Episode 21: Alex Rosenberg on Naturalism, History, and Theory of Mind

[@AeonsOfFrost]

15:30 wtf was that?

[@ExistentialistDasein]

Please do invite more philosophers to the podcast:) Thank you for this upload!

[@stevephillips8083]

David Kyle Johnson ftw! :D

[@stevephillips8083]

Human Evolution yeah :) Sciphi

[@anttiharju3739]

Please no.

[@origins7298]

Consciousness is just a word! The reason people have subjective experience is because that's what the laws of physics dictate will happen when you get the complex arrangement of atoms and molecules that make up a human being The same reason that water is wet because that's what the laws of physics dictate will happen when you get enough H2O molecules together and organisms experiencing it Anyway I don't know why it's so hard to just say Consciousness is a word, a label, that we apply to the totality of Human Experience But the reason we have that experience is that simply what is necessitated or dictated by the laws of physics and the conditions a complexity that human organisms have reached

[@WumpieJr]

I'm dismayed by Rosenberg's discussion of chairs vs. free will. He assumes we all agree on what a chair is, but asserts his right to deny any proposed instance of free will. The same right exists with respect to chairs. There is no rigorous empirical test by which objects may be included or excluded from the category "chair." If Rosenberg suggests a complete rubric by which that categorization can be made, someone can equally suggest a complete rubric by which a combination of particles (presumably in motion) can be judged to be an instance of free will. That's they key to things being "true" or "false" at a higher level of description: *we have to agree on the description*!

[@origins7298]

Right, good thoughts! It's also annoying to say it's a method of social control If there's no free will the criminals aren't free. But also The people that make up laws and incarcerate them are not free I just find it weird when people think that somehow if there's no concept of Free Will in society then somehow criminals won't be punished Obviously the people who incarcerate them and make up the laws have no more control over their behavior to enforce things than the people who are committing crimes And then you have to look at it that there's no person making up the rules of society it's just the forward momentum of all our physiology Surprise Sean doesn't bring up quantum physics more to show that there's no strict determinism Also it's interesting to look at Freedom or free will in the guise of the sense of control of our our physiology Could surely no one would say that they have absolute control over their physiology

[@WumpieJr]

@@origins7298 Carroll's view, if I understand correctly from having watched and listened to many hours, is that quantum mechanics is not an escape valve from determinism. The wavefunction is fully mathematically determined. We just experience a particular subset of it. But that doesn't mean anything nondeterministic happened. And it certainly doesn't have any relation to our typical conception of free will.

[@origins7298]

@@WumpieJr it seems like the challenge is that words like deterministic don't have any complete meaning Currently our best understanding is that we can model and make accurate predictions about the universe to a certain degree or within a certain margin of error That is for example we can say the Earth is a certain shape within a certain probability error Or we can measure the speed of light to within a certain probability error Once you get a complex enough system it'll never be completely deterministic because any measurement of that system will effect in ways that cannot be predicted I'm always surprised that given how smart Sean Carroll is and the fact that he's a physicist he doesn't talk more about things like the observer effect the uncertainty principle the indeterminacy principle It seems like his guest Alex was arguing against free will from the assumption that we have a soul that is completely independent of the laws of physics and completely free Of course this is an outdated conception Obviously there is no evidence for anything like an immaterial soul But certainly the words free will still have relative meaning in the way that any complex concept has relative meaning Someone's actions can be thought of as free will when compared to someone who is clearly being coerced manipulated or influenced in strong ways I think Sean Carroll poetic naturalism is one of the best ways to look at The Human Condition He certainly makes a good argument that Concepts like Free Will are the best descriptions we have for certain circumstances When you look at it from a biological perspective obviously no one has complete control over their physiology We Are biological organisms and we are following the forward momentum of biological processes However certainly people can learn to have certain Behavioral or abilities and describing certain behaviors as a free choice makes sense in certain situations Yeah I just think two things that need to be more emphasized in the discussion is 1 a biological perspective and 2 is more understanding of complexity Chaos Theory and the fact that complex systems are not deterministic Sean Carroll always mentions laplace's demon But he should know that laplace's demon is incompatible with the laws of physics In order to get knowledge of a system you have to influence that system just creating a larger more complex system

[@WumpieJr]

@@origins7298 I don't know, it seems like you're trying to wriggle out of potential issues with your statements by invoking the difficulty of defining terms while holding Carroll to a higher standard. For instance, you say "Surprise Sean doesn't bring up quantum physics more to show that there's no strict determinism " in your post above, but then "words like deterministic don't have any complete meaning." Well, which is it? Do you defend this notion that quantum implies a lack of determinism, which Carroll refutes, or do you feel the terms are inadequately defined? Also, you seem to hold that complex systems are undetermined simply because you don't *know* the outcome, but that is not the same as there not *being* a predetermined outcome that is unknown to you. To take it a step further, the Laplace's Demon that Carroll refers to (and he's often careful to point this out, but perhaps he didn't at some point) is not restricted to one branch of the wavefunction, but rather considers the entire Everettian universe, where we have no compelling reason to suspect that anything is undetermined. If you ask the Demon whether you will find a living or dead cat in the box it will reply that the wavefunction has equal amplitude in the "living" state and in the "dead" state. Just as many "yous" with equal claim to being you will see living and dead cats when they look. There is no indeterminacy there.

[@origins7298]

@@WumpieJr I think the fact that no one can ever know with certainty any outcome means that you therefore shouldn't go the next step and say.... "well there are predetermined outcomes but they can just never be known" This is really the Crux of the issue I think we are on pretty safe ground with all our scientific knowledge to say that predetermined outcomes can never be known in any complex enough system Therefore I don't think we should say that predetermined outcomes are part of the universe After all this was the upshot of all the great research done into chaos theory, the butterfly effect, the observer effect and so on It's just not a feature of our universe that any person or intelligence can have knowledge of future outcomes Therefore there's no need to argue whether that is an attribute of our universe Also from my understanding most physicist argue against the idea that the whole universe can be reduced to one-wave function... Anyway I agree with almost all the things Sean Carroll says and I like a lot of his arguments and I've learned a lot from him It's really just this notion of laplace's demon that he always refers to. Such an intelligence again is an impossibility given the things we know about our universe To gain knowledge about any complex system you have to influence that system in ways that cannot be predicted Talking about laplace's demon is like talking about Square circles Sean is very right to say that there's many things that we can conceive of that don't make sense. Such as we can conceive that angels are guiding the moon in accordance with Newtonian mechanics. But there is no need to make such an assumption So you can conceive of an intelligence that knows the position of every particle in the universe. but we know that such an intelligence is a physical impossibility ..... regarding the point about questioning the meaning of words and also arguing against the same words such as determinism In my mind those ideas go hand-in-hand because. And I think this is in accord with poetic naturalism. Words have meaning and utility within certain domains. But they don't have absolute meaning and we can use scientific Concepts to show the limitations of words like determinism Therefore I think modeling, predictability within a margin of error, patterns, I think these are more useful Concepts then to think of the universe in an absolute deterministic fashion. ..... To be clear I am not arguing for any mysticism or magical attributes. I do not believe in such things. I just think at the most fundamental levels that the question about determinism doesn't have any meaning. All we can say is it can never be known. I guess that would also go for Concepts like Randomness, spontaneity ... Regarding the Free Will discussion I thought we were pretty much on the same page. Clearly we are biological systems following the forward momentum of biological processes. We do not choose to grow old, we did not choose to be born and in this sense we really don't choose anything. But obviously the concept of choice has utility in certain situations. And clearly you can argue that certain actions are less constrained and up to our own biology compared with certain circumstances where we are being influenced by other people. So clearly the idea of Free Will has application and certain instances and it's valuable to contrast it with coercion xcetera

[@DamonD_Absences]

Was somebody murdered at 15:30 or......

[@3dlabs99]

Yup but its not relevant given free will doesnt exist -- it was just a natural consequence of the past. If you are surprised its just a sign of your lack of information.

[@DamonD_Absences]

3dlabs99 😂

[@xixeoxeno]

It’s a bit difficult to focus on the content with disruptions in the audio on Alex’s end. Of course it’s not his fault, but as a listener I think I would prefer if the interviews were done in person or had fewer interruptions, because the noises make it really distracting to listen.

[@xixeoxeno]

El Los er' What I’ve loved about all the episodes so far is the rapport Sean has with his guest, which is really informal and jocular - which balances nicely with the professional quality of the recordings. Here it was the opposite...I felt that they had a very stiff connection, with the guest using tons of jargon and not making his explanations accessible (perhaps without realizing), and the informal / phone call quality of the recording didn’t help. This is the first episode I wasn’t able to finish.

[@suzieQna]

Maybe the material is why people find it necessary to point out the distracting sound quality and its effect on their ability to focus on the content. To me, the sound quality became part of its charm. I listened to this one several times. By contrast, some interviewees with smooth audio and practised public speaking style, I did not find as interesting. I put this down to personal preference.

[@unclebirdman]

I agree about "aboutness" we should use the term "models". There is something in my brain that models this table (not that is about this table).

[@ladybirdlee3058]

going back through and listening to all these philosophy podcasts

[@bmdecker93]

Although I hold different views than Alex I appreciate his views and I'm glad Sean had him on. As a history grad and fan of philosophy I found his views fairly interesting.

[@szclimber]

Love the podcast, wish the guest audio was better

[@suzieQna]

Sam Zakeri maybe this was the best that was possible given the circumstances.

[@AlanWil2]

I read Alex's book "The Atheist's Guide to Reality" many years ago ...good stuff.

[@cripplingautism5785]

i have it sitting with a bunch of others i never get round to reading since youtube videos/podcasts are so much easier to digest and have destroyed my attention span

[@WisdomVendor1]

If you are going to discuss subject matter such as free will and naturalism, it is very important to present eaches SPECIFIC meanings and or examples of these expressions, as many people have different views on what these topics mean and or imply.

[@rodolfo9916]

I didn't understand what is the difference between thinking about something and having the "illusion" that you are thinking about something.

[@mycount64]

Regardless, of any of my other comments... great guest great topics... nice to delve in some non physics stuff.

[@brianmeanor7907]

Sorry but this is the only way I know to tell you how incredibly informative and beautiful I am finding your book the particle at the end of the universe to be .

[@damirhotlovac1214]

I really think these need to be video interviews, I'm a visual person and I need to see people talking to better organize the information I am hearing.

[@origins7298]

Hey Sean you got to look at the concept of free will from a biological perspective Surely no one has absolute control over their physiology But obviously there's limited domains of control. And people learn certain behavioral abilities over the course of their life Also concept of free will wasn't prevalent in Greek society and they certainly had a very strong sense of justice So I don't think it's a good argument to talk about free will or the concept of free will as a way to enforce social control And we must see that if we really don't think anyone is free than the criminals are not free but neither all the people who are enforcing or making up laws Anyway Sean is good to see you pushing this discussion a little more you're really smart guy and speak extremely well on many topics I would love for you to look at a book called the birth and death of meaning by Ernest Becker I still think, although some of Becker's thought was off-target due to Freudian influences, yet many of his discussion is still very relevant and insightful Particularly the way he boils things down to symbols vs biology. Obviously what makes us to distinct as humans is our ability to symbolically represent the world and to relate to our own symbolic creations

[@justinleemiller]

Rosenberg's book is excellent! They don't start talking about it until halfway through the podcast.

[@suzieQna]

I love this episode

[@dmarsub]

41:00 How about a podcast about this question :)?

[@JeroenBaxexm]

imo, the best one yet

[@christianbutcher716]

Free will may not exist, but will certainly does. We are are entangled in samsara; but to deny will is to deny the very act of philosophy in the first place.

[@karnytten]

Christian Butcher Exactly my thought. And, if not for a some degree of will, what is life then? If a rock falls, the living steps out of harms way, and so slightly changes the future course of bunch of elementary particles. It doesn’t give or take from the larger entropy which must be the deeper deterministic law? Will within a deterministic world.

[@woody7652]

Thank you.

[@robotaholic]

I love Alex Rosenberg and Eliminative Materialism. Great guest, rad podcast Definitely worth 5 bux!

[@paulsass4343]

i think a term for the person, myself among might, be "scienceist"

[@mycount64]

Freewill is an emergent phenomena due to the fact we cannot (at this time) know the future. Determinism may have eliminated freewill as a truth in the material world. We still function in the world as if we are experiencing freewill... even when we do not believe in it. Similar to freewill but simpler. Is running on a treadmill running? Freewill requires a) definition b) perspective depending upon how you define those two things determines the answer as to whether there is freewill or not.

[@DamonD_Absences]

Are we still not going to address the murder in the background at 15:30, or.....

[@3dlabs99]

Shhhh!

[@stevephillips8083]

I think philosophy is intuitive :/ Totally with Sean on free will.

[@kizza1645]

OK, so I can understand what the basic concept that he's trying to push about reality. It took a bit of flexible thinking but someone please tell me if I've got this wrong. So he's essentially trying to say definitionally and also practically - we are unable to see reality for what it truly is. Our own thinking is constrained by the reality of our hardware and software. The basic concept being that if we wanted to be truly honest and logical with our science - we need to make room to allow this line of thinking to progress. If we want to actually understand the true nature of reality, thinking cannot be constrained by our intuitions in what's was real and how things are structured. There are huge implications to what he's saying and the results we might find. Things like freewill and reality are extremely important to how society functions at this time. Sean seems to push back on this idea - however I don't think he understands the broader implications of what it would even mean for reality to not exist and for values to have this unusual spooky property to them. Sean is taking a hard physics approach to his line of thinking - agreeing only that the atoms and molecules in the chair are 'real' and exist within space at this time. I pushed this out a bit further in my head and reach the conclusion that in all practical and truthful terms, we don't see reality for what it is and it's impossible for us to do. We see what evolution aloud our brains the ability to develop sense for. If I just imagine everything that is around me that IS actually there and does exist - then my intuitive picture of reality break downs. Between me and the end of an empty room there exists large amounts of different gasses, water particles in the air, I can't see the radiating and decaying energy of the particles around me, I can't see the Higgs field, I can't see the forces of gravity and so much more. All these things fill empty space to the point that the very idea of a room becomes something different. If I were able to have a pan-opticon sensory ability - I would see a completely different space and therefore a completely different world. We are use to seeing, hearing, feeling etc within the constrains of what's useful to our survival. If I extrapolate out further - I find that I can agree with this argument. We may exists in what I think could be described as a 'construct'. A field of pure energy - which essentially is exactly what it really is. It's something we are physically almost unable of finding the base truth to - if we continue to think as humans. We almost need to develop entirely new ways of thinking to pass this science into the future and to progress it. How hard was it to find the Higg's field? Pretty hard right, so surely there are other fields of energy and forces acting within this construct of energy that fill other spaces in time that we cannot see. Even the discussion of values blows away any rational original intuition I had. He's technically 100 percent correct. How did a collection of atoms manage to have values and goals. That information doesn't seem to stored anywhere in the brain, it's all biological information processing that doesn't store information in the way that most people imagine. It's almost like the neurons in our brain contain a superposition of information - all at once. They both hold the value and also don't hold the value. I think if you take a hard naturalist stance, which I would say, you have to if your being scientific, then we are the gods. The power of complexity exists within us - we are the only beings we have evidence for that can hold true inspiration, creation and values. We may be the only collection of atoms in the universe that is able to hold these abstract, yet, meaningful - almost indefinable - set of world structuring concepts. These ideas are beyond trivial and if I'm being honest with myself, this is much more exciting to find the true nature of then any other science happening right now. We may truly be some special emergent property of matter within the universe. We are by definition an aberration - almost a glitch in the construct. It's truly a spin out if you think of these ideas for too long.

[@paulsass4343]

i am so pleased by your insights, though the possibility that there is no "emergentness" and increased computation, ( i mean in the manner of all thought being physicalist computation) can lead to an ever finer and more nuanced structure of relationships "understanding" each other; sorry for all the quotes but it seems likely that there is no word picture that can map onto the processes that are occurring- if we are eonly at the tip of the iceberg say, in regards the indefinite regress of fields? there are reasons to think things but are there reasons that the level of structure our kind of "individuals" dominate outwiegh any other set of processes? our self-perception may be a useful tool for- getting dinner but to use the individual person to measure the allthing is seemingly of use but to what point and when our thoughts and instrumentation progress further there will be more data to inter-relate ( as multivac said in "the last question" i'm collecting i'm collecting!!! referencing curly of the three stooges.)

[@null.och.nix7743]

word dude. i entirely agreee!

[@jdelcantov]

Hello, iam from Chile. I hopeyou can read this coment. I am a psychologist, and not long ago i have been very interested in this quantum world. Obviusly iam very ignorant, i find it very amazing, interesting i give me some energy that i dont know how to explain it. Well, finally you are very very clever bright men, Thanks a lot. Come to visit us!!

[@chrisrecord5625]

"Of course that's your contention, your a first year grad student...(Will). Not to be a nattering, nabob of negativism, but I thought we were drifting into neuro-flapdoodle, at times. I don't think SPECT Imaging has pinpointed thoughts, emotions or beliefs: yet. I am just learning about hard determinism, soft determinism and eliminative materialism but I think I am trending toward semipermeable determinism.Stopping short being more disobligating, I will avoid remarks on history, Baron d'Holbach, free will and the enlightenment.

[@chrisrecord5625]

Logic is the slave of emotion. Hitler was downing a cocktail of pharmaceuticals when he decided to launch the plans for the Battle of the Bulge knowing he had to pull several rabbits out of his hat to have any chance of an armistice, winning being out of the question. The plan, in retrospect, was a disaster. I shall now have a cocktail of my own.

[@stiffyvokes2404]

15:30 Rosenberg ignores a murder. Refuted.

[@myothersoul1953]

Didn't Skinner tried to rid the world of mentalism some time ago? How well did that work? Eliminative materialism sounds like my kind of thing in so far as it fits with naturalism but eliminating stories goes against science. Stories are great, stories are our power, the lessons we learn and the theories we construct. Theories are stories about how the world work. E = Mc2 is a story about a relationship that is incomplete because I left off the part about momentum. It's not as if psychology and cognitive sciences have made no progress at all. Not stellar progress like physics but then they don't study stars. But hey it's science and critical thinking is important as are results. So hey eliminative materialism, got any better results?

[@myothersoul1953]

I don't know if I agree with Alex Rosenberg about "free will" or not. I agree that it does not exists but I don't think "representation is just a useful tool like free will". "Free will" isn't a useful tool, "representation" is. Try explaining what you are doing as you read this sentence without using "representation" in your explanation.

[@paulsass4343]

Alex Rosenberg is the correctest man on earth

[@andrewroddy3278]

I can't see that Rosenberg's vision chimes with the biblical idea of the Fall but it does seem to be informed by an idea of some Paradise that is yet to be realised. In such a paradise his propositions. like Wittgenstein's, will be recognised as nonsensical. By this measure I am already in Paradise but - and I hate to say it - there is still a shitload of work to do.

[@youtubeadventurer1881]

If consciousness exists, then so does some sort of free will. That is, if consciousness cannot be ultimately explained by any sort of theory of physics, then whatever sort of 'magic' consciousness would have to be for that to be the case, that 'magic' would be impacting on the physical world, because otherwise we wouldn't be sitting here talking about the mystery of consciousness. Of course, it probably doesn't really exist in any such profound sense, and we're just to stupid to see how it could be explained by brain activity, and ultimately physics. I think there's a reasonable chance though that it does exist, and I hope it does, because otherwise all of this would be utterly pointless.

[@Beacharn]

I see no reason why fundamental consciousness would imply free will in the strong metaphysical sense. That remains an incoherent concept.

[@thulyblu5486]

I have a hypothesis of what consciousness might be. I think it's a crude simulation of our environment based on sensory input. In other words: Evolution produced individuals that need to survive in the environment and need to act in it. That requires information about the environment, thus we have senses. In order to use this sensory data, there needs to be a model to map this information onto.... this information is coming in continuously, so it must be integrated into this model all the time like a livestream. Call the center of this simulation "me", and bingo: You've got consciousness: a livestream of the universe centered around a "self" .

[@cripplingautism5785]

@@thulyblu5486 wouldn't that imply virtually every living thing would have evolved consciousness? i find that extremely difficult to believe, unless you're just talking about what some people call 'access consciousness' as opposed to 'phenomenal consciousness' which is the subjective experience of qualia, and a meta-awareness of that primary awareness, so while simple animals may be conscious and aware of their environment in some basic sense, there's no 'inner self' which is actually experiencing it phenomenalogically.

[@thulyblu5486]

@@cripplingautism5785 It would imply that there are different kinds of consciousness depending on the kind of model that the brain uses and also different degrees of consciousness depending on how elaborate and detailed the mental model is. Most animals would technically have some degree of consciousness, yes, but the vast majority would be rather primitive compared to human consciousness. You can test if the "self" is even part of the model of the world by confronting animals with a mirror.... some animals recognize themselves and some don't recognize themselves (and think it's another animal). By the way, human children develop the ability to recognize themselves in a mirror over time which would mean that consciousness gradually emerges rather than being instantly there (which makes sense when you think about it).

[@Jaroen66]

I'm fairly convinced that all of our perceptions of consciousness and free will are generated by the brain (just as anything else that we're aware of). But I wonder why it should make you feel pointless? The perception of meaning is imbued by the brain the same as consciousness and free will is, on top of that we create our own meaning as well. Is there any point to it in the ultimate bottom level of physics? No. Does it matter? I don't see why it should

[@landgabriel]

People who are unable to tell good stories are always arguing against the usefulness of stories. You can tell this IYI is probably a hit at parties.

[@snake88ification]

Please . Do not invite another guy like this . Chairs don't exist. I know a guy who thinks like that so, I do too. lol

[@Borisimo90]

My boy Alex!

[@lorenavedon]

Sean attempts to define free will as, "people making choices and can be held responsible for their actions" which when unpacked results in a futile endeavor to define the concept of free will. The concept of free will requires it to be fundamental. If you can't stop the regress at some point it becomes a meaningless concept. People making choices gets you nowhere in terms of free will. By this definition, robots make choices, computers make choices, planets make the choices to orbit the sun and follow the laws of gravity. Where is free will there? Next we move to, "can be held responsible for their actions". This is a huge issue. If someone is the most loving person in the world that goes out of their way to help others and not harm other creatures and one day develops a mental illness or brain tumor that leads them to kill someone, in what sense are they responsible? Should we call them evil and seek retribution? You can argue we should lock them up because they're a danger to society. But what if we had the ability to cure that person completely so they return to the loving person they once were. What would be the use then to seek further punishment. It would be insanity. The concept of free will has so much negative baggage that it would be beneficial for society to completely eradicate it. I'm not sure why Sean has such a hard-on to keep this idea afloat in some ethereal way. Free will leads to a misunderstanding of the brain and mental illness, it leads to angry retribution, it leads to people calling homeless people lazy, calling addicts weak minded, calling those struggling in school as stupid, calling criminals evil / possessed by the devil, calling someone that is psychotic as possessed by demons in need of exorcism. This is what the idea of free will gets you. This is what Sam Harris was trying to convey to Sean and it seems Sean has missed this. Free will is not a benign concept like the wetness of water as Sean frequently likes to make the comparison to.

[@thelenzperspective8297]

I wish Sean would have asked Alex to define free will

[@Panthless]

Sean doesnt believe in the incoherent notion of libertarian free will. Instead he recognizes there is a difference between making a choice, a choice that you were always determined to make, and being forced by someone to make a choice. Because of this free will is still a useful concept.

[@aleatoriac7356]

@@Panthless *being forced by someone to make a choice* That's simply abuse.

[@SortaPredictable]

Rihards Geidans The agreed state of dampening external subjective pressures so that one may pursue it’s own subjective pressures, that in turn don’t (in intent) dampen others, could easily substitute the traditional “otherworldliness” (as in not obeying the physical laws of the universe) concept of “free will”. If your willing to colloquially redefine free will to fit that definition, then inherently you will be describing free will in a manner that can actually be used to describe real events. Otherwise, any application of free will that attempts to utilize something outside the realm of reality will, of course, immediately fall flat on it’s face. I think people often talk passed one another thinking that the definitions they ascribe to certain words can be described in an objective manner, when the agreement of the details of the functional properties of a term is the only thing that can be described absolutely.

[@bmdecker93]

Ok, Sam. Gotcha.

[@tiborkoos188]

the argument about neuroscience revealed basic lack of understanding of the field !!!

[@elizondorj]

I demonstrate my free will by clicking on something else...

[@andrewroddy3278]

Fair play to Sean here. It would be perverse and radically unfair not to take the piss out of a man who, by his own account, can't possibly know what he is talking about.

[@mtumasz]

Dear Sean, no more philosophers for a while, please. It’s just too damn hard to follow

[@NessieJapan]

Scientismatics!

[@robertwhite1810]

Only objects "exist" "Consciousness" is not an object..it is the dynamic that takes place within the neurochemistry of our brains. Just like "love" and "justice" do not actually "exist"...they are expressions of the interactions that take place between objects. So this guy is totally wrong

[@yield269]

Consciousness is an emergent feature of physical brains. All things real are corporeal.

[@barefootalien]

Yeah, this guy is just lost... The _best_ form of argument I've heard him use so far is an appeal to authority... used while also using its inverse, denying other authorities.

[@barefootalien]

The idea of a conscious being exercising its free will in order to deny the existence of free will is always amusing. I think the underlying problem is that this guy has chosen some arbitrary and non-standard definition of the word 'exist' than everybody else uses. Which is kind of the type of trouble the entire field of philosophy tends to get itself into all the time. It's just hilarious to me that this guy uses words at all. After all, surely none of them exist. XD

[@tiborkoos188]

His whole argument is profound nonsense. The fact that it is difficult to explain the behavior of large communities over long time is not because theory of mind is a "poor adaptation" to the problems of the "savanna", the same way as difficulty of predicting the weather is not an indication of physics being poorly understood

[@WisdomVendor1]

This dude says "How History gets things wrong"....That's bullshit. He's a philosopher and should know better. What he should say is "How writings about history are wrong." I couldn't help it, philosophers are so fucking smug about exactness, I thought he needed a kick in the 'philosophes' .

[@DoctorDejay]

Postmodernism....YAY!

[@WalterWartenweilerPrivate]

It’s the first of your podcasts that irritates me. The interlocutor reminds me of other people like Paul Virilio making sentences full of words but devoid of content.

[@paulsass4343]

i do apologize but if you think that Rosenberg's stance is vacuous you need to work harder to step back from the un-evident basic assumptions you place in front of "the world" -there is a deep disconnect between Sean's naive realism(!) and Alex's determinism. i WANT to see things Sean's way, but there is an undeniable inertia to Rosenberg's repudiation of "the manifest image"

[@GeezerBoy65]

Devoid of content?? Perhaps English is your second language or you missed some things in university.