Space Time Mind

Episode Audio

Richard Brown & Pete Mandik

SpaceTimeMind Ep. 10: All Up In the Global Workspace of Consciousness (with Bernard Baars)

Download: MP3 Audio (96MB)

Episode Notes and LinksEpisode Notes

Neuroscience and philosophy meet in the arena of consciousness when neuroscientist guest Bernard Baars joins philosopher hosts Richard Brown and Pete Mandik on the SpaceTimeMind podcast. Topics we tackle include (1) the interface between science and philosophy, (2) the Global Workspace Theory of Consciousness, (3) the relevance of quantum mechanics for phenomenal consciousness, (4) the possibility of machine consciousness, and (5) Ned Block’s thesis that perceptual consciousness overflows cognitive access. And that's just for starters! We’ve saved you a seat in the theater of consciousness,  so pop open an ice cold can of qualia and enjoy the show.

(The music in the episode is by Quiet Karate Reflex and also by the New York Consciousness Collective.)

(The video chat that this episode's audio is drawn from is viewable on YouTube.)

Links

• Bernard Baars' academia.edu page 
• A Conscious Brain - Bernard Baars’ blog 
• "Debunking the Quantum Mind" @ the SpaceTimeMind blog
• Ned Block -  “Perceptual Consciousness Overflows Cognitive Access"
• Richard Brown - “The Myth of Phenomenological Overflow” 

Episode Audio

Richard Brown & Pete Mandik

SpaceTimeMind Ep. 9: A Journey to the Edge of Hypertime

Download: MP3 Audio (64MB)

Episode Notes and LinksEpisode Notes

This is the first of several episodes of the SpaceTimeMind podcast wherein amateur chrononauts Richard Brown and Pete Mandik tackle topics in the physics and metaphysics of time. In this episode, one of the main ideas we kick around is whether any moments exist beyond the present moment. Additionally, we tackle the issue of whether it makes any more sense to say that time flows than it does to say that space moves. If time flows at some rate, must there exist a hypertime relative to which first-order time changes? And is the ensuing infinite regress an intolerable ontic horror? Finally, we discuss the relationship between the phenomenology of time experience and the metaphysics of time by exploring whether a computer simulation of a brain would notice being run backwards in time. WARNING: Under no circumstances should you attempt to listen to any part of this episode backwards.

(The music in the episode is by our band, Quiet Karate Reflex. The song in the intro is "SpaceTimeMind Theme Song" [link to music video] and in the middle break and outro is "Time Consciousness." More of Quiet Karate Reflex's music can be heard here: http://quietkaratereflex.bandcamp.com/.)

(The video chat between Richard and Pete that this episode's audio is drawn from is viewable on YouTube. See especially the first half.)

Links

• New Books in Philosophy podcast - http://newbooksinphilosophy.com/
• Ted Sider - "Smart's B-theory" course handout on the hypertime argument against presentism
• Dean Zimmerman -"Presentism and the Space-Time Manifold" The Oxford Handbook of Time
• Brit Brogaard -  “Presentist Four-Dimensionalism.” The Monist 83 (2000), 341-356.  
• Greg Egan - Permutation City excerpt “Rip, tie, cut toy man” 
• Pete Mandik - "Slow Earth and the Slow-switching Slowdown Showdown"
• "A Time Travel Website" - http://timetravelphilosophy.net/
• Christopher Menzel - "Actualism" @Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy 
• Don A. Howard -"Einstein's Philosophy of Science" @Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Episode Audio

Richard Brown & Pete Mandik

SpaceTimeMind Ep. 8: Alien and Machine Minds (with Eric Schwitzgebel)

Download: MP3 Audio (71MB)

Episode Notes and LinksEpisode Notes

Could a robot or an alien have a mind even though its physical structure may contain nothing similar to a human brain? To address this, philosopher Eric Schwitzgebel once again joins Richard Brown and Pete Mandik to finish what we started in episode 4, “Death and Logic.” Here Richard defends brain-o-centrism against Eric’s “crazy-ism” (the view that something crazy has to be right about the metaphysics of consciousness) and Pete’s pro-AI, born-again functionalism (the view that minds are multiply realizable or substrate independent). Our launch points for discussion are themes from Eric’s recent essays, “If Materialism Is True, the United States is Probably Conscious” and “The Crazyist Metaphysics of Mind."

(The music in the episode is by our band, Quiet Karate Reflex. The song in the intro is "SpaceTimeMind Theme Song" [link to music video] and in the outro is "Ontological Indeterminacy." More of Quiet Karate Reflex's music can be heard here: http://quietkaratereflex.bandcamp.com/.)

(The video chat between Richard, Pete, and Eric that this episode's audio is drawn from is viewable on YouTube. See especially the second half.)

Links

• Terry Bisson - "They’re Made Out of Meat" 
• Eternal Return: Modern Cosmology @Wikipedia
• The Fermi Paradox @Wait But Why
• Eric Schwitzgebel’s home page.
• Eric Schwitzgebel’s paper “The Crazyist Metaphysics of Mind.” 
• Eric Schwitzgebel’s paper “If Materialism Is True, the United States is Probably Conscious.”
• Eric's postscript to this episode, a response to Richard over at The Splintered Mind blog

Episode Audio

Richard Brown & Pete Mandik

SpaceTimeMind Ep. 7: The Illusion of Free Will (with Gregg Caruso)

Download: MP3 Audio (88MB)

Episode Notes and LinksEpisode Notes

You have only three options: One, you listen to this episode of your own free will. Two, you listen to this episode as a matter of pure chance, with neither cause nor reason. Three, you were predetermined since the big bang to listen to this episode. One way or another, you're going to hear philosopher Gregg Caruso join Pete Mandik as they gang up on Richard Brown, who intermittently operates under the illusion that he has libertarian free will.

(The music in the episode is by our band, Quiet Karate Reflex. The song in the intro is "SpaceTimeMind Theme Song" [link to music video], the song in the mid-episode break is "Joints of Nature," and in the outro is "Ontological Indeterminacy." More of Quiet Karate Reflex's music can be heard here: http://quietkaratereflex.bandcamp.com/.)

(The video chat between Richard, Pete, and Gregg that this episode's audio is drawn from is viewable on YouTube.)

Links

• Gregg D. Caruso -  http://www.greggcaruso.com/
• Free Will and Consciousness: A Determinist Account of the Illusion of Free Will 
• Exploring the Illusion of Free Will and Moral Responsibility 
• Science and Religion: 5 Questions
• Mandik, Pete. (2010). Control Consciousness. Topics in Cognitive Science, 2 (4), 643-657. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1756-8765.2010.01084.x
• Arvan, Marcus. A New Theory of Free Will. Philosophical Forum 44 (1):1-48 (2013)
• Wikipedia entry on Quantum Teleportation -http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_teleportation 
• Brown, Richard. "Kantian Compatibilism?" post at the Philosophy Sucks! blog.

Episode Audio

Richard Brown & Pete Mandik

SpaceTimeMind Ep. 6: The Extended Mind (with Lara Beaty)

Download: MP3 Audio (93MB)

Episode Notes and LinksEpisode Notes

Vygotskian developmental psychologist Lara Beaty joins philosopher-scientists Richard Brown and Pete Mandik to tackle questions such as: Is the mind bigger than the brain? Does conceptual thought and even consciousness require the use of language or other sorts of social interaction? Which is morally preferable: making animals smarter or making humans stupider? Would it be totally cool to eat somebody who volunteered for it? 

(The music in the episode is by our band, Quiet Karate Reflex. The song in the intro is "SpaceTimeMind Theme Song" [link to music video], the song in the mid-episode break is “Massage the Lizard," and in the outro is "Without Your Permission." More of Quiet Karate Reflex's music can be heard here: http://quietkaratereflex.bandcamp.com/.)

(The video chat between Richard, Pete, and Lara that this episode's audio is drawn from is viewable on YouTube.)

LINKS 

• Lara Beaty - http://lbeaty.freeshell.org/
• Lev Vygotsky - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lev_Vygotsky
• New York Consciousness Collective in the David Chalmers segment from Through the Wormhole with Morgan Freeman - http://youtu.be/lStKa7T_aMc
• "My Skull Runneth Over" article at TV Tropes
• Deep Blue Sea (1999) IMDB - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0149261/
• Edward Tolman - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_C._Tolman
• Bruce Sterling “Our Neural Chernobyl” in Globalhead 
• Very Bad Wizards podcast - http://www.verybadwizards.com
• Mitchel Resnick - Turtles, Termites, and Traffic Jams: Explorations in Massively Parallel Microworlds
• Rebecca Kukla - "'Author TBD': Radical Collaboration In Contemporary Biomedical Research"
• Getting Out of Our Heads - Alva Noë http://youtu.be/Xhk9MkTkSPA

Episode Audio

Richard Brown and Pete Mandik

SpaceTimeMind Ep. 5: Transhumanism and Existentialism

Download: MP3 Audo (91MB)

Episode Notes and LinksEpisode Notes

Neurophilosophers Pete Mandik and Richard Brown wax futurological on whether the post-human future will be populated by Kantian superheroes or Sartrean sociopaths. Other questions addressed include: Is your brain a douchebag? Are “uplifted" monkeys happy monkeys or sad monkeys? Is it OK to torture sims? And if so, what’s the best way to do it? Musical interludes provided by the New York Consciousness Collective and Quiet Karate Reflex.

(The music in the mid-episode break is “Tommy the Hobbes” by the New York Consciousness Collective. The rest of the episode’s music is by Quiet Karate Reflex. The song in the intro is "SpaceTimeMind Theme Song" [link to music video] and the in the outro is “FINST-icuffs." More of Quiet Karate Reflex's music can be heard here: http://quietkaratereflex.bandcamp.com/.)

(The video chat between Richard and Pete that this episode's audio is drawn from is viewable on YouTube.)

Links

• Roger Williams - The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect 
• Roger Williams - "Hannibal Lecter as Transhumanist Icon" 
• Roger Williams’ review of Transcendence 
• Greg Egan - "Reasons to be cheerful"  in the collection Luminous 
• Greg Egan - Diaspora  
• TED debate with Steven Pinker and Rebecca Goldstein 
• Timothy Williamson - “Logic, Metalogic and Neutrality” and Richard Brown’s blogpost on it. 
• KnowYourMeme - "Scumbag Brain Meme"
• Urban Dictionary - “Catfish" 
• Norn torture
• The Adventures of Mark Twain (1985 film)

• Chatbot: A.L.I.C.E.

Episode Audio

Richard Brown & Pete Mandik

SpaceTimeMind Ep. 4: Death & Logic (w Eric Schwitzgebel)

Download: MP3 Audio (93MB)

Episode Notes and LinksEpisode Notes

People say that two things in life are certain. The first is that no one gets out alive. The second is that if possibly necessarily P, then necessarily P. But, are death and logic really certainties? If, for example, there exists an infinite number of situations which each contain an individual who is intrinsically similar to you, aren't you effectively immortal? And is there a single best logic to use in assessing such possibilities? Philosopher Eric Schwitzgebel joins Richard and Pete to tackle death and logic as well as topics concerning the reality of the past and the proper role of common sense in science and philosophy. This is the first part of our conversation with Eric. The second part will appear in a future episode.

(The music in the episode is by our band, Quiet Karate Reflex. The song in the intro and outro is "SpaceTimeMind Theme Song" [link to music video] and the song in the mid-episode break is “Skinner Box." More of Quiet Karate Reflex's music can be heard here: http://quietkaratereflex.bandcamp.com/.)

 

(The video chat between Richard, Pete, and Eric that this episode's audio is drawn from is viewable on YouTube. For this episode's source content, see especially the first half of the linked video.)

Links

• Eric Schwitzgebel’s home page.
• Eric Schwitzgebel’s blogpost, “My Botzmann Continuants.”
• Eric Schwitzgebel’s paper “The Crazyist Metaphysics of Mind.” 
• Eric Schwitzgebel’s paper “If Materialism Is True, the United States is Probably Conscious.”
• Garson, James. "Modal Logic” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
• Brow, Richard. "Logic and Death" post at the Philosophy Sucks! blog.

Episode Audio

Richard Brown & Pete Mandik

SpaceTimeMind Ep. 3: The nature of explanation

Download: MP3 Audio (48.8MB)

Episode Notes and LinksEpisode Notes

This is the second of a two part discussion between Richard and Pete concerning whether and how consciousness can be explained and whether it should be regarded as a fundamental feature of reality. In this episode, the discussion focuses on the question of what counts as an explanation and what norms govern good explanations in physics as well as in metaphysics.

(The music in the episode is by our band, Quiet Karate Reflex. The song in the intro and outro is "SpaceTimeMind Theme Song" and the song in the mid-episode break is "Aristotelian Eye Jelly." More of Quiet Karate Reflex's music can be heard here: http://quietkaratereflex.bandcamp.com/.)

(The video chat between Richard and Pete that this episode's audio is drawn from is viewable on YouTube. For this episode's source content, see especially the last half of the linked video.)

Links

• Galen Strawson - Realistic Monism: Why Physicalism Entails Panpsychism 
• Daniel Dennett and Kathleen Akins - Multiple drafts model 
• Higgs Boson at Wikipedia 
• Pete Mandik - Phenomenal Realism and Empirical Depth 
• Field (physics) - at Wikipedia 
• Richard Brown - David Chalmers on Mind and Consciousness in Andrew Bailey (ed) Key Thinkers in Philosophy of Mind http://philpapers.org/archive/BRODCO.pdf
• Susan Haack - The Justification of Deduction 
• Lewis Carroll - What the Tortoise Said to Achilles 
• Galileo’s paradox - at Wikipedia 
• Pete Mandik - Bigger Than Infinity

Episode Audio

Richard Brown & Pete Mandik

SpaceTimeMind Ep. 2: Computational Pythagoreanism

Download: MP3 Audio (47.5MB)

Episode Notes and LinksEpisode Notes

This is the first of a two part discussion between Richard and Pete concerning whether and how consciousness can be explained and whether it should be regarded as a fundamental feature of reality. In this episode, the discussion focuses on the view that everything that exists is ultimately computational/mathematical. In the first half of this episode, we discuss applications of computationalism in explaining brains, consciousness, and even reality itself. After a musical break, we turn in the second half of this episode to wrestle with the general merits of Pythagoreanism, the view that everything is ultimately mathematical. Are physical objects reducible to sets, which are in turn reducible to numbers, which are themselves reducible to the empty set and sets thereof?

(The music in the episode is by Quiet Karate Reflex. The song in the intro and outro is "Aristotelian Eye Jelly" and the song in the mid-episode break is "Skinner Box." More of Quiet Karate Reflex's music can be heard here: http://quietkaratereflex.bandcamp.com/.)

(The video chat between Richard and Pete that this episode's audio is drawn from is viewable on YouTube.)

Links

Links for the first half of this episode

• Hakwan Lau http://www.columbia.edu/cu/psychology/fac-bios/LauH/faculty.html
• Marcus Arvan http://www.marcusarvan.net/
• Arvan's Philosophers’ Cocoon blog http://philosopherscocoon.typepad.com/blog/
• April Fool’s Private Language Post http://philosopherscocoon.typepad.com/blog/2014/03/area-philosopher-constructs-definitive-refutation-of-the-private-language-argument-unable-to-explain.html
• Arvan's "New Theory of Free Will" http://philpapers.org/rec/ARVANT-2
• Mind Uploading http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_uploading
• Future Philosophy: Pete’s Alternate Minds Blog http://cogsciphi.blogspot.com/
• Richard’s blog post about the singularity http://onemorebrown.com/2010/04/21/the-singularity-again/
• Chalmers’ paper http://consc.net/papers/singularity.pdf and Richard’s commentary http://faculty.lagcc.cuny.edu/rbrown/zombies%20and%20simulation%20JCS.pdf
• Church-Turing Thesis http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/church-turing/
• Turing, A. (1950). Computing machinery and intelligence. Mind, 59, 433–460. http://www.csee.umbc.edu/courses/471/papers/turing.pdf
• Godel’s completeness theorem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gödel's_completeness_theorem

 

Links for the second half of this episode

• Frege-Hilbert letters http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/frege-hilbert/
• Re: Quine’s flirtations with Set-Theoretic Pythagoreanism See Quine (1981) “Things and Their Place in Theories” in Theories and Things.  http://isites.harvard.edu/fs/docs/icb.topic1191662.files/WVQThingsandTheirPlaceinTheories.pdf
• Power Set definition http://mathworld.wolfram.com/PowerSet.html
• Re: Ned Block on non-explained identities "Harder Problem of Consciousness" http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/philo/faculty/block/papers/harder.htm

Topics tackled include whether the physical universe is really a computer simulation and whether you can know with certainty that you are currently conscious.