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Brains encode information in representations that perform computations to make predictions, right? No, no, no, and no. That's Romain Brette's response to those ill-conceived notions that neuroscience relies on to try to explain how cognition works. He uses more words to do that in his new book, The Brain, in Theory, which we discuss today. In the book Romain breaks down how many of the common metaphors we use don’t withstand scrutiny, and he offers alternative approaches more in line with what we know about how biological entities work. Along those lines, we discuss his ongoing work understanding the cognition of a single celled organism, the paramecium, and what his views might mean for artificial intelligence. This is a long episode, but there's a lot more to be explored in the book, so I recommend you read it. If you're a patreon supporter, I coaxed Romain back on for another 45 minutes to go deeper on his thoughts about how anticipation is the core of cognition, how predictive processing accounts like active inference miss the mark, and a few other topics.
Romain's website.
The Brain, in Theory.
0:00 - Intro
4:01 - The Brain, In Theory
7:10 - Influences
13:11 - Process metaphysics
18:39 - Observer vs system perspective
21:24 - Information in the brain?
22:56 - Why this book?
29:52 - Computations in the brain
52:14 - Behavior is not a computation
1:07:20 - Paramecium cognition
1:22:02 - How should neuroscientists proceed?
1:29:09 - Cognition as collective behavior of autonomous cells
1:36:47 - Constraints, causes, and laws
1:52:36 - Hopes for the book to influence the field
1:55:04 - Thoughts about AI
2:02:13 - Computation and goals
2:08:17 - Anticipation vs prediction