Welcome to the Making Sense Podcast. This is Sam Harris. Just a note to say that if you're

hearing this, you are not currently on our subscriber feed and will only be hearing the

first part of this conversation. In order to access full episodes of the Making Sense

Podcast, you'll need to subscribe at samharis.org. There you'll find our private RSS feed to

add to your favorite pod catcher, along with other subscriber-only content. We don't run ads

on the podcast, and therefore it's made possible entirely through the support of our subscribers.

So if you enjoy what we're doing here, please consider becoming one.

To damn speaking, with Stephen Fleming, Stephen is a professor of cognitive neuroscience at University

College London, and is the author of the recent book, Know Thy Self, The Science of Self-Owness.

And Self-Owness is the topic of today's conversation. We talk about the relevant neuroscience,

the relationship between self-knowledge and intelligence, the evolution of medicognition,

error monitoring, theory of mind, mirror neurons, deception and self-deception, false confidence,

compartmentalistic reasoning, where medicognition fails, cognitive decline, those places where

self-knowledge might be counterproductive and other topics. Anyway, I've found it quite

interesting, and I hope you do as well. And I bring you Stephen Fleming.

I am here with Stephen Fleming. Steve, thanks for joining me.

Thanks very much, Sam. It's an honor to be here.

So you've written a very interesting book on perhaps the most interesting topic.

The topic is self-knowledge, self-awareness. The book is Know Thy Self, The Science of Self-Owness.

But I'm really eager to talk about the whole sweep of this, but before we jump in,

perhaps you can summarize your background academically and intellectually.

Sure, yeah. So I'm currently a professor of cognitive neuroscience at University College London.

...