Shermer and Seth discuss:
- What do words like “mind” and “consciousness” mean in the context of understanding how molecules and matter give rise to such nonmaterial processes?
- What is a controlled hallucination?
- the hard problem of consciousness
- the self and other minds
- consciousness and self-awareness as emergent properties
- Where does consciousness go during general anaesthesia? After death?
- Star Trek TNG episode 138 “Ship in a Bottle”: a VR inside a VR that is indistinguishable from reality. Are we living in a simulation that itself is inside a simulation?
- Does Deep Blue know that it beat the great Gary Kasparov in chess?
- Does Watson know that it beat the great Ken Jennings in Jeopardy!?
- Is Data on Star Trek sentient, conscious, and with feelings?
- Can AI systems be conscious?
- free will, determinism, compatibilism, and panpsychism.
Anil Seth is Professor of Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience at the University of Sussex, where he co-directs of the Sackler Centre for Consciousness Science. He is also Co-Director of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR) Program on Brain, Mind, and Consciousness, and of the Leverhulme Doctoral Scholarship Programme: From Sensation and Perception to Awareness. Dr. Seth is Editor-in-Chief of Neuroscience of Consciousness (Oxford University Press) and he sits on the Editorial Board of Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B and on the Advisory Committee for 1907 Research and for Chile’s Congreso Futuro. His new book is Being You: A New Science of Consciousness.
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This episode is sponsored by Wondrium:
This episode was released on June 21, 2022.
