Mind Chat

David Chalmers is one of the most important and influential philosophers of consciousness on the contemporary scene. He coined the phrase 'the hard problem of consciousness', and defends 'naturalistic dualism' as an alternative to materialism. In his new book 'Reality+', aimed at a general audience, David explores the big questions of philosophy through the lens of virtual reality. He argues that we don't know whether or not we are in a computer simulation, but that even if we are, it doesn't follow that the physical world around is isn't real. It just means the ultimate nature of the physical world is computational!

In the Mind Chat Christmas special, Keith and Philip take it in turns to interrogate each other about their favoured view of consciousness (illusionism and panpsychism, respectively), based in part on viewers' questions. The episode will culminate in a 15 min twitter poll, in which viewers will decide once and for all whether panpsychism or illusionism is the correct view of consciousness. 

Theoretical physicist Sean Carroll joins us to discuss whether it make sense to think of consciousness as an emergent phenomenon, and whether contemporary physics points in this direction.  

We discussed Sean's essay responding to Philip's book 'Galileo's Error,' and Philip's counter-response essay. Both are available here: https://conscienceandconsciousness.com/2021/08/01/19-essays-on-galileos-error/ 

We also discussed Philip's Scientific American article making the case that the move from the fine-tuning to the multiverse commits the 'inverse gambler's fallacy': https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/our-improbable-existence-is-no-evidence-for-a-multiverse/#:~:text=We%20exist%2C%20and%20we%20are,with%20the%20existence%20of%20life.  

Finally, Keith and Philip discussed the PhilPapers 2020 survey of philosophers' opinions on philosophical questions, which is linked to from this blog post of Philip's: https://conscienceandconsciousness.com/2021/11/01/materialism-remains-the-majority-view-but-only-just/

Anil Seth is Professor of Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience at the University of Sussex. In this episode we discuss his new book 'Being You: The New Science of Consciousness.' 

Dr Helen Yetter-Chappell is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at University of Miami. Idealism is the view that the fundamental nature of reality is made up of mentality or consciousness. Inspired by the 18th century idealist philosophy George Berkeley, Helen has developed a version of Berkeley's idealism which dispenses with his commitment to the existence of God.  http://yetterchappell.net/Helen/

Matthias Michel is a philosopher whose work focuses on the science of consciousness. In a recent paper he outlines how scientists working on consciousness have been having the same debates for 150 years without reaching consensus. In this episode, we will explore why the science of consciousness is more challenging than other scientific endeavours and examine possible ways forward.

Christof Koch is a neuroscientist and proponent of the integrated information theory of consciousness, or 'IIT". In this episode we explore with Christof the science and philosophy of IIT.

Professor Janet Levin is a materialist about consciousness. She thinks our feelings and experiences are identical with physical processes in the brain. In this episode we will explore Janet's position and how she responds to arguments that try to show that consciousness alludes physical explanation.

Tim O'Connor is a dualist: someone who thinks consciousness is not physical. People tend to think of dualists as believing in the soul, a supernatural entity distinct from the physical workings of the body and the brain. However, Tim's dualism is very different. He thinks consciousness resides in the brain, and is brought into existence by the physical particles that ultimately make up the brain. Nonetheless he rejects the idea that we can explain consciousness in terms of the kind of electro-chemical signalling of the brain. Instead, Tim is a Strong Emergentist: He thinks that particles have special powers to produce non-physical consciousness, powers that only kick in when the particles are arranged in the special combinations we find in brains. To put it another way: the brain as a whole is more than the sum of its parts.

Tim's website: https://toconnor.org/

Tim's entry on ''Emergent Properties' for the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/properties-emergent/

Video version of this episode: https://youtu.be/AlUsJRKqEVE