Uploaded August 2026 | Updated September 2026, 1 day ago
Marco Facchin on alternatives to computationalism in neuroscience, and philosophy of cognitive science.
Show notes: braininspired.co/podcast/1xx
Patreon (full episodes, archive, Discord, more): patreon.com/braininspired
Apple podcasts: itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/brain-inspired/id1428880766?mt=2
Spotify: open.spotify.com/show/2UZj8c8Ap5oc2gh2rJxLLe
Music by @dunovank
The Transmitter is an online publication that aims to deliver useful information, insights and tools to build bridges across neuroscience and advance research. Visit thetransmitter.org to explore the latest neuroscience news and perspectives, written by journalists and scientists.
Read more about our partnership: thetransmitter.org/partners
Sign up for the “Brain Inspired” email alerts to be notified every time a new “Brain Inspired” episode is released: thetransmitter.org/newsletters
To explore more neuroscience news and perspectives, visit thetransmitter.org.
Marco Facchin is a postdoctoral philosopher of neuroscience and cognitive sciences more broadly at the University of Antwerp.
He and his colleague Farid Zahnoun recently hosted a workshop called Beyond Neuro-computationalism with themselves and a handful of speakers, almost all of whom have been on Brain Inspired. In that workshop, they discussed many topics around this sort of forever ongoing reassessment in neuroscience and philosophy about how best to think about cognition, the role of brains, embodied, enactive, embedded, extended - known together as 4E cognition - how much biological detail matters for a good explanation, and so on. The talks from that workshop are online, and I'll link to them in the show notes. So today Marco and I discuss how that all went, and many of the topics and themes I just mentioned, plus his own work and ideas along those lines.
0:00 - Intro
3:30 - Beyond neurocomputationalism
14:02 - Vicente Raja motifs
17:58 - 4E cognition
32:36 - Philosophy and neuroscience
42:18 - The problem with predictive processing
48:56 - Role of AI in understanding brains and minds
54:05 - Metabolic constraints
1:07:58 - A philosopher's view of neuroscience
1:13:27 - A-lieving and AI
1:25:47 - AI consciousness
Marco Facchin on alternatives to computationalism in neuroscience, and philosophy of cognitive science.
Show notes: braininspired.co/podcast/1xx
Patreon (full episodes, archive, Discord, more): patreon.com/braininspired
Apple podcasts: itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/brain-inspired/id1428880766?mt=2
Spotify: open.spotify.com/show/2UZj8c8Ap5oc2gh2rJxLLe
Music by @dunovank
The Transmitter is an online publication that aims to deliver useful information, insights and tools to build bridges across neuroscience and advance research. Visit thetransmitter.org to explore the latest neuroscience news and perspectives, written by journalists and scientists.
Read more about our partnership: thetransmitter.org/partners
Sign up for the “Brain Inspired” email alerts to be notified every time a new “Brain Inspired” episode is released: thetransmitter.org/newsletters
To explore more neuroscience news and perspectives, visit thetransmitter.org.
Marco Facchin is a postdoctoral philosopher of neuroscience and cognitive sciences more broadly at the University of Antwerp.
He and his colleague Farid Zahnoun recently hosted a workshop called Beyond Neuro-computationalism with themselves and a handful of speakers, almost all of whom have been on Brain Inspired. In that workshop, they discussed many topics around this sort of forever ongoing reassessment in neuroscience and philosophy about how best to think about cognition, the role of brains, embodied, enactive, embedded, extended - known together as 4E cognition - how much biological detail matters for a good explanation, and so on. The talks from that workshop are online, and I'll link to them in the show notes. So today Marco and I discuss how that all went, and many of the topics and themes I just mentioned, plus his own work and ideas along those lines.
0:00 - Intro
3:30 - Beyond neurocomputationalism
14:02 - Vicente Raja motifs
17:58 - 4E cognition
32:36 - Philosophy and neuroscience
42:18 - The problem with predictive processing
48:56 - Role of AI in understanding brains and minds
54:05 - Metabolic constraints
1:07:58 - A philosopher's view of neuroscience
1:13:27 - A-lieving and AI
1:25:47 - AI consciousness
