Nature & Nurture #111: Dr. Jonas Kaplan - The Neuroscience of Narrative

Dr. Jonas Kaplan is a cognitive neuroscientist and faculty at USC's Brain and Creativity Institute, where he co-directs the the Dornsife Cognitive Neuroimaging Center. His research focuses on consciousness, the self, belief, empathy, social relationships, action perception and creativity. In this reunion episode, episode, we discuss active inference and predictive processing theories of consciousness, panpsychism, philosophy of mind, and the difference between interoception and exteroception. We further consider the evolutionary psychology of self-awareness, empathy, status seeking, and sexuality, and how these translate to modern technology and mental health. Lastly, we discuss neuroscience and its connection to film and literature, which Jonas discusses on his new podcast Float, and how this connects to cross-cultural analyses of religion, archetypes, and recent debates between Sam Harris and Jordan Peterson on the psychology and utility of religion. Timestamps: 0:01:30 Active inference and predictive processing 0:04:24 Skepticism about applying active inference to interoception 0:08:33 Consciousness, affect, and emotion 0:11:40 Dualism in neuroscience and philosophy of mind 0:13:41 The role of the body in consciousness and empathy 0:16:33 The limitations and challenges of artificial intelligence and empathy 0:20:09 The relationship between consciousness, narrative, and selfhood 0:26:23 Panpsychism and self-organizing systems 0:30:40 Postmodernism and categorical distinction 0:34:04 Pragmatism in statistics and narrative 0:38:08 How the brain recognizes narrative structure 0:40:32 Storytelling in hunter gatherers 0:42:04 Sexual selection, dominance, and creativity 0:49:24 The self as a collection of sub-personalities 0:52:43 Social comparison, stress, and mental health 0:55:08 Sexual selection, social status, and the crowdsourcing of wisdom 1:02:31 The psychology of dating apps 1:07:24 The potential impact of different app designs on mental health 1:09:32 The immersive experience of storytelling and audience engagement 1:13:34 The intersection of neuroscience, film, and storytelling 1:17:03 Black Mirror, technology, and memory 1:20:00 The value of forgetting and the nostalgia bias in memory 1:21:49 The cultural evolution of religion 1:25:24 Archetypes and their usefulness 1:30:40 Pantheism and mathematical Platonism 1:35:24 The necessity of axioms in science