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Into the Impossible With Brian Keating

David Chalmers: You Are in a Sim ​(#213)

Into the Impossible With Brian Keating

Brian Keating

Science, Physics, Natural Sciences

4.7 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 9 February 2022

⏱️ 85 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

David Chalmers is an Australian philosopher and cognitive scientist specializing in the areas of philosophy of mind and philosophy of language. He is a Professor of Philosophy and Neural Science at New York University, as well as co-director of NYU's Center for Mind, Brain and Consciousness (along with Ned Block). In 2006, he was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. In 2013, he was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. David Chalmers first formulated the problem in his paper Facing up to the problem of consciousness (1995) and expanded upon it in his book The Conscious Mind (1996). His works have proven to be provocative. Some, such as David Lewis and Steven Pinker, have praised Chalmers for his argumentative rigor and "impeccable clarity." Others, such as Daniel Dennett and Patricia Churchland, believe that hard problem is really more of a collection of easy problems, and will be solved through further analysis of the brain and behavior. Reality+: Virtual Worlds and the Problems of Philosophy https://amzn.to/3oqp0Cz Virtual reality is genuine reality; that’s the central thesis of Reality+. In a highly original work of “technophilosophy,” David J. Chalmers gives a compelling analysis of our technological future. He argues that virtual worlds are not second-class worlds, and that we can live a meaningful life in virtual reality. We may even be in a virtual world already. Along the way, Chalmers conducts a grand tour of big ideas in philosophy and science. He uses virtual reality technology to offer a new perspective on long-established philosophical questions. How do we know that there’s an external world? Is there a god? What is the nature of reality? What’s the relation between mind and body? How can we lead a good life? All of these questions are illuminated or transformed by Chalmers’ mind-bending analysis. Visit our Sponsor LinkedIn.com/impossible to post a job for FREESearch for The Jordan Harbinger Show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you listen to podcasts, or go to jordanharbinger.com/subscribe Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

So the hard problem of consciousness is the problem of explaining how physical processes in the brain give rise to subjective experience, to the subjective experience of the mind and the world.

0:13.4

Hello and welcome to another special episode of the Into the Impossible

0:19.1

Podcast with yours, truly Brian Keating,

0:21.4

Chancellor's Distinguished Professor of Physics at UC San Diego and

0:24.0

co-associate director of the Arthur C. Clark Center for Human Imagination.

0:28.0

Today's episode is with David Chalmers, a renowned philosopher who operates at New York University and has come up with some of the

0:35.8

foremost and most provocative issues that philosophers and theoretical physicists are grappling

0:41.9

with today, namely something called the hard problem of consciousness.

0:45.4

And you'll hear the definition from the horse's mouth.

0:48.4

I asked Dave to actually define it for you and for me in this episode.

0:53.4

We talked about the famous major outstanding problems

0:57.0

of our time and philosophy,

0:58.8

and those pertinent to his wonderful new book,

1:00.9

Reality Plus, which you'll hear a lot about in which he makes the case that we are

1:06.2

Essentially highly likely to be simulated

1:10.0

So you I am a simulated being with some level of intelligence questionable to some and you are simulated as well and this is being broadcast over digital computers which are primitive compared to the simulated computers

1:24.0

run by the master simulator herself, which is playing a role tantamount to that of God.

1:29.8

And you'll hear David's conception of that, we'll talk about famous paradigms and paradoxes like it from bit, how you can get material objects from pure information.

1:40.0

The reverse problem of getting information bits from it, from substrates, do you need a substrate,

1:45.2

how do you run the computer? Why would a deity or why would a master simulator even engage in this?

1:50.6

What's the purpose of it? You'll hear those classic questions answered by a phenomenal

1:57.0

philosopher. And he points out some of the challenges that he has to people like Bernardo Kastrupe and people like Stephen Wolfram and as

...

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