Mind Chat

Andy Clark is a leading and incredibly influential philosopher and cognitive scientist. Among other things, Andy has done pioneering work on predictive processing and the extended mind thesis. Here Keith and Philip discuss with Andy his most recent book 'The Experience Machine.'

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/may/04/the-experience-machine-how-our-minds-predict-and-shape-reality-review

Philip recently went public with his conversion to a heretical form of Christianity (see article and video below). In this episode Keith and Philip discuss this and open up to Q&A.

Annaka Harris is author of bestselling book "Conscious" and writer and producer of the forthcoming audio documentary series "Lights On." In this episode we mainly focused on panpsychism, although we also touched on free will and the self. Annaka is sympathetic to panpsychism, so Philip and Annaka compared their reasons for taking the view seriously, whilst Keith and Annaka tried to work out why they disagreed.

Can taking psychedelics teach us more about the mind than science and philosophy? Is it rational to trust what mystical experiences seem to be telling us about ultimate reality? These are questions Keith and Philip would like the answers to, and apparently Sarah Lane-Ritchie and Aidan Lyon have them. Join us to find out what they are!

Kevin Mitchell is Associate Professor of Genetics and Neuroscience at Trinity College Dublin. He is also the author of the wonderful recent book 'Free Agents: How Evolution Gave us Free will', a robust defence of the reality of free will. Between the three of us, we aim to definitely establish whether or not humans are free.

For more on Kevin Mitchell:

https://press.princeton.edu/books/har...

https://www.kjmitchell.com/

Timings

0:00 – Amusing Banter

4:41 – Introducing Kevin Mitchell

6:07 – Kevin’s view

16:12 – The Philosophy of Free Will

29:03 – Keith Probes Kevin

51:25 – Philip and Keith disagree on how to interpret Kevin’s position

1:01:00 – Does quantum mechanics help?

1:24:12 – Keith can’t help himself

1:30:24 – Philip mutes Keith

1:30:57 – Audience Q&A

1:43:33 – Final banter and Mind Chat catchphrase

Donald Hoffman is a cognitive scientist at UC Irvine and author of 'The Case Against Reality.' He believes that the world we experience is an illusion, whilst ultimate reality is composed of networks of conscious agents. Keith and Philip probe Professor Hoffman's view from their very different perspectives on the nature of consciousness.

Here's the paper we discuss at length which argues that Donald's argument from evolution is self-defeating: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11229-022-04021-1

Here's Donald's recent co-written paper in which the authors attempt to ground physics in networks of conscious agents: https://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/25/1/129

Eric Schwitzgebel is professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Riverside. His research interests include philosophy of psychology, philosophy of mind, moral psychology, classical Chinese philosophy, epistemology, metaphilosophy, and metaphysics. He has also written a number of pieces of philosophical science fiction, which have been published in leading science fiction magazines.