cognitive science

#413 Michael Anderson: Understanding How The Brain Evolved

Jan 4, 2021

Dr. Michael Anderson is Rotman Canada Research Chair in Philosophy of Science, Core member at the Rotman Institute of Philosophy, and Core member at the Brain and Mind Institute at the University of Western Ontario. For 2012-13, Dr. Anderson is a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, at Stanford University. His primary areas of research include an account of the evolution of the cortex via exaptation of existing neural circuitry (the "massive redeployment hypothesis"); the role of behavior, and of the brain's motor-control areas, in supporting higher-order cognitive functions; the foundations of intentionality (the connection between objects of thought and things in the world); and the role of self-monitoring and self-control in maintaining robust real-world agency. More»
#395 Lisa Bortolotti: The Epistemic Innocence of Irrational Beliefs

Nov 23, 2020

Dr. Lisa Bortolotti is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Birmingham, affiliated with the Philosophy Department in the School of Philosophy, Theology, and Religion; and with the Institute for Mental Health in the School of Psychology. Her research is in the philosophy of the cognitive sciences. She writes about the limitations of human cognition and human agency, investigating faulty reasoning and irrational beliefs, delusions, confabulations, distorted memories, poor knowledge of the self, unreliable self-narratives, self-deception, inconsistencies between attitudes and behavior, unrealistic optimism, and other positive illusions. She is also interested in the philosophy of medicine and how health, wellbeing, rationality, and agency interact. She is the author of The Epistemic Innocence of Irrational Beliefs. More»
#373 Melanie Mitchell: AI, Complex Systems, Human Cognition, and Algorithms

Oct 2, 2020

Dr. Melanie Mitchell is the Davis Professor of Complexity at the Santa Fe Institute, and Professor of Computer Science at Portland State University. Her current research focuses on conceptual abstraction, analogy-making, and visual recognition in artificial intelligence systems. Dr. Mitchell is the author or editor of six books and numerous scholarly papers in the fields of artificial intelligence, cognitive science, and complex systems. Her book Complexity: A Guided Tour (Oxford University Press) won the 2010 Phi Beta Kappa Science Book Award and was named by Amazon.com as one of the ten best science books of 2009. Her latest book is Artificial Intelligence: A Guide for Thinking Humans (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux). More»
#353 Guy Madison: The Psychology of Music

Aug 10, 2020

Dr. Guy Madison is Professor at the Department of Psychology at University of Umeå, Sweden. Dr. Madison does research in Neuroscience, Genetics and Evolutionary Biology. More»
#351 H. Clark Barrett: Consciousness, Moral Judgment, and Cross-cultural Studies

Aug 3, 2020

Dr. H. Clark Barrett is Professor in the Department of Anthropology, and the Director of the Center for Behavior, Evolution and Culture at UCLA. He is a biological anthropologist specializing in evolutionary psychology, the study of the mind’s evolved mechanisms and processes. In his work he uses methods from anthropology and psychology to examine universals and variation in how thinking develops across cultures. He conducts field research among the Shuar, an indigenous culture in southeast Ecuador, as well as in Los Angeles. His research has focused on learning and conceptual development in several domains, including “theory of mind,” or the ability to make inferences about others’ thoughts and intentions, and learning about danger. He has also collaborated with a variety of anthropologists, psychologists, and other social scientists on a variety of topics ranging from infant-directed speech to the evolution of morality, and supervise graduate projects on the evolution of cognition. He’s the author of the book The Shape of Thought: How Mental Adaptations Evolve. More»
#350 Julian De Freitas: The Self, Morality, and Common Knowledge

Jul 27, 2020

Julian De Freitas is a cognitive scientist in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University. He studies social intelligence, with a focus on the self, strategic thinking, and ethics. More»
#349 Jean-François Bonnefon: Morality, Machine Behavior, and Moral Machines

Jul 20, 2020

Dr. Jean-François Bonnefon (PhD, cognitive psychology) is a Research Director at the French Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, affiliated to the Toulouse School of Economics, the Toulouse School of Management, and the Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse. He holds the Moral AI chair at the Artificial and Natural Intelligence Toulouse Institute, and is the president of the European Commission expert group on the ethics of driverless mobility. He conducts research on decisions which have a moral component, especially in the context of machine ethics and human-AI cooperation. His research appeared in 100+ academic articles, in outlets that include Science, Nature, and PNAS. More»
#348 Robyn Bluhm: Medicine, Psychiatry, And Neurosexism

Jul 13, 2020

Dr. Robyn Bluhm is an Associate Professor with a joint appointment in the Department of Philosophy and Lyman Briggs College at Michigan State University. Her research examines philosophical issues in neuroscience and in medicine, with a particular focus on the relationship between ethical and epistemological questions in these areas. She has written extensively on the philosophy of evidence-based practice and on the use of functional neuroimaging in psychiatry. She is a co-editor of Neurofeminism: Issues at the Intersection of Feminist Theory and Cognitive Science. More»
#342 H. Clark Barrett: On Mental Adaptations And Modularity Of Mind

Jun 8, 2020

Dr. H. Clark Barrett is Professor in the Department of Anthropology, and the Director of the Center for Behavior, Evolution and Culture at UCLA. He is a biological anthropologist specializing in evolutionary psychology, the study of the mind’s evolved mechanisms and processes. In his work he uses methods from anthropology and psychology to examine universals and variation in how thinking develops across cultures. He conducts field research among the Shuar, an indigenous culture in southeast Ecuador, as well as in Los Angeles. His research has focused on learning and conceptual development in several domains, including “theory of mind,” or the ability to make inferences about others’ thoughts and intentions, and learning about danger. He has also collaborated with a variety of anthropologists, psychologists, and other social scientists on a variety of topics ranging from infant-directed speech to the evolution of morality, and supervise graduate projects on the evolution of cognition. He’s the author of the book The Shape of Thought: How Mental Adaptations Evolve. More»
#338 Don Moore - Perfectly Confident: How To Calibrate Your Decisions Wisely

May 25, 2020

Dr. Don Moore is the Lorraine Tyson Mitchell Professor of Communication and Leadership at the Haas School of Business, and a member of the Management of Organizations group, at UC Berkeley. Prior to Haas, Dr. Moore served on the faculty at Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School of Business, where he held the Carnegie Bosch chair. His research interests focus on overconfidence, including when people think they’re better than they are, when they think they are better than others, and when they are too sure they know the truth. He’s the author of a new book, Perfectly Confident: How To Calibrate Your Decisions Wisely. More»