All Episodes

#212 Donald Hoffman: The Case Against Reality; Perception, Consciousness, And Reality

Aug 5, 2019

Dr. Donald Hoffman is a Professor in the Department of Cognitive Sciences at the University of California, Irvine. Dr. Hoffman studies consciousness, visual perception and evolutionary psychology using mathematical models and psychophysical experiments. His research subjects include facial attractiveness, the recognition of shape, the perception of motion and color, the evolution of perception, and the mind-body problem. He has co-authored two technical books: Observer Mechanics: A Formal Theory of Perception, and Automotive Lighting and Human Vision. He is just about to release a new book, The Case Against Reality: Why Evolution Hid the Truth from Our Eyes. More»
#206 Derek Leben: Ethics for Robots, Contractarianism, Self-Driving Cars

Aug 3, 2019

Dr. Derek Leben is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh, Johnstown. He works at the intersection of ethics, cognitive science, and emerging technologies. In his new book, Ethics for Robots, Dr. Leben argues for the use of a particular moral framework for designing autonomous systems based on the Contractarianism of John Rawls. He also demonstrates how this framework can be productively applied to autonomous vehicles, medical technologies, and weapons systems. More»
#211 Catherine Wilson: Epicureanism, Atomism, Materialism, And Modernity

Aug 2, 2019

Dr. Catherine Wilson was until recently Professor of Philosophy at the University of York, and is now teaching part-time at the City University of New York, and also a writer. She holds degrees in Philosophy from Yale, Oxford and Princeton and has taught in the USA, Canada, and Germany. Dr. Wilson teaches and writes in the history of modern philosophy and on early modern science and also works in the areas of ethics and aesthetics with a special interest in the evolution of morality and the science behind visual experience. She’s the author of books like Moral Animals: Ideals and Constraints in Moral Theory, Epicureanism at the Origins of Modernity, and Epicureanism: A Very Short Introduction, and Metaethics from a First Person Standpoint: An Introduction to Moral Philosophy. More»
#210 Dwight Read: Cultural Kin Systems, And The Evolution Of Human Sociality

Aug 1, 2019

Dr. Dwight Read is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles). His research interests include mathematical anthropology, the structural logic of kinship terminologies, theory of social organization, cultural evolution, and archaeological classification. He’s the author of books like Artifact Classification: A Conceptual and Methodological Approach, Human Thought and Social Organization: Anthropology on a New Plane, and How Culture Makes Us Human: Primate Social Evolution and the Formation of Human Societies. More»
#205 Laura Cabrera: The Philosophy of Human Enhancement

Jul 31, 2019

Dr. Laura Cabrera is Assistant Professor in the Center for Ethics and Humanities in the Life Sciences and the Department of Translational Science & Molecular Medicine at Michigan State University. Dr. Cabrera's interests focus on the ethical and societal implications of neurotechnology and neuroscientific advances. She has been working on projects that explore the media coverage and the attitudes of the general public toward pharmacological and novel neurosurgical interventions for the treatment of psychiatric disorders. She has also worked on the public perceptions towards the use of different modalities of neuromodifiers for enhancement purposes, as well as their normative implications. Her current work focuses on the ethical and social implications of environmental changes for brain and mental health. She’s also the author of the book Rethinking Human Enhancement: Social Enhancement and Emergent Technologies. More»
#204 Carlos Fiolhais: A Ciência, o Método Científico e a Pseudociência

Jul 30, 2019

O Dr. Carlos Fiolhais é Professor Catedrático de Física na Universidade de Coimbra. Foi professor convidado em universidades de Portugal, Brasil e Estados Unidos. É autor de mais de 30 livros de divulgação científica. Participou em inúmeros encontros, conferências e ações promovendo a ciência e a cultura científica. Criou o portal de ciência www.mocho.pt. Ganhou em 1994 o Prémio União Latina/JNICT de tradução científica. Ganhou o Globo de Ouro de Mérito e Excelência em Ciência de 2004 atribuído pela televisão SIC e pela revista Caras em 2005. Em 2017, ganhou o Grande Prémio Ciência Viva Montepio. Investiga Física da Matéria Condensada e Ensino e História das Ciências. More»
#203 Gordon Ingram: Children's Social Development, And Cyberpsychology

Jul 29, 2019

Dr. Gordon Ingram is Associate Professor of Psychology at Universidad de los Andes, Colombia. He teaches undergraduate courses in Developmental Psychology, Cyberpsychology, and Psychology of Language, and a graduate course in Cognition and Culture. He supervises several graduate students researching children’s social and moral development. His research centers on children’s and adolescents’ everyday communication online. More»
#209 Cecilia Heyes: Cultural Evolutionary Psychology, Imitation, And Mindreading

Jul 29, 2019

Dr. Cecilia Heyes is a Professor of Psychology and Senior Research Fellow in Theoretical Life Science at All Souls College, University of Oxford. She was trained as an experimental psychologist at University College London (UCL, 1978-84). As a Harkness Fellow in the United States (1984-6), she studied evolutionary epistemology with Donald T. Campbell and philosophy of mind with Daniel Dennett. She’s done experimental work, initially in animal cognition and later in cognitive neuroscience, and more recently her group developed and tested an associative account of the origins of imitation and the mirror neuron system. She’s the author of Cognitive Gadgets: The Cultural Evolution of Thinking. More»
#202 Arlindo Oliveira: O Presente e o Futuro da Inteligência Artificial

Jul 27, 2019

O Dr. Arlindo Oliveira é Presidente do Instituto Superior Técnico e Professor do Departamento de Engenharia Informática, onde tem desenvolvido trabalho no contexto de sistemas digitais, síntese lógica, algoritmia, aprendizagem automática e bioinformática. Doutorou-se em Engenharia Electrotécnica e Ciências da Computação (EECS) pela Universidade da Califórnia em Berkeley, em 1994. É um dos maiores especialistas portugueses em Inteligência Artificial, e publicou em 2017 o livro “The Digital Mind: How Science Is Redefining Humanity”, pela MIT Press, existindo também a sua versão em português, pela IST Press. More»
#201 Mark Leary: The Self, Self-presentation, And Social Status

Jul 26, 2019

Dr. Mark Leary is Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at Duke University. Dr. Leary has taught at Denison University, the University of Texas at Austin, and Wake Forest University, where he also served as department chair. His research interests focus on social motivation and emotion, and on processes involving self-reflection and self-relevant thought. He has written or edited 12 books and over 200 scholarly articles and chapters. He was the 2010 recipient of the Lifetime Career Award from the International Society for Self and Identity and a 2015 co-recipient of the Scientific Impact Award from the Society for Experimental Social Psychology. More»