Keith Frankish is a philosopher and writer, British-born but now living in Crete, Greece. He is an Honorary Professor in the Philosophy Department at the University of Sheffield, a Visiting Research Fellow with The Open University, and an Adjunct Professor with the Brain and Mind Programme at the University of Crete. He is also editor of the Cambridge University Press series Elements in Philosophy of Mind. He spent many years thinking about the nature of belief and reasoning, developing a ‘two-level’ view of the human mind that he set out in his 2004 book, Mind and Supermind. Now he focuses mostly on Philosophy of Mind and says "I now spend much of my time defending the unpalatable but salutary view that phenomenal consciousness is an introspective illusion."
In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the most important questions: “what’s real?”, “who matters?” and "how can we make a better world?"
Sentientism answers those questions with "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube.
00:00 Clips
00:52 Welcome
03:15 Keith's Intro
- "By the way I don't think sentience is an illusion"
- "I'm best known as a person who thinks consciousness is an illusion... I don't think that"
- "I spend most of my time thinking about the human mind"
- "I suppose I have a sort of campaigning streak"
- "The state of consciousness science is unsettled... a revolutionary state"
- "It's important for science... for philosophy... for knowledge... ethical implications too"
- "Trying to invite people to look at things a different way"
- Moving from UK academia to Greece "I moved more tothe edges... I think it freed me... to spend more of time doing I think are important... devote energies to things that perhaps wouldn't have got so well rewarded in the formal academic structures"
08:23 What's Real?
- Working class family
- "Religion was present but in a very watered down typically sort of English way... I was baptised... go to church... Sunday School"
- "It was never oppressive"
- Uncle "... a wonderful example of the compassion and... the commitment to social justice that can come with religion"
- Reading an encyclopaedia about the scientific scepticismabout the soul "Oh right, there's no soul then... and that was it!"
- "I had a very strong inclination to trust science... certainly against religious interpretations of the world"
- "...there's another world in which I would have become a scientist."
- "You can't really educate yourself in science but you can educate yourself in philosophy... philosophy can only be taught by self-education."
01:04:55 What Matters?
01:15:10 Who Matters?
01:47:26 A Better Future?
01:58:12 Follow Keith:
- Keith on BlueSky (“I do not post on Twitter any more”)
And more... full show notes at Sentientism.info.
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