Sentience in Simple Organisms and Machines

Jim talks with Michael Shermer about his worldview and his new book, Truth: What It Is, How to Find It, and Why It Still Matters. They discuss Michael's self-identification as a monist and realist who believes in a physical objective world, the concept of fallibilism, intersubjective verification of the interobjective, reliance on authorities and institutions, the battle between the book of authority versus the book of nature, balancing rationality with empiricism, the dependence of mathematical truths on axioms, January 6 as an example of people acting rationally on false beliefs, Shermer's journey from born-again Christian to atheist and Jim's opposite journey from Catholicism to atheism, treating religious literature like great literature with deeper truths, the study of consciousness and the hard problem versus the easy problem, separating intelligence from consciousness, consciousness as a biological process like digestion, the question of machine sentience, a critique of Donald Hoffman's interface theory, evidence for veridical perception through mimicry in nature and animals climbing trees, skepticism about brain-in-a-vat and simulation scenarios, minimum viable metaphysics, Thomas Nagel's concept of one thought too many, Jonathan Rauch's constitution of knowledge, the replication crisis in psychology, the breakdown of trust in institutions due to COVID and the noble lie, the problem of scaling laws with followership, moral realism and the survival and flourishing of sentient beings, the principle of interchangeable perspectives, discovering moral values through problem-solving, the evolution of ethics and the expanding moral sphere, and much more. Episode Transcript Truth: What It Is, How to Find It, and Why It Still Matters, by Michael Shermer The Michael Shermer Show Why People Believe Weird Things, by Michael Shermer The Believing Brain, by Michael Shermer Why Darwin Matters, by Michael Shermer The Science of Good and Evil, by Michael Shermer Conspiracy: Why the Rational Believe the Irrational, by Michael Shermer "A Minimum Viable Metaphysics," by Jim Rutt JRS EP 287 - Jonathan Rauch on the Epistemic Crisis Dr. Michael Shermer is the Founding Publisher of Skeptic magazine and the host of the podcast The Michael Shermer Show. For 30 years he taught college and university courses in critical thinking, and for 18 years he was a monthly columnist for Scientific American. He is the author of New York Times bestsellers Why People Believe Weird Things and The Believing Brain, Why Darwin Matters, The Science of Good and Evil, The Moral Arc, Heavens on Earth, Giving the Devil His Due, and Conspiracy: Why the Rational Believe the Irrational. His new book is Truth: What it is, How to Find it, Why it Still Matters. Follow him on X @michaelshermer.