COGS Seminars provide a forum for internationally recognised researchers from all corners of cognitive science research to present and discuss their latest findings. All are welcome to attend.
Spring 2025
Tuesdays 16:00-17:30
| Date | Seminar | Venue |
|---|---|---|
|
Feb 5 |
The Thinking Game Abstract: The Thinking Game takes you on a fascinating journey into the heart of DeepMind, one of the world’s leading AI labs, as it strives to unravel the mysteries of artificial general intelligence (AGI).Inside DeepMind’s London headquarters, founder Demis Hassabis and his team are relentlessly pursuing the creation of AI that matches or surpasses human abilities on a wide range of tasks. Filmed over five years, the documentary puts viewers in the room for the pivotal moments of this quest, including the groundbreaking achievement of AlphaFold, a program that solved a 50-year grand challenge in biology. This film captures the exhilaration of historic breakthroughs like AlphaFold, the crushing weight of disappointment during setbacks, and the unwavering pursuit of knowledge that defines Demis’ commitment to scientific innovation. This film invites viewers to witness one of the most important scientific adventures of our time, exploring the potential of AGI to reshape our world. |
Chichester Lecture Theatre |
|
Feb 18 |
The cognitive foundations of the attention economy Abstract: Herbert Simon’s slogan that information abundance implies attention scarcity is generally taken to be foundational to the very concept of the attention economy, the economic system in which human attention is the scarce resource. My first aim in this talk is to assess how fitting Simon’s framework is for understanding attending in the attention economy. I will argue that it is not, and in the second half will draw upon predictive processing and other more action-oriented frameworks to better understand the challenges faced by human attention in the attention economy. |
online Passcode: 924265 |
|
Feb 25 |
Out-Of-Distribution Thinking: Philosophical Insights From Machine Learning Abstract: Why do people struggle to agree on metaphysical questions? In this talk, I propose the hypothesis that metaphysical reasoning in humans resembles "out-of-distribution" (OOD) generalisation in machine learning (ML). According to this hypothesis, our conceptual structures are well-enough aligned for practical purposes because there are strong external pressures (from embodied experience and social context) towards convergence in our everyday conceptual practices. Unfortunately, our conceptual practices in metaphysical domains are only weakly constrained by those forces; in consequence, sophisticated thinkers can disagree profoundly (and apparently irresolvably) on highly abstract conceptual questions. This hypothesis has pragmatic consequences for how we approach philosophy. In particular, if our concepts of "truth" and "reality" turn out to be underconstrained when applied in a metaphysical domain, then there is nothing to reliably anchor metaphysical disagreements to, at least if we see them as candidates for truth evaluation. This might incline some to eliminativism about metaphysics, but I argue instead for adopting a flexible, pluralistic approach. |
tba Passcode: 183366 |
|
Mar 4 |
Selves with distributed narratives Abstract: In this talk, I outline various ways in which artifacts are interwoven with autobiographical memory systems and conceptualize what this implies for the self. I first sketch the narrative approach to identity arguing that an important part of our identity is our (unfolding) life story, which, in turn, determines our present beliefs and desires, but also directs our future goals and actions. I then argue that our autobiographical memory is partly anchored in our embodied interactions with an ecology of artifacts in our environment. Lifelogs, photos, videos, journals, diaries, souvenirs, jewelry, books, works of art, and many other meaningful objects trigger and sometimes constitute emotionally laden autobiographical memories. Autobiographical memory is thus distributed across embodied agents and various environmental structures. To defend this claim, I draw on and integrate distributed cognition theory and empirical research in human-technology interaction. Based on this, I conclude that narrative identity is neither defined by psychological states realized by the brain nor by biological states realized by the organism, but should be seen as a distributed and relational construct. |
online Passcode: 068196 |
|
Mar 18 |
Impossible Languages and Possible Solutions Abstract: The success of Large Language Models draws attention to longstanding questions about the extent to which general learning mechanisms can account for human language acquisition. Those who advocate for strong innate biases point to the underlying shared properties of superficially diverse languages and argue that learning from the noisy, limited data that is available to children requires that the set of possible languages is substantially constrained. In other words, there are certain types of structure which are extremely difficult, if not impossible, for humans to learn. Recent experiments with LSTMs and Transformers show that certain types of "impossible language" are easily learnable by these language models. This suggests that they lack biases towards the structures typically found in natural languages, and so they are learning in a much wider hypothesis space than human language learners. This potentially explains why they require so much more data and yet continue to make surprising failures in generalising to novel inputs. This talk will discuss some of the experiments on impossible languages and potential solutions to the problems of constraining learning and obtaining stronger generalisation. |
Arts A 05 Passcode: 172549 |
|
Mar 25 |
Phenomenological control across multiple contexts Abstract: People have, to varying degrees, the ability to shape their subjective experience and to remain unaware that they are doing so. Historically, stable trait differences in this ability have been primarily investigated through direct verbal imaginative suggestions in the context of ‘hypnosis’. However, phenomenological control does not require imaginative suggestion or this specific social context and can be employed to pursue personal goals in a variety of situations. This talk presents some recent evidence supporting the proposal that phenomenological control can be employed to generate changes in experience in psychological experiments (e.g., to meet the social goal of being a ‘good participant’) and elsewhere (e.g., personal evidence of the apparent reality of one’s spiritual beliefs). |
Arts A 05 Passcode: 614864 |
|
Apr 1 |
Making Sense - Having Sense: On Concepts and Perceptions of Creative AI Abstract: Generative AI has entered our cultural practices with much force recently. People use it to write, think, discuss, get advice, even as tarot readers or oracles. Online systems can create realistic texts, images, videos and music that find their way as “content” on social media and other media channels. But there is an increased unease bubbling underneath this development: we find expressions of anger, offence and frustration as the artificial has begun to perform tasks that in our culture was seen as uniquely human: creativity. In this talk I will report on my experience of running a research project called Intelligent Instruments, where we develop musical instruments with AI. I will explore how people engage with notions of agency, intentionality, and understanding of those systems, even their emotional expression, and frame it in the context of strong AI, the symbol grounding problem and recent developments of embodied AI. |
Arts A 05 Passcode: 941352 |
|
May 6 |
Bridging scales: From subcellular processes to higher cognition Abstract: Most theories in cognitive neuroscience rely on an outdated view about how single neurons work. Many researchers think that such biological details do not matter. Here, I motivate the perspective that knowing more about biological details helps understand higher cognition. I will discuss how neurobiological details have changed my thinking about the mechanisms of consciousness and psychedelics. Attention to these details will also help us better understand how learning works and what type of learning we want to support in the education system. |
Online Passcode: 794866 |
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