Golden Oldie: What is consciousness for? (Robert Wright & David Chalmers)
Robert Wright's Nonzero
Nonzero
4.7 • 618 Ratings
🗓️ 8 July 2025
⏱️ 69 minutes
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Summary
0:00 A brief message from Bob 1:49 Why consciousness is so weird 11:29 Is consciousness like your brain’s shadow? 19:10 If David was a zombie, would anyone know? 23:21 Bob’s wacky theory about consciousness 44:49 Is consciousness what collapses the quantum wave function? 1:02:59 Can there be a true science of consciousness?
Robert Wright (Nonzero, The Evolution of God, Why Buddhism Is True) and David Chalmers (New York University, The Australian National University). Recorded October 24, 2016.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, this is Bob. Now, by the time you hear this, I will have had throat surgery, |
| 0:07.2 | which as I record this is scheduled for the very end of June. So I'm not going to be recording |
| 0:12.4 | any new podcast for the next week or two. However, so vast and deep are our archives that I have any number of golden oldies to choose from in filling this void. |
| 0:28.3 | Today's offering is a conversation on consciousness with the philosopher possibly most famously associated with a question of consciousness. |
| 0:39.9 | David Chalmers, he formulated this phrase, the hard problem of consciousness. |
| 0:46.7 | This is from 2016. That's nine years ago. Believe it or not, we've still not solved the |
| 0:53.4 | mind and body problem. In fact, I don't know that |
| 0:56.3 | radical progress has been made. So this is as relevant as it ever would be. So this is as relevant as |
| 1:06.0 | ever, and I hope you like it. And I will be back in a couple of weeks. |
| 1:12.1 | Now, in the meanwhile, please, although I will be suffering from excruciating post-surgical pain, |
| 1:20.2 | do not waste any time feeling sorry for me unless that feeling compels you to go to, say, the Apple podcast site, Spotify, the podcast app of your choice, and leave a possibly favorable review for the non-zero podcast and give it five, 10, 50 stars, whatever you feel like. |
| 1:43.4 | But that's optional. |
| 1:45.6 | In any event, I will be back soon. |
| 1:49.1 | Hi, David. |
| 1:50.4 | Hi, Bob. |
| 1:51.1 | How are you doing? |
| 1:51.7 | I'm doing okay. |
| 1:52.6 | How are you? |
| 1:53.4 | Yeah, I'm good. |
| 1:54.3 | Let me introduce this. |
| 1:55.3 | I'm Robert Wright. |
| 1:55.9 | This is a right show available on streaming video and audio podcast. |
... |
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