Consciousness is one of humanity’s most elusive phenomena, both historically and contemporarily. What is consciousness and mind? What is its source? Is it simply caused by the brain or is it separate from the brain, or is it identical to the brain? What is the role of qualia, sensations and subjectivity in mental phenomena and how are they related to the physical and material world? Conversely, can consciousness produce physicalism and the brain, could consciousness be something primary and fundamental in the universe that precludes physicalism and materialism? Could panpsychists therefore be right, that that consciousness itself is elementary in the universe and everything is conscious?
Interview & discussion with Professor John Searle
John Searle is one of the most influential philosophers of the second half of the twentieth century, noted for significant contributions to the philosophy of language, philosophy of mind and social philosophy. He began teaching at UC Berkeley in 1959, and was Willis S. and Marion Slusser Professor Emeritus of the Philosophy of Mind and Language and Professor of the Graduate School at the University of California until 2019.
https://www.podbean.com/ew/pb-itewf-4add23
Interview & discussion with Professor Paul Boghossian
Paul Boghossian is Silver Professor of Philosophy at New York University, where he is chair of the department (having also held the position from 1994 to 2004) in which time he built up the department to be the world’s leading Philosophy department under various International academic rankings. His research interests include epistemology, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language. He is also director of the New York Institute of Philosophy and Distinguished Research Professor of Philosophy at the University of Birmingham
https://www.podbean.com/ew/pb-zmkys-7df482
Interview & discussion with Professor Joseph Levine
Joseph Levine is a philosopher at the University of Massachusetts Amherst who received his PhD from Harvard University in 1981. He is one of the most influential philosophers of the second half of the twentieth century, best known for formulating the explanatory gap argument against a materialist explanation for consciousness. This has been cited as a precursor to David Chalmers’s formulation of the hard problem of consciousness.
https://www.podbean.com/ew/pb-7qm5v-7adc3a
Interview & discussion with Professor Thomas Metzinger
Thomas Metzinger is one of the world’s leading thinkers in philosophy of mind and consciousness – he is a Professor Emeritus of theoretical philosophy at the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz. As of 2011, he is an Adjunct Fellow at the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies. From 2018 to 2020, Metzinger worked as a member of the European Commission’s High-Level Expert Group on Artificial Intelligence. In 2022 he was elected into the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina. Metzinger is also a founding member of the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness.
https://www.podbean.com/ew/pb-zbp3w-79b51b
Interview & discussion with Professor Georges Rey
Georges Rey (PhD Harvard University) is Professor of Philosophy. He works primarily in the philosophy of mind and cognitive science, and has written numerous articles on problems surrounding (ir)rationality, concepts, linguistic competence, qualitative experience and consciousness, as well as a book, Contemporary Philosophy of Mind (Blackwell, 1997), where he defends a computational/representational theory of mind as a strategy for dealing with them. Rey has been a visiting professor at MIT, Stanford, the University of Split in Zadar (as a Fulbright fellow).
https://www.podbean.com/ew/pb-pxfn8-75b281
Interview & discussion with Professor Michael Graziano
Michael Graziano is one of the world’s leading neuroscientists who is currently Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at Princeton University.[2] His scientific research focuses on the brain basis of awareness. He has proposed the “attention schema” theory, an explanation of how, and for what adaptive advantage, brains attribute the property of awareness to themselves.
https://www.podbean.com/ew/pb-zyrkg-707589
Interview & discussion with Professor Joshua Knobe
Joshua Knobe is an American experimental philosopher and a leading thinker in philosophy of mind whose work ranges across issues in philosophy, mind and action and ethics. He is Professor of Cognitive Science and Philosophy at Yale University. He is known for his work on the “Knobe effect” and use of experimental methods to understand personal reactions to moral dilemmas. Knobe received his B.A. at Stanford University in 1996 and his Ph.D. from Princeton in 2006
https://www.podbean.com/ew/pb-eu99n-64c168
Interview & discussion with Professor John Heil
John Heil is known primarily for his work on metaphysics and the philosophy of mind. Heil is Professor of Philosophy at the Washington University in St. Louis,[1] Professor of Philosophy at Durham University,[2] and an Honorary Research Associate at Monash University.[3] Heil is the inaugural editor-in-chief of the Journal of the American Philosophical Association,[4] the North American Representative of The Philosophical Quarterly,[5] and a 2018 Guggenheim Fellow. He is the author of seven books and over 100 articles and book chapters. He is listed among the 50 most influential living philosophers.
https://www.podbean.com/ew/pb-pxfn8-75b281
Interview & discussion with Professor Philip Goff
Philip Goff is an idealist philosopher and professor at Durham University whose research focuses on philosophy of mind and consciousness. He is one of the world’s leading experts in consciousness and panpsychism. He is the author of the noted Consciousness and Fundamental Reality (Oxford University Press, 2017).
https://www.podbean.com/ew/pb-i7f3f-5d7e94
Interview & discussion with Professor Brian McLaughlin
Brian McLaughlin is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and Cognitive Science at Rutgers University, and Director of the Rutgers Center for Philosophy and the Sciences. He is a leading expert in Philosophy of Mind and the author of The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Mind on Oxford University Press
https://www.podbean.com/ew/pb-hymk6-5d7d80
Interview & discussion with Professor Jesse Prinze
https://www.podbean.com/ew/pb-semgc-51dc10
Interview & discussion with Professor Anthony Jack