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? Well, it depends what you mean by "explain." Our experience has a qualitative character: the feeling of red, the smell of methane, the feel of a cat's scratchy Continue Reading …
Saints & Simulators 10: #SoulfulMachines
Tenth in an ongoing series about the places where science and religion meet. The previous episode is here. At this point in our journey, let us take a moment to return to Descartes’s infamous concept of mind-body duality. The body, in his view, is one type of thing: physical matter. It is subject to the laws of physics, it gets old and degrades, it is built up of discrete Continue Reading …