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Futureproof Special: I Think Therefore (I Think) I Am

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20.10 14 Jun 2020


Futureproof Special: I Think Therefore (I Think) I Am



Share this article

20.10 14 Jun 2020


For the week's Futureproof Podcast we cast our attention back to a very special episode in which Jonathan seeks to better understand some of the bigger questions when it comes to what drives human behaviour, our relationship with time and consciousness, how we construct the world around us, and the very nature of truth itself.

Donald Hoffman, cognitive scientist and author of 'Visual Intelligence: How We Create What We See' joins Jonathan to discuss the idea that, evolutionarily speaking, it may be more beneficial for us to see things as they are not, and not as they truly are & asks if so much of our understanding of the world is a construct in our own minds, how much of what we see can we truly believe?

Robert Sapolsky, Professor of Biology, Neurology and Neurological Sciences at Stanford University and author of 'Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst' unpacks the concept of free will, and looks at whether anything we ever do, think, or say can ever be attributed to it.

Finally, Marc Wittman, Research Fellow at the Institute for Frontier Areas in Psychology and Mental Health in Freiburg and author of 'Altered States of Consciousness: Experiences Out of Time and Self' delves into questions of how we experience time, why our experience of it can be altered depending on the circumstances and asks - what can these altered states tell us about consciousness itself?

Listen and subscribe to Futureproof with Jonathan McCrea on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

  

Download, listen and subscribe on the Newstalk App.

  

You can also listen to Newstalk live on newstalk.com or on Alexa, by adding the Newstalk skill and asking: 'Alexa, play Newstalk'.


Read more about

Cognition Cognitive Scientist Consciousness Donald Hoffman Freiburg Jonathan Mccrea Marc Wittman Neurobiology Neurology Newstalk Perception Reality Robert Sapolsky Space Stanford University Thinking Time

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