A Great Loss to the Universe (Part Three)

Content note: this episode includes a brief discussion of suicide. If you or someone you know is struggling, call or text 988 to reach the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline in the US. Outside the US, you can find a local helpline at https://findahelpline.com.

Neuropsychoanalysis pioneer Mark Solms says he is building a machine that can feel. For two episodes, we asked whether he can. This week we ask whether he should.

This is the final part of our three-part story about consciousness. Philosopher Ian Gold, PhD explains why AI has turned philosophy of mind from science fiction into decisions we actually have to make, and why moments like this only come along when science forces philosophy's hand. His brother, psychiatrist Dr. Joel Gold, the other co-author of Suspicious Minds, makes a few cases I didn't see coming: that psychoanalysis doesn't need to be a science, and that projects like Mark's don't need to exist at all. Ian disagrees. The problem, he says, is never science. It's people.

Then a pattern I only noticed after the fact: almost every time I asked someone about creating a mind, they started talking about children. Philosopher Marcus Arvan speaks with us about what it means to experiment on a being that might be able to suffer. Psychoanalyst Dr. Amy Levy explores why we call some of the things we make "artificial," and others "home."

And David Benatar, the anti-natalist philosopher who believes that bringing any sentient being into existence is a harm, joins a conversation that has in many ways been about him. Mark Solms remembers David challenging him at his book launch in Cape Town, and tells us why he believes creating a conscious being is a mitzvah. David responds directly, to Mark, to Hon Weng Chong, and to Ian Gold, who calls him a utilitarian. He isn't one, he says, and he explains why so many people think he is.

Also: Kant's answer to Newton, John Searle's Chinese Room, what it's like to be a bat, Karl Popper and the black swan, Dr. Michael Ferguson on whether a machine could be spiritual, Peter Singer and Moby's forearms, Master Yoda's emotional family tree, a toddler and an ant farm, and the German word for worldview.

Everyone in this episode is asking “whether” a new form of consciousness can or should be created. Amy Levy was the only one who answered a different question: what would we actually do the morning after it is?

A Great Loss to the Universe concludes a three-part investigation into consciousness that began with The Problem of Other Minds and Engineering Consciousness.

Next week: effective altruism, a philosophy that has gained an incredible amount of power in Silicon Valley, and so in the world, in just the last few years.

We hope you enjoy this episode of our second season of Suspicious Minds. 

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Host and Creator: Sean King O'Grady

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Guests:

Professor Mark Solms — Director of Neuropsychology, Neuroscience Institute, University of Cape Town / Author, The Hidden Spring: A Journey to the Source of Consciousness — https://link.amazon/B0fagMPXP

David Benatar — Philosopher / Author, Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence — Author, Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming Into Existence — https://amzn.to/3TqY1cz

Dr. Ian Gold — Philosopher, McGill University / Co-author, Suspicious Minds: How Culture Shapes Madness — https://amzn.to/4upyA8U

Dr. Joel Gold — Assistant Clinical Professor, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai / Co-author, Suspicious Minds: How Culture Shapes Madness — https://amzn.to/4upyA8U

Dr. Marcus Arvan — Chair and Professor of Philosophy, University of Tampa / Author, Neurofunctional Prudence and Morality — https://link.amazon/B05vK59aa

Dr. Amy Levy — Psychoanalyst / Chair, American Psychoanalytic Association's Commission on Artificial Intelligence / Author of The New Other: Alien Intelligence and the Innovation Drive — https://amzn.to/3PH1FO5

Dr. Michael Ferguson — Director, Neurospirituality Research Lab · Harvard Medical School and Harvard Divinity School — https://neuromichael.com · https://neurospirituality.io

Other works and things mentioned:

Immanuel Kant — the philosopher Ian Gold describes as answering Newton — https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant/

John Searle's Chinese Room argument (1980) — https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/chinese-room/

Mark Solms, editor, The Revised Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud — https://link.amazon/B0bVGiTaC

Karl Popper and falsifiability — https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/popper/

Peter Singer, Animal Liberation (1975) — https://link.amazon/B07Yqbz7k

George Lucas, Joseph Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces, and the road from Freud to Yoda — https://amzn.to/4zTkaRA

Thomas Nagel — “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?” (1974), referred to by David Benatar — https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~cavitch/pdf-library/Nagel_Bat.pdf

Mitzvah — commandment, obligation, sacred duty — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitzvah

"Be fruitful and multiply" — Genesis 1:28 — https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis%201%3A28

David Benatar on theism and anti-natalism, Religious Studies — https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/religious-studies/article/religious-antinatalism-a-rare-breed/B6C0ADBE08D907B086C8529AB2425DA2#article

The periaqueductal gray — the region of the brain stem at the center of Mark Solms' theory of feeling — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Periaqueductal_gray

Frontier labs researching whether their own models could have experiences — Anthropic, "Exploring model welfare" — https://www.anthropic.com/research/exploring-model-welfare

Weltanschauung — Merriam-Webster — https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/weltanschauung

The Matrix Revolutions — "This is my world" — https://youtu.be/jsZgTS2ccUc?t=235

Pantheon — the animated series from our listener's P.S. — https://youtu.be/wTgYeETwgKQ

The Problem of Other Minds (Part One) — where this story begins — https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/suspicious-minds-ai-and-the-apocalypse/id1844631307?i=1000790005691

Engineering Consciousness (Part Two) — our last episode — https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/suspicious-minds-ai-and-the-apocalypse/id1844631307?i=1000791259514

Cortical Labs and the neurons that play Doom — Hon Weng Chong's earlier appearance this season — https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/suspicious-minds-ai-and-the-apocalypse/id1844631307?i=1000783108111

Suspicious Minds: AI and Psychosis (Season 1) — https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/suspicious-minds-ai-and-psychosis/id1844631307

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Credits:

Executive Producers: Mandy Teefey, Selena Gomez, Jonathon Glucksman, Molly Borman, Jesse Ford, David Tuohy, Feras M. Shammami

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