(00:00) Intro and T-shirts: Ghostbusters and Picard
(03:09) Joe discusses his article “Beneath the Skin of Capitalism.”
(6:30) The nature of consciousness, matter, and dualism have profound implications for ethics, human rights, and how society should be organized.
(9:45) Dualism vs. materialism / physicalism. Time, space, entropy and the second law of thermodynamics. Plato, Aristotle, and Descartes.
(36:29) The brain as a receiving station. The Matrix. The simulation hypothesis.
(51:55) The materialistic view of consciousness. The hard problem of consciousness, and qualia. Philosophical zombies, and the homunculus. Why does the experience of having a brain feel like something?
(01:02:30) If consciousness is material, then we are nature and nature is us. The implied hierarchy of dualism, that mind and spirit are greater than the body.
(01:06:34) Ethical implications of machine consciousness. How reflecting on conscious machines will help us better understand what it means to be human.
(01:10:05) Panpsychism: Could consciousness be an elemental force like gravity?
(01:15:16) Consciousness monism, Biocentrism, and the Buddhist “ground of being.”
(01:40:27) Summation and outro.
Show notes:
Beneath the Skin of Capitalism, by Joe Occhipinti
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
The Radio Wave Argument, by Sean Prophet
The Singularity is Near, by Ray Kurzweil
How to Create a Mind, by Ray Kurzweil
The Emotion Machine, by Marvin Minsky
Consciousness Explained, by Daniel Dennett
The idea that everything from spoons to stones is conscious is gaining academic credibility, by Olivia Goldhill
The strange link between the human mind and quantum physics, by Phillip Ball
Biocentrism, by Robert Lanza
Buddhist Mind and Matter, by Francisca Cho
