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8 episodes with Eric Schwitzgebel
3 episodes with Eric Schwitzgebel
3 episodes with Eric Schwitzgebel
2 episodes with Eric Schwitzgebel
3 episodes with Eric Schwitzgebel
3 episodes with Eric Schwitzgebel
2 episodes with Eric Schwitzgebel
2 episodes with Eric Schwitzgebel
3 episodes with Eric Schwitzgebel
"A shameless recycling of existing content to drive additional audience engagement on the cheap… or the single best, most valuable, and most insight-dense episode we put out in the entire year, depending on how you want to look at it." — Rob WiblinIt's that magical time of year once again — highlightapalooza! Stick around for one top bit from each episode, including:How to use the microphone on someone's mobile phone to figure out what password they're typing into their laptopWhy mercilessly driving the New World screwworm to extinction could be the most compassionate thing humanity has ever doneWhy evolutionary psychology doesn't support a cynical view of human nature but actually explains why so many of us are intensely sensitive to the harms we cause to othersHow superforecasters and domain experts seem to disagree so much about AI risk, but when you zoom in it's mostly a disagreement about timingWhy the sceptics are wrong and you will want to use robot nannies to take care of your kids — and also why despite having big worries about the development of AGI, Carl Shulman is strongly against efforts to pause AI research todayHow much of the gender pay gap is due to direct pay discrimination vs other factorsHow cleaner wrasse fish blow the mirror test out of the waterWhy effective altruism may be too big a tent to work wellHow we could best motivate pharma companies to test existing drugs to see if they help cure other diseases — something they currently have no reason to bother with…as well as 27 other top observations and arguments from the past year of the show.Check out the full transcript and episode links on the 80,000 Hours website.Remember that all of these clips come from the 20-minute highlight reels we make for every episode, which are released on our sister feed, 80k After Hours. So if you're struggling to keep up with our regularly scheduled entertainment, you can still get the best parts of our conversations there.It has been a hell of a year, and we can only imagine next year is going to be even weirder — but Luisa and Rob will be here to keep you company as Earth hurtles through the galaxy to a fate as yet unknown.Enjoy, and look forward to speaking with you in 2025!Chapters:Rob's intro (00:00:00)Randy Nesse on the origins of morality and the problem of simplistic selfish-gene thinking (00:02:11)Hugo Mercier on the evolutionary argument against humans being gullible (00:07:17)Meghan Barrett on the likelihood of insect sentience (00:11:26)Sébastien Moro on the mirror test triumph of cleaner wrasses (00:14:47)Sella Nevo on side-channel attacks (00:19:32)Zvi Mowshowitz on AI sleeper agents (00:22:59)Zach Weinersmith on why space settlement (probably) won't make us rich (00:29:11)Rachel Glennerster on pull mechanisms to incentivise repurposing of generic drugs (00:35:23)Emily Oster on the impact of kids on women's careers (00:40:29)Carl Shulman on robot nannies (00:45:19)Nathan Labenz on kids and artificial friends (00:50:12)Nathan Calvin on why it's not too early for AI policies (00:54:13)Rose Chan Loui on how control of OpenAI is independently incredibly valuable and requires compensation (00:58:08)Nick Joseph on why he's a big fan of the responsible scaling policy approach (01:03:11)Sihao Huang on how the US and UK might coordinate with China (01:06:09)Nathan Labenz on better transparency about predicted capabilities (01:10:18)Ezra Karger on what explains forecasters' disagreements about AI risks (01:15:22)Carl Shulman on why he doesn't support enforced pauses on AI research (01:18:58)Matt Clancy on the omnipresent frictions that might prevent explosive economic growth (01:25:24)Vitalik Buterin on defensive acceleration (01:29:43)Annie Jacobsen on the war games that suggest escalation is inevitable (01:34:59)Nate Silver on whether effective altruism is too big to succeed (01:38:42)Kevin Esvelt on why killing every screwworm would be the best thing humanity ever did (01:42:27)Lewis Bollard on how factory farming is philosophically indefensible (01:46:28)Bob Fischer on how to think about moral weights if you're not a hedonist (01:49:27)Elizabeth Cox on the empirical evidence of the impact of storytelling (01:57:43)Anil Seth on how our brain interprets reality (02:01:03)Eric Schwitzgebel on whether consciousness can be nested (02:04:53)Jonathan Birch on our overconfidence around disorders of consciousness (02:10:23)Peter Godfrey-Smith on uploads of ourselves (02:14:34)Laura Deming on surprising things that make mice live longer (02:21:17)Venki Ramakrishnan on freezing cells, organs, and bodies (02:24:46)Ken Goldberg on why low fault tolerance makes some skills extra hard to automate in robots (02:29:12)Sarah Eustis-Guthrie on the ups and downs of founding an organisation (02:34:04)Dean Spears on the cost effectiveness of kangaroo mother care (02:38:26)Cameron Meyer Shorb on vaccines for wild animals (02:42:53)Spencer Greenberg on personal principles (02:46:08)Producing and editing: Keiran HarrisAudio engineering: Ben Cordell, Milo McGuire, Simon Monsour, and Dominic ArmstrongVideo editing: Simon MonsourTranscriptions: Katy Moore
This episode features "How to Remember Perfectly" written by Eric Schwitzgebel. Published in the September 2024 issue of Clarkesworld Magazine and read by Kate Baker. The text version of this story can be found at: https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/schwitzgebel_09_24 Support us on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/join/clarkesworld?
Intro I think the 80,000 Hours Podcast is a great show. Despite the world of podcasts overflowing with content to choose from, it's reliably been a high-quality production that's been a regular part of my listening habits ever since I discovered it. It was also probably one of the first routes I become more aware of the EA community, which I suspect I might not be alone by.[1] So, as the podcast numbers ticked up, the vague idea to write up a post shouting out some of my favourite episodes took root. I didn't get far with it from there, and now the unreasonable effectiveness of the 80k podcast production team has forced my hand! So in the post I'm going to link to my 10 favourite episodes, along with some final thoughts at the end. I hope to share with you some of my favourite episodes, but I [...] ---Outline:(00:07) Intro(01:12) My Top 10(01:16) 10-4(01:19) 10: #144 – Athena Aktipis on why cancer is actually one of the fundamental phenomena in our universe(01:54) 9: #175 – Lucia Coulter on preventing lead poisoning for $1.66 per child(02:26) 8: #139 – Alan Hájek on puzzles and paradoxes in probability and expected value(03:00) 7: #153 – Elie Hassenfeld on two big picture critiques of GiveWells approach, and six lessons from their recent work(03:39) 6: #129 – Dr James Tibenderana on the state of the art in malaria control and elimination(04:15) 5: #185 – Lewis Bollard on the 7 most promising ways to end factory farming, and whether AI is going to be good or bad for animals(05:00) 4: #67 – David Chalmers on the nature and ethics of consciousness(05:40) Top 3(05:43) 3: #43 – Daniel Ellsberg on the creation of nuclear doomsday machines, the institutional insanity that maintains them, and how they could be dismantled(06:22) 2: #145 – Christopher Brown on why slavery abolition wasnt inevitable(07:07) 1: #100 – Having a successful career with depression, anxiety and imposter syndrome(07:51) Final Thoughts(07:54) Honourable Mentions(08:10) #52 – Glen Weyl on radical institutional reforms that make capitalism and democracy work better, and how to get them(08:52) #116 – Luisa Rodriguez on why global catastrophes seem unlikely to kill us all(09:29) #190 – Eric Schwitzgebel on whether the US is conscious(09:59) But JWS, where are the AI episodes?(12:03) EpilogueThe original text contained 3 footnotes which were omitted from this narration. --- First published: September 9th, 2024 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/C8HWX3XsoB3krSkbm/my-top-10-picks-from-200-episodes-of-the-80k-podcast --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
Join Nathan and Professor Eric Schwitzgebel as they delve into the fascinating world of AI consciousness. In this episode of The Cognitive Revolution, we explore popular theories of consciousness and their implications for AI systems. Discover insights on idealism, dualism, and materialism, and learn about the ethical considerations surrounding AI consciousness. Don't miss this thought-provoking discussion on one of the most pressing philosophical questions of our time. Apply to join over 400 founders and execs in the Turpentine Network: https://hmplogxqz0y.typeform.com/to/JCkphVqj RECOMMENDED PODCAST: Second Opinion A new podcast for health-tech insiders from Christina Farr of the Second Opinion newsletter. Join Christina Farr, Luba Greenwood, and Ash Zenooz every week as they challenge industry experts with tough questions about the best bets in health-tech. Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/id1759267211 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0A8NwQE976s32zdBbZw6bv History 102 Every week, creator of WhatifAltHist Rudyard Lynch and Erik Torenberg cover a major topic in history in depth -- in under an hour. This season will cover classical Greece, early America, the Vikings, medieval Islam, ancient China, the fall of the Roman Empire, and more.Subscribe on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/36Kqo3BMMUBGTDo1IEYihm Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/history-102-with-whatifalthists-rudyard-lynch-and/id1730633913 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@History102-qg5oj SPONSORS: Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) is a single platform for your infrastructure, database, application development, and AI needs. OCI has four to eight times the bandwidth of other clouds; offers one consistent price, and nobody does data better than Oracle. If you want to do more and spend less, take a free test drive of OCI at https://oracle.com/cognitive The Brave search API can be used to assemble a data set to train your AI models and help with retrieval augmentation at the time of inference. All while remaining affordable with developer first pricing, integrating the Brave search API into your workflow translates to more ethical data sourcing and more human representative data sets. Try the Brave search API for free for up to 2000 queries per month at https://bit.ly/BraveTCR Omneky is an omnichannel creative generation platform that lets you launch hundreds of thousands of ad iterations that actually work customized across all platforms, with a click of a button. Omneky combines generative AI and real-time advertising data. Mention "Cog Rev" for 10% off https://www.omneky.com/ Head to Squad to access global engineering without the headache and at a fraction of the cost: head to https://choosesquad.com/ and mention “Turpentine” to skip the waitlist. CHAPTERS: (00:00:00) About the Show (00:00:22) About the Episode (00:04:03) Introduction and Defining Consciousness (00:14:28) Consciousness Gradients (Part 1) (00:16:23) Sponsors: Oracle | Brave (00:18:27) Semantic Content of Experience (00:26:07) Theories of Consciousness: Idealism (00:30:34) Practical Implications of AI Consciousness (00:32:26) Sponsors: Omneky | Squad (00:34:12) Theories of Consciousness: Substance Dualism (00:41:05) Mechanistic Interpretability in AI (00:50:40) Theories of Consciousness: Materialism (00:56:58) Higher Order Thought Theory (01:01:59) Ethical Considerations for AI Development (01:11:49) Precautionary Approaches to AI Ethics (01:30:05) Balancing Progress and Ethics in AI (01:36:19) Ethical Treatment of Potentially Conscious AI (01:40:54) Outro --- SOCIAL LINKS: Website : https://www.cognitiverevolution.ai Twitter (Podcast) : https://x.com/cogrev_podcast Twitter (Nathan) : https://x.co...
This is a selection of highlights from episode #190 of The 80,000 Hours Podcast.These aren't necessarily the most important, or even most entertaining parts of the interview — and if you enjoy this, we strongly recommend checking out the full episode:Eric Schwitzgebel on whether the US is consciousAnd if you're finding these highlights episodes valuable, please let us know by emailing podcast@80000hours.org.Chapters:Luisa's intro (00:00:00)Can consciousness be nested? (00:00:18)Are our intuitions useless for thinking about these things? (00:05:45)Do small differences rule out consciousness? (00:09:43)Overlapping consciousnesses (00:13:26)Are we dreaming right now? (00:17:21)Highlights put together by Simon Monsour, Milo McGuire, and Dominic Armstrong
"One of the most amazing things about planet Earth is that there are complex bags of mostly water — you and me – and we can look up at the stars, and look into our brains, and try to grapple with the most complex, difficult questions that there are. And even if we can't make great progress on them and don't come to completely satisfying solutions, just the fact of trying to grapple with these things is kind of the universe looking at itself and trying to understand itself. So we're kind of this bright spot of reflectiveness in the cosmos, and I think we should celebrate that fact for its own intrinsic value and interestingness." —Eric SchwitzgebelIn today's episode, host Luisa Rodriguez speaks to Eric Schwitzgebel — professor of philosophy at UC Riverside — about some of the most bizarre and unintuitive claims from his recent book, The Weirdness of the World.Links to learn more, highlights, and full transcript.They cover:Why our intuitions seem so unreliable for answering fundamental questions about reality.What the materialist view of consciousness is, and how it might imply some very weird things — like that the United States could be a conscious entity.Thought experiments that challenge our intuitions — like supersquids that think and act through detachable tentacles, and intelligent species whose brains are made up of a million bugs.Eric's claim that consciousness and cosmology are universally bizarre and dubious.How to think about borderline states of consciousness, and whether consciousness is more like a spectrum or more like a light flicking on.The nontrivial possibility that we could be dreaming right now, and the ethical implications if that's true.Why it's worth it to grapple with the universe's most complex questions, even if we can't find completely satisfying solutions.And much more.Chapters:Cold open (00:00:00)Luisa's intro (00:01:10)Bizarre and dubious philosophical theories (00:03:13)The materialist view of consciousness (00:13:55)What would it mean for the US to be conscious? (00:19:46)Supersquids and antheads thought experiments (00:22:37)Alternatives to the materialist perspective (00:35:19)Are our intuitions useless for thinking about these things? (00:42:55)Key ingredients for consciousness (00:46:46)Reasons to think the US isn't conscious (01:01:15)Overlapping consciousnesses [01:09:32]Borderline cases of consciousness (01:13:22)Are we dreaming right now? (01:40:29)Will we ever have answers to these dubious and bizarre questions? (01:56:16)Producer and editor: Keiran HarrisAudio engineering lead: Ben CordellTechnical editing: Simon Monsour, Milo McGuire, and Dominic ArmstrongAdditional content editing: Katy Moore and Luisa RodriguezTranscriptions: Katy Moore
More at https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/why-world-so-weird. Quantum mechanics, mathematics, human consciousness.... whichever way you slice it, the universe is weird. How can our conscious minds be made from unconscious atoms? What should we make of quantum entanglement, or the fact that light can be both a particle and a wave? Why is it that there are exactly as many fractions as there are whole numbers? Josh and Ray boggle at the strangeness of it all with Eric Schwitzgebel from UC Riverside, author of "The Weirdness of the World."
"What's life for if there's no time to play and explore?" In The Weirdness of the World (Princeton UP, 2024), Eric Schwitzgebel invites the reader to a walk on the wilder side of philosophical speculation about the cosmos and consciousness. Is consciousness entirely a material phenomenon? How much credence should we have in the existence of a world outside our minds? Are there multiple parallel universes? Schwitzgebel, a professor of philosophy at the University of California-Riverside, constructs chains of conditional probabilities to explore the zone just beyond the edge of what we can understand, however imperfectly, given current scientific theory. He distinguishes hypothetical scenarios that are not worth taking seriously – like being a brain in a vat – from those that are just plausible enough to deserve playful, yet motivated, consideration. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network
"What's life for if there's no time to play and explore?" In The Weirdness of the World (Princeton UP, 2024), Eric Schwitzgebel invites the reader to a walk on the wilder side of philosophical speculation about the cosmos and consciousness. Is consciousness entirely a material phenomenon? How much credence should we have in the existence of a world outside our minds? Are there multiple parallel universes? Schwitzgebel, a professor of philosophy at the University of California-Riverside, constructs chains of conditional probabilities to explore the zone just beyond the edge of what we can understand, however imperfectly, given current scientific theory. He distinguishes hypothetical scenarios that are not worth taking seriously – like being a brain in a vat – from those that are just plausible enough to deserve playful, yet motivated, consideration. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/philosophy
"What's life for if there's no time to play and explore?" In The Weirdness of the World (Princeton UP, 2024), Eric Schwitzgebel invites the reader to a walk on the wilder side of philosophical speculation about the cosmos and consciousness. Is consciousness entirely a material phenomenon? How much credence should we have in the existence of a world outside our minds? Are there multiple parallel universes? Schwitzgebel, a professor of philosophy at the University of California-Riverside, constructs chains of conditional probabilities to explore the zone just beyond the edge of what we can understand, however imperfectly, given current scientific theory. He distinguishes hypothetical scenarios that are not worth taking seriously – like being a brain in a vat – from those that are just plausible enough to deserve playful, yet motivated, consideration.
"What's life for if there's no time to play and explore?" In The Weirdness of the World (Princeton UP, 2024), Eric Schwitzgebel invites the reader to a walk on the wilder side of philosophical speculation about the cosmos and consciousness. Is consciousness entirely a material phenomenon? How much credence should we have in the existence of a world outside our minds? Are there multiple parallel universes? Schwitzgebel, a professor of philosophy at the University of California-Riverside, constructs chains of conditional probabilities to explore the zone just beyond the edge of what we can understand, however imperfectly, given current scientific theory. He distinguishes hypothetical scenarios that are not worth taking seriously – like being a brain in a vat – from those that are just plausible enough to deserve playful, yet motivated, consideration. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/book-of-the-day
Today we discuss Eric Schwitzgebel's The Dauphin's Metaphysics, first printed in Unlikely Story's The Journal of Unlikely Academia, a story about a limited and quite disturbing form of immortality Read the story:http://www.unlikely-story.com/stories/the-dauphins-metaphysics-by-eric-schwitzgebel/ Art by Diane Dellicarpini
Do we live inside a simulated reality or a pocket universe embedded in a larger structure about which we know virtually nothing? Is consciousness a purely physical matter, or might it require something extra, something nonphysical? According to the philosopher Eric Schwitzgebel, it's hard to say. In The Weirdness of the World, Schwitzgebel argues that the answers to these fundamental questions lie beyond our powers of comprehension. We can be certain only that the truth—whatever it is—is weird. Philosophy, he proposes, can aim to open—to reveal possibilities we had not previously appreciated—or to close, to narrow down to the one correct theory of the phenomenon in question. Schwitzgebel argues for a philosophy that opens. According to Schwitzgebel's “Universal Bizarreness” thesis, every possible theory of the relation of mind and cosmos defies common sense. According to his complementary “Universal Dubiety” thesis, no general theory of the relationship between mind and cosmos compels rational belief. Might the United States be a conscious organism — a conscious group mind with approximately the intelligence of a rabbit? Might virtually every action we perform cause virtually every possible type of future event, echoing down through the infinite future of an infinite universe? What, if anything, is it like to be a garden snail? Schwitzgebel makes a persuasive case for the thrill of considering the most bizarre philosophical possibilities. Shermer and Schwitzgebel discuss: bizarreness • skepticism • consciousness • virtual reality • AI, Turing Test, sentience, existential threat • idealism, materialism • ultimate nature of reality • solipsism • evidence for the existence of an external world • computer simulations hypothesis • mind-body problem • truths: external, internal, objective, subjective • mind-altering drugs • entropy • causality • infinity • immortality • multiverses • why there is something rather than nothing. Eric Schwitzgebel is professor of philosophy at the University of California, Riverside. He is the author of A Theory of Jerks and Other Philosophical Misadventures; Perplexities of Consciousness; and Describing Inner Experience?
“I call this the emotional alignment design policy. So the idea is that corporations, if they create sentient machines, should create them so that it's obvious to users that they're sentient. And so they evoke appropriate emotional reactions to sentient users. So you don't create a sentient machine and then put it in a bland box that no one will have emotional reactions to. And conversely, don't create a non sentient machine that people will attach to so much and think it's sentient that they'd be willing to make excessive sacrifices for this thing that isn't really sentient.”Eric SchwitzgebelWhy should AI systems be designed so as to not confuse users about their moral status? What would make an AI system sentience or moral standing clear? Are there downsides to treating an AI as not sentient even if it's not sentient? What happens when some theories of consciousness disagree about AI consciousness? Have the developments in large language models in the last few years come faster or slower than Eric expected? Where does Eric think we will see sentience first in AI if we do?Eric Schwitzgebel is professor of philosophy at University of California, Berkeley, specializing in philosophy of mind and moral psychology. His books include Describing Inner Experience? Proponent Meets Skeptic (with Russell T. Hurlburt), Perplexities of Consciousness, A Theory of Jerks and Other Philosophical Misadventures, and most recently The Weirdness of the World. He blogs at The Splintered Mind.Topics discussed in the episode:Introduction (0:00)AI systems must not confuse users about their sentience or moral status introduction (3:14)Not confusing experts (5:30)Not confusing general users (9:12)What would make an AI system sentience or moral standing clear? (13:21)Are there downsides to treating an AI as not sentient even if it's not sentient? (16:33)How would we implement this solution at a policy level? (25:19)What happens when some theories of consciousness disagree about AI consciousness? (28:24)How does this approach to uncertainty in AI consciousness relate to Jeff Sebo's approach? (34:15)Consciousness and artificial intelligence insights from the science of consciousness introduction (36:38)How does the indicator properties approach account for factors relating to consciousness that we might be missing? (39:37)What was the process for determining what indicator properties to include? (42:58)Advantages of the indicator properties approach (44:49)Have the developments in large language models in the last few years come faster or slower than Eric expected? (46:25)Where does Eric think we will see sentience first in AI if we do? (50:17)Are things like grounding or embodiment essential for understanding and consciousness? (53:35)Resources discussed in the episode are available at https://www.sentienceinstitute.org/podcastSupport the show
Eric Schwitzgebel is a professor of philosophy at the University of California, Riverside. His main interests include connections between empirical psychology and philosophy of mind and the nature of belief. His book The Weirdness of the World can be found here. We talk about: The possibility of digital consciousness Policy ideas for avoiding major moral mistakes around digital consciousness Prospects for the science of consciousness, and why we likely won't have clear answers in time Why introspection is much less reliable than most people think How and why we invent false stories about our own choices without realising What randomly sampling people's experiences reveals about what we're doing with most of our attention The possibility of 'overlapping minds' How and why our actions might have infinite effects, both good and bad Whether it would be good news to learn that our actions have infinite effects, or that the universe is infinite in extent The best science fiction on digital minds and AI You can get in touch through our website or on Twitter. Consider leaving us an honest review wherever you're listening to this — it's the best free way to support the show. Thanks for listening!
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
Scientists and philosophers sometimes advocate pretty outrageous-sounding ideas about the fundamental nature of reality. (Arguably I have been guilty of this.) It shouldn't be surprising that reality, in regimes far away from our everyday experience, fails to conform to common sense. But it's also okay to maintain a bit of skepticism in the face of bizarre claims. Philosopher Eric Schwitzgebel wants us to face up to the weirdness of the world. He claims that there are no non-weird ways to explain some of the most important features of reality, from quantum mechanics to consciousness.Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2024/01/15/262-eric-schwitzgebel-on-the-weirdness-of-the-world/Support Mindscape on Patreon.Eric Schwitzgebel received his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of California, Berkeley. He is currently a professor of philosophy at the University of California, Riverside. He is the author of several books, including the new The Weirdness of the World.UC Riverside web pageThe Splintered Mind blogGoogle Scholar publicationsPhilPeople profileWikipediaSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Confessions of a Cheeseburger Ethicist, published by Richard Y Chappell on November 18, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum. Eric Schwitzgebel invokes the "cheeseburger ethicist" - a moral philosopher who agrees that eating meat is wrong, but eats meat anyway - as the paradigm of failing to walk the walk of one's moral philosophy. The example resonates with me, since people often assume that as a utilitarian I must also be vegan. It can be a little embarrassing to have to correct them. I agree that I should be a vegan, in the sense that there's no adequate justification for most purchases of animal products. I certainly think highly of vegans. And yet… I'm not one. (Sorry!) So I am a "cheeseburger ethicist". And yet… I'm not unmoved by the practical implications of my moral theorizing. I'm actually quite committed to putting my ethics into practice, in a number of respects (e.g. donating a substantial portion of my income, pursuing intellectually honest inquiry into important questions, and maintaining a generally forthright and co-operative disposition towards others). I'm just not especially committed to avoiding moral mistakes, or acting justifiably in each instance. If I'm right about this, then even a "cheeseburger ethicist" may still be "walking the walk", so long as their practical priorities correspond (sufficiently closely) to those prescribed by their moral theory. But while disagreeing with Schwitzgebel about the significance of self-ascribed error, I take myself to be further confirming his subsequent claim that "walking the walk" helps to flesh out the substantive content of a moral view. After all, it's precisely by reflecting on how I take myself to be living a broadly consequentialist-approved life that we can see that avoiding moral mistakes per se isn't a high priority (for consequentialists of my stripe). It really matters how much good it would do to remedy the mistake, and whether your efforts could be better spent elsewhere. Don't sweat the small stuff As I wrote in response to Caplan's conscience objection: [W]e aren't all-things-considered perfect. It's really tempting to make selfish [or short-sighted] decisions that are less than perfectly justified, and in fact we all do this all the time. Humans are inveterate rationalizers, and many seem to find it irresistible to contort their normative theories until they get the result that "actually we've most reason to do everything we actually do." But when stated explicitly like this, we can all agree that this is pure nonsense, right? We should just be honest about the fact that our choices aren't always perfectly justified. That's not ideal, but nor is it the end of the world. Of course, some mistakes are more egregious than others. Perhaps many reserve the term 'wrong' for those moral mistakes that are so bad that you ought to feel significant guilt over them. I don't think eating meat is wrong in that sense. It's not like torturing puppies (just as failing to donate enough to charity isn't like watching a child drown in this respect). Rather, it might require non-trivial effort for a generally decent person to pursue, and those efforts might be better spent elsewhere. That doesn't mean that eating meat is actually justified. Rather, the suggestion is that some genuinely unjustified actions aren't worth stressing over. On my view, we should prioritize our moral efforts, and put more effort into making changes that have greater moral payoffs. For most people, their top moral priority should probably just be to donate more to effective charities.[2] Some may be in a position where they can do even more good via high-impact work. Personal consumption decisions have got to be way down the list of priorities, by contrast. And even within that sphere, we can subdivide it into the "low hanging fruit" ...
Stephen Bloch-Schulman talks about teaching through experiences on episode 491 of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast. Quotes from the episode When students tell me what they think their beliefs are, what I'm hearing is what they wish they believe, not what they believe. -Stephen Bloch-Schulman I think what we're doing when we're talking about beliefs is often just naming how we wish we were. -Stephen Bloch-Schulman Resources Verified: How to Think Straight, Get Duped Less, and Make Better Decisions about What to Believe Online, by Mike Caulfield and Sam Wineburg You're Doing it Wrong Schitt's Creek Boop A critique of methods in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Philosophy, by Stephen Bloch-Schulman Teaching through experiences – Interview with Stephen Bloch-Schulman Eric Schwitzgebel - Intellectualism about beliefs Eric Schwitzgebel's scholarship
Eric Schwitzgebel is professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Riverside. His research interests include philosophy of psychology, philosophy of mind, moral psychology, classical Chinese philosophy, epistemology, metaphilosophy, and metaphysics. He has also written a number of pieces of philosophical science fiction, which have been published in leading science fiction magazines.
In this episode, Eric Schwitzgebel and I discuss topics like his theory of jerks, moral mediocrity, death bed regrets, the extent of our conscious experience, and much more besides. Eric Schwitzgebel is Professor of Philosophy at University of California, Riverside. He works on topics in the philosophy of psychology, philosophy of mind, and moral psychology. He has many publications to his credit. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jimmyalfonsolicon.substack.com
------------------Support the channel------------ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thedissenter PayPal: paypal.me/thedissenter PayPal Subscription 1 Dollar: https://tinyurl.com/yb3acuuy PayPal Subscription 3 Dollars: https://tinyurl.com/ybn6bg9l PayPal Subscription 5 Dollars: https://tinyurl.com/ycmr9gpz PayPal Subscription 10 Dollars: https://tinyurl.com/y9r3fc9m PayPal Subscription 20 Dollars: https://tinyurl.com/y95uvkao This show is sponsored by Enlites, Learning & Development done differently. Check the website here: http://enlites.com/ Dr. Eric Schwitzgebel is Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Riverside. Most of Dr. Schwitzgebel's research explores connections between empirical psychology and philosophy of mind, especially the nature of belief, the inaccuracy of our judgments about our stream of conscious experience, and the tenuous relationship between philosophical ethics and actual moral behavior. In this episode, we talk about beliefs, ethics, and psychology. We start by defining belief. We discuss if we have accurate views of our own beliefs, and if beliefs cause behavior. We talk about how well we really know our own conscious experience, and discuss if introspection is reliable. We then discuss if ethics professors and more moral than other people, if philosophy classes have any effect on the moral behavior of students, and the effects of narrative arguments. We also discuss if philosophy has become more welcoming of women in recent decades, and the relationship between empirical psychology and philosophy. -- A HUGE THANK YOU TO MY PATRONS/SUPPORTERS: PER HELGE LARSEN, JERRY MULLER, HANS FREDRIK SUNDE, BERNARDO SEIXAS, OLAF ALEX, JONATHAN VISSER, ADAM KESSEL, MATTHEW WHITINGBIRD, ARNAUD WOLFF, TIM HOLLOSY, HENRIK AHLENIUS, JOHN CONNORS, FILIP FORS CONNOLLY, DAN DEMETRIOU, ROBERT WINDHAGER, RUI INACIO, ZOOP, MARCO NEVES, COLIN HOLBROOK, SIMON COLUMBUS, PHIL KAVANAGH, MIKKEL STORMYR, SAMUEL ANDREEFF, FRANCIS FORDE, TIAGO NUNES, ALEXANDER DANNBAUER, FERGAL CUSSEN, HAL HERZOG, NUNO MACHADO, JONATHAN LEIBRANT, JOÃO LINHARES, STANTON T, SAMUEL CORREA, ERIK HAINES, MARK SMITH, JOÃO EIRA, TOM HUMMEL, SARDUS FRANCE, DAVID SLOAN WILSON, YACILA DEZA-ARAUJO, ROMAIN ROCH, DIEGO LONDOÑO CORREA, YANICK PUNTER, ADANER USMANI, CHARLOTTE BLEASE, NICOLE BARBARO, ADAM HUNT, PAWEL OSTASZEWSKI, NELLEKE BAK, GUY MADISON, GARY G HELLMANN, SAIMA AFZAL, ADRIAN JAEGGI, NICK GOLDEN, PAULO TOLENTINO, JOÃO BARBOSA, JULIAN PRICE, EDWARD HALL, HEDIN BRØNNER, DOUGLAS FRY, FRANCA BORTOLOTTI, GABRIEL PONS CORTÈS, URSULA LITZCKE, SCOTT, ZACHARY FISH, TIM DUFFY, SUNNY SMITH, JON WISMAN, MORTEN EIKELAND, DR BYRD, DANIEL FRIEDMAN, WILLIAM BUCKNER, PAUL-GEORGE ARNAUD, LUKE GLOWACKI, GEORGIOS THEOPHANOUS, CHRIS WILLIAMSON, PETER WOLOSZYN, DAVID WILLIAMS, ROOFTOWEL, DIOGO COSTA, ANTON ERIKSSON, CHARLES MOREY, ALEX CHAU, AMAURI MARTÍNEZ, CORALIE CHEVALLIER, PEDRO BONILLA, BANGALORE ATHEISTS, LARRY D. LEE JR., OLD HERRINGBONE, STARRY, MICHAEL BAILEY, DAN SPERBER, ROBERT GRESSIS, TOM ROTH, THERPMD, IGOR N, JEFF MCMAHAN, JAKE ZUEHL, BARNABAS RADICS, MARK CAMPBELL, RICHARD BOWEN, TOMAS DAUBNER, LUKE NISSEN, CHRIS STORY, AND MANUEL OLIVEIRA! A SPECIAL THANKS TO MY PRODUCERS, YZAR WEHBE, JIM FRANK, ŁUKASZ STAFINIAK, TOM VANEGDOM, BERNARD HUGUENEY, CURTIS DIXON, BENEDIKT MUELLER, VEGA GIDEY, THOMAS TRUMBLE, KATHRINE AND PATRICK TOBIN, JONCARLO MONTENEGRO, ROBERT LEWIS, AND AL NICK ORTIZ! AND TO MY EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS, MATTHEW LAVENDER, SERGIU CODREANU, AND BOGDAN KANIVETS!
This episode features "Larva Pupa Imago" written by Eric Schwitzgebel. Published in the February 2023 issue of Clarkesworld Magazine and read by Kate Baker. The text version of this story can be found at: https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/schwitzgebel_02_23 Support us on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/join/clarkesworld?
Eric Schwitzgebel is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of California Riverside. Before that, he did his undergraduate work at Stanford, and then received his doctorate from the University of California Berkeley. Eric has worked on an extremely wide array of topics, ranging from Chinese philosophy to philosophy of mind, metaphilosophy, and metaphysics. In this conversation, however, Robinson and Eric talk about his upcoming book on philosophy and weirdness. In particular, they discuss why the United States might be conscious, what Kant and cyberpunk have in common, the moral value of alien microbes, and a lot more about garden snails than you thought you could ever find interesting. Keep up with Eric through his blog, the Splintered Mind, or on Twitter @eschwitz. Outline: 00:00 Introduction 3:07 A Man of Many Interests 4:21 The Weirdness of the World 12:32 Why the United States May Be Conscious 25:50 Kant and Cyberpunk 35:22 Experimental Evidence for an External World 46:54 Are Ethicists More Ethical Than the Rest of Us? 1:04:47 What It's Like to Be a Garden Snail 1:23:07 The Moral Value of Alien Microbes Linktree: https://linktr.ee/robinsonerhardt Twitter: https://twitter.com/robinsonerhardt YouTube (Robinson's Podcast): youtube.com/@robinsonspodcast Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/robinsonerhardt/ Twitch (Robinson Eats): https://www.twitch.tv/robinsonerhardt YouTube (Robinson Eats): youtube.com/@robinsoneats TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@robinsonerhardt --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/robinson-erhardt/support
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My opinionated introduction to mysterianism. Inspired by Noam Chomsky, Colin McGinn, and Eric Schwitzgebel, we explore a version of mysterianism that I think may be true. YouTube Support on Patreon Listen to our sister show, Counter Apologetics here Transcript Shane Wagoner - From Physicalism to Mysterianism Music by ichika Nito and used with permission. Twitter @waldenpod @OnPanpsychism linktr.ee/emersongreen
To what extent does thinking about ethics actually cause a person to behave more ethically? Do ethicists behave more ethically than the average person, or are they just better at justifying their unethical behavior? Why do we sometimes have strong negative reactions to people who seem "too" moral — even if they're genuinely altruistic and not just acting as though they're better than everyone else? Is morality inherently motivating? More specifically, are some kinds of moral beliefs more motivating than others (e.g., beliefs obtained through reasoning vs. beliefs adopted because of social pressures vs. implicit beliefs to which our brains are predisposed for evolutionary reasons, etc.)? In philosophical terms, what is a jerk? How many kinds of jerks are there? Are philosophers mostly trying to find the truth, or are they mostly just playing logic games?Eric Schwitzgebel is a professor of philosophy at University of California, Riverside. He has published widely in moral psychology and philosophy of mind, including on the moral behavior of ethics professors, on introspection and consciousness, and on the role of science fiction in philosophical thinking. His most recent book is A Theory of Jerks and Other Philosophical Misadventures. He blogs at The Splintered Mind.[Read more]
To what extent does thinking about ethics actually cause a person to behave more ethically? Do ethicists behave more ethically than the average person, or are they just better at justifying their unethical behavior? Why do we sometimes have strong negative reactions to people who seem "too" moral — even if they're genuinely altruistic and not just acting as though they're better than everyone else? Is morality inherently motivating? More specifically, are some kinds of moral beliefs more motivating than others (e.g., beliefs obtained through reasoning vs. beliefs adopted because of social pressures vs. implicit beliefs to which our brains are predisposed for evolutionary reasons, etc.)? In philosophical terms, what is a jerk? How many kinds of jerks are there? Are philosophers mostly trying to find the truth, or are they mostly just playing logic games?Eric Schwitzgebel is a professor of philosophy at University of California, Riverside. He has published widely in moral psychology and philosophy of mind, including on the moral behavior of ethics professors, on introspection and consciousness, and on the role of science fiction in philosophical thinking. His most recent book is A Theory of Jerks and Other Philosophical Misadventures. He blogs at The Splintered Mind.
To what extent does thinking about ethics actually cause a person to behave more ethically? Do ethicists behave more ethically than the average person, or are they just better at justifying their unethical behavior? Why do we sometimes have strong negative reactions to people who seem "too" moral — even if they're genuinely altruistic and not just acting as though they're better than everyone else? Is morality inherently motivating? More specifically, are some kinds of moral beliefs more motivating than others (e.g., beliefs obtained through reasoning vs. beliefs adopted because of social pressures vs. implicit beliefs to which our brains are predisposed for evolutionary reasons, etc.)? In philosophical terms, what is a jerk? How many kinds of jerks are there? Are philosophers mostly trying to find the truth, or are they mostly just playing logic games?Eric Schwitzgebel is a professor of philosophy at University of California, Riverside. He has published widely in moral psychology and philosophy of mind, including on the moral behavior of ethics professors, on introspection and consciousness, and on the role of science fiction in philosophical thinking. His most recent book is A Theory of Jerks and Other Philosophical Misadventures. He blogs at The Splintered Mind.
https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/contra-hoel-on-aristocratic-tutoring I. Erik Hoel has an interesting new essay, Why We Stopped Making Einsteins. It argues that an apparent decline in great minds is caused by the replacement of aristocratic tutoring by ordinary education. Hoel worries we're running out of geniuses: Consider how rare true world-historic geniuses are now-a-days, and how different it was in the past. In “Where Have All the Great Books Gone?” Tanner Greer uses Oswald Spengler, the original chronicler of the decline of genius back in 1914, to point out our current genius downturn […] There are a bunch of other analyses (really, laments) of a similar nature I could name, from Nature's “Scientific genius is extinct” to The New Statesman's “The fall of the intellectual” to The Chronicle of Higher Education's “Where have all the geniuses gone?” to Wired's” “The Difficulty of Discovery (Where Have All The Geniuses Gone?)” to philosopher Eric Schwitzgebel's “Where are all the Fodors?” to my own lamentation on the lack of leading fiction writers. If you disagree, I'll certainly admit that finding irrefutable evidence for a decline of genius is difficult—intellectual contributions are extremely hard to quantify, the definition of genius is always up for debate, and any discussion will necessarily elide all sorts of points and counterpoints. But the numbers, at least at first glance, seem to support the anecdotal. Here's a chart from Cold Takes' “Where's Today's Beethoven?” Below, we can see the number of acclaimed scientists (in blue) and artists (in red), divided by the effective population (total human population with the education and access to contribute to these fields).
In this episode of “What Is X?” Justin E.H. Smith comes ready to be persuaded, as he tries to get a handle on one of the most difficult Xes of all: consciousness. What are the inner states we experience? Is figuring it out just a matter of neural activity, or might there be something to consciousness that science can't fully apprehend? What is the nature of introspection, the stream of thoughts and experiences we have in the privacy of our own intellects? What are the boundaries of consciousness? Is it different from sense perception? What does it mean to “see” a red dot? From the origins of psychoanalysis to philosophy debates of the 1990s, Justin and Eric try to answer the question so poignantly captured by The Pixies: Where is my mind?
WATCH: https://youtu.be/kKJyo2_s5P8 Eric Schwitzgebel is Professor of Philosophy at University of California at Riverside. He received his B.A. in Philosophy from Stanford and his PhD in Philosophy from U.C. Berkeley. He blogs at The Splintered Mind and is the author of Perplexities of Consciousness (2011) and A Theory of Jerks and Other Philosophical Misadventures (2019). He has published dozens of articles on the issue of introspection, moral psychology, the nature of belief and other attitudes; the epistemology of philosophy; ancient Chinese philosophy; philosophical issues in moral, developmental, and perceptual psychology; the metaphysics of consciousness; and the relationship between philosophy and science fiction. EPISODE LINKS: - Eric's Website: http://www.faculty.ucr.edu/~eschwitz/ - Eric's Blog: http://schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com/ - Eric's Books: https://www.amazon.com/Eric-Schwitzgebel/e/B004FR351K%3Fref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share - Eric's Publications: https://philpeople.org/profiles/eric-schwitzgebel CONNECT: - Website: https://tevinnaidu.com - Instagram: https://instagram.com/drtevinnaidu - Facebook: https://facebook.com/drtevinnaidu - Twitter: https://twitter.com/drtevinnaidu - LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/drtevinnaidu TIMESTAMPS: (0:00) - Introduction (0:40) - Mind-Body Problem (9:00) - Universal craziness thesis (17:00) - Issues with theories of consciousness (29:00) - What is consciousness and the self? (36:25) - Issues of introspection and beliefs (52:11) - Other minds (1:00:08) - Philosophy of science fiction (1:06:47) - Ethics of ethicists (1:14:22) - Philosophy of philosophers (1:23:32) - Universal dubiety thesis (1:30:27) - Artificial intelligence (1:35:42) - Copernican principle of consciousness & alien species (1:41:40) - Belief in God, atheism, agnosticism (1:45:09) - Free will & compatibilism (1:48:40) - Eric's author recommendations (1:56:43) - Skepticism of philosophical expertise (2:00:29) - Conclusion Website · YouTube · YouTube
WATCH: https://youtu.be/kKJyo2_s5P8 Eric Schwitzgebel is Professor of Philosophy at University of California at Riverside. He received his B.A. in Philosophy from Stanford and his PhD in Philosophy from U.C. Berkeley. He blogs at The Splintered Mind and is the author of Perplexities of Consciousness (2011) and A Theory of Jerks and Other Philosophical Misadventures (2019). He has published dozens of articles on the issue of introspection, moral psychology, the nature of belief and other attitudes; the epistemology of philosophy; ancient Chinese philosophy; philosophical issues in moral, developmental, and perceptual psychology; the metaphysics of consciousness; and the relationship between philosophy and science fiction. EPISODE LINKS: - Eric's Website: http://www.faculty.ucr.edu/~eschwitz/ - Eric's Blog: http://schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com/ - Eric's Books: https://www.amazon.com/Eric-Schwitzgebel/e/B004FR351K%3Fref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share - Eric's Publications: https://philpeople.org/profiles/eric-schwitzgebel CONNECT: - Website: https://tevinnaidu.com - Instagram: https://instagram.com/drtevinnaidu - Facebook: https://facebook.com/drtevinnaidu - Twitter: https://twitter.com/drtevinnaidu - LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/drtevinnaidu TIMESTAMPS: (0:00) - Introduction (0:40) - Mind-Body Problem (9:00) - Universal craziness thesis (17:00) - Issues with theories of consciousness (29:00) - What is consciousness and the self? (36:25) - Issues of introspection and beliefs (52:11) - Other minds (1:00:08) - Philosophy of science fiction (1:06:47) - Ethics of ethicists (1:14:22) - Philosophy of philosophers (1:23:32) - Universal dubiety thesis (1:30:27) - Artificial intelligence (1:35:42) - Copernican principle of consciousness & alien species (1:41:40) - Belief in God, atheism, agnosticism (1:45:09) - Free will & compatibilism (1:48:40) - Eric's author recommendations (1:56:43) - Skepticism of philosophical expertise (2:00:29) - Conclusion Website · YouTube
Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Before Colour TV, People Dreamed in Black and White, published by Sam Enright on February 1, 2022 on LessWrong. On an episode of Julia Galef's podcast, the philosopher Eric Schwitzgebel said the following: For [dreams], there was actually a literature that's very interesting where people in the '50 in the United States and the '40s thought that dreams just generally were black and white. I don't think that they thought it was just dreams in the United States, as influenced by media. I think they just thought dreams are a black and white kind of thing. Most people thought that in the 1950s. It's related to the presence of media in the culture, so if you look pre-20th century, very few people will say that dreams are black and white. If you look 21st century, very few people will say that dreams are black and white. You look at the arc of it and it relates to the dominance of black and white film media in the culture. And we got some cross-cultural evidence for this. This guy emailed me and said, "We should try this in China," because this was about the year 2000. He said, "Well, in rural China, most people are exposed to black and white media, their TVs are black and white, whereas in urban China, most people -- especially the wealthier people -- are exposed to mostly colour media." So we asked about their dreams and we found rural people in China in the early 2000s tended to say that their dreams were black and white, and urban people tended to say their dreams were coloured. That became the paper Schwitzgebel, Huang and Zhou 2006. If true, this is one of the most bonkers things I have ever learned. The thing is, it's extremely unlikely that black and white TV actually changed the contents of people's dreams. There's no plausible way that the small proportion of time people spent watching visual media could radically change dreams about things we see in colour every day. Rather, people don't know whether they dream in colour. Dreams may not even have associated colours one way or the other! Indeed, when I asked a few friends and family whether they dreamed in colour, a surprising number of them answered “I don't know”. When the dominant culture has a reference of visual media in black and white, you think you dream in black and white. And when your culture has a reference of visual media in colour, you think you dream in colour. This relates to a generally underappreciated aspect of consciousness: vagueness. Your conscious experience of the world is vague. You don't typically know what you're feeling, or dreaming, and look to cultural cues to figure it out. This explains the stylised fact that anxiety and excitement are almost neurologically indistinguishable; the difference is in the surrounding interpretation. More speculatively, it also may explain the cross-cultural differences in mental illnesses. The associated brain states of mental illnesses may well be the same everywhere, caused by a few failure modes. But different cultures prime people to think of mental illnesses in different ways. You may be sceptical if you are aware of how the psychological research on priming has not replicated well. But my colloquial usage of the term ‘prime' is different from its technical meaning in psychology. It is not quite the placebo effect either: since all experiences are influenced by beliefs and expectations, that would commit us to say that everything is a placebo, which doesn't seem right. It's more similar to the Popperian case against empiricism that I outlined in my review of The Beginning of Infinity. I was thinking out loud with a friend recently about how the purpose of meditation may be to eliminate this mental vagueness. To better understand sensation, unmediated by concepts. I heard Sam Harris say that experienced meditators even practice mindfulness in their s...
Link to original articleWelcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Before Colour TV, People Dreamed in Black and White, published by Sam Enright on February 1, 2022 on LessWrong. On an episode of Julia Galef's podcast, the philosopher Eric Schwitzgebel said the following: For [dreams], there was actually a literature that's very interesting where people in the '50 in the United States and the '40s thought that dreams just generally were black and white. I don't think that they thought it was just dreams in the United States, as influenced by media. I think they just thought dreams are a black and white kind of thing. Most people thought that in the 1950s. It's related to the presence of media in the culture, so if you look pre-20th century, very few people will say that dreams are black and white. If you look 21st century, very few people will say that dreams are black and white. You look at the arc of it and it relates to the dominance of black and white film media in the culture. And we got some cross-cultural evidence for this. This guy emailed me and said, "We should try this in China," because this was about the year 2000. He said, "Well, in rural China, most people are exposed to black and white media, their TVs are black and white, whereas in urban China, most people -- especially the wealthier people -- are exposed to mostly colour media." So we asked about their dreams and we found rural people in China in the early 2000s tended to say that their dreams were black and white, and urban people tended to say their dreams were coloured. That became the paper Schwitzgebel, Huang and Zhou 2006. If true, this is one of the most bonkers things I have ever learned. The thing is, it's extremely unlikely that black and white TV actually changed the contents of people's dreams. There's no plausible way that the small proportion of time people spent watching visual media could radically change dreams about things we see in colour every day. Rather, people don't know whether they dream in colour. Dreams may not even have associated colours one way or the other! Indeed, when I asked a few friends and family whether they dreamed in colour, a surprising number of them answered “I don't know”. When the dominant culture has a reference of visual media in black and white, you think you dream in black and white. And when your culture has a reference of visual media in colour, you think you dream in colour. This relates to a generally underappreciated aspect of consciousness: vagueness. Your conscious experience of the world is vague. You don't typically know what you're feeling, or dreaming, and look to cultural cues to figure it out. This explains the stylised fact that anxiety and excitement are almost neurologically indistinguishable; the difference is in the surrounding interpretation. More speculatively, it also may explain the cross-cultural differences in mental illnesses. The associated brain states of mental illnesses may well be the same everywhere, caused by a few failure modes. But different cultures prime people to think of mental illnesses in different ways. You may be sceptical if you are aware of how the psychological research on priming has not replicated well. But my colloquial usage of the term ‘prime' is different from its technical meaning in psychology. It is not quite the placebo effect either: since all experiences are influenced by beliefs and expectations, that would commit us to say that everything is a placebo, which doesn't seem right. It's more similar to the Popperian case against empiricism that I outlined in my review of The Beginning of Infinity. I was thinking out loud with a friend recently about how the purpose of meditation may be to eliminate this mental vagueness. To better understand sensation, unmediated by concepts. I heard Sam Harris say that experienced meditators even practice mindfulness in their s...
Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: [Linkpost] Eric Schwitzgebel: Against Longtermism, published by ag4000 on January 6, 2022 on The Effective Altruism Forum. This is a linkpost for Eric Schwitzgebel, a philosophy professor at UC Riverside, just posted a criticism of longtermism on his blog. In short, his arguments are: We live in a dangerous time in history, but there's no reason to think that the future won't be at least as dangerous. Thus, we'll likely go extinct sooner rather than later, so the expected value of the future is not nearly as great as many longtermists make it out to be. It's incredibly hard to see how to improve the longterm. For example, should we almost destroy ourselves (e.g., begin a cataclysmic yet survivable nuclear war) to avoid the risks from even more dangerous anthropogenic threats? Apart from temporal discounting, there are reasonable ethical positions from which one might still have greater reason to help those temporally closer than farther. For example, confucianism says we should focus more on those "closer" to us in the moral circle (friends, family, etc.) than those "farther" (including, presumably, future people). There's a risk that longtermism could make people ignore the plight of those currently suffering. (Although, Schwitzgebel acknowledges, prominent longtermists like Ord also work in more neartermist areas.) Overall, the critiques don't seem to be original. The third argument seems to me to be a reminder that it is important to examine the case for longtermism from other ethical perspectives. If you enjoyed reading Schwitzgebel's post, he has another EA-related post about AI alignment (as well as many posts on consciousness, e.g., in AI). Thanks for listening. To help us out with The Nonlinear Library or to learn more, please visit nonlinear.org.
Would you willingly plug yourself into an experience-simulating machine such as The Matrix? What would happen to society if robots suddenly became conscious? What would you do if, for some reason, you encountered an utterly alien life form? Many of us first ponder big philosophical questions such as these through exposure to science fiction stories in books or movies. In episode 42, Ellie and David explore the power of sci-fi. After considering the origins of this genre, they interview Dr. Helen De Cruz, an expert on the philosophy of science fiction, about how our brains process sci-fi stories differently than other speculative narratives, including philosophical thought experiments!Works DiscussedHelen De Cruz, Johan De Smedt, and Eric Schwitzgebel, Philosophy Through Science Fiction Stories: Exploring the Boundaries of the PossibleJohan De Smedt and Helen De Cruz. "The Epistemic Value of Speculative Fiction"Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and SimulationThe Matrix Decoded: Le Nouvel Observateur Interview With Jean Baudrillard, 2004Ted Chiang, "Story of Your Life"Ursula K. Le Guin, The DispossessedUrsula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of DarknessZhuangzi, The Inner ChaptersMary Shelley, FrankensteinPhilip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?The Matrix (film)Zenon, Girl of the Twenty-First Century (film) Arrival (film)Dune (film)I, Robot (film)Robert Nozick, “The Experience Machine"Ruth Garrett Millikan, “On Swampkinds"Website | overthinkpodcast.comInstagram & Twitter | @overthink_podEmail | Dearoverthink@gmail.comYouTube | Overthink podcast
The philosophical community continuously aims to reconcile differing views on first person data and the consciousness of the mind. Is it possible to live without consciousness? Can one conceive thoughts without matching images to them? In this episode, Eric Schwitzgebel of the University of California tries to dissect such topics and questions to help us better understand the philosophical world. Keywords: philosophy, epistemic data, first person data, stimulus error, imageless thought, consciousness
This week Alba and Amanda discuss a new book called How Humans Judge Machine by Cesar A. Hidalgo. Get the book on: https://www.judgingmachines.com/ Eric Schwitzgebel's Aiming for Moral Mediocrity: https://faculty.ucr.edu/~eschwitz/SchwitzAbs/MoralMediocrity.htm The puppy cartoon: https://images.app.goo.gl/C4zKG5hsfE6419Ra6
Eric Schwitzgebel is an American philosopher and professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Riverside. His main interests include connections between empirical psychology and philosophy of mind and the nature of belief. Support the show with a dollar/pound per video and get your name in the credits and my heart: https://www.patreon.com/Ideas_Sleep
Myisha Cherry chats with philosopher Eric Schwitzgebel about jerks, sweet hearts, science fiction, public philosophy, and more.
On episode 83, we welcome back philosopher Helen De Cruz to discuss why science fiction is a great platform for bringing complex philosophical ideas to a wide audience, the history of the belief in the afterlife and its early link to the intellectual and financial elite, Christianity’s democratizing of the hereafter, how philosophy is more about helping us become more fully human than about uncovering absolute truths, the roles of impulsivity and irrationality in dystopian literature, ethical dilemmas in the epidemics of sci-fi, and philosophy’s contribution to humans rising above their more selfish desires to lead more thoughtful lives. Helen De Cruz is professor of philosophy and Danforth Chair in the humanities at Saint Louis University in Missouri. Her latest book, coedited with Johan De Smedt and Eric Schwitzgebel, is called Philosophy through Science Fiction Stories: Exploring the Boundaries of the Possible. | Helen De Cruz | ► Book | https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08QZ97R5T/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1 ► Website | http://helendecruz.net ► Twitter | https://twitter.com/Helenreflects Where you can find us: | Seize The Moment Podcast | ► Website | https://o4lonlinenetwork.com/seizethemoment ► Facebook | https://www.facebook.com/SeizeTheMoment ► Twitter | https://twitter.com/seize_podcast ► Instagram | https://www.instagram.com/seizethemoment #HelenDeCruz #PhilosophyThroughScienceFictionStories #SeizeTheMoment #Philosophy #ScienceFictionPhilosophy #PhilosophyInScienceFiction #HelenDeCruzInterview #JohanDeSmedt #EricSchwitzgebel
Some theories violate common sense so wildly that you want to just reject them out of hand. For example, "The United States is conscious," or "The most moral act would be to replace all living beings with an orgasmic blob." On the other hand, many theories in physics that sounded similarly crazy turned out to be very well-supported (think of quantum theory, or relativity). So what role should "common sense" play in evaluating new theories? This episode features a discussion with philosopher Eric Schwitzgebel on his theory of "Crazyism," that we should expect the truth to be at least a little bit crazy. Sped up the speakers by ['1.0', '1.04']
You might expect that professional ethicists -- people whose job it is to determine which behaviors are ethical and why -- would behave more ethically than other people. You'd be wrong! This episode features philosopher Eric Schwitzgebel , who is well known for his work studying whether experts in ethics live up to their own standards. He and Julia discuss why the answer is "no," and explore questions like, "How do you decide how moral you're going to try to be?" Eric Schwitzgebel is a Professor of Philosophy at University of California at Riverside. He is the co-author (with Russell T. Hurlburt) of Describing Inner Experience?: Proponent Meets Skeptic and blogs at The splintered Mind. Sped up the speakers by ['1.0', '1.16']
Pedro Chrismann (IBMEC-RJ), Guilherme Almeida (FGV-RJ) e Danilo Almeida (FURG) finalmente enfrentam a questão do momento: qual é a sensação de ser um país? Para explorar os mistérios da consciência, os três embarcam numa viagem interestelar entre zumbis filosóficos, polvos (“pólvos”?) desmontáveis e mamutes-formigueiros, guiados por Eric Schwitzgebel, autor de “If materialism is true, the United States is probably conscious”. Neste episódio, a posição materialista sobre a mente é posta à prova através de uma bateria de cenários bizarros. Por fim, Pedro manda um grande dane-se para os “louquismos” metafísicos de Guilherme, enquanto Danilo bota a mão na consciência e repensa sua história evolutiva.
More at www.philosophytalk.org/shows/ethical-jerk. Ethics philosophers are more ethical than the average person — right? Well, maybe not. Studies show that philosophy professors are just as biased as the rest of us, and no more generous in their charitable giving. So does that mean they’re not any more ethical too? What’s the point of doing moral philosophy if it’s not to make ourselves more ethical? How can we make ourselves better people? Or are we doomed to moral mediocrity, despite our best efforts to the contrary? Josh and Ray play nice with Eric Schwitzgebel from UC Riverside, author of "A Theory of Jerks and Other Philosophical Misadventures."
Prof. Eric Schwitzgebel joins us to discuss the concept of the "Overton Window" and the potential consequences of engaging in unacceptable discourse. Buy Eric's Book, "A Theory of Jerks and Other Philosophical Misadventures": https://amzn.to/3d2LKjw Eric's Blog: http://schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com/ Support us on Patreon: https://patreon.com/renegadeape Music: "Monkey Business" by Mike Franklyn https://www.epidemicsound.com/track/nc340keROg
How well do you know your own feelings? Is our ability to know this about ourselves less reliable than what we know about the outside world around us? Is there anything we can do to make ourselves less "naive" and improve the reliability of introspection about conscious experiences? Links and Resources * Eric Schwitzgebel (https://faculty.ucr.edu/~eschwitz/) * The Paper (http://faculty.ucr.edu/~eschwitz/SchwitzAbs/Naive.htm) * The Splintered Mind (http://schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com/) * Alison Gopnik (http://alisongopnik.com/) * Introspection (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/introspection/) * Self-Knowledge (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/self-knowledge/) * Edward Titchener (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_B._Titchener) * Introspective Training Apprehensively Defended: Reflections on Titchener's Lab Manual (http://faculty.ucr.edu/~eschwitz/SchwitzAbs/IntrospTrain.htm) Paper Quotes Descartes, I think, had it quite backwards when he said the mind—including especially current conscious experience—was better known than the outside world. The teetering stacks of paper around me, I’m quite sure of. My visual experience as I look at those papers, my emotional experience as I contemplate the mess, my cognitive phenomenology as I drift in thought, staring at them—of these, I’m much less certain. My experiences flee and scatter as I reflect. I feel unpracticed, poorly equipped with the tools, categories, and skills that might help me dissect them. They are gelatinous, disjointed, swift, shy, changeable. They are at once familiar and alien. I know better what’s in the burrito I’m eating than I know my gustatory experience as I eat it. I know it has cheese. In describing my experience, I resort to saying, vaguely, that the burrito tastes “cheesy,” without any very clear idea what this involves. Maybe, in fact, I’m just— or partly—inferring: The thing has cheese, so I must be having a taste experience of “cheesiness.” Maybe also, if I know that the object I’m seeing is evenly red, I’ll infer a visual experience of uniform “redness” as I look at it. Or if I know that weeding is unpleasant work, I’ll infer a negative emotion as I do it. Indeed, it can make great sense as a general strategy to start with judgments about plain, easily knowable facts of the outside world, then infer to what is more foreign and elusive, our consciousness as we experience that world. I doubt we can fully disentangle such inferences from more “genuinely introspective” processes. Special Guest: Eric Schwitzgebel.
Part 3 in a trilogy of previously unpublished Quick Fire Questions featuring Vincent Felitti, MD, Dr. Charles Strozier, Prof. Eric Schwitzgebel, Joe Strike, Prof. Paul Gilbert, Haley Weaver (aka @haleydrewthis), and Kate Allan (aka @thelatestkate).
This episode features "Gaze of Robot, Gaze of Bird" written by Eric Schwitzgebel. Published in the April 2019 issue of Clarkesworld Magazine and read by Kate Baker. The text version of this story can be found at: http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/schwitzgebel_04_19 Support us on Patreon at http://patreon.com/clarkesworld
This episode features "Gaze of Robot, Gaze of Bird" written by Eric Schwitzgebel. Published in the April 2019 issue of Clarkesworld Magazine and read by Kate Baker. The text version of this story can be found at: http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/schwitzgebel_04_19 Support us on Patreon at http://patreon.com/clarkesworld
In today's episode we discuss the nature of introspection with Prof. Eric Schwitzgebel and his contention that we can never reliably grasp the true nature of our inner selves. We explore the inadequacies of our imaginary, emotional, and visual experience, the implications of these shortcomings for things like happiness and mental health, and whether or not introspection is something we can learn to do better. *** SUPPORT US ON PATREON *** http://patreon.com/mowe *** SHOW NOTES *** https://mowe.blog/podcast/how-little-thou-can-know-thyself/ *** BOOKS MENTIONED *** "A Theory of Jerks and Other Philosophical Misadventures" by Eric Schwitzgebel https://amzn.to/2UbGeWk "Perplexities of Consciousness" by Eric Schwitzgebel https://amzn.to/2U6SrLY "Describing Inner Experience? Proponent Meets Skeptic" by Eric Schwitzgebel & Russell T. Hurlburt https://amzn.to/2FzxG2v "Labyrinths" by Jorge Luis Borges https://amzn.to/2WpLYJP *** SOCIAL MEDIA *** Facebook: http://facebook.com/mowepod Twitter: http://twitter.com/mowepod *** CREDITS *** Theme Music: Falling Down by Ryan Little http://youtube.com/user/TheR4C2010 Elevator Music: "Local Forecast - Elevator" by Kevin MacLeod http://incompetech.com Podcast Image: SpankyNew https://flic.kr/p/neQ6U9 DISCLAIMER: My Own Worst Enemy is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.co.uk and affiliated sites.
We've read Children of Time (https://amzn.to/2QqYKII), and boy do we have a lot to say about it! This episode we discuss the structure of the book, whether novels need strong characters, how animal consciousness might differ from our own, and how to stock a ship designed to re-seed the human race on another planet. Adrian gets to jabber on about the Baldwin Effect & octopuses, and Matt makes some sharp points about the importance of empathy. Truly this podcast represents the future liberals want. As always, here's a list of stuff we discuss in the episode. If the links don't show up in your podcatcher, they will on spectology.com. All links are referral links. * Startide Rising by David Brin * The Bees by Laline Paull * The White Bone by Barbara Gowdy * Watership Down by Richard Adams * The Foundation Trilogy by Isaac Asimov * Goedel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter And finally, a few books on consciousness, language, and evolution that weren't mentioned by name, but which Adrian recommends: * Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness by Peter Godfrey-Smith (octopus researcher mentioned)* Adam's Tongue by Derek Bickerton (language evolution & the Baldwin Effect)* The Crucible of Consciousness by Zoltan Torey (language & consciousness) * The Perplexities of Consciousness by Eric Schwitzgebel (essays on the difficulty of introspecting consciousness) * The Ego Tunnel by Thomas Metzinger (laying out the ideas behind the phrase "consciousness is an illusion" for a lay audience) --- We'd love to hear from you, either by chatting with us on twitter at @spectologypod, sending us an email at spectologypod@gmail.com, or submitting the episode to r/printSF on reddit. We'll reply, and shout you out in the next podcast when we talk about your comment. And if you like the episode, subscribe at spectology.com or whever you listen to podcasts, and share it with your friends! Many thanks to Dubby J and Noah Bradley for doing our music and art.
Do people of opposing political parties believe in different facts? The mantra at the moment is that they do, because of media echo chambers, motivated reasoning, and ideological blindspots. But a more careful look reveals a different answer, with perhaps even more startling consequences. This week we follow two conservative Republicans who consumed a liberal newsfeed for two weeks, and we look at the empirical and philosophical problem of the way partisanship affects belief in facts. Guest voices include Janalee Tobias, Trent Loos, philosophers Daniel Wodak and Eric Schwitzgebel, and political scientist John G. Bullock. The episode is brought to you by the Great Courses Plus. Sign up for one month free at www.thegreatcoursesplus.com/hiphi. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
How do I know I'm not dreaming? This sort of question has puzzled philosophers for thousands of years. Eric Schwitzgebel discusses scepticism and its history with Nigel Warburton in this episode of the Philosophy Bites podcast. This episode of Philosophy Bites was sponsored by the Examining Ethics podcast from the Janet Prindle Institute for Ethics at DePauw University. You can subscribe to Examining Ethics on iTunes or listen to episodes at ExaminingEthics.Org
I listened to an episode of Rationally Speaking with Julie Galef, where Dr. Eric Schwitzgebel espoused his belief that self-knowledge is not accurate and unknowable. Not accurate? Fair enough. Unknowable? Meh. Yes/No. Self-awareness and self-knowledge are complex things, really.
Philosopher Eric Schwitzgebel returns to the show to explore several related questions: His taxonomy of the three different styles of thinker -- "Truth," "Dare," and "Wonder" -- and whether one of them is better than the others. His case for why it's bad to interpret people "charitably." And his seemingly paradoxical claim that we are frequently wrong about our own conscious experience.
This episode features "Little /^^^&-" written by Eric Schwitzgebel. Published in the September 2017 issue of Clarkesworld Magazine and read by Kate Baker. The text version of this story can be found at: http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/schwitzgebel_09_17 Support us on Patreon at http://patreon.com/clarkesworld
This episode features "Little /^^^&-" written by Eric Schwitzgebel. Published in the September 2017 issue of Clarkesworld Magazine and read by Kate Baker. The text version of this story can be found at: http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/schwitzgebel_09_17 Support us on Patreon at http://patreon.com/clarkesworld
In this talk, Eric Schwitzgebel considers whether it's acceptable to aim for peer-relative mediocrity. Most of us aim to be morally mediocre. That is, we aim to be about as morally good as our peers, not especially better, not especially worse. This mediocrity has two aspects. It is peer-relative rather than absolute, and it is middling rather than extreme. We look around us, notice how others are acting, then calibrate toward so-so. This is a somewhat bad way to be, but it's not a terribly bad way to be. We ought to be somewhat disappointed in ourselves. A possibly helpful comparison is being mediocre in other things you care about intensely: being a mediocre parent, a mediocre friend, a mediocre teacher, a mediocre philosopher.
In this talk, Eric Schwitzgebel considers whether it's acceptable to aim for peer-relative mediocrity. Most of us aim to be morally mediocre. That is, we aim to be about as morally good as our peers, not especially better, not especially worse. This mediocrity has two aspects. It is peer-relative rather than absolute, and it is middling rather than extreme. We look around us, notice how others are acting, then calibrate toward so-so. This is a somewhat bad way to be, but it's not a terribly bad way to be. We ought to be somewhat disappointed in ourselves. A possibly helpful comparison is being mediocre in other things you care about intensely: being a mediocre parent, a mediocre friend, a mediocre teacher, a mediocre philosopher.
Author : Eric Schwitzgebel Narrator : Tatiana Grey Host : Graeme Dunlop Audio Producer : Peter Wood Discuss on Forums First published in Unlikely Story Rated PG-13. The Dauphin's Metaphysics by Eric Schwitzgebel “—which suggests possible applications, if the cobbler is much younger. Don't you think, Miss Professor?” The Dauphin sat twelve rows back—teenage heir […] The post PC 475: The Dauphin's Metaphysics appeared first on PodCastle.
A year ago I talked with Eric Schwitzgebel about his new story Momentary Sage, his Philosophers' Science Fiction / Speculative Fiction Recommendations, and the next moral frontier. Now it’s time to dust off that conversation in celebration of the publication of my novella PETROLEA! What’s this about … Continue reading →
Some theories violate common sense so wildly that you want to just reject them out of hand. For example, "The United States is conscious," or "The most moral act would be to replace all living beings with an orgasmic blob." On the other hand, many theories in physics that sounded similarly crazy turned out to be very well-supported (think of quantum theory, or relativity). So what role should "common sense" play in evaluating new theories? This episode features a discussion with philosopher Eric Schwitzgebel on his theory of "Crazyism," that we should expect the truth to be at least a little bit crazy.
Our second podcast for July is “Fish Dance” written by Eric Schwitzgebel and read by Kate Baker.
Our second podcast for July is “Fish Dance” written by Eric Schwitzgebel and read by Kate Baker. Subscribe to our podcast.
Special guest Eric Schwitzgebel joins David and Tamler to discuss the moral behavior (or lack thereof) of ethicists. Does moral reflection make us better people, or does it just give us better excuses to be immoral? Who's more right about human nature--Mencius or Xun Zi? What did Kant have against bastards and masturbating? Plus, we talk about jerks, robot cars, and killing baby Hitler. (Godwin's Law within 1:42--might be a new record for us). LinksEric Schwitzgebel publications. (Has links to all the discussed papers).Why Self-Driving Cars Must be Programmed to Kill [technologyreview.com]Bonnefon, J. F., Shariff, A., & Rahwan, I. (2015). Autonomous Vehicles Need Experimental Ethics: Are We Ready for Utilitarian Cars? [arxiv.org]Mencius [wikipedia.org]Xun Zi [wikipedia.org]"The Philosophical Problem of Killing Baby Hitler." [vox.com]Why it's Unethical to Go Back in Time and Kill Baby Hitler. [forbes.com] Special Guest: Eric Schwitzgebel.
Dave and Tamler celebrate their 75th episode by welcoming six BFFs of the podcast and asking them to share the biggest thing they've changed their minds about in their professional careers. You'll hear Dan Ariely on our moral duty to take science into the real world, Laurie Santos on the the role of neuroscience in explaining psychological findings, Yoel Inbar on what it means to do good science as a psychologist, Eric Schwitzgebel on his metaphysical epiphany about materialism, Nina Strohminger on breaking-up with priming research, and Sam Harris on Artificial Intelligence and its perils, and his recently changed views about vegetarianism. (Sadly, we had a technical glitch with the audio when we recorded our most-frequent guest Paul Bloom, but we'll bring him on again soon.) Plus we play some hilarious mash-ups, raps, and voicemails sent in from listeners.Links to info about our GuestsDan ArielyLaurie SantosYoel InbarNina StrohmingerEric SchwitzgebelSam Harris Listener-Created Music in this Episode Special Guests: Dan Ariely, Eric Schwitzgebel, Laurie Santos, Nina Strohminger, Sam Harris, and Yoel Inbar.
Eric Schwitzgebel is Professor of Philosophy at University of California at Riverside. His most recent book is Perplexities of Consciousness. We discuss his article "Cheeseburger Ethics" on his research into whether ethics professors are any better behaved than anyone else. See http://schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com
You might expect that professional ethicists -- people whose job it is to determine which behaviors are ethical and why -- would behave more ethically than other people. You'd be wrong! This episode features philosopher Eric Schwitzgebel , who is well known for his work studying whether experts in ethics live up to their own standards. He and Julia discuss why the answer is "no," and explore questions like, "How do you decide how moral you're going to try to be?" Eric Schwitzgebel is a Professor of Philosophy at University of California at Riverside. He is the co-author (with Russell T. Hurlburt) of Describing Inner Experience?: Proponent Meets Skeptic and blogs at The splintered Mind.
Coming Up… Short Fiction: Reinstalling Eden, by R. Scott Bakker and Eric Schwitzgebel Originally published in Nature magazine. R. Scott Bakker has written eight novels translated into over dozen languages, including Neuropath, a dystopic meditation on the cultural impact of cognitive science, and the nihilistic epic fantasy series, The Prince of Nothing. He lives in London, Ontario with his wife and his daughter. Eric Schwitzgebel is a professor of philosophy at University of California, Riverside. His short fiction has appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Nature, Weird Tales,... See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
Could a robot or an alien have a mind even though its physical structure may contain nothing similar to a human brain? To address this, philosopher Eric Schwitzgebel once again joins Richard Brown and Pete Mandik to finish what we started in episode 4, “Death and Logic.” Here Richard defends brain-o-centrism against Eric’s “crazy-ism” (the view that something crazy has to be right about the metaphysics of consciousness) and Pete’s pro-AI, born-again functionalism (the view that minds are multiply realizable or substrate independent). Our launch points for discussion are themes from Eric’s recent essays, “If Materialism Is True, the United States is Probably Conscious” and “The Crazyist Metaphysics of Mind."
People say that two things in life are certain. The first is that no one gets out alive. The second is that if possibly necessarily P, then necessarily P. But, are death and logic really certainties? If, for example, there exists an infinite number of situations which each contain an individual who is intrinsically similar to you, aren't you effectively immortal? And is there a single best logic to use in assessing such possibilities? Philosopher Eric Schwitzgebel joins Richard and Pete to tackle death and logic as well as topics concerning the reality of the past and proper role of common sense in science and philosophy. This is the first part of our conversation with Eric. The second part will appear in a future episode.
Our most irresponsible episode ever! Dave and Tamler talk about two reviews of a book they haven't read--Joshua Greene's Moral Tribes: Emotion, Reason, and the Gap Between Us and Them--and feel only a little shame. (Since the recording, at least one of us has finished the book). Can Greene successfully debunk all non-utilitarian intuitions? Does Greene have a dark enough view of human nature? What would an ideal moral world look like? Will Dave ever stop making fun of Tamler's haunted boy haircut? We answer all of these questions and more. Plus we respond to a listener's email and read a couple of our favorite iTunes reviews.LinksMoral tribes: Emotion, reason, and the gap between us and them by Joshua Greene [amazon.com]Joshua Greene's website [harvard.edu]Why can't we all just get along? The uncertain biological basis of morality. Robert Wright reviews "Moral Tribes" for The Atlantic.You Can't Learn About Morality from Brain Scans: The problem with moral psychology. Thomas Nagel Reviews "Moral Tribes" for the New RepublicIf you don't already have it, Tamler's interview with Joshua Greene and Liane Young in his book A Very Bad Wizard is worth the read [amazon.com]On Debunking (Tamler's five part series of posts at Eric Schwitzgebel's blog The Splintered Mind)*book links are amazon affiliate links. They are the same price for you but sends a few pennies our way.
You might expect people who specialize in moral philosophy to behave better than other people. Eric Schwitzgebel has done some empirical investigation of whether this is the case, and it doesn't seem to be. What does that show about ethics? Philosophy Bites investigates.
Dan Ariely, Eric Schwitzgebel
How much do we know about our stream of conscious experience? Not much, if Eric Schwitzgebel is right. In his new book Perplexities of Consciousness (MIT Press, 2011), Schwitzgebel argues for skepticism regarding our knowledge of the phenomenology of conscious experience. We don't know if we dream in color or black and white, we don't know whether tilted coins look elliptical or round, and we don't know whether conscious experience is confined to what we are paying attention to or more abundant. Schwitzgebel's position is based on close examination of historical philosophical texts and current psychological experiments that show radical variability in reports of experience that seem unlikely to reflect radical differences in the experiences themselves. In this wide-ranging interview, Schwitzgebel considers whether psychologist Edward Titchener was on to something with his training of expert introspectors, why current theories of the neural correlates of consciousness are question-begging, and how reports of conscious experiences may be grounded in analogies to familiar media. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology
We are not so good at perceiving our own internal states.
We are not so good at perceiving our own internal states.
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