Closer To Truth

By Closer To TruthSociety & Culture Education Philosophy

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Typical duration
66 min
per episode

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Closer To Truth episodes

April 14, 2021 The Mystery of Existence
COSMOS - Call all-that-exists “something.” Why is there “something” rather than “nothing”? The question haunts me. Why is there anything at all?

Featuring Colin McGinn, Peter van Inwagen, Philip Clayton, George Lakoff, and Dean Zimmerman.
27 min
April 07, 2021 Can Art Clarify the Mind-Body Problem?
CONCIOUSNESS - Can art inform the classic mind-body problem? While the relationship between mental activity and physical brain continues to baffle (especially consciousness), can the existence and process of art provide insight?
27 min
March 31, 2021 Does Information Create the Cosmos?
COSMOS - Of what is reality made? What are the most basic building blocks from which the cosmos is constructed? Particles? Mass-Energy? Forces? Fields? A new candidate is ‘Information’—‘IT from BIT’.

Featuring Seth Lloyd, Sean Carroll, Raphael Bousso, Alan Guth, and Christof Koch.
27 min
March 24, 2021 Big Questions in Free Will (Part 1)
CONSCIOUSNESS - What is free will? Do we have free will? The ‘Big Questions in Free Will’ project tackles these issues in a multi-year study. In Part I, scientists and philosophers research, test, and advance thinking on free will.

Featuring Alfred Mele, Galen Strawson, John Searle, Peter van Inwagen, Christof Koch, Uri Maoz, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Thalia Wheatley, and Peter Tse.
27 min
March 17, 2021 What Exists? (Part 2)
COSMOS - What’s the ultimate stuff of reality? What’s absolutely fundamental and non-reducible — the fewest number of categories within which every specific thing, of every general kind, can be classified?

Featuring Barry Loewer, David Albert, Luke Barnes, Raymond Tallis, and George Ellis.
27 min
March 10, 2021 Can the Cosmos Have a Reason?
COSMOS - Perhaps we cannot know the reason for the universe, if there is any. But is it even possible for the universe to have a reason? If yes, how would natural regularities and rules compare with some kind of goal or God?

Featuring Alexander Vilenkin, John Polkinghorne, Michael Shermer, Stephen Wolfram, and Stuart Kauffman.
27 min
March 03, 2021 Can Brain Explain Mind?
CONSCIOUSNESS - What is it about the brain that enables some scientists to claim they can explain mind? And what is it about scientific explanations that some philosophers reject?

Featuring Christof Koch, Rodolfo Llinas, Raymond Kurzweil, John Searle, and David Chalmers.
27 min
February 24, 2021 Where are All Those Aliens?
COSMOS - Most scientists assume that the universe must be populated with innumerable alien intelligences and civilizations—after all, we humans can't be so special. OK, so where are they, these "innumerable alien intelligences and civilizations"? How come there's zero evidence?

Featuring Jill Tarter, Douglas Vakoch, Frank Drake, Raymond Kurzweil, Francisco Ayala, Steven Dick, and David Brin.
27 min
December 30, 2020 Big Questions in Free Will (Part 2)
CONSCIOUSNESS - What is free will? Do we have free will? The ‘Big Questions in Free Will’ project tackles these issues in a multi-year study. In Part I, scientists and philosophers research, test, and advance thinking on free will.

Featuring Bertram Malle, Eddy Nahmias, Roy Baumeister, Patrick Haggard, Adina Roskies, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, and Alfred Mele.
27 min
December 11, 2020 What is the Mind-Body Problem?
CONSCIOUSNESS - How is it possible that mushy masses of brain cells, passing chemicals and shooting sparks literally are mental sensations and subjective feelings? They seem so radically different.

Featuring John Searle, Ned Block, J.P. Moreland, Marvin Minsky, and Colin McGinn.
27 min

About Closer To Truth

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Closer To Truth presents the world’s greatest thinkers exploring humanity’s deepest questions in Cosmos, Life, Consciousness, and Meaning. Engage new and diverse ways of thinking. Appreciate intense…