Does the Computer Know That It Wants to Play Jeopardy?

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Watson the computer played against the two greatest champions of all time, including ken jennings. It doesn't even know it's playing a game or that it's on television. No amount of data processing is necessarily accompanied by experience unless you already presuppose some of panpsychism. But our readiness to believe we can create private conscious in their life in silicon reflects an amazing capacity to ignore our sense of plausibility when it comes to consciousness.

In this expansive conversation, Michael Shermer speaks with Bernardo Kastrup, the executive director of Essentia Foundation. His work has been leading the modern renaissance of metaphysical idealism, the notion that reality is essentially mental. He has a Ph.D. in philosophy (ontology, philosophy of mind) and another Ph.D. in computer engineering (reconfigurable computing, artificial intelligence). Shermer and Kastrup discuss: materialism, idealism, dualism, monism, panpsychism, free will, determinism, consciousness, the problem of other minds, artificial intelligence, out of body and near-death experiences, model dependent realism, and the ultimate nature of reality.