Space Time Mind Pete Mandik

Pete Mandik is joined by philosopher and AI researcher Alex Kiefer (Monash University) to discuss some newsworthy Artificial Intelligence projects, especially Language Models such as LaMDA, DALL-E, and GPT-3. What are the spiciest possible takes on these systems, and is any take too spicy for Alex or Pete? How much of so-called human intelligence and consciousness is just a language game disconnected from reality? What’s a CRUNGUS, and how many are among us? Whose art will you consume when non-humans get better at making it than humans? And whose podcasts?

The first half of the episode is dedicated to illusionism. In the second half, we talk about Christianity in general and Mormonism in particular, with an eye toward how such religious traditions square with metaphysics and epistemologies that are broadly naturalistic, empiricist, and physicalist.

Topics covered include the brain’s role in conscious experience, competing definitions of “consciousness”, hypnosis, near-death experiences, psychedelic drugs, cognitive behavioral therapy, the “self” and much much more.

Get ready to interrogate some mind colors! Can the so-called qualitative aspects of consciousness be explained in holistic and functionalist terms that undermine anti-physicalist critiques? Can the consciousness of a mental state be wholly explained in terms of a non-conscious thought about it? To find out, Pete Mandik talks to Jacob Berger (Lycoming College) about Jake’s work on consciousness within the Higher-Order Thought approach. Pete and Jake also get into the closely related quality-space view of sensory qualities that Jake defends.

Behold!: The first new episode of SpaceTimeMind after a seven-year hiatus. Buddhist philosophy meets neuroscience when host Pete Mandik talks with Bryce Huebner (Georgetown U.) about his NeuroYogacara project.  We talk about Yogacara and other nearby schools of Buddhist philosophy as we delve into meditation, psychedelic drugs, biopsychist approaches to consciousness, disgusting things, 4E cognition, and philosophy as life craft.

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?