Uploaded July 2022 | Updated September 2026, 9 hours ago
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Music by: The New Year: thenewyear.net
Show notes: braininspired.co/podcast/142
Cameron Buckner is a philosopher and cognitive scientist at The University of Houston. He is writing a book about the age-old philosophical debate on how much of our knowledge is innate (nature, rationalism) versus how much is learned (nurture, empiricism). In the book and his other works, Cameron argues that modern AI can help settle the debate. In particular, he suggests we focus on what types of psychological "domain-general faculties" underlie our own intelligence, and how different kinds of deep learning models are revealing how those faculties may be implemented in our brains. The hope is that by building systems that possess the right handful of faculties, and putting those systems together in a way they can cooperate in a general and flexible manner, it will result in cognitive architectures we would call intelligent. Thus, what Cameron calls The New DoGMA: Domain-General Modular Architecture. We also discuss his work on mental representation and how representations get their content - how our thoughts connect to the natural external world.
0:00 - Intro
4:55 - Interpreting old philosophy
8:26 - AI and philosophy
17:00 - Empiricism vs. rationalism
29:59 - Domain-general faculties
35:58 - Faculty psychology
43:18 - New faculties?
48:58 - Human faculties
54:15 - Cognitive architectures
59:26 - Language
1:04:53 - Beyond dichotomous thinking
1:11:18 - Lower-level faculties
1:17:53 - Animal cognition
1:22:05 - A Forward-Looking Theory of Content
Patreon for full episodes and Discord community:
patreon.com/braininspired
Free Video Series: Open Questions in AI and Neuroscience:
braininspired.co/open
Apple podcasts: itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/brain-inspired/id1428880766?mt=2
Spotify: open.spotify.com/show/2UZj8c8Ap5oc2gh2rJxLLe
Music by: The New Year: thenewyear.net
Show notes: braininspired.co/podcast/142
Cameron Buckner is a philosopher and cognitive scientist at The University of Houston. He is writing a book about the age-old philosophical debate on how much of our knowledge is innate (nature, rationalism) versus how much is learned (nurture, empiricism). In the book and his other works, Cameron argues that modern AI can help settle the debate. In particular, he suggests we focus on what types of psychological "domain-general faculties" underlie our own intelligence, and how different kinds of deep learning models are revealing how those faculties may be implemented in our brains. The hope is that by building systems that possess the right handful of faculties, and putting those systems together in a way they can cooperate in a general and flexible manner, it will result in cognitive architectures we would call intelligent. Thus, what Cameron calls The New DoGMA: Domain-General Modular Architecture. We also discuss his work on mental representation and how representations get their content - how our thoughts connect to the natural external world.
0:00 - Intro
4:55 - Interpreting old philosophy
8:26 - AI and philosophy
17:00 - Empiricism vs. rationalism
29:59 - Domain-general faculties
35:58 - Faculty psychology
43:18 - New faculties?
48:58 - Human faculties
54:15 - Cognitive architectures
59:26 - Language
1:04:53 - Beyond dichotomous thinking
1:11:18 - Lower-level faculties
1:17:53 - Animal cognition
1:22:05 - A Forward-Looking Theory of Content
