MindChunk: Don't Torture Your Norns
What moral obligations do we have to sims?
Filtering by Tag: MindChunks
MindChunk: How do you know you're not a zombie?
We spent more on special effects for this MindChunk than on all previous MindChunks combined!
Richard Brown from ground control talks Pete Mandik through some repairs to the mothership. Along the way they find time to discuss the question of whether you can be absolutely certain that you have conscious experiences.
MindChunk: Spacetime Worms
Latest MindChunk: Spacetime Worms
Philosopher and neuroscientist Brit Brogaard joins Richard Brown and Pete Mandik to discuss the nature of time and the conscious experience of time.
MindChunk: The Brain Is Finite
Speaking of MindChunks, what are the metaphysical consequences of the supposition that the brain is a finite system of chunks that can each be in only a finite number of states?
Pete Mandik on Turing's argument from the finite nature of the brain.
MindChunk: Uplift or Downgrade?
In today's MindChunk we bring you an uplifting discussion (although the part about cannibalism in the middle gets a little NSFW). Animal "uplift" is basically transhumanism for animals. See, for example, The Planet of the Apes. See also the Arcturean major cow from The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, an animal genetically engineered to talk you into eating it. Psychologist Lara Beaty joins philosophers Richard Brown and Pete Mandik for the discussion. The longer discussion appears as Episode 6 of the SpaceTimeMind podcast: "The Extended Mind (with Lara Beaty)."
MindChunk: Time Consciousness and the Problem of the Unopened Einstein Book
Hey, you know what? MindChunk, that's what. The latest edition to our MindChunk video series launches a sneak attack on the nature of time by way of a thought experiment about artificial intelligence and a simulation of Einstein's brain. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.
What do artificial intelligence and the physics of time have to do with each other? Richard Brown and Pete Mandik set out to find out and what happened next will amaze you.
MindChunk: Metaphysical Impasse and Existential Threat
The matter duplicator on board the SpaceTimeMind mothership just went "ding" and another MindChunk popped out. Hurry and take a look before we toss it out of the airlock.
Will the debate over mind uploading be settled by one of the sides going extinct? http://www.spacetimemind.com
Consciousness and Biology
Just how tightly do biological facts constrain facts about consciousness? Are radically alien or machine minds possible? Or is a mind without a brain like a square without corners? We tackle these questions in this latest installment of the MindChunks video series. This is excerpted from the discussion Richard Brown and Pete Mandik had with Eric Schwitzgebel. For the rest, be sure to check out Episode 8: Alien and Machine Minds.
Are there biological requirements on consciousness? Do we know enough about what life is to use it as a meaningful test on what does and doesn't have consciousness? Richard Brown leans toward "yes" while Pete Mandik leans toward "no." This is an excerpt from our conversation with philosopher Eric Schwitzgebel.
Zombie Fight!
In horror movies, a zombie fight happens when two of the flesh-eating undead confuse each other for prey and, despite tearing each other apart, they both go to bed hungry. In philosophy, a zombie fight is exactly the same. In the latest installment of the MindChunk series, watch as Richard Brown and Pete Mandik use all their best zombie moves on one another, while neuroscientist Joe LeDoux kicks back and surveys the carnage.
Phenomenal consciousness is what you know you have when you know what it's like to be you. Zombies don't have any. Richard and Pete each accuse the other guy of being a zombie. One of them is right. But which one?
The Unger Games
The declaration of the death of philosophy du jour comes from Peter Unger in his recent book, Empty Ideas: A Critique of Analytic Philosophy. Glimpse his main ideas in this 3 Quarks Daily interview of Unger. Evident throughout is a pervasive scientism. Apropos of all this, see below the recent MindChunk from Richard and Pete, "Scientist or Philosopher?" (For the longer discussion from which this MindChunk originates, see our video "Scientism.")
Pete Mandik and Richard Brown discuss the question of whether philosophers should be scientists or scientists should be philosophers.
Just Like Superheroes, Philosophers Have Origin Stories
In this installment of the MindChunk video series, Richard and Pete each relate their philosophical origin stories. (SPOILER ALERT: Richard's adamantium skeleton was installed in a secret government location and Pete was bitten by a radioactive norn.)
Get to know the hosts of SpaceTimeMind a little better as they reveal their philosophical origin stories.
Fields Are Awesome
"Fields are awesome." - Richard Brown, Episode 3: Consciousness explained (?) part 2: The nature of explanation
See also:
Advice to Graduate Students
Professor, what are MindChunks?
In further pursuit of S C I E N C E, we here at the SpaceTimeMind Laboratory are conducting an experiment, codename "MindChunks." Each MindChunk will be a brief little tidbit or bite-sized morsel. It will be small, short, and entirely user-friendly. A MindChunk takes only a few minutes out of your day, but its effects may last a lifetime. What are you waiting for? Ask your doctor about MindChunks today.