Susan Blackmore: "Consciousness Isn't What It Seems To Be"

PROGRAM NOTES
03:30 Jon Hanna introduces Susan Blackmore
08:04 "A lot of people kind of think that scientists like myself are kind of pushing the problem [of what is consciousness] away, some are, but there’s a huge excitement about what we do with this mystery, and it’s a very strange mystery indeed."
09:22 "That’s what we mean by consciousness, in contemporary science, what it’s like for you."
09:38 Susan talks about ‘the great chasm’ between mind and brain, sometimes called the ‘fathomless abyss’ . . . "It’s the chasm between subjective, how it is to me, and objective, how we believe it must be in the real physical world. Don’t underestimate this problem."
11:48 "So that’s the sense in which I mean consciousness might be an illusion: not what it seems to be."
18:48 Susan begins her discussion about free will.
24:34 "You can see the readiness potential building up in someone’s brain a long time, a long time in brain terms, before they know they are spontaneously and freely act."
26:56 "We can believe that free will is an illusion. That’s my preferred solution. I don’t want to press it on you, but it seems this way: When you look at these results, and many other results too, consciousness just doesn’t seem to be the thing that starts things off."
51:07 "I suggest, that when you’re walking around in your ordinary life, just realize how much you are not seeing, but you are not seeing it all."

» Podcast 104 - "Consciousness Isn't What It Seems To Be"