Show 142: “On Consciousness” w/ Ted Honderich & Susan Blackmore

“On Consciousness”  w/ Ted Honderich & Susan Blackmore

Audio here!

What is Consciousness?  Is the “self” just an illusion?  Do we really have “free will?”  The last 300 years has brought us two of the most important scientific discoveries of human civilization.  The Copernican-Galilean Revolution took humankind out of the center of the universe and allowed us to understand the nature of space.  The Darwinian Revolution removed humankind from our privileged position at the center of “God’s Universe,” and allowed us to understand the true nature of godless life.  Now, the upcoming Consciousness Revolution will allow us to understand the nature of our minds and indeed our very existence.

Imagine what a deterministic, self-less understanding of human behavior can lead us to in our many struggles both with each other and with the universe at large.  First, however, we need to understand what is means to be conscious in the first place.

Susan Blackmore is a freelance writer, lecturer and broadcaster, and a Visiting Lecturer at the University of the West of England, Bristol. She has a degree in psychology and physiology from Oxford University (1973).  Her research interests include memes, evolutionary theory, consciousness, and meditation.  She practices Zen and campaigns for Drug legalization. Her books inlude Dying to Live (on near-death experiences), The Meme Machine, A Very Short Introduction to Consciousness, and forthcoming, Conversations on Consciousness.

Ted Honderich is the Grote Professor at the University College of London.  He is a democratic socialist, and proud of the small civil disobedience of having sat down on the pavement in Parliament Square with Bertrand Russell.  He has been a visiting professor at Yale, the Graduate Centre of the City University of New York, Brooklyn College, and the University of Calgary.  Some of his first publications were articles on the nature of truth and on Russell’s theory of descriptions.  His books include How Free are You?, the Oxford Companion to Philosophy, After the Terror – prompted  by September 11 – and On Consciousness. His forthcoming book will be a new edition of Punishment: The Supposed Justifications.

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