🇪🇺Join us for the PLM Workshop: Traces and Engrams – Philosophical and Neuroscientific Perspectives on Memory Ruhr University Bochum (and Online) 18–20 Feb 2026 🔗 Register here: forms.gle/e4mW9MT3o2q8... #philsky #philsci #cogsky #neuroskyence
- Reposted by Tomas Marvan 🇪🇺This debate shows how fragile contrastive analysis (the statistics of comparing conscious with unconscious perception) really is. A possible response is to use an alternative statistical procedure to find NCCs/C-functions. I have developed such a procedure here: osf.io/preprints/ps...
- Reposted by Tomas Marvan 🇪🇺Is Signal Strength a Confound in Consciousness Research? today's blog post, critiquing @matthiasmichel.bsky.social and @hakwan.bsky.social -- link in comments
- Reposted by Tomas Marvan 🇪🇺Aaaand we're back!! Two Postdocs in Philosophy of Mind (one ot two years), Centre for Philosophical Psychology, University of Antwerp - to work with me! Deadline: March 20, 2026 More info on PhilJobs
- Reposted by Tomas Marvan 🇪🇺Lady, have I got news for you.
- Reposted by Tomas Marvan 🇪🇺#PhiMiSci published a new article in the special issue on structuralism: “Neurophenomenal structuralism and the role of computational context” by M. Paßler and A. Doerig. It aims to challenges local structuralist theories that overlook the content-constituting role of computational context.
- Our department as depicted by its current member, María Martínez-Ordaz
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- Look what I found in the mail today kudos @epiphenomenal.bsky.social #consci
- Reposted by Tomas Marvan 🇪🇺fMRI signals “up,” but neural metabolism might be going “down.” In our @natneuro.nature.com paper, we demonstrate that about 40% of voxels with robust BOLD responses exhibit opposite oxygen metabolism, revealing two distinct hemodynamic modes. rdcu.be/eUPO8 funds @erc.europa.eu #neuroskyence 🧵:
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- Happy to see that the Access Consciousness-Phenomenal Consciousness distinction is being reconsidered. My preferred solution is to get rid of the notion of "access consciousness" altogether but retain distinction btw "pure" and "mixed" states of PC. www.researchgate.net/publication/... #consci
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- Reposted by Tomas Marvan 🇪🇺2nd CFA for the 8th Scientific Understanding and Representation (SURe) annual workshop, which will take place May 27-29, 2026, at the IFIS PAN in Warsaw. Submission deadline: 20 January 2026. More info: shorturl.at/AUoye @philsci.bsky.social @eenphilsci.bsky.social @epsaphilsci.bsky.social
- Reposted by Tomas Marvan 🇪🇺This is friggin’ cool.
- New preprint! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... As you are silently reading this, you may experience a little voice in your head. How is it represented in the brain, and what purpose does it serve? Our new study answers the questions. Together with @adriendoerig.bsky.social and Radek Cichy.(1/8)
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- CfP: The Psychophysical Adventure. From Wolff to Behaviorism, eds. Chiara Russo Krauss and Giuseppe Guastamacchia www.disciplinefilosofiche.it/en/disciplin... Deadline Jan 16
- This is cool and right on the money. The right question vis a vis artificial systems, esp. LLMs, is not 'Do they have phenomenal states?' but 'Can they have some sort of self-awareness even without phenomena states?'
- Happy to announce this NEH Summer Institute at UC Berkeley, co-directed by @christiancoseru.bsky.social @alvanoe.bsky.social and yours truly @evanthompson.bsky.social www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~skneh/
- It just occured to me that we philosophers of mind are not so good in organising ourselves. Compare: philosophers of science have dedicated associations, conferences and a number of prominent journals. What have we got?
- I am told (by an expert) that the notion of unconscious inference in perception does not originally come from von Helmholtz but from .... Arthur Schopenhauer!
- Reposted by Tomas Marvan 🇪🇺New Special Issue of #HOPOS on Paul Feyerabend. Featuring a new transcription and critical overview of Paul Feyerabend’s unpublished manuscript “On the Responsibility of Scientists” as well as eight new papers. Link to the special issue: www.journals.uchicago.edu/toc/hopos/20...
- Reposted by Tomas Marvan 🇪🇺A picture is worth a 1000 words. The birth dose of hepatitis B vaccines in the USA eliminated perinatally acquired hepatitis B infection from over 20,000 cases a year before the vaccine was introduced to <20 cases a year. The gaslighting by the current members ACIP is obscene, unethical and cruel.
- Oxford Hume Forum – Appropriations of Hume - two b2b workshops at our Institute this Friday and Saturday more info here: www.flu.cas.cz/en/?view=art...
- A meeting with Victoria Bosch @initself.bsky.social this Thursday at our Institute. We will talk about the alignment of neural activity and LLM vector spaces. All welcome - on-site or online!
- Reposted by Tomas Marvan 🇪🇺We are pouring our heart into this conference to keep it high quality, supportive, and accessible (no registration fee!). Do consider it for your #philsci content broadly conceived. I also can't wait to see Bucharest in September.
- The EENPS 2026 call for papers & symposia is now open! 🔥🔥🔥 🗓 Submission deadline: 15 Feb 2026 Conference: 18–19 Sept 2026, Bucharest 😉 See the conference website for full details! eenps2026.sciencesconf.org
- Reposted by Tomas Marvan 🇪🇺🔥 Open PhD position at the Institute of Medical Psychology and Systems Neuroscience @uni-muenster.de! Join our team to investigate neural mechanisms of conscious and non-conscious processing of neutral and emotional stimuli using EEG, fMRI, or both simultaneously. tinyurl.com/phdmuenster
- Reposted by Tomas Marvan 🇪🇺I have a PhD project open for application about "Habituation of Paramecium, the “swimming neuron”" on the DIM C-Brains programme, for a PhD in Paris. Open for students with a Master outside France. Get in touch if interested! dim-cbrains.fr/en/phd-progr...
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- Hume in Dialogues: Alter a person’s brain ever so slightly, and you might transform a tyrant into a saint. Isn't this Phineas Gage in reverse - a full 100 years before the Gage incident? Hume new more of neuroscience than I tend to imagine he knew... #philmind #DavidHume #PhineasGage
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- The Latin nerd in me protests that the show should have been called "Unum", not "Pluribus" - apart from that, so far it's really very good!
- Reposted by Tomas Marvan 🇪🇺I'm very much looking forward to our "Mathematical Phenomenology: Synergies and Connections" workshop tomorrow! 👉 www.uni-bamberg.de/en/bamxi/res... #consci A huge thank you to our speakers and my co-organisizer @andrewyuanlee.bsky.social in advance!
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- Reposted by Tomas Marvan 🇪🇺We're very happy to announce another consciousness workshop in the famed snowy mountain cabin of the Austrian Alps! ❄️🦇 This year's theme is computational neurophenomenology (broadly defined) Applications are now open! www.uni-bamberg.de/en/bamxi/res...
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- Reposted by Tomas Marvan 🇪🇺Tomorrow, 22 November is the final of three meetings of PSA Around the World! A fantastic online program with plenary panel and parallel sessions. All welcome! Note: time zone is 3pm CET.
- Reposted by Tomas Marvan 🇪🇺Very exciting news to share! Me and @davidcolaco.bsky.social published a target article in BBs on metabolism and cognition! We argue that models of cognition should incorporate metabolism - either to evaluate if existing models are biologically plausible, or to generate new models (1/3)
- Reposted by Tomas Marvan 🇪🇺Today, two of our METIS members and PhD students present at the PSA @philsci.bsky.social Around the World Conference 💠 Losner Briones (@losnerbriones.com): "From Causal Inference to Distributive Outcomes" 💠 Marco Portillo (@raciondeser.bsky.social): "Biology as Evidence for the A-Theory of Time"
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- We start tommorrow at 3 PM CET with a panel highlighting outstanding contemporary contributions to the philosophy of science in Eastern and Central Europe.
- Reposted by Tomas Marvan 🇪🇺This is tomorrow — the first day last week was excellent. Look forward to tomorrow’s programme with thanks to @eenphilsci.bsky.social for the organisation.👇
- hot take: none of the major theories of consciousness (HOT, RPT, GNWT etc.) is "computational" so the current buzz around "computational functionalism" is getting progressively surreal. None of these th. claims that there is an algorith that will take you from unconscious contents to conscious ones.
- Reposted by Tomas Marvan 🇪🇺If you're interested in auditory neuroscience and doctoral work, reach out! I'm one of the mentors listed for CSD's (@ucf.bsky.social) new PhD program and would love to recruit a kind, curious, and enthusiastic new member of the conscious audition and scene analysis (CASA) lab. tinyurl.com/m9www9rc
- Happy and relieved that things run smoothly! See you next week.
- What a successful kick-off of the PSA around the World - Eastern Europe! So many super interesting talks. Kudos to @tmarvan.bsky.social, @magdalenamalecka.bsky.social, @philsci.bsky.social and @eenphilsci.bsky.social for such a great job at organizing it! Looking forward to the next one on 14 Nov.
- Reposted by Tomas Marvan 🇪🇺Looking forward to the upcoming PSA around the world, where I will be presenting joint work on trust in science and scientific understanding applied to the Ai context.
- Check out the schedule of the online conference PSA Around the World Eastern Europe (pm of Nov 6,14,22). A collaboration between @philsci.bsky.social and @eenphilsci.bsky.social it showcases #philsci from, about, and otherwise connected to the region. Wonderful names and titles, looking forward!
- Reposted by Tomas Marvan 🇪🇺@apotochnik.bsky.social makes the important point that the Vienna Circle had also a conception of the public role of their philosophy. Some great pictures and quotes on the slides. Is this material published, Angela? I wish I was taking screenshots. Thank you for a fantastic talk!
- Reposted by Tomas Marvan 🇪🇺Listening to the first panel on history of #philsci in CEE. Inspiring that so many colleagues around the world tuned in. A wonderful first talk by Marta Sznajder on Janina Hosiasson (her heartbreaking story below). Now Angela Potochnik on the role of Marie Neurath (Reidemeister) in the Vienna Circle
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- The 2026 edition of the Ernst Mach workshop will tackle the topic of aesthetic attention. Confirmed keynote speakers: Paloma Atencia-Linares and Bence Nanay @bencenanay.bsky.social
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- Reposted by Tomas Marvan 🇪🇺Tomorrow 6 November is the first of three meetings of the PSA Around the World! A fantastic online program with plenary panel and parallel sessions. All welcome! Note: time zone is 3pm CET.
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- Reposted by Tomas Marvan 🇪🇺New paper in the #PhiMiSci special issue on structuralism: “The incommensurability problem: A critique of phenomenal structuralism” by Miguel Á. Sebastián argues that phenomenal structuralism clarifies the relational nature of qualities but fails to explain shared aspects of qualitative experience.
- Bandara et al., Computational modelling shows evidence in support of both sensory and frontal theories of consciousness (we should learn to live with the idea that you sometimes need and sometimes DON'T need PFC to perceive things consciously)
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- A short piece in Techxplore on Ahsan's neurobiologically inspired transformer Co4 techxplore.com/news/2025-05...
- Reposted by Tomas Marvan 🇪🇺Ask a brain anything! This is incredible work led by Victoria Bosch @initself.bsky.social at the Kietzmann Lab @timkietzmann.bsky.social, developing interactive and flexible brain decoding. I'm excited to see where this goes next.
- Problems with responsible AI: Vulnerability, Explainability and Mindshaping -- Seminar with Tillmann Vierkant cetep.eu/problems-wit...
- Tillmann Vierkant: Doc Brown, AI and the Responsibility Gap soon at our Institute cetep.eu/tillmann-vie...
- Reposted by Tomas Marvan 🇪🇺🚨 Call for Papers! Join us for the PLM Workshop: Traces and Engrams – Philosophical and Neuroscientific Perspectives on Memory RUB, 18–20 Feb 2026 Apply by 30 November! Submit here 👉https://forms.gle/Gkjbvmb8Q8v9KRyS9 #philsky
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