Stephen Fleming, Professor of cognitive neuroscience, discusses self-deception, cognitive biases, and the limits of self-knowledge. They explore split brain experiments, the challenges of metacognition, and the relationship between metacognition and performance. The podcast also delves into the distinction between reality and imagination, influential books, and representing humanity to future AI.

Sam Harris speaks with Stephen Fleming about the neuroscience of self-awareness. They discuss the nature and limits of metacognition, the relationship between self-knowledge and intelligence, error monitoring, theory of mind, mirror neurons, deception and self-deception, false confidence, probabilistic reasoning, where metacognition fails, cognitive decline, calibrating one’s confidence, and other topics. 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.   Learning how to train your mind is the single greatest investment you can make in life. That’s why Sam Harris created the Waking Up app. From rational mindfulness practice to lessons on some of life’s most important topics, join Sam as he demystifies the practice of meditation and explores the theory behind it.

We take a dive into neuroscience and metacognition. Thinking about thinking and thinking about other minds. We are joined by Professor Stephen Fleming, neuroscientist and author of the book Know Thyself to learn more about how our cognition works and the implications for our work as mind-creating creatives and in the development of AI.