TrueSciPhi

Podcast Profile: Consciousness Live!

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93 episodes
2019 to 2026
Median: 113 minutes
Collection: Philosophy

Description (podcaster-provided):

Themes and summary (AI-generated based on podcaster-provided show and episode descriptions):

This podcast consists largely of long-form, live conversations with philosophers, cognitive scientists, and neuroscientists about consciousness and closely related topics in the mind sciences. Across episodes, the host uses interviews to explore how conscious experience might be explained, modeled, or situated in nature, moving between philosophical argument and empirical research programs.

A recurring focus is the relationship between theories of consciousness and evidence: how to formulate testable criteria, how neuroscientific paradigms bear on competing frameworks, and what methodological commitments (including open science and adversarial collaboration) can and cannot decide. Listeners can expect frequent discussion of prominent theoretical approaches in contemporary consciousness science, including global workspace-style accounts, integrated information approaches, sensorimotor and perception-centered theories, and debates about computation and implementation.

Another through-line is the structure of conscious experience itself—perception, mental imagery, imagination, attention, and metacognition—along with disputes about whether introspection is reliable and what epistemic role consciousness plays. Several conversations emphasize philosophy of perception (including naïve realism and representational issues), while others broaden into memory research and the psychological study of self-awareness.

The show also regularly engages with major metaphysical positions about mind and reality, such as physicalism and its challenges, illusionism about phenomenal consciousness, panpsychism and related views (including biopsychism), and more radical proposals about the self and subjectivity (including universalism and solipsism). Some episodes connect consciousness studies to questions about value, emotion, agency, and animal minds.

While the central thread is consciousness, the scope occasionally expands to adjacent topics like artificial intelligence and cognitive enhancement, psychiatry and the unconscious, psychedelics, and intersections between academic philosophy and broader cultural interests. Overall, this podcast functions as an ongoing forum for contemporary debates about what consciousness is, how (or whether) it can be explained, and which tools—philosophical, scientific, or both—are best suited to the task.