The Institute for Arts and Ideas produces numerous debates, lectures, and interviews on a broad range of topics including philosophy, science, politics, art.

They asked me to host a debate of a sort between Donald Hoffman, Bernardo Castro, and Susan Schneider on whether machines are or can be conscious.

This is part one, and the rest of the episode can be viewed on the IAI.tv website, as well as on their YouTube channel, both linked in the description. Also, I was asked to host an interview one-on-one between myself and Donald Hoffman, and that part one should be exclusively on the Toe Channel shortly, as well as the rest on the IAI website slash YouTube channel. Enjoy. My name's Kurt Jai Mungal. I'm the host of the YouTube channel Theories of Everything,

which analyzes Toz from a theoretical physics perspective, and it's my distinguished pleasure

to host this talk with Donald Hoffman, Susan Schneider, and Bernardo Castro.

Donald Hoffman is an American cognitive psychologist working at the University of California,

Irvine. He's making waves with his new theory, suggesting that

instead of presenting reality as it really is, quote unquote, that our perception is tantam out to a

desktop user interface, enabling us to use reality effectively. Don's latest paper is Fusions

of Consciousness and his latest book is the case against reality, why evolution hid the truth

from our eyes. Bernardo Castro is the Dutch computer reality why evolution hid the truth from our eyes.

Bernardo Castro is the Dutch computer scientist and is one of the prominent defenders of

metaphysical idealism, the notion that reality is essentially mental.

Bernardo has worked as a scientist in leading laboratories across the world, including

CERN, searching for supersymmetry and finding the Higgs as an artifact, and the Phillips

research laboratories, and he's a regular contributor to Scientific American. Susan Schneider is an

academic and public philosopher, the William F. Dietrich Professor of Philosophy at Florida

Atlantic University and a recipient of the National Endowment for the Humanities Public Scholar Award.

She's also the co-director of the Machine Perception and Cognitive Robotics Lab at Florida

Atlantic University in her recent book, Artificial You and the Future of Mind is now available.

The question that we're going to use as a catalyst for this discussion is, should we accept that consciousness arises only in biological beings and that AI simply isn't made of the right ingredients and will go in order of Don, Susan and Bernardo, and welcome everyone. It's good to see you all. So, Don. So I think the very question itself makes an assumption. It assumes that space and time and physical objects

are fundamental, that the fundamental reality of space and time and particles and quantum fields

...