u/Open-Grapefruit47

Hi, I'm an undergraduate student due to start applying to grad programs in the summer -fall.

I apologize in advance for the verbosity in the post, just want to provide proper context.

I was originally interested in theoretical neuroscience when I first started college, I then wrote a research proposal and my old supervisor was willing to let me conduct research under their mentorship.

I then realized that I had a series of behavioral experiments with no way to make sense of what I was interested in. I discovered the work of the decision making researchers and taught myself the methods (mathematical modeling of behavioral data, the theoretical underpinnings of the rise to threshold models in neuroscience and psychology) and went on a side quest to look at the rich history of the work, and discovered cognitive science by accident and then fell in love with it's interdisciplinary approach. You could pull inspiration from all sorts of fields ranging from movement ecology to robotics.

When I transferred to my current institution to finish my undergrad, I discovered our humanities dept and found two of our Philo profs who had academic backgrounds in philosophy of mind and cog sci. I felt more at home in the humanities dept rather than our behavioral science dept, as I felt professors encouraged students to ask questions instead of saying "that's just the way it is". I felt more like a student than a person taking classes.

I have been talking to my intro to Philo professor about some ideas I have. I believe the stagnation of progress in majority of neuroscience and cognitive science comes from its roots in cybernetics. That is, they abuse the tools of cybernetics while not having an explicit awareness of the goals of early cyberneticists (human use of human beings, treat organisms as technology to improve your own), and I believe that most of neuroscience, and most of modern day cognitive psychology is conceptually confused. The most successful cognitive theories always end up being applied to areas like, military optics or autonomous robotics.

I have entertained the thought of doing a dissertation on this, I'd like to argue A). Most of modern neurocognitive sciences are conceptually confused due to the abuse (and misinterpretation) of cybernetic methods and metaphors B). It was always about human machine interactions and science of technology, so this is why the above translation of successful cognitive theories is more immediately translated to technology C). Human machine interactions are an important and useful area of inquiry, we can develop useful technology like better collision alert systems for elderly drivers, or less harmful social media apps. D). The centralized, and disembodied view of intelligence is how we end up with centralization of technology that can cause harm and inequality (see, LLMs, vs the Roomba).

That said, I enjoy empirical research, I enjoyed getting to conduct experiments and I am enjoying my current supervised research with my current supervisor as well. In my area of research, we can do all sorts of cool stuff now. Like have participants

Walk on treadmills (https://www.eneuro.org/content/12/5/ENEURO.0343-23.2025)

do game like experiments with more complex experimental apparatuses and haptic feedback (https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10841631)

do useful applied human machine interactions research (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36877467/) or drive in driving simulators.

I am also severely lacking in philosophy, I am not used to thinking about things from a "birds eye view" and become frustrated when things have no straightforward answer, I am not "good" at philosophy and I'm worried if I have better success focusing on doing empirical work

That said, I have grown incredibly frustrated with my field, and I believe a lot of us are conceptually confused, and I believe doing work on the history of cybernetics and examining why I believe the neuro cognitive sciences are conceptually confused is a worthwhile endeavor.

Would it be easy to get back into empirical work if I do a master's of science, in say experimental psych and do a PhD in philosophy? I know there are philosophers like Tony Chemero and Luis favela who do empirical research, but I'm also wondering about the consequences of doing a PhD in philosophy after an Msc in experimental psychology.

What utility is there in pursuing the line of inquiry I mentioned, and will doing a PhD in philosophy harm my chances of going into say, industry positions (like video game research) should I choose to do my PhD in philosophy after an MSc? My philosophy professor says that I won't have to give up cognitive science if I do my PhD in philosophy, given it's interdisciplinary nature so he encouraged me to pursue my passions and felt the above line of inquiry (or something like the history of cybernetics) would be a worthwhile endeavor.

I am a bit torn, id appreciate some insight into what a PhD in philosophy looks like, and if it would be easy to translate something like my PhD topics into the empirical world of research.

Thanks.

Some of the authors(heathcote) are well known in the decision making sphere, so I'm wagering that they can throw their weight around well, just honestly surprised that the authors took this direction as a response to current discourse in cognitive science (wagenmakers, ratcliffe and chemero, Turvey and colleagues had a line of beef going back to around 2004).

Haha the timing is funny I just started working on a presentation for our philosophy club arguing that A). Most of cognitive psychology and neuroscience abuses the metaphors and tools of cybernetics B). A large portion of cognitive science, neuroscience and modern psychology is conceptually confused, the methods of cybernetics was always about technology and communication, as well as human machine interactions. C) cognitive science must devote a portion of itself to the study of humans and our interactions with machines (andy clarks humans as natural cyborgs view comes to mind, so does cyborg anthropology)

Seems like the cognitive psychologists are wising up now

https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/86GA9

Bout time lol.

Hi,

So I'm an undergrad and an aspiring PhD candidate in cognitive science.

I fell in love with research at my old community college, where me and my supervisor had 0 resources and all I had was a rough proposal and some ideas. We managed to pull off a completed study by the skin of our teeth, and I got to conduct experiments, learned to use computational methods and enjoyed learning about the history of my topic while doing the literature review after getting results.

I'm currently at a proper research university, and I had a well thought out proposal, I developed my model fitting pipeline and data analysis pipeline in python, and did a pretty exhaustive review of the literature (about 200 or so papers), I put it all in writing (I went and formalized my hypothesis, done the power analysis and listed all the methods and software I was using to run the behavioral experiments) and started reaching out to professors and went through this weird process where professors would say "sounds neat, but this person would be a better fit reach out to them".

I went through 9 or so professors then gave up and reached out to one of our lecturers who teaches data science, comp sci and ML courses and he was willing to take me on right out the get go.

That said, we have still had to deal with the bureaucracy of our university a LOT.

I have citi training in a few areas, and we have all the resources we need to run our experiments (my supervisor reached out to his dept head and they said they could just give us money to pay participants, our behavioral science dept has been weird about letting my supervisor direct the project because I'm not a math, computer science or physics student).

It's frustrating because I NEED these experiences as a student to make up for areas I'm weaker in( I have a rough academic history, I'm a lazy student) to be a competitive candidate for grad school.

My supervisor finds it ridiculous that he has to jump through so many hoops to properly mentor me as a supervisor.

That said, we just analyzed some open data sets and I got to present at our statistics and ml seminar, so I'm happy they are batting for me even though it feels like our behavioral science department would rather just have me stop being obnoxious.

Is this something that is ubiquitous in academia, having to eat shit?

I'm starting to lose passion for things because of how hard it's been to get the opportunities I need to succeed.

I have enjoyed working with my supervisor, it's neato to see how our work is applicable to areas like comp sci or engineering/ robotics, but dealing with the brick walls constantly being put up seems frustrating.

Thanks