Episode

[@sherkowski]

Best podcast on the net👍

[@ChaosLierLen]

Hands down!

[@parmenides1472]

I agree.

[@baronbullshyster2996]

It’s an illusion 😂

[@Omar-es3qh]

​@@ChaosLierLen😮 my name

[@tohigherhighs]

100%

[@geneharvey7]

Happy 10th anniversary Stephen. Quality vs. quantity. No problem with the frequency. Great episode!

[@nazzenpoppel886]

Wonderful podcast. I do nothing but sit and listen, my attention nowhere else. I look forward to "freewill". Looking back on my 58 years, I highly doubt it's existence.

[@ericjackson-nq4hp]

One day someone will rewind the tape and find that West has written one of the strongest intellectual autobiographies found anywhere online.

[@divelostmind]

Happy anniversary 🎉, my favourite and most long term podcast, (I usually get bored of podcasts after a few months but I've stuck with this one for multiple years consistently). Thank you for helping us know more today than we did yesterday! Always grateful.

[@InsanityInsanity-m8k]

New uploads from you are such a joy

[@robertsaget9697]

When you can't solve the hard problem just deny consciousness exists! No problem to solve if we simply deny there is a problem to address!

[@baronbullshyster2996]

Don’t just deny consciousness. Make it reprehensible as well. Then you definitely won’t have a problem. The last time I used my consciousness was to write a stupid comment. So I’m definitely not going to use consciousness again.

[@tookie36]

@@baronbullshyster2996 you make quiet the assumption in saying you “use” your consciousness

[@baronbullshyster2996]

@@tookie36 yes well said. If I’m consciousness, how can I use it. I must have made my conscious into a thought. But that’s a thought. O no I think I’ve created a feed back loop in my head. I’m going to have turn it off and turn in on again.

[@Torbu6286]

Yeah, because before you answer a question you have to examine the question, if it's a dumb question or logical one.

[@bdnnijs192]

Maybe it's not so much denying consiousness but more accusing mainstream philosophers of barking up the wrong tree. In the film analogy there is no constant movement, but there is still a stream of still pictures. There is however continious sound, however that is not a movement.

[@davidwadsworth1760]

Dr Michael Levin has done studies on planaria worms that can regenerate their bodies when they are cut into pieces... when separated from their neurons, they regenerate them, but whats really interesting is that they retain their memories.

[@jerben9462]

How do we know worms keep their memories?

[@davidwadsworth1760]

@@jerben9462 they were trained to react to stimuli, then they were cut into pieces and the worms that regenerated independent of the neurons retained that training... theres a bunch of great podcasts and interviews he has done and I highly recommend them, its very fascinating stuff he is working on and highly relevant to the discussion on consciousness.

[@baronbullshyster2996]

If worms retain their memories Dr Levin better be careful as they might want revenge after remembering they were chopped up.

[@rajith.d.fernando]

@@baronbullshyster2996 hahaha that's hilarious

[@richardjaffe9972]

@@davidwadsworth1760etained memory is probably explain by transfer RNA but still different than how a plant can remember without a brain. There are experiments where a plant that was dropped and immediately closed up after being dropped had learned on subsequent falls not to close up.

[@maryjanemccarthy2907]

Can't get enough of these!

[@AlexanderWeurding]

Great work again! My brain always hurts but for the positive. Learned Qualia :)

[@AlexanderWeurding]

Had me thinking about french philosopher jean baudrillard again.

[@Egoistic_girl]

You're back! Yay \o/

[@tookie36]

Very excited to see an idealist episode in the future :) 12:27 Also Daniel Dennette wrote a book called "Consciousness Explained" and yet he cannot define consciousness. 15:45 David Chalmers called "emergence" as believing in magic haha The brain, the body, the mind are all objects within consciousness Love the episode !

[@thereignofthezero225]

"I think, therefore, i am not." - Knowone No-one

[@kuroarimiyazaki4628]

Loving this one and the previous one!

[@thereignofthezero225]

"You could do this infinitely..." Nope, we live in a finite universe

[@TennesseeJed]

Phenomenal phenomenology!

[@tonygregory9345]

Well that can explain consciousness in terms of 'what it feels like to be you' as an illusion .. but what about explaining the existence of 'what it feels like to be' generally speaking? Because personally that's what I think of when I think of 'consciousness' .. and that subjective consciousness ie 'what it feels like to be you' is an extension of that.. and then to try to explain why there is such a thing within being of subjectiveness at all?

[@Torbu6286]

The hard problem is meaningless, it's semantics.

[@jusuzippol]

Really love the metaphor of our consciousness being the desktop or the steering wheel of a car. Been watching some Michael Levin interviews lately and he's convinced me about how consciousness and probably free will as well is an emergent property from the intelligence of our cells and their collectives. In that sense, consciousness is kind of like the user interface on a desktop pc. The difference is that a computer's parts arent intelligent in themselves, but our bodies are machines made up of intelligent parts which increases the complexity significantly. And, similarly to free will, one of the fundamental reasons of this "illusion" or emerging consciousness is our lack to perceive all the parts in their totality, mostly temporally (in time). The processes that make up our consciousness are a lot both slower and faster than what we can understand.

[@gendashwhy]

Love hearing Jim Gaffigan's voice at 3:25 in... 😂😂😂 ! Get some Steve-O!! Can't stop laughing.......

[@rajith.d.fernando]

Build this man a statue!

[@chrisjarmain]

Alan watts who was a 60s philopspher suggests Eastern thought, religion, and ideas suggest the ego that we use to describe the self, conscious awareness is an illusion. He has put alot of time and effort into describing this concept and at the same time translating the Eastern thought for a western person.

[@chrisjarmain]

And in an odd way trying to find your consciousness is useless. Because you are getting in your own way. Like ideas that you can't touch the tip of your finger with the same tip of that same finger. So, you can't see your consciousness with your own consciousness. It's too close for inspection.

[@ИванИван-и5х9д]

Brilliant!

[@christinemartin63]

When I'm absorbed in a book and I am suddenly self-consciously aware that I am reading a terrific book, then I am aware of myself being aware--of my own consciousness.

[@anubhavsharma904]

The Conspiracy Against the Human Race Book by Thomas Ligotti and Antinatalism.

[@Chef8898]

❤ your show

[@Alex-eh3sp]

Frumos 🙏🏻

[@richardjaffe9972]

Free will or not we do have the opportunity to have a happier longer productive life through better decisions. Be a lifelong learner. Learn how to optimize self care. Be aware of subconscious implicit biases and logical fallacies. Be good at critical thinking. No need to judge or try to change others. 😊

[@robertlewisart]

The metaphor of a browser or computer desktop skirts the issue. WHO is viewing the screen? Who is moving the mouse? It still FEELS like ME. Why does it feel like me? What experiences the feeling of me?

[@euanlynch6343]

Is it possible that phenomenal consciousness will never become explained by humanity because of nature? As in the earth we humans have evolved into. Maybe there is simply no need for life to “discover” what phen. Cons is because life in the situation we are in just does not call for it to help our situation? I’d also refer to the earlier part of the episode where you talk about phen. consciousness as an attribution in between the process of access cons. Maybe because this has been established, we then cannot break further on and we are left at this level of understanding. However, it could still be possible for other life forms other than us to discover it depending on their capabilities and position in nature?

[@exlauslegale8534]

21:55 this is very close to what Deleuze and Guattari meant with theirs poststructuralism of the _Anti-Oedipus,_ molecular vs. molar, virtual vs. actual, real but not actual... Structure by itself conflates, smashes together these different dimensions

[@ericjackson-nq4hp]

I like your style. _Anti-Oedipus_ was and remains, up to this hour, the most challenging read I have ever attempted. I am still haunted by it, more than a decade after first picking it up. hahaha, I am partial to the Continental drift but translation is a pressing problem I didn't account for. Mad Respect. It's a provocative text for sure. Presently, I am reading _Phaedrus._ I noticed a _plateau_ in your avatar. Whatever, keep reading. Awesome stuff. A bunch going on in the ancient world too. Cheers.

[@exlauslegale8534]

@@ericjackson-nq4hp To paraphrase Bergson, every era needs it's own metaphysics.

[@czowiekpierwotny2160]

Would love to hear about idealism take!

[@DjTahoun]

🌷😇🙏🏻🌷

[@aocbbl]

❤❤❤

[@adlos6168]

Love it

[@MrWhite-yg6yk]

Well, the good news is that you might not even be you!

[@seanpatrickrichards5593]

whatever consciousness is, I like it ! :D There's alot of nice sights and sounds and fun stuff to do

[@rabbychan]

Nothing we can do about it in such case so just enjoy life on hardcore mode.

[@Kevin-h3s8k]

🎉

[@stanleyklein524]

There is only phenomenal consciousness. The remainder are objects OF consciousness. That is a fundamental distinction known for virtually ever (in human time).

[@cp_sparrow]

This is advait vedant philosophy (india philosopher shankarachar 1300 year ago )

[@ErnestRamaj]

Yea, just upload more, thanks.

[@FormsInSpace]

the buddhist (khandhas / 5 aggregates) show that there is no self. only impermanent, temporal sense stimulus and mental activity.

[@hantoosh1200]

🤯

[@stanleyklein524]

If consciousness is an illusion, what is it an illusion of? Consciousness? If I taught philosophy in this manner I would justifiably be fired.

[@bdnnijs192]

What is it an illusion of? Leads to more open minded examination than the usual unfounded assumptions philosophers make.

[@daltongrowley5280]

It seems so obvious when ya say it like that though.

[@ericjackson-nq4hp]

...haha, West is a phenomenal writer. hahahaha. I bet you have a great sense of humour - thanks for sharing it.

[@csmithvenice17]

I think therefore I am; this discussion is silly

[@jasonsomers8224]

Incame up withbthis defenition of real while listening and I have to write it down somewhere. The thing that is real is the thing whose total corpus of representations give incomplete knowledge of the it.

[@stanleyklein524]

The question is incandescently stupid (at least to all who experienced it).