Anil Seth on the Real Problem of Consciousness

Philosophy Bites

Nigel Warburton

Education, Philosophy, Society & Culture

4.6 • 2K Ratings

🗓️ 19 July 2017

⏱️ 23 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The Hard Problem of consciousness is the difficulty of reconciling experience with materialism. In this episode of the Philosophy Bites podcast, in conversation with Nigel Warburton, Anil Seth, a neuroscientist, explains his alternative approach to consciousness,which he labels the 'Real Problem. Anil is a Wellcome Trust Engagement Fellow.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is Philosophy Bites with me Nigel Warburton and me David Edmonds.
0:07.0	Philosophy Bites is unfunded.
0:09.0	Please help us keep it going by subscribing or donating at
0:12.0	W.W.
0:14.0	Philosophy Bites.com or you can become a patron at Patreon.
0:18.0	There's probably no problem which exercises philosophers more than that of consciousness.
0:24.6	How can we explain it?
0:26.2	How can physical stuff, neurons, synapses, produce subjective experience?
0:32.4	Neuroscientists are making astonishing discoveries all the time about the brain.
0:37.0	But will they ever be able to tell us anything useful about consciousness?
0:42.0	Neuroscientists Anul Seth believes they will.
0:46.0	Anil Seth, welcome to FlossiBites.
0:48.0	It's a pleasure, thanks very much.
0:50.0	The topic we're going to focus on is the real problem of consciousness.
0:55.0	Just before we get onto that, could we begin by saying a little bit about how people
1:01.0	have traditionally approached the problem or the problems of consciousness?
1:06.0	Probably almost all thinking and research on consciousness is traceable at least back to Descartes and I think he set the terms for the modern debate entirely.
1:14.8	With his dualistic philosophy, dividing the world
1:17.5	into two different kinds of stuff, into mind stuff,
1:21.2	res cogitans, the stuff of thoughts and of conscious experiences, and
1:26.8	res extensa, the stuff that tables and chairs and indeed brains and bodies are made out of,
1:31.2	material stuff.
	...

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