

Many Minds
Kensy Cooperrider – Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute
Our world is brimming with beings—human, animal, and artificial. We explore how they think, sense, feel, and learn. Conversations and more, every two weeks.
Episodes
Mentioned books

Jun 17, 2020 • 1h 32min
How do chimps communicate?
Welcome back everyone! My guest on today's show is Dr. Cat Hobaiter. Cat is a Lecturer at the University of St Andrews, where she's part of research unit called the Centre for Social Learning and Cognitive Evolution. Cat spends a good chunk of her time, not in Scotland, however, but in Africa, where she conducts fieldwork on great apes. Her primary research site is in the Budongo Forest Reserve in Uganda. Along with her team there, she studies the social behavior of wild chimpanzees—in particular, how they communicate with each other. Much of our conversation centers on how chimps communicate through gesture—through bodily theatrics like stomping, drumming, clapping, somersaulting, and pirouetting. We discuss when chimps use these gestures, how they acquire them, and the thorny issue of what they mean. We also talk about how the gestures of chimpanzees compare to the gestures of other primates—including those bonobos, gorillas, and human toddlers. Cat and I do make our way over to other topics, too—we touch on some work she and her colleagues have done on the so-called "cooperative eye" hypothesis. We talk about the day-to-day of what it's like to do fieldwork on great apes. And we talk about how the chimps at Budongo are faring in these pandemic times. Not many of us get the opportunity to observe our closest primate cousins in the wild. I've certainly never been so lucky. But maybe the next best thing is to hear from someone who has—particularly someone like Cat who has spent more than a decade watching chimps closely, puzzling out their propensities, and generally just figuring out what they're up to. I learned a lot from this conversation—and had fun to boot. I think you will do. So without any more preamble, here is my conversation with Dr. Cat Hobaiter! A transcript of this interview is available here. Notes and links 2:45 – Learn more about the Budongo Forest Reserve here. 7:45 – Chimpanzees are "neophobic"—afraid of new things, like humans. As a result, primatologists spend a lot of time habituating chimps to their presence. 14:15 – An article about Jane Goodall's classic work on chimpanzees. 17:00 – An influential paper by Dr. Hobaiter and a colleague on the gestural repertoire of wild chimpanzees. 19:25 – Examples of many of the gestures we discuss are viewable at: http://greatapedictionary.ac.uk/video-resources/gesture-videos/ 20:55 – A study in which Dr. Hobaiter and a colleague examine how many of the anatomically possible gestures chimpanzees actually make use of. (A small percentage, it turns out.) 25:15 – An important early paper on the intentional use of gesture in orangutans. 32:00 – A paper by Dr. Hobaiter and a colleague reviewing the debate on where chimp gestures come from. An influential earlier book in these debates. 44:25 – An article by Kirsty Graham and colleagues on the bonobo gestural repertoire. See also a more recent article featuring a direct comparison between bonobos and chimpanzees. 48:05 – Comparing a chimpanzee pant hoot and a human impersonation of a chimpanzee pant hoot. 52:40 – A recent article in Aeon about the controversy surrounding chimpanzee pointing. 58:45 – A paper by Dr. Hobaiter and colleagues on possible cases of pointing in the wild by chimpanzees. 1:01:45 – A recent study by Dr. Hobaiter and colleagues comparing the gestures of apes with those of human toddlers. For a popular write-up of this article, see here. 1:13:10 – A 2007 study comparing the flexibility of gestures and vocalizations in apes. 1:16:20 – A 2019 paper by Dr. Hobaiter and colleagues investigating sclera and the "cooperative eye" hypothesis in chimps, bonobos, and humans. The original article proposing the hypothesis. 1:25:00 – A recent report on how primatologists are trying to keep primates safe during the pandemic. For news about the chimps at Budongo during the pandemic, see here. Cat Hobaiter's end-of-show recommendation: A special issue of Animal Cognition devoted to the study of primate gesture, edited by Erica Cartmill and Cat Hobaiter. The best way to keep up with Dr. Hobaiter is on Twitter: @NakedPrimate. You can learn more about her research at: http://greatapedictionary.ac.uk/about/ Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute (DISI) (https://www.diverseintelligencessummer.com/), which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted by Kensy Cooperrider, with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster, and Associate Director Hilda Loury. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd (https://www.mayhilldesigns.co.uk/). Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala (https://sarahdopierala.wordpress.com/). You can subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play—or wherever you like to listen to podcasts. We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: manymindspodcast@gmail.com.

Jun 3, 2020 • 20min
A mini minds with many voices
A warm welcome back! On this "mini minds" installment, we tried something a little different. We reached out to former participants in the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute (DISI)—including grad students, post docs, and faculty—to ask them a couple questions. What we've done for this episode put together a selection of their answers. Here were the questions: 1. What is a book you've read over the last couple months and would recommend—perhaps because it offered insight, comfort, context, or escape? 2. As we start to look beyond the pandemic, what are some changes you think—or hope—may be in store for academic research?These could be changes to your own practices or priorities as a researcher; to your subfield; to academic culture or practices generally; or to the role of science in society. A transcript of this episode is available here. Contributors Anna Corwin, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Saint Mary's College of California Nadya Vasilyeva, Postdoctoral Researcher, Princeton University/ UC Berkeley/ UCLA Brian Bruya, Professor of Philosophy, Eastern Michigan University Dániel Czégel, Graduate Student at Eötvös University, Budapest Hungary Amalia Bastos, Graduate Student in Comparative Psychology at the University of Auckland Jacob Foster, Founding Co-Director of DISI, Associate Professor of Sociology, UCLA Colin Conwell, Graduate Student in the Department of Psychology, Harvard University Alina Arseniev-Koehler, Graduate Student in the Department of Sociology, UCLA Efrén Cruz Cortés, Eberly Postdoctroal Research Fellow, Penn State University Chris Krupenye, Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Department of Psychology, Durham University (UK) Haleh Yazdi, Graduate Student in the Departments of Psychology, UCSD Book recommendations Man Is Not Alone, by Abraham Joshua Heschel At the Existentialist Café, by Sarah Bakewell Confucius Beyond the Analects, by Michael Hunter The Book of Life, edited by Stephen Jay Gould What is Life, by Lynn Margulus and Dorian Sagan The Sense of Style, by Steven Pinker Indiscrete Thoughts, by Gian-Carlo Rota What It's Like to Be a Bird, by David Sibley Why Fish Don't Exist, by Lulu Miller Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute (DISI) (https://www.diverseintelligencessummer.com/), which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted by Kensy Cooperrider, with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster, and Associate Director Hilda Loury. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd (https://www.mayhilldesigns.co.uk/). Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala (https://sarahdopierala.wordpress.com/). You can subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play—or wherever you like to listen to podcasts. We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: manymindspodcast@gmail.com. For updates about the show, follow us on Twitter: @ManyMindsPod.

May 20, 2020 • 1h 8min
Message to the stars
Greetings all—and a warm welcome back for another episode! Today's show is a conversation with Daniel Oberhaus. Daniel is a staff writer for Wired magazine and the author of the book Extraterrestrial Languages, published by MIT Press in 2019. The book charts the history of humanity's efforts at "interstellar communication"—our attempts to send messages to the stars in the hopes that alien life forms might receive them. Daniel and I talk about what these messages have contained, what forms they've taken, and the thinking and theories behind them. As you might guess, the history of interstellar communication is packed full of colorful episodes, charismatic characters, and quirky passion projects. But it's also full of deep questions—questions about the very nature of communication, about the essence of human language, about why minds think in the ways they do, about the origins of mathematics, about what can and should be said on behalf of our species—or our planet. Apologies for the long list, but there really is a lot in play here—we touch on a bunch of it but for the fuller story, I definitely recommend you check out Daniel's book. Thank you so much for joining us, as always. Enjoy and take care! A transcript of this interview is available here. Notes and links Most of the topics we discuss are treated in detail in Daniel Oberhaus's book, Extraterrestrial Languages. 2:38 – In 1960 the mathematician Hans Freudenthal published a book called Lincos: Design of a Language for Cosmic Intercourse. Here is Daniel's original article profiling Freudenthal and his ideas. 5:08 – There were a number of fanciful early schemes for communicating with aliens. For example, Carl Friedrich Gauss, better known for his contributions to mathematics, reportedly proposed building a large right triangle as a kind of message. 10:30 – The Arecibo message was devised and sent by Frank Drake and Carl Sagan in 1974. 11:25 – Two important acronyms in this world: the search for extraterrestrial life (SETI) and messaging extraterrestrial life (METI). 14:40 – In case you need a refresher on what an exoplanet is—as I did—here is a place to start. 20:38 – For more on the idea of Mathematical Platonism, see this article in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. A few alternatives to Mathematical Platonism have been proposed, including the theories of Embodied Mathematics put forward by George Lakoff & Rafael Núñez in Where Mathematics Comes From. 27:00 – A brief survey of the different numeral base systems used in across human languages. 28:30 – For a bit about John Lilly, read his obituary or see this article on his role in SETI. Lilly promoted the idea that communicating with aliens might be akin to communicating with dolphins. 30:50 – Another analogy: decoding alien messages might be like decoding ancient scripts like Linear B. 34:20 – For more on the dolphin whistle research we discuss, see here. 36:16 – Noam Chomsky's idea that recursion is a key—perhaps the key feature—of human language is controversial. For discussion of this claim—and an equally controversial rejection of it—see this article. 37:50 – For examples of the communication abilities of Koko the gorilla, see here. Koko died in 2018. 44:45 – See here for more about the Pioneer Plaques, and here for more about the Golden Voyager Record. 48:30 – Here is a list of the musical recordings that were included on the Golden Voyager Record. 51:20 – For more about the Cosmic Call messages, see here. 53:10 – The controversial Pioneer Plaque image. 56:49 – The website for METI International. 1:03:30 – The 2015 announcement of a $100 million donation to fund SETI research is discussed here. Daniel Oberhaus's end-of-show recommendations: Intelligent Life in the Universe, by I.S. Shklovskii and Carl Sagan Communication with Extraterrestrial Intelligence, edited by Carl Sagan The best way to keep up with Daniel is on Twitter @DMOberhaus. His personal website is: http://www.danieloberhaus.com/ Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute (DISI) (https://www.diverseintelligencessummer.com/), which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted by Kensy Cooperrider, with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster, and Associate Director Hilda Loury. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd (https://www.mayhilldesigns.co.uk/). Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala (https://sarahdopierala.wordpress.com/). You can subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play—or wherever you like to listen to podcasts. We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: manymindspodcast@gmail.com. For updates about the show, follow us on Twitter: @ManyMindsPod.

May 6, 2020 • 11min
Me, my umwelt, and I
This podcast explores the concept of umwelt theory, which suggests that every species has its own unique way of sensing and experiencing the world. It discusses Jacob von Uexküll's influential work and its continued relevance today. The podcast delves into examples of animals and their private worlds, as well as the interface theory of perception, which emphasizes the variation of reality and meaning across species.

Apr 22, 2020 • 1h 19min
Born to be cultured
Welcome back! Today's episode is a conversation with Cristine Legare. Cristine is a Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research focuses on how our minds allow us to do culture—to learn it, to create it, and to pass it on. Among other things, we talk about cumulative culture and the human capacities for imitation and innovation. We talk about the power of ritual and about thorny questions surrounding human uniqueness. We touch on work that Cristine and her team have done in Vanuatu. And we muse about the problems facing psychology—in particular the so-called WEIRD problem. For those who may not know, this is the issue of psychologists unduly focusing on a thin slice of humanity—namely, Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) folks. I found Cristine's perspective on this issue—and really on all these issues—super insightful. Without further ado, here is my conversation with Dr. Cristine Legare. Hope you enjoy it! And please be well. A transcript of this episode is available here. Notes and links 2:35 – An article about "cumulative culture." 3:25 –There is debate about whether any non-human animals show evidence of cumulative culture. Here is one review of the topic. 6:30 – A paper by Dr. Legare and a colleague on imitation and innovation as "dual engines of cultural learning." 10:53 – One of Dr. Legare's studies examining children's flexible understanding of when to imitate faithfully. 13:07 – A popular article about the puzzle of why chimps in Zambia started to put grass in their ears. The primary research was reported here. 14:25 – The literature on so-called "over-imitation" is substantial. Here is a recent review. 19:14 – An encyclopedia article by Dr. Legare and a colleague on ritual. See also their paper on the social functions of rituals. 25:45 – Here is the original paper report on the "illusion of explanatory depth." 28:42 – A paper on how a culture's history of migration affects how often its members smile. 34:45 – This article describes the puzzle of chimpanzees throwing rocks at trees. 40:18 – This paper by Joe Henrich and colleagues is the source of the acronym WEIRD—that is, Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic—and is one of the most cited and discussed papers in the last decade of psychology. Here is a recent popular article on the current state of the WEIRD problem. Finally, see this paper by Dr. Legare and colleagues about the WEIRD bias in developmental psychology. 49:00 – Dr. Legare has done a number of studies in Vanuatu, a culturally diverse archipelago in the South Pacific. 49:32 – A study by Dr. Legare and colleagues comparing triadic interactions in the US and in Vanuatu. 55:51 – Barbara Rogoff, mentioned here, has done a range of important work on learning styles across cultures. See, for example, her book, The Cultural Nature of Human Development. 59:55 – A study by Dr. Legare and colleagues showing that adults in the US and Vanuatu differ in how they evaluate the intelligence of conforming vs non-conforming children. Dr. Legare's end-of-show recommendations: A good summary of some of the research we discussed by Dr. Legare and her colleagues can be found here. See also the following books: The Secret of Our Success (2018), by Joe Henrich Cognitive Gadgets (2018), by Cecilia Heyes A Different Kind of Animal (2018), by Robert Boyd Minds Make Societies (2018), by Pascal Boyer The best ways to keep up with Dr. Legare's research: http://www.cristinelegare.com/ Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute (DISI) (https://www.diverseintelligencessummer.com/), which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted by Kensy Cooperrider, with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster, and Associate Director Hilda Loury. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd (https://www.mayhilldesigns.co.uk/). Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala (https://sarahdopierala.wordpress.com/). You can subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play—or wherever you like to listen to podcasts. We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: manymindspodcast@gmail.com. For updates about the show, follow us on Twitter: @ManyMindsPod.

Apr 8, 2020 • 20min
Artificial Olympians
Welcome to our next 'Mini Minds' installment! As I mentioned before, we're still figuring out what we want this format to be, so you can expect a bit of tinkering over the coming months. Our first mini was a short audio blogpost of sorts, and today's mini is a mini interview. I chatted with Matt Crosby. He's a postdoc at Imperial College London and has been spearheading a super cool project called the Animal AI Olympics. (If you recall, this is something that Marta Halina and I touched on briefly in our last episode, but it seemed intriguing enough to merit a longer look.) The basic idea behind the project, as Matt and I discuss, was to have a bunch of artificial agents—submitted by teams from around the world—compete in a gauntlet of tests. The wrinkle was that these weren't the kinds of tests usually given to artificial systems. They were tests usually given to animals: some involved avoiding obstacles; others involved remembering locations; still others involved solving physical puzzles, like the celebrated "trap tube" task. This all sounds like good fun—and no doubt it was. But there were also deeper motivations for the project. Matt and I talk about those. We also talk a bit about how the contestants performed, about whether he was impressed, and about his team's plans for the next iteration of the Olympics, to be held in 2021. Enjoy the mini—and thanks for listening! A transcript of this interview is available here. Notes and links 2:23 – An article by Dr. Crosby and colleagues about the Animal AI Olympics and the motivations behind it. 3:45 – An article about recent successes in getting AIs to play Atari games. 5:45 – For details about the Animal AI environment and the types of tasks use, see here. 8:28 – A little more about object permanence. 12:48 – Variants of the "trap tube" task have been widely used in animal cognition research. Here's an example of a paper using it in apes, and here is a video of a dog attempting this kind of task. 14:15 – A blogpost announcing the results of the competition. For more info about the Animal AI Olympics, check out: http://www.animalaiolympics.com/ For more about Matt Crosby and his work, see: https://www.mdcrosby.com/ @MaCroPhilosophy Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute (DISI) (https://www.diverseintelligencessummer.com/), which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted by Kensy Cooperrider, with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster, and Associate Director Hilda Loury. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd (https://www.mayhilldesigns.co.uk/). Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala (https://sarahdopierala.wordpress.com/). You can subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play—or wherever you like to listen to podcasts. We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: manymindspodcast@gmail.com. For updates about the show, follow us on Twitter: @ManyMindsPod.

Mar 25, 2020 • 56min
Can artificial minds think creatively?
Welcome back! Our guest today is Marta Halina, a University Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge. Marta's current focus is the philosophy of artificial intelligence. We discuss what philosophers can contribute to AI. We talk about AlphaGo and its stunning defeat of one of the world's most celebrated Go champions. We puzzle over whether artificial minds can think creatively. (We also touch briefly on a project that Marta has been involved in called the Animal AI Olympics. Consider this part of our conversation a teaser—our next 'mini' episode is going to take a longer look at this initiative.) Marta brings a distinctive perspective to all these issues. As you'll hear, she's worked on great ape minds as well as artificial minds, and she's run scientific experiments in addition to her philosophical work. As always, thanks for listening—we hope you enjoy the conversation. A transcript of this interview can be found here. Notes and links 8:45 – The key distinction between artificial general intelligence (AGI) and artificial narrow intelligence (ANI). 10:25 – AlphaGo's victory against Go master Lee Sedol. 12:00 – More about Go. 15:57 – Lee Sedol announces his retirement. 17:00 – An article by Marta Halina and colleagues describing the Animal AI Olympics. (Stay tuned for our upcoming "mini" episode about this!) 23:05 – Demis Hassabis is the CEO and co-founder of DeepMind. You can listen to an interview with him here. 26:45 – On the idea that creative ideas are new, surprising, and valuable, see this collection of essays. 28:45 – A blogpost on DeepMind's system AlphaFold, part of its effort to develop AIs that support scientific discovery. 30:32 – For Margaret Boden's distinction between P-creativity and H-creativity, see this article (or this book). 35:45 - An article about Stephen Hawking's 2016 presentation at the launch of the Leverhulme Center for the Future of Intelligence. 38:54 – A paper by Henry Shevlin and Marta Halina in which they argue that, in the context of AI, "rich psychological terms" ought to be used with care. 46:15 – The mission statement of the Society for the Philosophy of Science in Practice. Dr. Halina's end-of-show recommendations: What is This Thing Called Science? (1976), by Alan Chalmers The Meaning of Science (2016), by Tim Lewens Kinds of Minds (2008), by Daniel Dennett The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on Artificial Intelligence The best ways to keep up with Dr. Halina's research: https://www.martahalina.com/ @MartaHalina Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute (DISI) (https://www.diverseintelligencessummer.com/), which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted by Kensy Cooperrider, with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster, and Associate Director Hilda Loury. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd (https://www.mayhilldesigns.co.uk/). Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala (https://sarahdopierala.wordpress.com/). You can subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play—or wherever you like to listen to podcasts. We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: manymindspodcast@gmail.com. For updates about the show, follow us on Twitter: @ManyMindsPod.

Mar 11, 2020 • 10min
The monkey in the mirror
Welcome to our second episode—and our very first installment of Mini Minds! Mini Minds is a short, snack-sized format that will alternate with our longer conversations. Today's Mini is a primer on the mirror self-recognition test. This is a classic paradigm in comparative psychology—and, as we'll see, it continues to generate both results and criticism. Thanks for listening, and we hope you enjoy the mini format! A text version of this "mini" is readable here. Notes and links 2:58 – Wilhelm Preyer's observations on ducks. 3:15 – Wolfgang Kohler's The Mentality of Apes. 3:33 – The original mirror test study by Gordon Gallup. 6:09 – Frans de Waal's 2019 paper, offering a gradualist perspective on self-awareness in animals. 6:45 – Alexandra Horowitz's 2017 paper, innovating an olfactory version of the mirror test for use in dogs. 8:56 – A recent study correlating brain structures in chimps with their performance on the mirror test. 9:05 – A recent study correlating chimps' performance on the mirror test with other measures of their social cognition abilities. The research surrounding the mirror test is truly vast—much vaster than could be covered in a short episode. Here are a couple recommendation for further reading: A recent Aeon essay by Virgina Morell A popular article about a recent finding of mirror self-recognition in the wrasse fish Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute (DISI) (https://www.diverseintelligencessummer.com/), which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted by Kensy Cooperrider, with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster and Associate Director Hilda Loury. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd (https://www.mayhilldesigns.co.uk/). Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala (https://sarahdopierala.wordpress.com/). You can subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, or wherever you like to listen to podcasts. We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: manymindspodcast@gmail.com. For updates about the show, follow us on Twitter: @ManyMindsPod.

Feb 26, 2020 • 1h 9min
Of bees and brains
Welcome to our first full-length episode! The guest for our inaugural interview is Dr. Andrew Barron, a neuroethologist at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. (In case you're wondering what a neuroethologist is, don't' worry, we get to that.) Andrew specializes in honey bees. He studies their minute brains, their natural behaviors, and their remarkable cognitive abilities. We probably don't have to tell you that bees are cool. Humans have been fascinated with them for centuries. But one thing that makes Andrews's work especially cool is how it sheds light on questions that are bigger than bees—questions about how minds work, about how brains support conscious experience, about learning and memory, and a lot else. As you may have heard, bees have seen better days—like so much else in our natural world, they're starting to show signs of stress. We talk about that, too. Thanks for listening, and we hope you enjoy the conversation. A transcript of this interview can be found here. Notes and links 7:30 – A very brief introduction to honey bee dance communication. A more in-depth introduction. 11:15 – A paper by Andrew Barron and Colin Klein on consciousness in the animal kingdom, including which species have it and which don't. See also this popular write-up. 12:11 – A paper by Bjorn Merker about the role of the midbrain in supporting conscious awareness. 26:30 – A connectome is a map of neural connections. 32:00 – A popular article about new 3d maps of the insect brain. A new pre-print that includes some of the latest maps of the Drosophila brain. 33:55 – Thomas Nagel's classic paper, 'What is it like to be a bat?' 38:30 – Bees are able to navigate using polarized light. 41:00 – A popular article by Andrew Barron on bees' ability to discriminate between art styles. Barron's demonstration builds on the earlier studies by Judith Reinhard and colleagues. 54:05 – A recent paper that summarizes our understanding of cephalopod brains. 54:40 – The word "sessile" means fixed in one place, like a barnacle. 56:35 – A paper by Andrew Barron and colleagues on bees and environmental stress. See also this popular article covering similar issues. Dr. Barron's end-of-show recommendations: Honeybee Democracy (2010), by Thomas D. Seeley The Wisdom of the Hive (1996), by Thomas D. Seeley The Evolution of the Sensitive Soul (2019), by Simona Ginsburg and Eva Jablonka Other Minds (2017), by Peter Godfrey-Smith The best way to keep up with Dr. Barron's research: http://andrewbarron.org/ Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute (DISI) (https://www.diverseintelligencessummer.com/), which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted by Kensy Cooperrider, with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster, and Associate Director Hilda Loury. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd (https://www.mayhilldesigns.co.uk/). Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala (https://sarahdopierala.wordpress.com/). You can subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, Overcast—or wherever you like to listen to podcasts. We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: manymindspodcast@gmail.com. For updates about the show, follow us on Twitter: @ManyMindsPod.

Feb 15, 2020 • 4min
Introducing 'Many Minds'
Welcome to 'Many Minds,' a podcast about the curious ways that mind manifests—in humans, animals, and machines. We spotlight the findings, theories, and phenomena that are changing how we think about minds. A text version of this episode is available here.


