Author: Steve Patterson

Can the whole be greater than the sum of its parts? Does consciousness require that we split the world between mind and body? Can free will exist in a naturalistic worldview?

Dr. David Kelley joins me on this episode to give his Objectivist perspective on these questions. As Dr. Kelley explains, many ideas in Objectivism are heavily influenced by Aristotelean thinking.

Guest’s Website

Topics Discussed:

03:48 Mind and Matter – Are they separate?
13:22 Is consciousness emergent?
23:33 Do capacities exist independent of the mind?
26:03 Free Will
30:48 Mysticism and The Ghost in the Machine
38:09 Concepts and Concept Formation
40:28 Do things exist independently from minds?
46:21 How are living and dying different from the position of atoms changing?
47:55 Can physical phenomena be explained in terms of their parts rather than the whole?

Do we see reality as it is? Or, are we stuck inside our own mental representations of the world?

My guest this week is Dr. Donald Hoffman, who believes that there’s a 0% chance that we accurately perceive the world. He believes that mental phenomena – consciousness, experience, qualia – is the real stuff that makes up the world, not physical objects.

Guest’s Website

Dr. Hoffman’s TED Talk

Topics Discussed:

2:22 Do we see reality as it is? What do we actually perceive?
5:43 Perception and Natural Selection – Are true perceptions fitter perceptions?
10:02 Are true perceptions disadvantageous?
23:15 Do space and time necessarily not exist?
27:30 Evolutionary fitness of our conceptual system
37:11 Are math and logic fundamental?
41:11 What actually exists?
43:43 What are conscious agents? What is and is not conscious? Is everything conscious?
51:07 Where is the starting point?
59:36 Where does this theory go? To what end/use?