The Philosopher's Zone - Program podcast Folgen

Human consciousness is intentional – it’s about something – but what is the relationship between my consciousness and the objects of which I’m conscious?  And, in particular, how does this work when the objects don’t even exist, like Santa Claus and Pegasus?  This week, we investigate an old philosophical issue.

Over four decades, the Gavin David Young Lectures in Philosophy at the University of Adelaide have become a very significant series with many distinguished contributors from across the globe..  This year, the speaker was Frank Jackson, Professor of Philosophy at ANU. His subject was ‘Philosophy for Representationalists’: perceptual experiences represent the way things are. For example, visual perceptual experiences typically represent how things are in front of us. We can pass this information on in many ways, but we humans most often pass it on using words and sentences. What do these commonplaces about experiences and language tell us about the contents of our experiences and the contents of our words and sentences?

Where does the mind stop and the rest of the world begin? Some philosophers are now arguing that thoughts are not all in the head. The environment has an active role in driving cognition; cognition is sometimes made up of neural, bodily, and environmental processes. Their argument has excited a vigorous debate among philosophers and this week we discover what the fuss is about. We hear from two proponents of the extended mind thesis from one of its critics, Robert Rupert, associate professor of philosophy at the University of Colorado, Boulder.