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Ep. 223: Guest Ned Block on Consciousness (Part One)

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The climax and denouement of our summer philosophy of mind series: Ned Block visits to fill in the gaps about functionalism and attributing consciousness to machines and discuss essays from Blockheads (2019), focusing here on Brian McLaughlin’s “Could an Android be Sentient?”

Don’t wait for part 2! Get the ad-free, unbroken Citizen Edition now. Please support PEL!

Please go check out Modern Day Philosophers at moderndayphilosophers.net and See You on the Other Side at othersidepodcast.com. Also, subscribe to Mark’s Pretty Much Pop at prettymuchpop.com.

Ep. 223: Guest Ned Block on Consciousness (Citizen Edition)

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The climax and denouement of our summer philosophy of mind series: Ned Block visits to fill in the gaps about functionalism and attributing consciousness to machines. We discuss two essays from Blockheads (2019): Brian McLaughlin’s “Could an Android be Sentient?” and Michael Tye’s “Homunculi Heads and Silicon Chips: The Importance of History to Phenomenology.”

End song: “Your So Dark Sleep/Goodbye” by The Black Watch, as interviewed on Nakedly Examined Music #102.

Ep. 219: The Harder Problem of Consciousness (Block & Papineau)

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On Ned Block’s “The Harder Problem of Consciousness” (2002) and David Papineau’s “Could There Be a Science of Consciousness?” (2003).

What would give us sufficient reason to believe that a non-human was conscious? Block thinks this is a harder problem that we might suspect. We can’t know for sure exactly what consciousness in us is, so we can’t know for sure what such a being might require (a brain? certain patterns of behavior?) for them to be enough like us that we could safely apply our own experience of our own conscious states to them. Papineau diagnoses this as a fundamental vagueness in the concepts we use to describe our conscious states.

This conversation continues from ep. 218, with guest Gregory Miller from the Panpsycast still with us.

End song: “Mindreader” by Phil Judd as interviewed on Nakedly Examined Music #98.

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Ep. 219: The Harder Problem of Consciousness (Block & Papineau) (Citizen Edition)

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On Ned Block’s “The Harder Problem of Consciousness” (2002) and David Papineau’s “Could There Be a Science of Consciousness?” (2003).

What would give us sufficient reason to believe that a non-human was conscious? Block thinks this is a harder problem that we might suspect. We can’t know for sure exactly what consciousness in us is, so we can’t know for sure what such a being might require (a brain? certain patterns of behavior?) for them to be enough like us that we could safely apply our own experience of our own conscious states to them. Papineau diagnoses this as a fundamental vagueness in the concepts we use to describe our conscious states.

This conversation continues from ep. 218, with guest Gregory Miller from the Panpsycast still with us.

End song: “Mindreader” by Phil Judd as interviewed on Nakedly Examined Music #98.

Episode 218: The Hard Problem of Consciousness (Chalmers, et al) (Part Two)

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Continuing on “Consciousness and Its Place in Nature” by David Chalmers (2003).

We finish Chalmers’s account of the types of physicialism, then move on to dualism (including epiphenomenalism), and finally dally with panpsychism, the specialty of our guest, Gregory Miller from the Panpsycast.

Listen to part 1 first or listen to the unbroken, ad-free Citizen Edition. Please support PEL!

End song: “Georgia Hard” by Robbie Fulks, as interviewed on Nakedly Examined Music #36.

Sponsor: Visit the St. John’s College Graduate Institute: partiallyexaminedlife.com/sjcgi.

Episode 218: The Hard Problem of Consciousness (Chalmers, et al) (Part One)

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On “Consciousness and Its Place in Nature” by David Chalmers (2003), with special guest Gregory Miller from the Panpsycast Philosophy Podcast.

Can we explain human experience using the terms of brain physiology? Chalmers thinks not, and lays out the arguments against this and the range of positions philosophers have taken in response to these objections. 

Continues on part two, or get the full, ad-free Citizen Edition now. Please support PEL!

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Episode 218: The Hard Problem of Consciousness (Chalmers, et al) (Citizen Edition)

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On “Consciousness and Its Place in Nature” by David Chalmers (2003), with special guest Gregory Miller from the Panpsycast Philosophy Podcast.

Can we explain human experience using the terms of brain physiology? Chalmers thinks not, and lays out the arguments against this and the range of positions philosophers have taken in response to these objections.

End song: “Georgia Hard” by Robbie Fulks, as interviewed on Nakedly Examined Music #36.

Episode 179: William James’s Introspective Psychology (Part One)

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On The Principles of Psychology (1890) chapters 1 & 7, and Psychology, the Briefer Course (1892), the chapters on “The Stream of Thought,” “Habit,” and some of “The Self.”

Can we talk about the mind in a way that is both scientific and also does justice to our everyday experiences? James thought his method, which involved both introspection and physiology, yielded more accurate descriptions of the mind than associationism (the mind is made up of ideas) or spiritualism (the mind is a faculty of the soul). Consciousness is a stream, not a concatenation of ideas!

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Episode 179: William James’s Introspective Psychology (Citizen Edition)

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On The Principles of Psychology (1890) chapters 1 & 7, and Psychology, the Briefer Course (1892), the chapters on “The Stream of Thought,” “Habit,” and some of “The Self.”

Can we talk about the mind in a way that is both scientific and also does justice to our everyday experiences? James thought his method, which involved both introspection and physiology, yielded more accurate descriptions of the mind than associationism (the mind is made up of ideas) or spiritualism (the mind is a faculty of the soul). Consciousness is a stream, not a concatenation of ideas!

End song: “Drowning Mind (feedback overload)” by AMP, as interviewed on Nakedly Examined Music #57.

Citizen Interview with Nicholas Humphrey, a Leading Figure in Mind and Consciousness

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Having the opportunity to speak with Nicholas Humphrey was a phenomenal experience (pun intended). His accounts of discussing dreams with Francis Crick, debating the best materialist arguments with Dan Dennett, working on blindsight, describing how personhood and ethics arise out of consciousness, and positing that our minds act as artists to make us fall in love with ourselves, make for a wonderful and enlightening listen.

Do Phenomenal Concepts Negate Wittgenstein’s Private Language Argument?

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Watch on Vimeo In the video above, Prof. David Papineau compares different “naturalist” theories of consciousness to propose that phenomenal concepts pose a problem for Wittgenstein’s private language argument. (A version of this issue was briefly raised during the second episode discussing Philosophical Investigations.) Hint: If you’re not yet familar with the “Mary’s Room” thought experiment, it would be helpful to Continue Reading …

Anesthesia and Consciousness

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Neuroscientists are using anesthesia to study consciousness in a way that seems related to higher order theories of consciousness. The conclusion so far: “consciousness emerges from the integration of information across large networks in the brain”: Over the past few years, other EEG studies have supported the idea that anesthesia doesn’t simply shut the brain down but, rather, interferes with its Continue Reading …

Episode 47: Sartre on Consciousness and the Self (Citizens Only)

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Discussing Jean-Paul Sartre’s The Transcendence of the Ego (written in 1934). What is consciousness, and does it necessarily involve an “I” who is conscious of things? Sartre says no: typical experience is consciousness of some object and doesn’t involve the experience of myself as someone having this consciousness. It’s only when we reflect on our own conscious experiences that we posit this “I.” The ego is our own creation, or more precisely a social creation. This means that far from being some primordial structure of all experience, this transparent thing inside us that we have more immediate knowledge of than anything else, the ego is an object: it has parts we don’t see, and we can be wrong when we make judgments about it. Other people might even know us better than we know ourselves. Learn more.

End song: “Thing in the World,” by Mark Lint.

PREVIEW-Episode 47: Sartre on Consciousness and the Self

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Discussing Jean-Paul Sartre’s The Transcendence of the Ego (written in 1934). What is consciousness, and does it necessarily involve an “I” who is conscious of things? Sartre says no: typical experience is consciousness of some object and doesn’t involve the experience of myself as someone having this consciousness. It’s only when we reflect on our own conscious experiences that we posit this “I.” The ego is our own creation, or more precisely a social creation. This means that far from being some primordial structure of all experience, this transparent thing inside us that we have more immediate knowledge of than anything else, the ego is an object: it has parts we don’t see, and we can be wrong when we make judgments about it. Other people might even know us better than we know ourselves.

Looking for the full Citizen version?

Topic for #47: Sartre on the Self

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Jean-Paul Sartre is best known for his 1960’s existentialism and Marxist activism, but before he was a big celebrity, he was a phenomenologist who spent a lot of time grappling with Heidegger (his book Being and Nothingnessis an homage in part to Heidegger’s Being and Time, but more importantly (to this topic) with Edmund Husserl. Part of Husserl’s analysis of Continue Reading …

About The Partially Examined Life

The Partially Examined Life is a philosophy podcast by some guys who were at one point set on doing philosophy for a living but then thought better of it. Each episode, we pick a text and chat about it with some balance between insight and flippancy. You don’t have to know any philosophy, or even to have read the text we’re talking about to (mostly) follow and (hopefully) enjoy the discussion

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