Space Time Mind

SpaceTimeMind Ep. 20: Paradoxes of Physical Information

Richard Brown & Pete Mandik

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Episode Notes and Links

Philosophers of mind and science Richard Brown and Pete Mandik burn the book of the world while orbiting a decaying black hole with Maxwell’s demon, a reversible cellular automaton, and can of whoop-ass worms. Will they survive? Will one of them successfully execute the argumentative equivalent of the Five-Point-Palm Exploding-Heart-Technique against the other? And how would you even know?

(Audio for this episode is drawn from the video chat viewable here: @YouTube.)

• Sturgeon’s law 
• Black Hole Information Paradox 
• Reversible cellular automaton 
• Maxwell’s demon 
• Physical Information 
• Dogmatism Paradox 
• The Value of Knowledge 

SpaceTimeMind Ep. 19: Fun, Pain, and Ontology (with Eric Kaplan)

Richard Brown & Pete Mandik

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Episode Notes and Links

Does all of reality exceed what we believe about it? Even the reality of fun? How about the reality of pain? Eric Linus Kaplan is an author (Does Santa Exist?), a TV writer (Big Bang Theory, Futurama), and an all-around philosophical dude (Buddhist monk, UC Berkeley philosophy doctoral student). Eric joins philosophy professors Richard Brown and Pete Mandik, co-hosts of the SpaceTimeMind podcast, for a discussion of ontology, clowns, parties, tattoos, dentists, and experimental philosophy.

(Audio for this episode is drawn from the last part of the video chat viewable here: @YouTube.)

• Eric’s choose your own adventure video for his book Does Santa Exist?: http://youtu.be/fZixtwdqGR8
• Eric's IMDB page: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0438235/
• Eric's blog: http://ericlinuskaplan.wordpress.com
• Richard Brown’s Philosophy TV Christmas monolog: “Santa, agnosticism, and Christmas” http://www.philostv.com/on-christmas-5/
• Eric Steinhart’s “The Simplicity of Santa” in which it is proved that Santa is an unextended thinking substance http://ericsteinhart.com/santa.html
• Recent Blog posts by Hillary Putnam on Experts and Meaning: 
  • The Question: http://putnamphil.blogspot.com/2014/11/a-question-about-experts-meaning-in.html 
  • The Answer: http://putnamphil.blogspot.com/2014/11/meaning-and-experts-answer-to-question.html
• Clark Glymour "A Mind is a Terrible Thing to Waste"
• Stephen Stich "Deconstructing the Mind (Chapter 1)"

SpaceTimeMind Ep. 18: Truth and Naturalism

Richard Brown & Pete Mandik

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Episode Notes and Links

Philosophers Richard Brown and Pete Mandik continue their discussion from the SpaceTimeMind podcast’s Episode 11 on Scientism. Here they focus on naturalistic versions of truth and reality. Can evolution by natural selection ground our ability to represent truths that transcend usefulness? If it can’t, what can?

(Audio for this episode is drawn from the last part of the video chat viewable here: @YouTube.)

• David Lewis (1984) "Putnam's Paradox"
• Gerald Marsh (2010) “Is the Hirsch-Sider Dispute Merely Verbal?”

SpaceTimeMind Ep. 17: Memory, Emotion, and Consciousness (with Joe LeDoux)

Ricard Brown & Pete Mandik

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Episode Notes and Links

Neuroscientist and rock star Joseph LeDoux (NYU) joins SpaceTimeMind podcast co-hosts and philosophers Richard Brown (CUNY) and Pete Mandik (WPU) to discus the neural bases of memory, emotion, and consciousness in human and non-human brains. 

(The audio for this episode is drawn from this video chat: @YouTube.)

• The LeDoux Lab @Center for Neural Science at NYU 
• Joe's band, the Amygdaloids 

SpaceTimeMind Ep. 16: Singularity and Sociopathy (with Roger Williams)

Richard Brown & Pete Mandik

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Episode Notes and Links

Philosopher kings Richard Brown and Pete Mandik are once again joined on the SpaceTimeMind podcast by science fiction author and essayist Roger Williams. In the first part of the episode we discuss the technological singularity as well as Williams' own singularity tale, The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect. The themes of transformation continue on through to the last part of the episode, where we discuss Roger's essay, "Hannibal Lecter as Transhumanist Icon." So, slap some sim-stim 'trodes on your forehead, pour yourself a nice chianti, and kiss your precious meatspace goodbye, oh you pretty pre-post-humans. We're gonna find out what's at the bottom of the bag of infinite free ponies.

(The audio for this episode is drawn from this video chat: @YouTube.)

 

• Roger Williams' page http://localroger.com/
• A fan blog dedicated to Williams' work: http://www.passagesinthevoid.com/
• The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect  @Wikipedia
• "Hannibal Lecter: Transhumanist Icon" @kuro5hin
• Episode 15: Supernature (with Roger Williams and Gregg Caruso)

SpaceTimeMind Ep. 15: Supernature (with Roger Williams and Gregg Caruso)

Richard Brown & Pete Mandik

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Episode Notes and Links

In this episode of the SpaceTimeMind podcast we discuss supernature, a hypothetical realm that is, in some sense, above and beyond the world accessible to the natural sciences. In part one of the episode, Richard Brown and Pete Mandik are joined by science fiction author Roger Williams. In part two, we are joined by philosopher Gregg Caruso, who you may remember from episode 7 on free will. If you notice anything strange occurring while you listen to this episode, please let us know about it at spacetimemind.com. It may have just been a coincidence. Or it may, just possibly, have been an intrusion into our world from the world of SUPERNATURE.

(The audio for this episode is drawn from this video chat with Roger Williams and this video chat with Gregg Caruso.)

 

• Roger Williams page http://localroger.com/
• A fan blog dedicated to Williams' work: http://www.passagesinthevoid.com/
• Gregg Caruso page http://www.greggcaruso.com/
• Episode 7: The Illusion of Free Will (with Gregg Caruso) http://www.spacetimemind.com/blog/2014/6/13/episode-7-the-illusion-of-free-will-with-gregg-caruso

Episode Audio

SpaceTimeMind Ep. 14: Eternalism Versus Presentism (with Brit Brogaard)

Richard Brown & Pete Mandik

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Episode Notes and Links

A 3-D object, fully present in the now, walks into a bar where the bartender is a 4-D spacetime worm. The worm asks the object “Why so tense?” Further instantiations of such high-grade philoso-physical hilarity ensue in this, the third episode of the SpaceTimeMind podcast on the topic of time. Brit Brogaard is back by popular demand, and this time a Brogaard/Brown presentist team-up gives Pete “Erstwhile Eternalist” Mandik a run for his money…forever.

(The edited audio of this episode is drawn from the first half of the video, "Brit Brogaard on the Metaphysics of Time and the Neurophilosophy of Consciousness" viewable on theSpaceTimeMind YouTube channel.)

• Brit Brogaard's homepage
• Brit Brogaard -  “Presentist Four-Dimensionalism.” The Monist 83 (2000), 341-356. 
• Michael Moorcock - Behold the Man
• Comic adaptation of Behold the Man: http://bronzeageofblogs.blogspot.com/2014/10/behold-man.html
• The problem of temporary intrinsics: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/identity-time/#2.3
• Episode 9: A Journey to the Edge of Hypertime
• Episode 12: The Fourth Dimension

Episode Audio

SpaceTimeMind Ep. 13: Neurophilosophy and Consciousness (with Brit Brogaard)

Richard Brown & Pete Mandik

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Episode Notes and Links

Hide your brains; the neurophilosophers are coming! Philosopher and neuroscientist Berit (Brit) Brogaard joins Richard Brown and Pete Mandik on the SpaceTimeMind podcast to discuss what makes some states of the mind or brain conscious and others unconscious. Is this sort of question answerable from a psychological or philosophical perspective that makes no essential reference to neuroscience? Or, instead, are neuroscientific data unavoidable in this domain? And: Can Brit go a full ten minutes without using the word “brain?"

(The edited audio of this episode is drawn from the second half of the video, "Brit Brogaard on the Metaphysics of Time and the Neurophilosophy of Consciousness" viewable on the SpaceTimeMind YouTube channel.)

• Brit Brogaard's homepage
• Brit Brogaard - “Are Conscious States Conscious in Virtue of Representing Themselves?" 
• Josh Weisberg - "Same Old, Same Old: The Same-Order Representational Theory of Consciousness and the Division of Phenomenal Labor" 
• David Rosenthal & Josh Weisberg - "Higher-order Theories of Consciousness"
• Hakwan Lau & Richard Brown - "The Emperor’s New Phenomenology? The Empirical Case for Conscious Experience without First-Order Representations"

 

Episode Audio

SpaceTimeMind Ep. 12: The Fourth Dimension

Richard Brown & Pete Mandik

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Episode Notes and LinksEpisode Notes

In this episode of the SpaceTimeMind podcast, Richard Brown and Pete Mandik continue their discussion from Episode 9 ("A Journey to the Edge of Hypertime”) and consider the view that time constitutes a fourth dimension analogous to the three spatial dimensions of height, width, and depth. What’s gained and what’s lost in viewing moments other than the present as analogous to places other than here? Do we lose an ability to account for change and motion? And if a computer simulation of a brain can have consciousness when we run the program, could it have consciousness even when the program isn’t being run?

Links

• SpaceTimeMind Episode 9: "A Journey to the Edge of Hypertime” 
• "Time is nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once.” -- Ray Cummings. Quote often misattributed to Woody Allen. See also John Archibald Wheeler @WikiQuote 
• Richard Brown and Pete Mandik "On Whether the Higher-Order Thought Theory of Consciousness Entails Cognitive Phenomenology, or: What is it Like to Think that One Thinks that P?”  @PhilPapers 
• Ruth Milikan’s Dewey Lecture 
• Richard Dawkins interviews Deepak Chopra @YouTube 
• "Time In Time": supercut of "time"-based dialog from movie "In Time" @YouTube 
• The Ritdijk-Putnam argument @Wikipedia 

Episode Audio

Richard Brown & Pete Mandik

SpaceTimeMind Ep. 11: Scientism

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Episode Notes and LinksEpisode Notes

Good news, everybody! SpaceTimeMind turns it up to 11 as science-obsessed philosophers Richard Brown and Pete Mandik duke it out over which one is the most egregious purveyor of scientism, the view that anything worth knowing is worth knowing scientifically. Or is scientism just empiricism? And what the bleep is that, anyway? Is it simply an affirmation of the superiority of sensory knowledge? Or is it at bottom a denial of necessary truths? Or is being a scientismologist just what happens when you label yourself as such to achieve greater societal respectability and sell more books? Put on your goggles have a clean beaker handy, for today we science!!!

Links

• Scully Likes Science @YouTube
• Dennett, D. Higher order truths about chmess
• Curry's paradox @Wikipedia