Meaning Lab
Podcast
#79: Randy Gallistel on Upsetting Neuroscientists (The Theory)
0:00
-43:53

#79: Randy Gallistel on Upsetting Neuroscientists (The Theory)

Cognitive Revolution | Randy has made a career out of making the neuroscientific community mad. We dive into his ideas.

This is Cognitive Revolution, my show about the personal side of the intellectual journey. Each week, I interview an eminent scientist, writer, or academic about the experiences that shaped their ideas. The show is available wherever you listen to podcasts.


Randy Gallistel has made a career (at least partly) out of making the neuroscientific community angry. He’s made broad, sweeping claims that cut to the core of the neuroscience of learning and memory. The problem with his claims is not that they’re broad and sweeping. The problem is that they might be right. In particular, he’s taking aim at neuroscience for not grappling with the symbolic nature of cognition. The neuroscience of memory, he argues, doesn’t even acknowledge the basis existence of “facts.” That is, there’s no neural theory of what a fact is, or how the brain might store it. In this episode, we talk about Randy’s claims in this space of topics. This was the second half of a much longer conversation. In a follow-up episode, I’ll publish the first half—which goes into the backstory of how Randy developed these ideas and the major figures who influenced him.

Share

Randy’s Three Books:

Books we talked about:

Papers we talked about:


Like this episode? Here’s another one to check out:

The New Kommers
#58: Jeff Hawkins on Tackling the Big Problems
Listen now (86 min) | This is Cognitive Revolution, my show about the personal side of the intellectual journey. Each week, I interview an eminent scientist, writer, or academic about the experiences that shaped their ideas. The show is available wherever you listen to podcasts…
Read more

I’d love to know what you thought of this episode! Just reply to this email or send a note directly to my inbox. Feel free to tweet me @CodyKommers. You can also leave a rating for the show on iTunes (or another platform). This is super helpful, as high ratings are one of the biggest factors platforms look at in their recommender system algorithms. The better the ratings, the more they present the show to new potential listeners.

Leave a comment

Also: If you’d like to unsubscribe from these weekly podcast emails, you can do so while still remaining on the email list that features my weekly writing. Thanks for following my work!

Discussion about this podcast

Meaning Lab
Podcast
Welcome to the Meaning Lab podcast. In each episode, I talk to a scientist, author, or artist about their approach to meaning-making — from language, to productivity, to writing, to travel. It's all fair game, as long as it gets us closer to understanding how we make sense of the world and our place in it.