Episodes

  • Michael Wooldridge on the History and Future of AI

    Michael Wooldridge on the History and Future of AI
    May 12 2021

    AI research endured years of failure and frustration before new techniques in deep learning unleashed the swift, astonishing progress of the last decade.

    Michael’s recent book A Brief History of Artificial Intelligence explores what we can learn from this history, and examines where we are now and where the field is going.

    We discuss:

    • Why the Cyc project’s aim to encode ‘all human knowledge’ (!!) into a functioning AI got stuck, despite years of intense effort. 
    • What OpenAI’s GPT-3 language-generating AI system really knows about making an omelette.  
    • Why the next generation of AI systems may have to combine symbolic and non-symbolic approaches. 

    You can find NOUS on Twitter @NSthepodcast 
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    56 mins
  • Iris Berent on Innate Knowledge and Why We Are Blind to Ourselves

    Iris Berent on Innate Knowledge and Why We Are Blind to Ourselves
    Jan 28 2021

    The idea we have ‘innate knowledge’ seems quite wrong to most of us. But we do! And the intuitions leading us astray here also blind us to other aspects of human nature. 

    We are all ‘blind storytellers’. Professor Iris Berent reveals what misleads us, and what we are missing.

    18:55 Newborns have basic knowledge of the nature of objects. Eye-tracking experiments reveal that they have a grasp of the 3 c’s - cohesion, contact and continuity. 

    22:35 How do you get expectations about the nature of the world coded into genes? Do genes somehow give rise to computational ‘rules’ in the brain? Is my inability to grasp this illustrating Iris’ argument!? A deep mystery remains. 

    26:51 Birdsong is innate. So why not aspects of language and human object cognition?  

    28:20 “People know how to talk in more or less the sense that spiders know how to spin webs“ says Steven Pinker. 

    37:44 We learn a particular language from those around us - but some argue that the deep structural rules underlying all languages are innate. How does that work? Are there ‘rules’ of language somehow inscribed in neural structures? 

    47:39 Our intuitive biases to *dualism* and *essentialism* lead us to get lots of things wrong about human nature. 

    55:05 Why we go ‘insane about the brain’, and get weirdly impressed by neuroscience-y explanations, even when they are bad. 

    1:00:44 Why is our thinking about mental disorders so biased and confused? 

    ***

    Check out Iris Berent's book The Blind Storyteller here, or find her on Twitter @berent_iris

    To get in touch with Ilan or join the conversation, you can find NOUS on Twitter @NSthepodcast or on email at nousthepodcast@gmail.com
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    1 hr and 9 mins
  • Ann-Sophie Barwich on the Surprising Neuroscience of Smell

    Ann-Sophie Barwich on the Surprising Neuroscience of Smell
    Dec 20 2020

    Vision is the best understood sensory domain. But smell is turning out to be wonderfully strange and even more complex than sight.

    Dr Ann-Sophie Barwich joins me to explore ideas from her recent book Smellosophy. How is vomit related to parmesan cheese? Why do things smell so different depending on context? And what does smell teach us about the very nature of perception? 

    We explore:

    • Why the ‘promiscuity’ of smell doesn’t make it merely subjective. Smells can have a multitude of qualities or notes depending on the context and depending on the individual. But this variability has a functional basis. 
    • The weird neural representation of smell. The patterns of neural activation underpinning smell don’t follow the mapping principles followed by other sensory modalities. 
    • Why philosophers shouldn’t ignore the neural ‘plumbing’ of sensory systems. Evolved brain mechanisms underly the nature and function of the perceptual experience  - so they have to inform a philosophical account of perception.  

    Check out Dr Barwich’s book Smellosophy here, https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674983694, 

    her article in Aeon magazine here https://aeon.co/essays/why-might-it-be-easier-to-fool-your-eyes-than-your-nose.

    and another great piece in Nautilus http://nautil.us/issue/91/the-amazing-brain/our-mind_boggling-sense-of-smell 

    ***

    To get in touch with Ilan or join the conversation, you can find NOUS on Twitter @NSthepodcast or on email at nousthepodcast@gmail.com
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    49 mins
  • Matthew Cobb - Why Neuroscience Still Can’t Explain Much

    Matthew Cobb - Why Neuroscience Still Can’t Explain Much
    Nov 22 2020

    Despite multi-million dollar research programmes and impressive technical progress, neuroscience still can’t explain basic systems - like a maggot’s tiny brain or the grinding of a lobster’s stomach.

    Professor Matthew Cobb joins me to discuss the intellectual history of neuroscience,  his frank assessment of where we’re at, and how we can make progress.

    We cover:

    • How the idea of the brain as computer got started in the mid-C20th, and why it’s probably wrong. (10:53)
    • The challenge of the Grandmother Cell - and why some neurons selectively respond to Jennifer Aniston and Halle Berry! (21:00)
    • What have we really learnt from fMRI? Is it “just a bit crap”? (27:25)
    • Why the Human Brain Project was so controversial - and how its has spectacularly failed to live up to its own rhetoric (36:29).
    • Could a neuroscientists understand a microprocessor? We discuss the brilliant study by Eric Jonas and Konrad Paul Kording. (41:30)
    • The amazing achievement of artificial limbs (49:50)
    • How useful is the ‘predictive brain theory’ favoured by Anil Seth, Karl Friston and Andy Clark?
    • “Show me in a maggot!” Why we should get behind a Maggot Brain project. (58:40)

    Matthew’s book The Idea of the Brain has been shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford prize. Check it out here: https://bit.ly/2Ky6IOL

    ***

    To get in touch with Ilan or join the conversation, you can find NOUS on Twitter @NSthepodcast or on email at nousthepodcast@gmail.com
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    1 hr and 5 mins
  • Edward Bullmore on the ‘inflamed mind’ theory of depression

    Edward Bullmore on the ‘inflamed mind’ theory of depression
    Jan 30 2020

    Could depression be caused by inflammation?  Cambridge psychiatrist Ed Bullmore makes the case for his radical new theory, from his bestselling book The Inflamed Mind.

    Here's the breakdown...

    6:12 There’s a Cartesian divide in the way we practice medicine.  Professor Bullmore argues that we need to find more integrated ways of treating body and mind.

    8:52 The case of Mrs P who was suffering from arthritis and depression. But what was causing what?

    12:31 Is this theory a biomedical or psychosocial approach to depression? Professor Bullmore argues that it can bridge the two.

    18:07 There will never be just one theory for depression. 

    19:12 We chat through the enormous range of options on the DSM criterion for depression. Symptoms of depression can include losing weight and gaining weight, sleeping too much and sleeping too little. 

    21:50 Everyone has a 25% lifetime risk of depression - that’s 1 in every family.

    23:11 Why depression may be a bit like fever: one symptom with myriad underlying causes, all of which need different treatments.

    25:07 WHAT IS THE EVIDENCE? We finally get around to talking through the different sources of evidence for the Inflammatory theory of depression. Animal studies, longitudinal studies. 

    27:41 What is ‘inflammation’?

    31:00 Can you have inflammation without having any apparent illness or injury?

    35:40 Why you might want to try rubbing your auricles. Seriously, it’s nice.

    38:47 Is it time to ditch the serotonin theory of depression once and for all?

    44:22 Why did the big pharmaceutical companies start abandoning research into psychiatric drugs from 2010?

    51:20 New research into the depression-inflammation link is now underway: what’s going on and what are we hoping to find?

    54:52 Professor Bullmore shares his aspiration for the next 10 years: to integrate mental and physical healthcare in the way medical are trained and in the way they practice.

    The Inflamed Mind at Amazon

    Get in touch with Ilan or join the conversation! You can find NOUS on Twitter @NSthepodcast or on email at nousthepodcast@gmail.com
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    57 mins
  • Keith Frankish Exposes the Illusion of Consciousness

    Keith Frankish Exposes the Illusion of Consciousness
    Dec 1 2019
    ‘Qualia’, the subjective qualities of experience, are the bedrock of some theories of consciousness - but they are a fiction according to my guest in this episode. With great charm and passion, Keith Frankish makes the case for ‘illusionism’. 0:54 We kick off chatting about Keith’s humorous definition of a philosopher as ‘an expert in everything and nothing.’ That leads us to Wilfrid Sellar’s famous description of the aim of philosophy: “to understand how things, in the broadest possible sense of the term, hang together, in the broadest possible sense of the term.” 4:36 Keith argues that the strong concept of ‘emergence’ isn’t very helpful when thinking about complex systems like brains. It’s a reasonable assumption that the brain works just as predictably as computers, which we can build and control. 7:26 “I want to eliminate them” says Keith of phenomenal properties. And we’re off….! Keith introduces ‘qualia’ aka ‘phenomenal properties’. He avoids trotting out the usual account and first talks through some things we can all agree on. Qualia are the ‘something else’ that is supposedly happening while all the functional stuff is going on - they are supposed to be the subjective experience occurring alongside or in addition to cognition and behaviour. 11:30 I try to offer a concise definition of phenomenal properties, and Keith explains why he deliberately doesn’t like to start that way around: if you start with the common definition of qualia, you’ve already loaded the dice in favour of consciousness being a mystery! “You get captured by Cartesian gravity.” 17: 29 By defining phenomenal properties in the traditional way we “create an artefact that’s inexplicable - and then claim there’s a big mystery!” 22:50 Keith talks me through Dennett’s famous paper ‘Quining Qualia’, where he identifies 4 properties generally ascribed to qualia, and then goes on to show that there can’t possibly be such things! The four properties are: Private - They can only be known by you. Ineffable - You can’t really describe them, you can only note similarities and differences. Immediately or directly apprehensible - you know them with absolute certainty Intrinsic - they don’t represent anything external, they are part of the intrinsic nature of experience. 27:08 Keith makes an often neglected point: we generally describe our experiences as being properties of the world, not merely properties of our experience of the world. So the yellowness of a banana is not merely a feature of our experience, but of the banana! 28:08 What was ‘Galileo’s Error’? It’s the title of Philip Goff’s recent book which sets out his argument for panpsychism. Keith argues Galileo made a second, more significant error than the one Philip picks on: he plucks phenomenal properties out of the world and and places them in our minds. 29:50 We’ve been sidling up to it, now we tackle Keith’s ILLUSIONISM head on. Keith introduces the positive element of illusionism: the project of explaining why this way of thinking is so compelling. Possibly, Keith suggests, because it’s useful, maybe even adaptive.    He suggests that ‘phenomenal properties’ are really just packages full of the meanings of things, of the ways we respond to and interact with the world. Packaging them up in like this is a useful way of compressing the complexity of experience into discrete bundles. But the packages are just a useful cognitive trick - they aren’t mysterious metaphysical objects in themselves! 36:48 How does all of this this relate to the famous thought experiment about Mary the Neuroscientist? 41:17 Illusionism is a bit like watching a movie. What you’re actually seeing is a series of still images, but your visual system (mis)represents them as movement. Phenomenal properties are like the movement - they’re not really there, we just represent things as if they were. 43:00  All this talk of ‘representation’ leads me to wonder how much illusionism overlaps with the Higher Order Theory of consciousness, which was defended by the Joseph LeDoux in the last episode. Keith explain HOTs and how they are very similar in structure to his own theory, with one crucial difference.   48:30 Does illusionism suggest that we could create androids that think they’re consciousness in exactly the same way as we do?  51:40 What about the most common objection: how could is possibly be wrong about the nature of my own experience! If I’m feeling something, you can’t tell me I’m wrong about that. Keith responds that experience is the result of lots of lower level processes which get represented as being a certain way at higher levels; so you can be wrong.  54:40 THOUGHT EXPERIMENT: You’re going to have a painful operation and you have the choice of two anaesthetics: one of them will shut off the qualia, so you will have no phenomenal experience of pain BUT you will show all the ...
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    1 hr and 13 mins
  • Joseph LeDoux on the 4 Billion Year Journey to Our Conscious Selves

    Joseph LeDoux on the 4 Billion Year Journey to Our Conscious Selves
    Oct 27 2019

    Joseph LeDoux is a celebrated neuroscientist whose latest book is a work of quite staggering ambition - it traces the ‘Four Billion Year Story of How We Got Conscious Brains’. He reveals the profound similarities between us and bacteria, as well as offering a brilliant, overarching account of what makes us unique in the animal kingdom; how we developed the capacity for emotion and self-consciousness.

     

    2:27 LeDoux describes his career path – from a small town in Louisiana, via business administration to the legendary studies on split-brain patients he undertook with Michael Gazzaniga.  

     9:11 What are ‘split brain’ patients and why are they so intriguing? LeDoux describes one of the pioneering experiments he was involved with in the 70s and what they reveal.

    The split brain experiments may be tricky to understand from the audio alone! Here’s the experimental set up and results we’re describing...

    RIGHT hemisphere sees: SNOW SCENE

    LEFT hemisphere sees: a CHICKEN 

    *Then* participant then asked: pick the object associated with the image.

    Right hand (controlled by LEFT hemisphere) picks a CHICKEN CLAW

    Left hand (controlled by RIGHT hemisphere) picks a SNOW SHOVEL

    BUT the left hemisphere offers a surprising explanation for the behaviour of the left hand…

    12:48 Why do we need a ‘deep’ history that covers 4 billion years of evolution? LeDoux explains how his research kept drawing him deeper and deeper into evolutionary history as he traced the origins of the molecular mechanisms at work in our own brains.  

     22.16 We discuss the staggering fact that even bacteria have a basic capacity for learning and memory

    24:16 What do we have in common with the mother of all organisms - LUCA - (the Last Universal Common Ancestor). LeDoux argues that a lot of behaviour is driven by impulses related to survival, rather than the mental states (the thoughts and feelings) which accompany behaviour. Consciousness

    26:10 Do we feel emotion because of action, or do we act because of emotion? LeDoux takes issue with William James.

    29:00 Darwin was not such a great psychologist. LeDoux cautions against the tempting assumption that animals are conscious, while admitting tends to assume his cat is conscious.

    32:26 “Behaviour is not a tool of the mind, it’s a tool of survival.” This falls out of a deep history of the mind.

    36:25 To what extent we are still at the mercy of ancient instincts and impulses – how much more control does cognition afford us?

    What kind of consciousness might other animals have? LeDoux describes ‘autonoetic consciousness’, the ability for the self to be part of an experience, as distinctively human. He traces the evidence for different forms of consciousness in other animals and discusses brai based differences.

     39:56 LeDoux sets out the Higher Order theory of consciousness which he defends. Is it really just a search for the neural correlates of consciousness, or an explanation for phenomenal consciousness?  

    42:36 “Once we understand consciousness, we get emotions for free”

    44:30 What elements are required to have an emotion? LeDoux explains why he got a T-shirt printed with “No self, no fear”. 

    46:43 Are our conscious minds in the driving seat, or are they just monitoring the auto-pilot? LeDoux admits he’s ‘kinda waffley’ on free will (49:23) so I let it go… 

    49:41 What brain features are associated with having a developed self-schema, which other primates don’t?

    54.14 LeDoux surprises me with the suggestion that maybe emotion did not arise through natural selection!

    58:21 We discuss the book’s epilogue, starting with LeDoux’s evocative statement, “While autonoetic self-awareness is the enabler of our deepest problems, it is also our sole hope for a future.” The deep history tells us that species come and go. Bacteria will definitely make it through environmental catastrophe, but will we? 

    IN CONSCIOUSNESS WE MUST TRUST

    The Deep History of Ourselves: The Four-Billion-Year Story of How We Got Conscious Brains

    Follow NOUS on Twitter @NSthepodcast

    Email at nousthepodcast@gmail.com

     

     
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    1 hr and 2 mins
  • Patricia Churchland on How We Evolved A Conscience

    Patricia Churchland on How We Evolved A Conscience
    Sep 15 2019

    Patricia Churchland is the queen of neurophilosophy. She’s on fine form in this interview - charming, funny and occasionally savage as we range over her views on the nature of philosophy, the neuroscience and evolution of morality, and consider what’s wrong with the two major ethical traditions in western thought: utilitarianism and Kantianism. 

    1.43 - Is philosophy just a kind of science in its infancy - a ‘proto-science’ - or it is a special kind of conceptual analysis? Professor Churchland doesn’t pull her punches as she takes on the ‘language police’ approach to philosophy.

    8.03 Why so much philosophy is useless. “They make finer and finer distinctions, which nobody in the sciences gives a tinker’s damn about!”

    9.03 How epistemology is just ‘isms up the ying yang’!

    10.40 What good work is being done in philosophy, and what makes it good? Walter Sinnott Armstrong, Owen Flanagan and Julian Savulescu get nods of approval.

    12.00 We set to work discussing Professor Churchland’s book Conscience. Where does moral motivation come from in humans and other mammals?

    16.20 Why was the evolution of warm-bloodedness important in this story?

    18:00 The emergence of the cortex in mammals. Why the most sophisticated animals are the most helpless when they are born, and why it enables the most powerful learning. 

    20:40 Why the mammalian dependence on a caregiver is the origin of moral concern.

    23.20 What precursors to moral behaviour do we see in chimpanzees, wolves and rodents?

    28.40 What’s the difference between chimps and humans? It’s just more neurons! But, argues Prof Churchland, quantitative changes can beget qualitative differences in cognition and behaviour, as illustrated by advances in AI.

    33.00 The Purveyors Of Pure Reason - what’s wrong with utilitarianism - and why is the contemporary Effective Altruist movement ‘a bit of an abomination’? Prof Churchland takes exception to the idea that 10 homeless folk should matter to her more than her own daughter, and defends the importance of community as a valid source of moral motivation. She explains why Russian philosophers called utilitarianism ‘Lenin’s Math.’

    44.00 How can neuroscience and evolution theory tell us anything important about ethics? Prof Churchland tackles the naturalistic fallacy, and argues that the sciences can usefully constrain our theorising. She celebrates the contributions of Hume and Aristotle.

    47.32 Why morality is a lot harder than most moral philosophers think: it’s not just about figuring out some simple over-arching principles. Moral issues are really practical problems, not primarily exercises in rational reflection.   

    54.25 There are no moral authorities - but that shouldn’t cause us existential angst. We should be like the Buddhists and Confucians.

    TL:DR - Aristotle and Hume had it right: there are no moral authorities and no grand rules to live by. You gotta figure it out as you go along. 

    Follow NOUS on Twitter @NSthepodcast
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    1 hr and 1 min