Wojtek Mamak

Wojtek Mamak

Philosopher and historian of science

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A list of all the posts and pages found on the site. For you robots out there is an XML version available for digesting as well.

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About

Philosophy in/of Cognitive Science + History of Data & Stats

Posts

Future Blog Post

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Blog Post number 4

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Blog Post number 3

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Blog Post number 2

less than 1 minute read

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Blog Post number 1

less than 1 minute read

Published:

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popular

Brain Scans Can’t Read Lies (In Polish)

Exposing the dangerous myth of technological lie detection—from fatal polygraph failures to the seductive allure of fMRI brain scans—and why truth is a social relationship, not a biological marker.

Did Anyone Win the Consciousness Derby? (In Polish)

The dramatic story of a 25-year bet between a neuroscientist and a philosopher, a multi-million-dollar experiment to settle the “hard problem” of consciousness, and the explosive academic fallout that followed.

portfolio

The Atlas of Quantification

Mapping the historical, social, and cognitive expansion of quantification across various domains of modern life (early-stage project)

Cold Calculation: The Promises of Computational Rationality (In Polish)

This book explores the historical and cognitive shift that led modern society to instinctively trust numbers, metrics, and statistics as the ultimate standard of objectivity. By tracing the evolution of quantification from Leibniz to the era of Big Data, it demonstrates how our growing reliance on ‘computational rationality’ fundamentally transformed how we produce knowledge, establish facts, and persuade others.

A Proof Above All. The Emergence of Modern Statistics as a Cognitive Shift in 1878-1931 Poland

This project examines how the rapid introduction of modern statistics in Poland (1878–1931) served not merely as a tool for social modernization, but triggered a profound ‘cognitive shift’ in public and scientific discourse. By analyzing key historical debates on the outskirts of mainstream European science. it demonstrates how an escalating ‘trust in numbers’ (of Ted Porter) fundamentally redefined the standards of rationality and fact-production, effectively becoming ‘reasoning by numbers’.

To Foresee and Forestall: The Quantitative Lens of Sustainability Sciences

This project investigates the overlooked role of computational techniques and quantitative methods in shaping knowledge production within sustainability sciences. By combining Integrated History and Philosophy of Science with digital humanities tools, it scrutinizes how statistical modeling and data circulation drive the field’s core ambition to ‘foresee and forestall.’

publications

Forsaking the False Gods: Philosopher’s Analytic Approach to Cyberpunk Literature

Published in A Roundtable on Interdisciplinary Literary studies (ed. Paweł Wojtas, Wyd. Artes Liberales UW, 2014

By combining insight from literary studies and metaethics, I argue that sci-fi literature should be understood as a controlled environment for though experiments testing the limits of ethical theories.

Recommended citation: Mamak, W. (2014). Forsaking the False Gods: Philosopher’s analytic approach to cyberpunk literature. In P. Wojtas (Ed.), A roundtable on interdisciplinary literary studies (pp. 81-90). Faculty of Artes Liberales, University of Warsaw.
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Meaning from Matching: How Representational Mechanisms Exploit Structural Similarity.

Published in THEORIA. An International Journal for Theory, History and Foundations of Science., 2025

We propose utilizing infomorphisms as introduced by Barwise and Seligman (1997) in order to explain the flow of semantic information via structural similarity. Repsresentational Similarity Analysis (RSA) used in neuroscience is used as an empirical demonstration of the empirical utility of our framework.

Recommended citation: Mamak, W., & Milkowski, M. (2025). Meaning from matching: How representational mechanisms exploit structural similarity. THEORIA. An International Journal for Theory, History and Foundations of Science. https://doi.org/10.1387/theoria.25171
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Information-based Explanations in Cognitive Science

Published in PhD Dissertation, Graduate School for Social Research, Polish Academy of Sciences, 2026

This dissertation defends a refined “neo-Information Processing Paradigm” (neo-IPP) to provide renewed support for an information-based, but mechanistically grounded foundation for cognitive science. By biologically anchoring representations in neuronal architectures and redefining how information is formatted and consumed, the theoretical framework rescues the necessity of internal representations from recent enactivist and interactivist critiques. Finally, empirical stress tests involving data compression, Representational Similarity Analysis, and generativity demonstrate that this informational approach remains indispensable for explaining flexible, high-level cognition.

Recommended citation: Mamak, W. (2026). Information-based Explanations in Cognitive Science, PhD Dissertation, Polish Academy of Sciences.
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Review of ‘The Cooperative Neuron - William Phillips’

Published in Philosophy of Science, 2026

Review of the monography “The Cooperative Neuron: Cellular Foundations of Mental Life” by William Phillips, published by Oxford University Press

Recommended citation: Mamak, W. (forthcoming). Review of "The Cooperative Neuron" - William Phillips, OUP
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What Does It Mean To Generate Information

Published in Draft (submitted to 'Synthese')

This paper is the first (to my knowledge) attemt to rigorously define generativity, understood as generation of contentfully novel information

Recommended citation: Mamak, W. (draft). On Generating Information
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Representing As Compressing. Bridging the Biological and Artificial Perceptual Systems

Published in Draft (submitted to 'Minds & Machines')

I argue for the need to conceptualize representations as information-compressor - a view that has surprisingly eluded the debates on representational properties.

Recommended citation: Mamak, W (draft). Representing As Compressing. Bridging the Biological and Artificial Perceptual Systems: A Case for Information-based Explanations in Cognitive Science.
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talks

‘Games as Moral Laboratories. Gamification of Moral Dilemmas Concerning Autonomous Vehicles’ [with B. Maćkiewicz]

Published:

This presentation explores the potential of using video games as moral laboratories to gather data on human ethical decision-making concerning autonomous vehicles. By analyzing the MIT Moral Machine project, the talk highlights how gaming environments can help solve the psychological research trade-off between experimental control and mundane realism. I argue that to effectively build machine-learning algorithms capable of ethical choices, researchers need vast amounts of data collected through bottom-up approaches. Ultimately, tools for ethical research must evolve beyond lightly gamified experiments into truly immersive and interactive games to ensure high ecological validity.

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‘Are Brains Computers? And Could That Give Us Mindreading?’

Published:

Delivered as a comprehensive lecture for the philosophy faculty at the National University of Mongolia, this presentation critically examines the Computational Theory of Mind (CTM) and its philosophical implications for modern neurotechnology. By analyzing the current state of neural decoding, Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCIs), and second-generation “lie detectors”, the talk separates genuine scientific progress from science-fiction media hype. Ultimately, it argues that while limited forms of neural readout have been achieved, true mindreading remains constrained by deep conceptual and empirical hurdles. This underscores why philosophers of mind still have a crucial, ongoing role in interpreting neuroscientific data and rigorously defining cognitive concepts.

teaching

Teaching experience 1

Undergraduate course, University 1, Department, 2014

This is a description of a teaching experience. You can use markdown like any other post.

Teaching experience 2

Workshop, University 1, Department, 2015

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