Filmmaker Jay Shapiro has produced a new series of audio documentaries, exploring the major topics that Sam has focused on over the course of his career.
Each episode weaves together original analysis, critical perspective, and novel thought experiments with some of the most compelling exchanges from the Making Sense archive. Whether you are new to a particular topic, or think you have your mind made up about it, we think you’ll find this series fascinating.
In this episode, we survey the landscape of consciousness and get acquainted with the mystery of the mind. We start with an attempt to define consciousness–and veterans of conversations on consciousness will know that this is a huge part of the challenge.
David Chalmers begins with his conception of what he coined “The Hard Problem of Consciousness” and a famous question offered by the philosopher Thomas Nagel.
We then construct a “Philosophical Zombie” before the philosopher Thomas Metzinger explains why he is thoroughly unimpressed by the ability to imagine “such a thing,” while he simultaneously warns us against ever attempting to build one. Anil Seth brings some hope of whittling away the intuition gap of the hard problem by pursuing the “easy” problems, with clear scientific reasoning.
Later, Iain McGilchrist lays out the intuition-shattering implications of the famous Roger Sperry experiments with split brain patients that suggest that consciousness can be cut with a knife… at least temporarily. Annaka Harris then shifts the conversation to the realm of panpsychism, which suggests that consciousness is nomologically fundamental and potentially permeates all matter.
Finally, Don Hoffman explains that consciousness is not only fundamental and non-illusory, but that the physical world we appear to be navigating is merely a virtual space-time interface, which has evolved to hide the true nature of reality from us.
#313 — Apocalypse
Making Sense of Belief and Unbelief | Episode 6 of The Essential Sam Harris
#312 — The Trouble with AI
#311 — Did SARS-CoV-2 Escape from a Lab?
Making Sense of Free Will | Episode 5 of The Essential Sam Harris
#310 — Social Media & Public Trust
Making Sense of Encounters With Violence | Episode 4 of The Essential Sam Harris
#309 — Vulnerability, Politics, and Moral Worth
#308 — The Long Game
Making Sense of Foundations of Morality | Episode 3 of The Essential Sam Harris
#307 — Twitter, Elon, & Free Speech
#306 — Psychedelics & Mortality
#305 — Moral Knowledge
#304 — Why I Left Twitter
Making Sense of Artificial Intelligence | Episode 1 of The Essential Sam Harris
#303 — The Fall of Sam Bankman-Fried
#302 — Science & Civilization
#301 — The Politics of Unreality: Ukraine and Nuclear Risk
#300 — A Tale of Cancellation
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