Podcast 104 – “Consciousness Isn’t What It Seems To Be”

Guest speaker: Susan Blackmore PROGRAM NOTES: (Minutes : Seconds into program) 03:30 Jon Hanna introduces Susan Blackmore 08:04 "A lot of people kind of think that scientists like myself are kind of pushing the problem [of what is consciousness] away, some are, but there’s a huge excitement about what we do with this mystery, and it’s a very strange mystery indeed." 09:22 "That’s what we mean by consciousness, in contemporary science, what it’s like for you." 09:38 Susan talks about ‘the great chasm’ between mind and brain, sometimes called the ‘fathomless abyss’ . . . "It’s the chasm between subjective, how it is to me, and objective, how we believe it must be in the real physical world. Don’t underestimate this problem." 11:48 "So that’s the sense in which I mean consciousness might be an illusion: not what it seems to be." 18:48 Susan begins her discussion about free will. 24:34 "You can see the readiness potential building up in someone’s brain a long time, a long time in brain terms, before they know they are spontaneously and freely act." 26:56 "We can believe that free will is an illusion. That’s my preferred solution. I don’t want to press it on you, but it seems this way: When you look at these results, and many other results too, consciousness just doesn’t seem to be the thing that starts things off." 51:07 "I suggest, that when you’re walking around in your ordinary life, just realize how much you are not seeing, but you are not seeing it all." Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option Books discussed in this podcast            The Meme Machine by Susan Blackmore Consciousness: An Introduction by Susan Blackmore Conversations on Consciousness: What the Best Minds Think about the Brain, Free Will, and What It Means to Be Human by Susan Blackmore Consciousness Explained by Daniel C. Dennett Susan Blackmore’s books on Amazon.com