Blog - Space Time Mind: Recent Episodes
Richard Brown and Pete Mandik
Philosophy professors Richard Brown and Pete Mandik tackle topics ranging from the neuroscience of consciousness to the philosophical foundations of physics.
Watch the video of this discussion here: https://youtu.be/ASYDMgMfCtk
Alex Kiefer’s webpage http://alexbkiefer.net
Alex Kiefer’s music (as exileFakir): https://exilefaker.bandcamp.com
WaPo story about Google engineer Blake Lemoine and LaMDA: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/06/11/google-ai-lamda-blake-lemoine/
SpaceTimeMind Episode 28: Psychedelic Artificial Neural Networks: http://www.spacetimemind.com/blog/2015/6/30/episode-28-psychedelic-artificial-neural-networks
Behold!: The Crungus: https://www.iflscience.com/nothing-to-worry-about-dall-e-has-created-a-new-cryptid-named-crungus-64118
AI Can Now Generate DMT Visuals, Thanks To This Online Community: https://doubleblindmag.com/ai-can-now-generate-dmt-visuals/
Intelligence Unbound: The Future of Uploaded and Machine Minds: https://ndpr.nd.edu/reviews/intelligence-unbound-the-future-of-uploaded-and-machine-minds/
Quiet Karate Reflex: https://quietkaratereflex.bandcamp.com
Additional info and credits:
Intro narration: Rachelle Mandik rachellemandik.com
Movie clip quote from: Space Men - Assignment Outer Space Space (1960):https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space-Men
SpaceTimeMind Theme Song, Intro Version: Richard Brown on Drums and Pete Mandik on everything else.
Mid-episode break music: Ockham’s Chainsaw by Alex Kiefer (as exileFakir): https://exilefaker.bandcamp.com/track/ockhams-chainsaw-2
SpaceTimeMind Theme Song, Outro Version: Pete Mandik
Video discussion from which this episode’s audio is taken: https://youtu.be/HI7OsUfPzHI
Tarik LaCour on twitter: https://twitter.com/realscientistic
Tarik’s conversation with Emerson Green: https://youtu.be/M3ShG06vJ2A
Additional info and credits:
Intro narration: Rachelle Mandik rachellemandik.com
Movie clip quote from: The Creation of the Humanoids (1962): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Creation_of_the_Humanoids)
SpaceTimeMind Theme Song, Intro Version: Richard Brown on Drums and Pete Mandik on everything else.
Mid-episode break music: Diesel by Pete Mandik
SpaceTimeMind Theme Song, Outro Version: Pete Mandik
Video discussion from which this episode’s audio is taken: https://youtu.be/b_oRS7nIujg
Webpage for the Spirit of the Senses Salon: http://spiritofthesenses.org/moreaboutus.htm
Additional info and credits:
Intro narration: Rachelle Mandik rachellemandik.com
Movie clip quote from: War of the Satellites (1958) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_the_Satellites
SpaceTimeMind Theme Song, Intro Version: Richard Brown on Drums and Pete Mandik on everything else.
Mid-episode break music: Spring Theory by Pete Mandik
SpaceTimeMind Theme Song, Outro Version: Pete Mandik
Video discussion from which this episode’s audio is taken: https://youtu.be/I1p2MnXnvzc
Jake’s webpage: https://jfberger.wixsite.com/home
Jacob Berger & Richard Brown (2021) Conceptualizing consciousness, Philosophical Psychology, 34:5, 637-659. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09515089.2021.1914326
Berger 2 A Defense of Holistic Representationalism, Mind & Language 33(2): 161-176. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/mila.12163
David Rosenthal, There’s Nothing about Mary. https://www.davidrosenthal.org/DR-Mary.pdf
Additional info and credits:
Intro narration: Rachelle Mandik rachellemandik.com
Movie clip quote from: Star Odyssey (1979) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Odyssey
SpaceTimeMind Theme Song, Intro Version: Richard Brown on Drums and Pete Mandik on everything else.
Mid-episode break music: Diesel by Pete Mandik
SpaceTimeMind Theme Song, Outro Version: Pete Mandik
Merch! It exists; it is available; I’m here to tell you about it. There are THREE flavors of SpaceTimeMind merch, and they’re all available in my RedBubble shop linked here: LINK.
The three flavors of SpaceTimeMerch: Logo, Cowboy, and Jellyfish.
Go hog wild. Get a teeshirt. Or some coffee mugs. Stickers, even. Proceeds go to pay for keeping the podcast casting (which mostly is just web hosting fees).
If you score some cool SpaceTimeMind merch, be sure to tell us about it here or on twitter! And if you’d rather help financially without also receiving cool merch, head on over to our support page and mash on the DONATE button over there. Thank you!
Video discussion from which this episode’s audio is taken: https://youtu.be/8e847S4uGWo
Bryce’s webpage: https://brycehuebner.weebly.com
Gold, Jonathan C., "Vasubandhu", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2021/entries/vasubandhu/
In order to account for consciousness in terms of representational content, how FUNKY does the content need to be? Along the way we discuss the representation of inexistents and whether mathematical structuralism can shed light on the conceivability of undetectable qualia inversions. Is there any real difference (as opposed to a merely notational difference) between the square root of negative one and the negative square root of negative one? If so, what would that tell us about the question of whether intersubjectively undetectable qualia inversions are conceivable?
ATTENTION! Richard Brown and Pete Mandik shine their spotlights on the philosophy of mind of attention and awareness. Many philosophers of mind endorse the Transitivity Principle, the view that if you have a conscious state, you must be aware of that state. But what is the best account of the relevant notion of awareness? Is attending a kind of awareness? Further, is it a kind of awareness that is distinct from the awareness one has in virtue of perceiving, thinking about, or sensing something? Does it suffice for being aware of something that information about it is globally accessible to an embedding system? Would global availability suffice for a higher-order awareness of one’s own mental states, or would it only suffice for a first-order awareness of environmental or bodily items? Along the way we also get into some methodology and metaphilosophy, especially as regards the question of to what degree philosophical and scientific theorizing should be constrained by folk theory.
Prof. David Pereplyotchik once again joins Pete Mandik to tackle pain in the philosophy of mind. Can there be a scientific reductive explanation of pain. Can robots feel pain? Will this hurt? We here continue the conversation we started in SpaceTimeMind Episode 27.
Richard Brown and Pete Mandik debate the following proposal: The worst thing you can imagine happening to you is an event that has a non-zero probability of occurring at any given moment, and the longer you stay alive, the greater the chances become of that thing happening at some point in your lifetime. Would literally infinitely-lived immortals necessarily run into their own worst imaginable hell? Would even finite, but long-lived transhuman lifespans increase their chances of suffering by increasing their time alive? Would any amount of possible pleasure make it worth risking the worst imaginable suffering? Along the way we talk a little physics and a little Buddhism. Are interpretations of quantum mechanics the place where explanations go to bottom out? What are the physical prospects of the universe itself not dying? If you can achieve, in a single moment, a conscious experience of eternity, what’s the point of having more than one such experience?
Get in the Delorean, Marty! It’s time for the future of philosophy and the philosophy of the future. Philosophers and chrononauts Richard Brown and Pete Mandik overclock their flux capacitors to see if philosophy has a chance of surviving into the deep future of the human race. In the first half of the episode, they discuss the future of life itself. Along the way they hit Nick Bostrom’s “Great Filter” argument, Susan Schneider’s argument that aliens will be robots, and Pete’s own “Metaphysical Daring” argument about mind uploading and posthuman survival strategies. In part two, they delve into the future of the human race, and the question of whether philosophy could survive humanity's slipping into a Mad-Max-style future-primitive dark age. If we don't devolve into an idiocracy, will philosophy ever converge on a uniquely correct way of representing the real?
Spoilers galore as philosophers Richard Brown and Pete Mandik wade up to their necks in spoilers to discuss recent cinematic depictions of (spoiler) artificial intelligence and (another spoiler) mind-uploading, especially in the 2015 films Ex Machina and Advantageous. DID WE MENTION THERE WILL BE SPOILERS? The first half of the episode largely focuses on Ex Machina and we shift to Advantageous for the second half. Also: Spoilers.
Gather up your microphysical constituents and embark on an epic audio odyssey wherein Richard Brown and Pete Mandik rock out about: physicalism, whether the mind is physical, how best to define "physical" and "physicalism," whether the physical universe is causally closed, and whether brainless spiders from Mars can have minds, etcetera, etcetera, and so on, and so forth. TO BE PLAYED AT MAXIMUM VOLUME
You are listening to SpaceTimeMind, a podcast by two philosophy professors, Richard Brown, and Pete Mandik, who talk about philosophy, science, and all sorts of other stuff. Please be advised that this podcast contains strong language and abstract ideas not suitable for all intelligent life forms.
The Google research team has released the code for the inceptionism artificial neural network image processing that we discuss in Episode 28. Download the code packages HERE. If that seems like too much, you can play around with a browser-based implementation HERE.
Here's the inceptionized SpaceTimeMind logo:
And here's the inceptionized version of the Episode 28 show art:
And finally, check out this cool video my Memo Akten:
deepdream #inceptionism
Cognitive philosophers Richard Brown and Pete Mandik examine recent claims by Google researchers to have implemented dreams, imagery, and hallucinations in artificial neural networks. The images created by these artificial systems are kind of cool, but can anything at all be learned from such projects about how the mind or brain actually functions? Richard and Pete move from there to debate connectionism, AI, and rationalist vs. empiricist methodologies in the philosophy of cognitive science. Special prize for the first listener to correctly identify all three of the neuroscientists that Pete misidentifies!
Pete Mandik is once again joined by David Pereplyotchik (see episode 25) and this time they enter into a world of pain. Are pains identical to states of brains? Are pains fully accessible only from the first-person point of view? Is there anything contradictory about the idea of unconscious pains? Can you merely seem to yourself to be suffering without actually really being in a state of suffering? Will Pete and David answer any of these questions about pain in the philosophy of mind?
Pete Mandik talks to philosopher Eric Steinhart (William Paterson University) about his book, Your Digital Afterlives: Computational Theories of Life after Death. They dig deep into the computational and value-theoretic foundations of all existence. Other topics tackled include atheistic neopaganism, the cognitive science of hyper-arousal trances, the prudential self-concern of mind-uploads, entheogenic drugs, and Roko’s basilisk. Get comfy with a hot bowl of monads and enjoy the show while an infinite army of zombie-Leibnizes tear up the town.
Pete Mandik is joined by David Pereplyotchik (assistant professor of philosophy at Kent State University) to sleep furiously on some colorless green ideas. Also, they talk about language. Grammar, meaning, truth, translation, Google, and the difficulty in faking deafness are just a few of the topics tackled.
Is it a law of nature that if your neurons are gradually replaced with silicon chips, your qualia won’t thereby gradually fade? Can the armchair methodology of analytic metaphysics deliver knowledge of natural laws? Or can the boundaries of the nomologically possible be discerned only within the natural sciences? And who cares? Richard Brown and Pete Mandik, that’s who!
Richard Brown takes a one-episode hiatus while Pete Mandik heads down to Texas to talk to philosopher Ken Williford. Pete and Ken discuss whether (1) it’s desirable for humans to transform themselves into something alien, (2) whether we or our brains are already alien to us, and (3) whether an “acquaintance relation” view of consciousness is consistent with physicalism.
After two physics episodes in a row Richard Brown and Pete "Macho Bluff" Mandik dial the way-back machine to the Golden Era of Dinosaur Travel and kick out some old-school philosophy of mind jams. In part 1 ("Time Shuffling") they sort some stuff out about temporal counterpart theory and so-called “real identity.” In part 2 (“Finger Sausages”) they tackle the transparency of conscious experience and phenomenal acquaintance. In part 3 (“A Brain Made out of Paper”) they discuss the extended mind hypothesis and it’s connection to panpsychism and meditation (with a mild de-rail on journal refereeing best/worst practices).
We just had a very large and satisfying video dump that you should go check out. Not to spoil too many surprises, but do check out Richard's new glasses!
Philosophy of mind and philosophy of science by professors Richard Brown and Pete Mandik. Part 1: Fourdimensionalism, eternalism, mereology, and hoaks Part 2: Finger sausages, Aristotle's illusion, transparency, and acquaintance Part 3: Panpsychism
Philosophy of mind and philosophy of science by professors Richard Brown and Pete Mandik Part 1: Cotard's delusion, Capgras delusion, and the Koro delusion. Also, fading qualia and dancing qualia. Part 2: Super Mario, functionalism, and change blindness. Part 3: Biologism
Physicist Sean Carroll joins philosophers Richard Brown and Pete Mandik on the SpaceTimeMind podcast to discuss, for example: anti-intellectual academics; intelligent design and fine tuning; entropy, decoherence, and the arrow of time, baby Benjamin-Button universes; Boltzmann brains; lambda cold dark matter; many worlds; disappearing worlds; interacting worlds. And much much more!
Check out our latest trailer and find out what's coming up this winter on the SpaceTimeMind podcast.
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?
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.
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?
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.
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, poor 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.
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.
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.
We spent more on special effects for this MindChunk than on all previous MindChunks combined!
Richard Brown from ground control talks Pete Mandik through some repairs to the mothership. Along the way they find time to discuss the question of whether you can be absolutely certain that you have conscious experiences.
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?"
Latest MindChunk: Spacetime Worms
Philosopher and neuroscientist Brit Brogaard joins Richard Brown and Pete Mandik to discuss the nature of time and the conscious experience of time.
Speaking of MindChunks, what are the metaphysical consequences of the supposition that the brain is a finite system of chunks that can each be in only a finite number of states?
Pete Mandik on Turing's argument from the finite nature of the brain.
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?
You are listening to SpaceTimeMind, a podcast by two philosophy professors, Richard Brown and Pete Mandik, who talk about philosophy, science, and all sorts of other stuff. Please be advised that this podcast contains strong language and abstract ideas not suitable for all intelligent lifeforms.
Our helper drones took some time off from repairing the mothership to whip up yet another theatrical trailer giving glory to the great blue mind-sack and also to our excellent and esteemed forthcoming guests on the SpaceTimeMind podcast. Orient your irritable surfaces screenward and let your lobes luxuriate in this premium infotainment.
Coming this fall on the SpaceTimeMind podcast: Philosophy professor co-hosts Richard Brown and Pete Mandik are joined by neuroscientist Joe LeDoux, philosopher-scientist Brit Brogaard, and science fiction author Roger Williams to discuss topics including, but not limited to: consciousness, the singularity, the physics and metaphysics of time, memory and emotion, the simulation hypothesis, and music.
If you haven't already, direct your clicking finger (or tentacle) to the SpaceTimeMind RequestBucket. Taking a peek at what others have requested is like taking a peek into the future. Deposit something yourself while over there. Do not insert head into bucket. Bucket is a tool, not a toy.
In today's MindChunk we bring you an uplifting discussion (although the part about cannibalism in the middle gets a little NSFW). Animal "uplift" is basically transhumanism for animals. See, for example, The Planet of the Apes. See also the Arcturean major cow from The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, an animal genetically engineered to talk you into eating it. Psychologist Lara Beaty joins philosophers Richard Brown and Pete Mandik for the discussion. The longer discussion appears as Episode 6 of the SpaceTimeMind podcast: "The Extended Mind (with Lara Beaty)."
Good news everybody! 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 hack 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. It is time to science.
Hey, you know what? MindChunk, that's what. The latest edition to our MindChunk video series launches a sneak attack on the nature of time by way of a thought experiment about artificial intelligence and a simulation of Einstein's brain. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.
What do artificial intelligence and the physics of time have to do with each other? Richard Brown and Pete Mandik set out to find out and what happened next will amaze you.
Check out “Consciousness as an M-Property” by Richard Brown over at his blog, Philosophy Sucks. His post ties in with the SpaceTimeMind podcast Episode 7: "The Illusion of Free Will (with Gregg Caruso").
Dear SpacetimeMinders,
What topics would you like to see tackled? What depths plumbed? What guests would you like subjected to our special brand of norn torture? Is there something you'd like to see or hear more of? Less of? Please utilize the SpaceTimeMind RequestBucket by leaving a comment below.
The small but growing list of audience suggestions so far implemented on the SpaceTimeMind podcast.
"I am the lowest turtle." - Richard Brown, Episode 9: A Journey to the Edge of Hypertime
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. We’ve saved you a seat in the theater of consciousness, so pop open an ice cold can of qualia and enjoy the show.
photo: http://instagram.com/p/rE9UyIh07F/
In our upcoming episode with neuroscientist Bernard Baars (episode 10, out on Aug 1), we discuss the relevance, or lack thereof, of quantum mechanics to explaining consciousness. Here’s a small roundup of debunking articles on the topic, including Baars’ own piece, co-authored with David Edelman.
- Litt, A., Eliasmith, C., Kroon, F. W., Weinstein, S., & Thagard, P. (2006). Is the brain a quantum computer? Cognitive Science, 30, 593–603.
- Grush, Rick, and Patricia Chuchland (1995). Gaps in Penrose's Toilings Journal of Consciousness Studies. 2(1):10 - 29.
- Baars B, & Edelman D. Consciousness, biology and quantum hypotheses. Phys Life Rev. 2012 Sep;9(3):285-94. doi: 10.1016/j.plrev.2012.07.001. Epub 2012 Jul 10.
BONUS: Here’s a recent article presenting a sympathetic treatment of the pro side: Quentin Ruyant’s "Is quantum mechanics relevant to the philosophy of mind (and the other way around)?" at Scientia Salon.
We're only a few days away from episode 10, which is all about consciousness with guest neuroscientist Bernard Baars. To help you get ultra stoked, here are some helpful study materials:
- Episode 2: Consciousness explained (?) part 1: Computational Pythagoreanism
- Episode 3: Consciousness explained (?) part 2: The nature of explanation
- MindChunk: ZombieFight!
- MindChunk: Consciousness and Biology
- EXTRA CREDIT: Read this webcomic.
The matter duplicator on board the SpaceTimeMind mothership just went "ding" and another MindChunk popped out. Hurry and take a look before we toss it out of the airlock.
Will the debate over mind uploading be settled by one of the sides going extinct? http://www.spacetimemind.com
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.
Tomorrow we release SpaceTimeMind podcast episode 9, one of several planned episodes on the physics and metaphysics of time. In order to whip your hungry brains into an anticipatory froth, be sure to check out the following classic song-and-dance productions covering such topics as change and temporal becoming, perdurantism vs. endurantism, and McTaggart's paradox. Apologies ahead of time (ha!) for any earworms you may catch from the delightful songs contained below.
First, check out the under appreciated and overlooked extravaganza, "The Tense View of Time and You, Parts 1 and 2," a 2006 musical comedy posted by YouTube user, dapootieman. How this has fewer views than Gangam Style is an eternal mystery.
Second, check out the second installment of the absolutely bonkers show for "kids", Don't Hug Me I'm Scared, informatively entitled "TIME."
hey, cheekbones
In our discussion with sci fi author Roger Williams, we spend a bunch of time on the topic of Hannibal Lecter (jump to the 1:24:51 mark here). There's a new post up at the Passages In the Void blog where Roger provides an overview of the Hannibal TV series. Check it out, fannibals. (Spoiler-alert alert: Those of you who hate spoiler alerts should be alerted to the presence of such alerts in Roger's post.)
And don't miss Roger's older (pre-reboot) essay, "Hannibal Lecter as Transhumanist Icon."
Just how tightly do biological facts constrain facts about consciousness? Are radically alien or machine minds possible? Or is a mind without a brain like a square without corners? We tackle these questions in this latest installment of the MindChunks video series. This is excerpted from the discussion Richard Brown and Pete Mandik had with Eric Schwitzgebel. For the rest, be sure to check out Episode 8: Alien and Machine Minds.
Are there biological requirements on consciousness? Do we know enough about what life is to use it as a meaningful test on what does and doesn't have consciousness? Richard Brown leans toward "yes" while Pete Mandik leans toward "no." This is an excerpt from our conversation with philosopher Eric Schwitzgebel.
"What's expected of us," by Ted Chiang is a super short and really great piece of sci fi published in Nature that taps into themes we cover in Episode 7: The Illusion of Free Will (with Gregg Caruso) and will explore further in several upcoming episodes on time (see also our two video discussions on time to date, "What is time?" and "Brit Brogaard on the Metaphysics of Time and the Neurophilosophy of Consciousness").
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."
We're getting pretty stoked here at SpaceTimeMind central, as we're just a few days away from our next episode, Episode 8: Alien and Machine Minds (with Eric Schwitzgebel). Eric is our first return guest, and the discussion in episode 8 picks up where things left off with Eric in Episode 4: Death and Logic. Things got pretty rowdy in the virtual studio - stormy even - while we were talking about massive lightning strikes creating swamp people and even entire swamp galaxies. See for yourself in this amazing video:
Dramatic event that transpired during the recording of Episode 4: Logic and Death with Eric Schwitzgebel. http://www.spacetimemind.com/blog/2014/4/28/episode-4-death-and-logic-with-eric-schwitzgebel spacetime mind
In horror movies, a zombie fight happens when two of the flesh-eating undead confuse each other for prey and, despite tearing each other apart, they both go to bed hungry. In philosophy, a zombie fight is exactly the same. In the latest installment of the MindChunk series, watch as Richard Brown and Pete Mandik use all their best zombie moves on one another, while neuroscientist Joe LeDoux kicks back and surveys the carnage.
Phenomenal consciousness is what you know you have when you know what it's like to be you. Zombies don't have any. Richard and Pete each accuse the other guy of being a zombie. One of them is right. But which one?
The declaration of the death of philosophy du jour comes from Peter Unger in his recent book, Empty Ideas: A Critique of Analytic Philosophy. Glimpse his main ideas in this 3 Quarks Daily interview of Unger. Evident throughout is a pervasive scientism. Apropos of all this, see below the recent MindChunk from Richard and Pete, "Scientist or Philosopher?" (For the longer discussion from which this MindChunk originates, see our video "Scientism.")
Pete Mandik and Richard Brown discuss the question of whether philosophers should be scientists or scientists should be philosophers.
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.
It's been an unusually busy week in the SpaceTimeMind virtual studio and a very brain-heavy one to boot. Today Richard and Pete rocked out with rock-n-roll neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux (of the Amygdaloids) on memory and emotion. And, oh yes, consciousness. Also, another zombie-fight broke out between the co-hosts. Thankfully, no philosophers were harmed. At least, not consciously. Anyway, check out the video below:
Neuroscientist Joe LeDoux joins philosophers Richard Brown and Pete Mandik to discuss the neural bases of memory, emotion, and consciousness in human and nonhuman animals. For more information about the SpaceTimeMind podcast, check out http://www.spacetimemind.com
Professor of philosophy and neuroscientist Berit (Brit) Brogaard from the University of Miami joins Richard Brown and Pete Mandik in the virtual studio for the SpaceTimeMind podcast. In the first half we talk about the physics and metaphysics of time. In the second half we talk about the neurophilosophy of consciousness. To see the full conversation, check out the video below. Click HERE to follow the SpaceTimeMind YouTube channel.
Professor of philosophy and neuroscientist Berit (Brit) Brogaard from University of Miami joins Richard Brown and Pete Mandik in the virtual studio for the SpaceTimeMind podcast. In the first half we talk about the physics and metaphysics of time. In the second half we talk about the neurophilosophy of consciousness.
In this installment of the MindChunk video series, Richard and Pete each relate their philosophical origin stories. (SPOILER ALERT: Richard's adamantium skeleton was installed in a secret government location and Pete was bitten by a radioactive norn.)
Get to know the hosts of SpaceTimeMind a little better as they reveal their philosophical origin stories.
SpaceTimeMind co-hosts Richard Brown & Pete Mandik once co-authored a paper. It will be published soon, but due to a weirdo way of handling backlog at the journal, Philosophical Topics, (basically, time travel), the publication date will be listed as 2012. Anyway, check out "On Whether the Higher-Order Thought Theory of Consciousness Entails Cognitive Phenomenology, Or: What is it Like to Think that One Thinks that P?"
ABSTRACT.The question at the center of the recent growing literature on cognitive phenomenology is this: In consciously thinking P, is there thereby any phenomenology? In this paper we will present two arguments that “yes” answers to this question follow from the Higher Order Thought (HOT) theory of consciousness, especially the version articulated and defended by David Rosenthal. The first, the general argument, aims to show that on the HOT theory all phenomenology is cognitive. The second, the central argument, aims to show that all conscious thoughts have phenomenology.
"Fields are awesome." - Richard Brown, Episode 3: Consciousness explained (?) part 2: The nature of explanation
See also:
In Episode 5: Transhumanism and Existentialism, Richard and Pete spend a bunch of time talking about sci-fi author Roger Williams. Tonight they hit the virtual studio to talk to Roger Williams. If you aren't super-stoked about this news or are previously unaware of Williams' work, here's a mini crash-course for you:
- Roger Williams' novel The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect . You can read it for free online.
- Roger Williams' story arc "Passages In the Void"
- Roger Williams' essay "Hannibal Lecter as Transhumanist Icon"
- A fan blog dedicated to Williams' work: http://www.passagesinthevoid.com/
In Pete's interview in 3AM Magazine, he lists The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect among his top 5 all-time favorite sci-fi books.
(Update: June 5, 2014. The interview went really well, we think. Check out the raw unedited action below.)
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The latest installment of the excellent philosophical webcomic chaospet by Ryan Lake takes very direct and explicit inspiration from an exchange between Richard and Pete in Episode 1 of the SpaceTimeMind podcast (the exchange occurs in the second half of the episode). In the webcomic, Richard's in blue and Pete's in green. This is a pretty accurate reenactment, up to and including the last panel.
Chaospet #246: The Ultimate Skepticism http://chaospet.com/246-the-ultimate-skepticism/
What is knowledge? Knowledge is poo-poo. See below. See also: Duncan Pritchard and John Turri "The Value of Knowledge" Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Image source: http://mrblisschina.tumblr.com/post/8386451239/knowledge-is-poo-poo-hong-kong
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 indomitable and indefatigable Dr. Brown strikes once again with the best and latest in his series of completely over-the-top cinematic trailers for the SpaceTimeMind podcast. If you can watch this without getting so stoked that you need to go run a few laps, then you are truly dead inside. Grab some popcorn and enjoy.
This summer we will have some very cool guests on the spacetimemind podcast. Guests include Lara Beaty, Eric Schwitzgebel, Gregg Caruso, and Bernard Baars
The following MindChunk is drawn from our Scientism session.
Pete Mandik and Richard Brown discuss Neil deGrasse Tyson's recent remarks that if one wants to engage with the big questions in life then one should study the empirical sciences
Attention Twin Earthings and/or doppelgangers thereof. SpaceTimeMind is now touting its toots in tweetspace. The official SpaceTimeMind Twitter account is @spacetimemind99. Accept no substitutes.
In further pursuit of S C I E N C E, we here at the SpaceTimeMind Laboratory are conducting an experiment, codename "MindChunks." Each MindChunk will be a brief little tidbit or bite-sized morsel. It will be small, short, and entirely user-friendly. A MindChunk takes only a few minutes out of your day, but its effects may last a lifetime. What are you waiting for? Ask your doctor about MindChunks today.
Two philosophy professors decided to have some guests on their podcast and what happens next will literally blow your mind. (And we mean "literally" literally.) Watch the video below to see what Richard Brown and Pete Mandik are freaking out about this time. (See also this previous blog post for further valid news regarding upcoming guests.)
Pete and Richard are really excited about the upcoming guests on SpaceTImeMind
When a podcast mentions another podcast, it's a very beautiful thing. SpaceTimeMind just got a shout-out in the most recent episode of the excellent Very Bad Wizards podcast hosted by philosopher Tamler Sommers and psychologist David Pizarro. If for some weird reason you listen to SpaceTimeMind but not Very Bad Wizards, I don't know what your problem is, but stop that right now. Go check it out!
Richard and Pete welcome their new scientismicological overlords and hope they find their nifty blue shirts pleasing.
Hosts of the SpaceTimeMind podcast, philosophers of science Richard Brown and Pete Mandik, discuss scientism. Is everything worth knowing accessible via the methods of science? If so, how would you know that? Can scientism be self-justifying? Is it instead self-refuting? Is calling something "scientific" just an empty honorific?
This video chat is the basis for episodes 2 & 3 of the SpaceTimeMind podcast with Professors Richard Brown and Pete Mandik. The audio from the first half of the video chat found its way into Episode 2: "Consciousness Explained (?) Part 1: Computational Pythagoreanism" and the second half wound up in Episode 3 "Consciousness Explained (?) Part 2: The Nature of Explanation." More info is available at the following links:
http://www.spacetimemind.com/blog/2014/4/6/episode-2-consciousness-explained-part-1-computational-pythagoreanism
http://www.spacetimemind.com/blog/2014/4/14/episode-3-consciousness-explained-part-2-the-nature-of-explanation
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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.
Episode 5 of the SpaceTimeMind podcast drops tomorrow, and our launch point for discussion is the technological singularity, especially as depicted in fictions such as Roger Williams' novel, The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect and the new Johnny Depp flick, Transcendence. Podcast co-host Richard Brown took one for the team and saw Transcendence for the rest of us so we don't have to. For another proxy, check out the official featurette below. Actor Paul Bettany says a scientist told him we'll have digital immortality in 30 years, so I got that goin' for me.
http://www.joblo.com - "Transcendence" Official Featurette - What Is Transcendence? (2014) Johnny Depp HD Dr. Will Caster is the foremost researcher in the field of Artificial Intelligence, working to create a sentient machine that combines the collective intelligence of everything ever known with the full range of human emotions.
In case you missed it the first time around, here are some pertinent installments from Richard Marshall's series of interviews of philosophers for 3:AM Magazine. First off, here are the interviews with the hosts of the SpaceTimeMind podcast, Pete "Brain Hammer" Mandik and Richard "Shombies vs Zombies" Brown. See also the interview with our first guest, Episode 4's Eric "Splintered Skeptic" Schwitzgebel.
"Give a man a fish, feed him for a day. Teach a man Cantor's Diagonal Proof, blow his mind out of his asshole. Now you don't have to feed him." --Philosophy Bro
Richard Brown mentions Cantor's Diagonal Proof towards the end of Episode 3 of the SpaceTimeMind podcast. This may perhaps be one of those things that are a bit hard to follow in a strictly audio format. Here's my own take on the proof. It's excerpted from "Welcome To Infinity," a short paper I wrote in 2012 for students in my class on the philosophy of science. The proof comes in the paper's final section, called "There's more!"
Read it, and we won't have to feed you.
An infinite set that has members that can be mapped one-to-one onto the natural numbers is a countable set. Georg Cantor proved the existence of infinite sets larger than this. Such sets are uncountable. Cantor proved that there are more real numbers than integers.
If for each of the natural numbers we had a row upon which we wrote the infinite decimal expansion of a real number, then we could discover a number that is not on any of those rows by taking the diagonal (the number whose first digit is the first digit of the first row, second digit is the second digit of the second row, and so on) and changing each of the diagonal’s digits. The resultant changed diagonal is guaranteed not to have been anywhere in the original list since any number on the original list would differ from the changed diagonal at the digit where that number’s row intersected the diagonal.
In the following example the digits in bold italic form the diagonal.
Row 0: 0.1234567…
Row 1: 0.2468101…
Row 2: 0.481632…
Row 3: 0.5101520…
Row 4: 0.98989898…
Row 5: 0.75757575…
Thus the diagonal number is 0.28087…The changed diagonal is a number that differs from Row 0 in having a different 1st digit, differs from Row 1 in having a different 2nd digit, differs from Row 2 in having a different 3rd digit, and so on. The changed diagonal will differ from every number on a Row by one digit. Thus, the changed diagonal will not itself be one of the Row numbers. Thus the changed diagonal will not be mapped onto one of the natural numbers. AND... there thus exists at least one more real number (the changed diagonal) than there are natural numbers. Ta da!
We're about a week away from Episode 5 of the SpaceTimeMind podcast, and the episode's audio will be culled from the videochat below.
Richard Brown recently saw (and hated) that new Johnny Depp movie, Transcendence, and that got us going on Sartrean Singularity, Kantian AI, and torturing your sims. Stay tuned, spacetimeminders!
Is a post-singularity transhuman condition an existentialist's ultimate wet dream? Or is it instead a harrowing nightmare? Richard Brown is confident that Kant can save us from unfriendly AI. But Pete Mandik is betting on the rise of the super-sociopath.
Today cognitive neuroscientist Bernard J. Baars joined Pete and Richard in the virtual studio to discuss the Global Workspace Theory of consciousness. The raw unedited video of our conversation is available below. As is our custom, this is the source of the audio that winds up in our SpaceTimeMind podcast.
One of us is once again on Philosophy TV. This time it's Pete, and he's appearing as part of the 2nd Annual Online Undergraduate Philosophy Conference that Phil TV is hosting, and he's commenting on Chris Crogan's "Mind, Brains, and Contents." Check it out if you're into (or identical to) any of the following: Artificial Intelligence, brains, representational content, swamp people, and Chinese rooms.
Past Phil TV appearances of the SpaceTimeMinders include:
- Richard Brown & Pete Mandik discussing higher order representation approaches to explaining consciousness.
- Richard Brown & Keith Frankish defending/de-friending qualia.
- Richard Brown taking a dump on Santa Claus.
(PARENTHETICAL BONUS: Speaking of television, here's Richard's appearance in an episode of Fly Girls.)
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 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.
Eric Schwitzgebel, Lara Beaty, & Gregg Caruso
Episodes 1-3 of the SpaceTimeMind podcast have so far featured only Richard Brown, Pete Mandik, and their wild imaginations. But actual live humans have agreed to join us in the virtual studio for forthcoming episodes. Upcoming guests include philosopher Eric Schwitzgebel, psychologist Lara Beaty, and philosopher Gregg Caruso.
Other guests are in the works. Stay tuned for further announcements.
As always, the audio that gets edited into the podcasts originates in wild and wooly video chats that are archived at the SpaceTimeMind YouTube channel. Sneak a peek!
The Oxford Bibliography "Philosophy of Cognitive Science" by Pete Mandik is free this week (April 13 - April 19) along with a whole bunch of other online content as part of Oxford University Press's "Library Week". To check it out, use "libraryweek" as both username and password.
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.
Richard Brown has made a second trailer for the launch of SpaceTimeMind. This one has way more narwhals in it! (You can see the first trailer here.)
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.
Topics tackled include whether the physical universe is really a computer simulation and whether you can know with certainty that you are currently conscious.