David Chalmers is a philosopher and cognitive scientist specializing in philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, and consciousness. He is perhaps best known for formulating the hard problem of consciousness which could be stated as “why does the feeling which accompanies awareness of sensory information exist at all?” This conversation is part of the Artificial Intelligence podcast. If you would like to get more information about this podcast go to https://lexfridman.com/ai or connect with @lexfridman on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Medium, or YouTube where you can watch the video versions of these conversations. If you enjoy the podcast, please rate it 5 stars on Apple Podcasts, follow on Spotify, or support it on Patreon. This episode is presented by Cash App. Download it (App Store, Google Play), use code “LexPodcast”.  Here’s the outline of the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time. 00:00 – Introduction 02:23 – Nature of reality: Are we living in a simulation? 19:19 – Consciousness in virtual reality 27:46 – Music-color synesthesia 31:40 – What is consciousness? 51:25 – Consciousness and the meaning of life 57:33 – Philosophical zombies 1:01:38 – Creating the illusion of consciousness 1:07:03 – Conversation with a clone 1:11:35 – Free will 1:16:35 – Meta-problem of consciousness 1:18:40 – Is reality an illusion? 1:20:53 – Descartes’ evil demon 1:23:20 – Does AGI need conscioussness? 1:33:47 – Exciting future 1:35:32 – Immortality

David Chalmers, a renowned philosopher and cognitive scientist at NYU, dives into the perplexing nature of consciousness. He discusses why consciousness is deemed a 'hard problem' and explores its implications in understanding reality. The conversation touches on theories of animal consciousness, the relationship between subjective experiences and AI, and philosophical ideas like 'philosophical zombies.' They also examine how consciousness ties into color perception and even the evolution of our understanding of physics, raising questions about the nature of existence itself.

Can consciousness be explained by physics, or does it appeal to something beyond materialism? Philosopher guest star David Chalmers talks to us about how we can think about consciousness from a philosophical and scientific perspective.To support our show and get ad-free episodes and other exclusives, join us for $3 a month on Patreon: https://patreon.com/whythisuniverseSupport the show

Filmmaker Jay Shapiro has produced a new series of audio documentaries, exploring the major topics that Sam has focused on over the course of his career. Each episode weaves together original analysis, critical perspective, and novel thought experiments with some of the most compelling exchanges from the Making Sense archive. Whether you are new to a particular topic, or think you have your mind made up about it, we think you’ll find this series fascinating. In this episode, we survey the landscape of consciousness and get acquainted with the mystery of the mind. We start with an attempt to define consciousness–and veterans of conversations on consciousness will know that this is a huge part of the challenge.  David Chalmers begins with his conception of what he coined “The Hard Problem of Consciousness” and a famous question offered by the philosopher Thomas Nagel.  We then construct a “Philosophical Zombie” before the philosopher Thomas Metzinger explains why he is thoroughly unimpressed by the ability to imagine “such a thing,” while he simultaneously warns us against ever attempting to build one. Anil Seth brings some hope of whittling away the intuition gap of the hard problem by pursuing the “easy” problems, with clear scientific reasoning. Later, Iain McGilchrist lays out the intuition-shattering implications of the famous Roger Sperry experiments with split brain patients that suggest that consciousness can be cut with a knife… at least temporarily. Annaka Harris then shifts the conversation to the realm of panpsychism, which suggests that consciousness is nomologically fundamental and potentially permeates all matter.  Finally, Don Hoffman explains that consciousness is not only fundamental and non-illusory, but that the physical world we appear to be navigating is merely a virtual space-time interface, which has evolved to hide the true nature of reality from us.

The two hottest topics in tech right now are the rise of generative AI and, with Apple’s recent push into spatial computing, the mainstreaming of augmented reality. Will silicon-based machines develop sentience? Will human experience extend into virtual worlds? These distinct technologies may eventually blend to spawn a surprising future, as our “real” world becomes digitally enhanced and our machines behave increasingly like humans.Today, a provocative discussion with some big (human) thinkers: Steven Johnson, visiting scholar at Google Labs and author of ”Extra Life,” “Where Good Ideas Come from,” and “How We Got to Now”; philosopher and cognitive scientist David Chalmers, author of ”The Conscious Mind” and “Reality+”; and Betaworks founder and AI investor John Borthwick.• Want to learn more about our executive membership? Email podcast@nextbigideaclub.com• “David Chalmers Thinks We May Be Living in a Simulation (and He’s OK With It)”• “Steven Johnson & Michael Specter on the Future of Life”

Throughout the year, AI development has taken significant strides. We are living in a society that is becoming increasingly reliant on digital technology, which soon could be flooded with computer-generated content. As technology advances, it will become harder to distinguish between the virtual and the real, eventually almost impossible. Is this a cause for concern?In part one of this partnership with the Swedish publishing house and ideas forum Fri Tanke we hear from keynote speaker David Chalmers, Professor of Philosophy at New York University.We’d love to hear your feedback and what you think we should talk about next, who we should have on and what our future debates should be. This event took place in May 2023 in Stockholm.Send us an email or voice note with your thoughts to podcasts@intelligencesquared.com or Tweet us @intelligence2. And if you’d like to get ad-free access to all Intelligence Squared podcasts, including exclusive bonus content, early access to new episodes and much more, become a supporter of Intelligence Squared today for just £4.99, or the equivalent in your local currency . Just visit intelligencesquared.com/membership to find out more.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This video is demonetised on music copyright so we would appreciate support on our Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/mlst  We would also appreciate it if you rated us on your podcast platform.  YT: https://youtu.be/_KVAzAzO5HU Panel: Dr. Tim Scarfe, Dr. Keith Duggar Guests: Prof. J. Mark Bishop, Francois Chollet, Prof. David Chalmers, Dr. Joscha Bach, Prof. Karl Friston, Alexander Mattick, Sam Roffey The Chinese Room Argument was first proposed by philosopher John Searle in 1980. It is an argument against the possibility of artificial intelligence (AI) – that is, the idea that a machine could ever be truly intelligent, as opposed to just imitating intelligence. The argument goes like this: Imagine a room in which a person sits at a desk, with a book of rules in front of them. This person does not understand Chinese. Someone outside the room passes a piece of paper through a slot in the door. On this paper is a Chinese character. The person in the room consults the book of rules and, following these rules, writes down another Chinese character and passes it back out through the slot. To someone outside the room, it appears that the person in the room is engaging in a conversation in Chinese. In reality, they have no idea what they are doing – they are just following the rules in the book. The Chinese Room Argument is an argument against the idea that a machine could ever be truly intelligent. It is based on the idea that intelligence requires understanding, and that following rules is not the same as understanding. in this detailed investigation into the Chinese Room, Consciousness and Syntax vs Semantics, we interview luminaries J.Mark Bishop and Francois Chollet and use unreleased footage from our interviews with David Chalmers, Joscha Bach and Karl Friston. We also cover material from Walid Saba and interview Alex Mattick from Yannic's Discord.  This is probably my favourite ever episode of MLST. I hope you enjoy it!  With Keith Duggar.  Note that we are using clips from our unreleased interviews from David Chalmers and Joscha Bach -- we will release those shows properly in the coming weeks. We apologise for delay releasing our backlog, we have been busy building a startup company in the background. TOC:  [00:00:00] Kick off [00:00:46] Searle [00:05:09] Bishop introduces CRA [00:00:00] Stevan Hardad take on CRA  [00:14:03] Francois Chollet dissects CRA [00:34:16] Chalmers on consciousness [00:36:27] Joscha Bach on consciousness [00:42:01] Bishop introduction [00:51:51] Karl Friston on consciousness [00:55:19] Bishop on consciousness and comments on Chalmers  [01:21:37] Private language games (including clip with Sam Roffey) [01:27:27] Dr. Walid Saba on the chinese room (gofai/systematicity take) [00:34:36] Bishop: on agency / teleology [01:36:38] Bishop: back to CRA [01:40:53] Noam Chomsky on mysteries  [01:45:56] Eric Curiel on math does not represent [01:48:14] Alexander Mattick on syntax vs semantics Thanks to: Mark MC on Discord for stimulating conversation, Alexander Mattick, Dr. Keith Duggar, Sam Roffey. Sam's YouTube channel is https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjRNMsglFYFwNsnOWIOgt1Q

The "Easy Problems" of consciousness have to do with how the brain takes in information, thinks about it, and turns it into action. The "Hard Problem," on the other hand, is the task of explaining our individual, subjective, first-person experiences of the world. What is it like to be me, rather than someone else? Everyone agrees that the Easy Problems are hard; some people think the Hard Problem is almost impossible, while others think it's pretty easy. Today's guest, David Chalmers, is arguably the leading philosopher of consciousness working today, and the one who coined the phrase "the Hard Problem," as well as proposing the philosophical zombie thought experiment. Recently he has been taking seriously the notion of panpsychism. We talk about these knotty issues (about which we deeply disagree), but also spend some time on the possibility that we live in a computer simulation. Would simulated lives be "real"? (There we agree -- yes they would.) David Chalmers got his Ph.D. from Indiana University working under Douglas Hoftstadter. He is currently University Professor of Philosophy and Neural Science at New York University and co-director of the Center for Mind, Brain, and Consciousness. He is a fellow of the Australian Academy of Humanities, the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Among his books are The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory, The Character of Consciousness, and Constructing the World. He and David Bourget founded the PhilPapers project. Web site NYU Faculty page Wikipedia page PhilPapers page Amazon author page NYU Center for Mind, Brain, and Consciousness TED talk: How do you explain consciousness? See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Sam Harris speaks with philosopher David Chalmers about the nature of consciousness, the challenges of understanding it scientifically, and the prospect that we will one day build it into our machines. If the Making Sense podcast logo in your player is BLACK, you can SUBSCRIBE to gain access to all full-length episodes at samharris.org/subscribe.

This podcast explores the perplexing concept of consciousness and delves into novel explanations for its existence. Featuring interviews with prominent experts, it discusses the enigma of consciousness, its essential properties, the interplay with quantum mechanics, and controversial theories surrounding its nature.