The Problem With Consciousness

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When Nagel is talking about consciousness, he is talking about it in the way that Tamler was describing. It's not at all anything that like self awareness, right? You might doubt whether or not a bad is self aware. That's a term that sometimes used synonymously with consciousness but here it's just merely the subjective experience of being.

We try (with varying success) to wrap our heads around Thomas Nagel’s classic article “What is it Like to be a Bat?" Does science have the tools to give us a theory of consciousness or is that project doomed from the outset? Why do reductionist or functionalist explanations seem so unsatisfying? Is the problem that consciousness is subjective, or is it something about the nature of conscious experience itself? Is this ultimately an epistemological or metaphysical question? What are we talking about? Do we even know anymore?

Plus, the return of Mr. Robot! We talk about the big new mystery at the heart of the new season.

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