The Cognition Project

Tom Griffiths

How can we study the mind, something we can never see or touch? This podcast tells the story of how psychologists, neuroscientists, computer scientists, linguists, and philosophers worked together to create a new science of the mind. Each episode is an interview with one of the people who played a role in this process, providing an oral history of cognitive science. Created and hosted by Tom Griffiths, professor of psychology and computer science at Princeton University.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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22 episodes
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Avg 47 min
English

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#21
Yesterday · 38 min
Simple Ideas: Daniel Kahneman
The Cognition Project is an oral history of cognitive science. Created and hosted by Tom Griffiths, the head of Princeton’s AI Lab and a professor of psychology and computer science. This episode is from an interview with Daniel Kahneman from 2015. Kahneman helped to spread the approach cognitive psychologists had developed to other fields, leading to the creation of behavioral economics. Kahneman received the Nobel Prize in Economics for these contributions in 2002. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
#20
August 14 · 41 min
Mapping Relations: Dedre Gentner
The Cognition Project is an oral history of cognitive science. Created and hosted by Tom Griffiths, the head of Princeton’s AI Lab and a professor of psychology and computer science. Dedre Gentner’s research has helped us understand how people form analogies, and the broader importance of relations in human cognition. Her story of becoming a cognitive scientist features some of the people we have already met, like Donald Norman, as well as an eyewitness account of the first cognitive science conference. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
#19
July 31 · 58 min
A Strange Loop: Douglas Hofstadter
The Cognition Project is an oral history of cognitive science. Created and hosted by Tom Griffiths, the head of Princeton’s AI Lab and a professor of psychology and computer science. This episode is about Douglas Hofstadter who wrote the book Godel Escher Bach. The book was responsible for many contemporary cognitive scientists entering the field. His own journey passes through music, physics, mathematics, linguistics, and computer science in a way that really reflects the interdisciplinary nature of cognitive science. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
#18
July 16 · 1 hr 32 min
The Power of Metaphor: George Lakoff
The Cognition Project is an oral history of cognitive science. Created and hosted by Tom Griffiths, the head of Princeton’s AI Lab and a professor of psychology and computer science. This episode is about George Lakoff, who was excited and then disappointed by Chomsky’s approach to linguistics. Lakoff ended up taking a new approach to understanding language: cognitive linguistics. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
#17
July 10 · 44 min
Centers and Peripheries: Eleanor Rosch
The Cognition Project is an oral history of cognitive science. Created and hosted by Tom Griffiths, the head of Princeton’s AI Lab and a professor of psychology and computer science. One of the central questions of cognitive science is how we represent the world around us, organizing it into categories. Eleanor Rosch offered a new perspective on this question, providing clear evidence that categories have fuzzy boundaries that cannot easily be captured using logical rules. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
#16
July 2 · 56 min
Applied Cognitive Science: Donald Norman
The Cognition Project is an oral history of cognitive science. Created and hosted by Tom Griffiths, the head of Princeton’s AI Lab and a professor of psychology and computer science. This episode is about Donald Norman, who had a rich career that crossed from the East to the West Coast, from engineering to psychology, and from academia to industry. Norman also played a key role in the creation of the Cognitive Science Society, its first conference, and the first cognitive science department. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
#15
June 27 · 32 min
Learning About Reasoning: Phil Johnson-Laird
The Cognition Project is an oral history of cognitive science. Created and hosted by Tom Griffiths, the head of Princeton’s AI Lab and a professor of psychology and computer science. Our story of the origins of cognitive science has so far been focused in the United States, but a similar awareness of new ways to study the mind was growing on the other side of the Atlantic, in the United Kingdom. In this episode we hear from Phil Johnson-Laird who witnessed some of the early days of British cognitive psychology and developed his own influential account of human reasoning. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
#14
June 18 · 47 min
Models Without Dogma: Ewart Thomas
The Cognition Project is an oral history of cognitive science. Created and hosted by Tom Griffiths, the head of Princeton’s AI Lab and a professor of psychology and computer science. This episode is with Ewart Thomas, who offers a final perspective on the mathematical psychology scene at Stanford as well as a bridge to the early days of cognitive psychology in England. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
#13
June 12 · 17 min
More to Memory: Elizabeth Loftus
The Cognition Project is an oral history of cognitive science. Created and hosted by Tom Griffiths, the head of Princeton’s AI Lab and a professor of psychology and computer science. This episode is about Elizabeth Loftus, who grew disenchanted with mathematical psychology and went on to create a new field, studying the psychology of eyewitness testimony. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
#12
April 8 · 21 min
A Student of Memory: Richard Shiffrin
The Cognition Project is an oral history of cognitive science. Created and hosted by Tom Griffiths, the head of Princeton’s AI Lab and a professor of psychology and computer science. This episode is with Richard Shiffrin, who offers a student’s perspective on the cognitive psychology scene at Stanford in the 1960s. He worked with Gordon Bower and Richard Atkinson and went on to become one of the most influential researchers studying human memory. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
#11
April 1 · 1 hr 16 min
Seeking Universal Laws: Roger Shepard
The Cognition Project is an oral history of cognitive science. Created and hosted by Tom Griffiths, the head of Princeton’s AI Lab and a professor of psychology and computer science. This episode is about Roger Shepard, who created innovative methods to let us peek inside people’s heads. He ultimately used those tools to propose psychology’s first universal law. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
#10
March 27 · 48 min
From Rats to Hypotheses: Gordon Bower
The Cognition Project is an oral history of cognitive science. Created and hosted by Tom Griffiths, the head of Princeton’s AI Lab and a professor of psychology and computer science. Continuing to trace the development of cognitive psychology, this episode tells the story of Gordon Bower. At a time when psychologists still had to demonstrate that this new approach to their science could offer insights that went beyond merely studying behavior, Bower devised clever methods for revealing the complexity of human minds. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
#9
March 18 · 18 min
Computers and Memory: Richard Atkinson
The Cognition Project is an oral history of cognitive science. Created and hosted by Tom Griffiths, the head of Princeton’s AI Lab and a professor of psychology and computer science. This episode is with Richard Atkinson, who did groundbreaking work exploring the structure of human memory before going on to be the Director of the National Science Foundation, Chancellor of UC San Diego, and ultimately President of the entire University of California. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
#8
March 11 · 1 hr 7 min
Heading West: Dan Slobin
The Cognition Project is an oral history of cognitive science. Created and hosted by Tom Griffiths, the head of Princeton’s AI Lab and a professor of psychology and computer science. This episode is the story of Dan Slobin, who offers both a perspective on the East Coast origins of cognitive science and how it evolved on the West Coast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
#7
March 6 · 1 hr 24 min
Chomsky, Chimpsky, and Beyond: Tom Bever
The Cognition Project is an oral history of cognitive science. Created and hosted by Tom Griffiths, the head of Princeton’s AI Lab and a professor of psychology and computer science. This episode is with Tom Bever, who took a circuitous path that led him through several important events in the cognitive revolution. Bever ultimately became an influential psycholinguist in his own right. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
#6
February 26 · 1 hr 2 min
From Wugs to Chatbots: Jean Berko Gleason
The Cognition Project is an oral history of cognitive science. Created and hosted by Tom Griffiths, the head of Princeton’s AI Lab and a professor of psychology and computer science. This episode is the story of Jean Berko Gleason, who was a student at Harvard just as new ideas about studying language and the mind were emerging. Her work revealed that even young children seem to internalize the rules of language, an idea that we are going to revisit when artificial neural networks come into the story. Those artificial neural networks power today’s AI chatbots, but Berko Gleason remains skeptical. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
#5
February 19 · 55 min
Listening to Babies: Lila Gleitman
The Cognition Project is an oral history of cognitive science. Created and hosted by Tom Griffiths, the head of Princeton’s AI Lab and a professor of psychology and computer science. In this episode, we get the chance to hear the story of Lila Gleitman – one of the researchers who did foundational work in understanding how young children come to acquire language. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
#4
February 19 · 35 min
Generating Grammars: Noam Chomsky
The Cognition Project is an oral history of cognitive science. Created and hosted by Tom Griffiths, the head of Princeton’s AI Lab and a professor of psychology and computer science. This the story of Noam Chomsky, whose work on language was arguably one of the key components of the “cognitive revolution” that led to the creation of cognitive science. The interview took place in 2013. More recently, Chomsky has been in the news for his interactions with Jeffrey Epstein. If you would prefer to skip this interview you can hear a different perspective on the same period from the influential psycholinguist Lila Gleitman in the next episode. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
February 12 · 13 min
Book Excerpt: The Laws of Thought
This bonus episode of The Cognition Project features the introduction of The Laws of Thought, Tom Griffiths's new book. The interviews in The Cognition Project were used as part of the research for the book, which tells the story of the quest for a mathematical theory of the mind, from the cognitive revolution to modern AI. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
#3
February 11 · 1 hr
The Origin of a Cognitive Scientist: Susan Carey
The Cognition Project is an oral history of cognitive science. Created and hosted by Tom Griffiths, the head of Princeton’s AI Lab and a professor of psychology and computer science. This episode is with Susan Carey, who worked with Jerome Bruner both as an undergraduate and a graduate student before going on to make her own deep contributions to our understanding of how children’s minds work. As a consequence, she had a front row seat to the earliest days of cognitive science and helped it grow through her interactions with psychologists, linguists, and philosophers. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Showing 1–20 of 22 episodes