TIMESTAMPS: 0:00 - Introduction 1:28 - What is consciousness? 3:21 - Why the mind-body debate? (David Chalmers) 7:32 - Eliminative Materialism (Paul Churchland) 13:02 - Illusionism (Daniel Dennett, Keith Frankish, Michael Graziano) 14:55 - Neurophilosophy 17:57 - Atypical brains (Michael Gazzaniga) 21:44 - If mind is brain, why is the 3rd biological revolution in psychiatry also failing? 25:00 - 4E cognition 28:58 - Evolution of awareness & sleep 34:23 - Origins of moral intuition & a conscience 41:31 - Why the transition to neuroethics? 45:54 - The issues with morals and ethical dilemmas 50:58 - Neuroexistentialism & free will 59:10 - Pat's religious/spiritual views 1:06:41 - Immediate social altruism vs effective altruism 1:09:51 - Selfish gene (Richard Dawkins) 1:12:58 - Mental health solutions from a mind is brain perspective 1:17:41 - New brain data and changes of folk views 1:21:36 - Artificial intelligence becoming conscious 1:23:11 - Pat's author/book recommendations 1:25:56 - Conclusion THANKS FOR WATCHING! If you enjoyed the content, please like this video, subscribe to the channel and turn on notifications for future updates. :)

Pat Churchland is the exemplar of clarity and honesty in communication, and the Churchland's work continues to prove seminal to the burgeoning sea-change in our understanding of the brain and the nature of our subjective experience. Thank you so much for making this entertaining and edifying video.

@drtevinnaidu

Жыл бұрын

Thanks Mark. Appreciate the comment. Glad you enjoyed the video!

The three most misunderstood aspects of the Hard Problem arise from 1) Conflating consciousness with subjectivity. Just because our personal experience of thoughts, feelings, and other sensations seem private to us does not mean that feeling of privacy is not also private. It also doesn't mean that objectivity is any less dependent on consciousness, or that the boundary between subjectivity and objectivity is not dependent on consciousness. 2) Failing to philosophically limit physics to the physical. If we are ideologically committed to eliminative materialism then even the most obvious evidence of transpersonal consciousness or transphysical phenomena (all aesthetic appearances subjective and objective, including the tangibility of physical objects) become instead evidence that we just haven't figured it out yet. The eliminative materialist becomes infinitely suggestible to pseudo-physical theoretical abstractions like emergent properties, virtual particles, dark energy, superposition/uncertainty, MWI, etc... literally anything that does what consciousness does but has a name that implies the absence of consciousness. 3) Applying double standards that arise from 1 & 2. Cognitive bias tends to frame evaluation of evidence and reasoning in ways that a priori disqualify indications of a limited role for physics in reality as illusory/delusional, unknowable or a waste of time. To get around this, I propose a view of nature based on modalities and scopes of sense experience (qualia). This would reframe what we mean by physical to include only those presences that can be located as concrete, tangible objects (forms without information) moving in public space. It's fine to theorize intangible/conceptual reasons for how and when those movements take place - I'm ok with quantitative principles such as mass, energy, density, force etc since they are abstractions made DIRECTLY FROM the tangible properties of tangible objects moving in public space - but anything beyond that, any 'emergent properties' and 'information' should be identified as related to conscious experiences and the intangible or transtangible qualia within them. The term physics should be reserved for the geometry of objects at any scale and their movements.

@drtevinnaidu

Жыл бұрын

Love comments like these. Thanks for engaging!

I respect and adore Pat Churchland, and she and Paul have taken us far. I also think she is correct that she has not put enough thought into the importance of embodied consciousness. I think that's precisely where she needs to go, as a neurophilosopher.

@drtevinnaidu

8 ай бұрын

Thanks Mark!

3:13. I think the debate is a reflection of the social relations we live in, in which large segments of the world population live in a state of uncertainty, fear, poverty. These things can be explained in scientific terms, but that exposes and goes against the interests of the ultrawealthy, the ruling classes. Basically fear and uncertainty allows for mystical ideas to predominate. When most people have little to no control over their destiny, over this most special thing we call life, people imagine and look forward to an afterlife, which can only be imagined by rejecting materialism and the physical basis of mind.

@numbynumb

Жыл бұрын

We don't know if these things can be explained in terms of eliminative materialism (not to be confused with science more broadly). There's not even the faintest glimmer of a notion that might explain how cells and tissues in the body give rise to what we experience as consciousness. Given what our well-established scientific theories tell us, the mind-brain identity theory is utterly implausible. For example, a computer has memory and that memory is stored by magnetizing or demagnetizing individual transistors, but human brains have nothing in them that's even remotely theoretically comparable and yet we are able to store memories and retrieve them reliably. No one has yet managed to propose a theoretical explanation to this problem of memory. It's not even possible to make a coherent scientific statement in the direction that might lead to an explanation of memory. There's nothing there. And that's just the memory function. The brain itself, when examined closely, shows us precisely nothing about consciousness. It's almost like discovering that the most powerful computer ever manufactured is just a plastic box filled with shredded newspaper. So let's not get ahead of ourselves regarding mind-brain science. Skepticism toward the mind-brain identity theory has nothing to do with mysticism or superstition. It's simply the logical consequence of an honest appraisal of the observables. Churchland has no more evidence to support her hypothesis than those who place their confidence in the very opposite one.

@drtevinnaidu

Жыл бұрын

Thanks for enjoying the content and engaging with the community within this wonderful niche!

Thanks again! Always enjoying the content

@drtevinnaidu

2 жыл бұрын

Thanks for supporting the channel!

There's no physical evidence that physical substances can't create non-physical appearances (including appearances themselves), but then there is no justification for calling a phenomenon that could create qualia physical or a substance. There is no evidence that 'signals' exist physically, or could exist physically. What is detecting and interpreting signs in a physical universe when you have mechanical chain reactions that would replace any possible use for them?

It's ironic that Churchland argues for a kind of vaguely-defined moral realism. It's difficult to imagine an ethical philosophy that's more incongruent with eliminative materialism or mind-brain identity theory.

@numbynumb

Жыл бұрын

Why is it only eliminative materialists that are exempt from metaphysics? Do they imagine that physics has eliminated metaphysics?

Some neuroscientists say, brain is a solidified mind. Words(verbo) can become flesh.

As science has aided in humanity's progress beyond the superstitions of primitive religious mythologies, neurophilosophy, I believe, is destined to do the same with respect to folk philosophy. In my own process of reconstructing reality after losing religion a few years ago, I found myself adrift in the sea of philosophy, having found nothing reliable or even useful in a real-world context (besides Dudeism, if that counts). Then I discovered Prof. Churchland's work which sent me on a new course of investigation. Thanks to neurophilosophy, I now have what I feel is a solid, reliable foundation for understanding my humanity, my place in the world, and even in the universe, that's grounded in something more than intelligent ponderings.

@drtevinnaidu

Жыл бұрын

Love this.👌🏽

1.03 eliminativist yoguini you are a good teacher ;b

I read somewhere that schizophrenia doesn't appear within non-literate populations. Perhaps blind people, who today learn to read text by scanning over it with their fingertips, are incidentally spared this possible side effect of visional literacy. The right to literacy has become such a moral imperative (and non-literacy, in turn, so pathologized) that the effects of literacy haven't been studied dispassionately.

@numbynumb

Жыл бұрын

Perhaps neuroscientists will one day discover that braille is healthier, neurologically speaking, for the sighted and non-sighted alike.

@MarkConnely

Жыл бұрын

I do not think it is true, that schizophrenia does not appear in non-literate populations. In fact, I know of at least two studies which included non-literate schizophrenics among their participants.

"I haven't had much to do with philosophers." And "no serious philosophers are thinking about the mind Body problem." Churchland's level of presumptuous dogmatism is disturbing. She just claims there is evidence for all her arguments, which their isn't, such as working memory in the brain, or the brain generating conscious experience. Then she straw man's others' arguments with a disrespectful tone. Ridiculous. The critiques she lobs at others would bury her if she only could see her own biases and assumptions.

@drtevinnaidu

2 жыл бұрын

Thanks for the comment! What I'd like to do at some point is get 2 or 3 philosophers (or scientists etc.) together to debate their ideas/views. That way their is some opposing force. For now, I just want all my guests to have a comfortable place to express their views openly without interruption and active listening and engagement from my part (in a non-debate manner)...

@numbynumb

Жыл бұрын

@@drtevinnaidu I would very much like to see Churchland defend her arguments in a debate with a similarly well-educated skeptic.

@protonman8947

Жыл бұрын

Where pray, are working memory and conscious experience located if not in the brain?

@numbynumb

Жыл бұрын

@@protonman8947 The problem is that's the sole argument of mind-brain identity theorists.

@protonman8947

Жыл бұрын

@@numbynumb That is he only argument? The evidence that the brain is the mechanistic locus for consciousness and working memory is overwhelming. Dualism, and panpsychism still have all their work ahead. Extraordinary claims for the immaterial, or for panpsychism, require extraordinary evidence, yet there is no evidence whatsoever. That you don't care for Churchland's tone is immaterial and irrelevant.

The good Dr. keeps disregarding the one thought tradition that actually first, and sufficiently grappled with the mind-consciousness subject. No clue why the studied disregard- he wouldn’t even mention it. My mind wants to ascribe it to a sense of inferiority, after all a man of colour in South Africa must go out of his way to minimize his association with non-white traditions. It’s a pity though. And, given the depth and profundity of these overlooked systems, he’d someday renounce his misbegotten reticence. For now, this podcast is a fabulously Eurocentric exploration.

She demands falsifiability. Utility. That's where she sees the best future. Whatever you think of her personality, this is a completely defensible position. This position obviously requires certain premises, but these are neither occult nor extraordinary. She's not playing the same game as Dennett and Chalmers. These interviews are interesting not least because of the ambiguous context.

@drtevinnaidu

2 жыл бұрын

Patricia certainly does not hold back. Loved chatting to her!

That sounds like a misreading of Dawkins