All invited to Philosophy Forum lecture on generative deep neural networks

Ohio University will host a special public lecture by respected author and philosophy professor, Cameron Buckner, on Thursday, Nov. 5.

Buckner, professor and the Donald F. Cronin Chair in the Humanities at the University of Florida, will discuss “Generative Deep Neural Networks as models of imagination, creativity, and planning” at the Annual Philosophy Forum Public Lecture.

All students, staff, and community members are invited to the free lecture, which will begin at 4 p.m. in Scripps Hall Room 111.

Buckner’s work primarily concerns philosophical issues which arise in the study of non-human minds, especially animal cognition and artificial intelligence. His most recent book, "From Deep Learning to Rational Machines" (Oxford University Press 2024) provides a framework for philosophical inquiry centered around machine learning as an approach to artificial intelligence.

In addition, he has produced publications such as “Empiricism without Magic: Transformational Abstraction in Deep Convolutional Neural Networks” (2018, Synthese), and “Rational Inference: The Lowest Bounds” (2017, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research)—the latter of which won the American Philosophical Association's Article Prize for the period of 2016–2018.

He received a PhD in Philosophy at Indiana University in 2011 and an Alexander von Humboldt Postdoctoral Fellowship at Ruhr-University Bochum from 2011 to 2013.

The Annual Philosophy Forum is sponsored by the Philosophy Department in the College of Arts & Sciences.