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Philosopher Keith Frankish interviews leading philosophers of mind and cognitive scientistsThemes and summary (AI-generated based on podcaster-provided show and episode descriptions):
➤ Philosophy of mind interviews • consciousness theories • intentionality and representation • introspection and illusionism • sensation vs perception, blindsight • artificial agents, LLMs, artificial consciousness • digital ethics, online pollution • evolution and spiritualityThis podcast features in-depth interviews with philosophers of mind and cognitive scientists, focusing on how consciousness, perception, and mental representation can be understood in naturalistic terms. Conversations typically connect traditional philosophical questions—such as what consciousness is, what it does, and whether there is anything distinctive about first-person experience—with findings and methods from psychology, neuroscience, and cognitive science.
Across the discussions, recurring themes include debates about phenomenal consciousness and “what it is like” characterizations of experience, including skeptical or deflationary approaches that treat certain aspects of subjective experience as illusory, theoretically dispensable, or better explained from a third-person perspective. Related issues include how introspection works and whether it provides privileged access to mental states, as well as the status of sensory qualities such as color and the distinction between sensation and perception. There is also attention to unusual and informative cases—such as blindsight and other neuropsychological phenomena—as ways of probing what conscious awareness contributes beyond information processing and behavior.
The show also explores how consciousness might have evolved and what its adaptive functions could be, extending the inquiry to non-human animals and comparative questions about sentience. Alongside these topics, the podcast engages with contemporary questions about artificial agents and artificial consciousness, including the implications of large language models and digitally mediated environments. Overall, it offers long-form, technically oriented dialogue that situates philosophical disputes within broader scientific and technological contexts, while also touching on wider human concerns that intersect with theories of mind, such as spirituality, depression, and suicide.
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3: Anna Strasser 2025-Oct-12 48 minutes |
2: Pete Mandik2022-Apr-16 152 minutes |
1: Nicholas Humphrey2022-Jan-15 112 minutes |