23 April 2019
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Apr 2, 2019 —
Robert Wright & Randolph Nesse
The Wright Show
Nov 28, 2018 —
John Horgan & Robert Trivers
Nov 14, 2018 —
Aryeh Cohen-Wade & Rebecca Lohnes
Culturally Determined
- Rebecca’s path from the Ivy League to an animal shelter
- The science of animal training
- The many reasons why you shouldn’t try to be your dog’s “alpha”
- What we know about animal personality
- What goes on inside an animal shelter?
- Is there such a thing as a “bad dog”?
- What’s actually happening when your pet looks ashamed
- Aryeh and Rebecca debate whether their dog loves them
Nov 3, 2018 —
John Horgan & Owen Flanagan
Mind-Body Problems
- Owen’s transition from Catholicism to “quiet skepticism”
- The problem of evil
- The hubris of modern philosophers
- Can we live with the scientific image of man?
- The origin of the universe, life, and consciousness
- Owen: Doubt yourself
- Does philosophy lead to practical wisdom?
- Mind-altering chemicals and free will
TAGS atheism | Buddhism | Christianity | consciousness | ethics | evolution | free will | human nature | mind-body problem | philosophy | psychology | religion | science
Sep 20, 2018 —
Nikita Petrov & John Horgan
Mind-Body Problems
- John’s new book, Mind-Body Problems, is free online
- “What are we really, what can we be, and what should we be?”
- Robert Trivers, an evolutionary biologist with an affinity for violence
- Douglas Hofstadter, a playful writer, but a melancholic person
- Why ex-materialist Christof Koch embraced panpsychism
- How losing a daughter made Stuart Kaufman study the paranormal
- Story time! Nikita and John exchange psychedelic tales
TAGS biology | cognitive science | consciousness | enlightenment | evolution | human nature | meditation | mind-body problem | philosophy | psychology | religion | science | spirituality
Jun 13, 2018 —
Stephen Asma & Rami Gabriel
Emotions and the Brain
- Where do culture, emotion, and cognition intersect?
- Is altruism a fluke of humans’ inherently selfish nature?
- How Western individualism clouds our view of human nature
- Stephen: The strongest cultural adaptations are shared unconsciously
- An evolutionary explanation of Trump’s cult of personality
- Complicating the narrative on immigrant cultural values and success
- Reactions to Stephen’s new book, Why We Need Religion
May 15, 2018 —
Stephen Asma & Rami Gabriel
Emotions and the Brain
- Are emotions cultural or physiological?
- Neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett’s argument for emotion-via-culture
- Why social construct theory is all the rage today
- Rami’s thoughts on self-help psychology
- Rami: Pets teach us that emotional connection predates language
- What makes emotions adaptive to environment?
- Stephen and Rami review the Jaak Panksepp Memorial Symposium
- What neuroscientists say about the brain’s unpredictability
May 4, 2018 —
Robert Wright & Steven Pinker
The Wright Show
- Steve’s new book, Enlightenment Now, and Bob’s critique
- Cognitive biases that undergird tribalism
- Bob wants to crowdfund a meditation retreat for Steve, who is uncooperative
- How Al Gore’s climate change activism may have hurt his own cause
- Is it crazy to suspect that there’s a larger purpose unfolding through the workings of nature?
- Has our growing grasp of computation and cognition made consciousness less mysterious or more so?
Mar 2, 2018 —
Robert Wright & Richard Prum
The Wright Show
- Darwin’s approach to explaining the peacock’s cumbersome plumage
- Could beauty have evolved, in part, for beauty’s sake?
- The sense in which traits favored via mate selection may not be ‘adaptive’
- Mate preference and aesthetics
- What can we learn from ducks’ miserable sex lives?
- How paternal investment in offspring became part of human life
- When sex isn’t for reproduction
- Richard’s misgivings about evolutionary psychology
Feb 9, 2018 —
Stephen Asma & Rami Gabriel
Emotions and the Brain
- This week’s puppet show: How do emotions help us survive?
- Darwin’s attempts to understand the inner lives of animals
- Can we really hide our feelings? Rami doubts it
- The “seeking” drive that keeps us going
- Angst: Fear without an object
- How culture complicates finding a mate
- Is there an adaptive function to recognizing beauty?
Dec 16, 2017 —
Robert Wright & John Horgan
The Wright Show
- The pervasiveness of sexual harassment
- Human nature according to Socrates, the Google memo guy, and Bob
- Are gendered behavioral differences innate or learned?
- John: Scientists keep trying, and failing, to discern the roots of human behavior
- Can you be both enlightened—in the Buddhist sense—and immoral
- Sexual harassment in science and philosophy
Oct 7, 2017 —
Robert Wright & Tyler Volk
The Weirdness of Physics
Sep 8, 2017 —
Josh Summers & Stephen Asma
TAGS altruism | cognitive science | consciousness | Donald Trump | dreaming | empathy | ethics | evolution | meditation | philosophy
Aug 24, 2017 —
Robert Wright & Lisa Feldman Barrett
Emotions and the Brain
Jun 6, 2017 —
Daniel Kaufman & Massimo Pigliucci
Sophia
- “Purpose” in science and morality
- What Aristotle thought about purpose in nature
- Why asking “what is it for?” makes sense in biology but not other sciences
- Does form dictate function?
- Is there a “law” of morality?
- The paths to human flourishing
- Why a “scientific” approach to ethics à la Sam Harris doesn’t work
Feb 15, 2017 —
Robert Wright & Robert Stickgold
The Wright Show
TAGS biology | cognitive science | consciousness | creativity | dreaming | evolution | psychology | science
Feb 6, 2017 —
Daniel Kaufman & Massimo Pigliucci
Sophia
- Join the hordes clamoring for Massimo’s forthcoming book!
- The science of ethics
- Is morality baked into our biology?
- Can primates tell us where morality comes from?
- How Kant and moral psychology complement each other
- Nietzsche’s moral philosophy
- Warning: Chimps and bonobos are not hairy proto-humans!
- The trouble with studying morality in infants
TAGS cognitive science | ethics | evolution | human nature | justice | philosophy | psychology | science | tribalism
Dec 21, 2016 —
Robert Wright & Michael Shermer
The Wright Show
Dec 18, 2016 —
Nikita Petrov & George Young
- Does Russian thought have anything to contribute to the world?
- Nikolay Fedorov, an eccentric thinker who influenced Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky
- Fedorov’s plan: Immortality for everyone
- “Kinship” as a fundamental property of all matter
- A mass movement for the spiritual unity of humankind
- Vladimir Solovyov’s The Meaning of Love: Sexuality as a path to a Christian utopia
- Christ as the ultimate role model
TAGS Christianity | consciousness | death | evolution | history | human nature | literature | mysticism | occult | philosophy | politics | religion | science | spirituality | technology | the future | transhumanism
Nov 21, 2016 —
Robert Wright & Gad Saad
The Wright Show
- How hormones drive consumer and mating behavior
- How your fingers give your testosterone level away
- Why some people seem taller than they are
- Why grandfathers get fewer gifts than grandmothers
- Is religion at the root of bad behavior?
- Is Islam more conducive to violence than other religions?
- Evolutionary perspectives on religion
Nov 13, 2016 —
Robert Wright & Keith Frankish
The Wright Show
TAGS Buddhism | cognitive science | consciousness | ethics | evolution | human nature | memory | mind-body problem | panpsychism | perception | philosophy | psychology | self | technology
Nov 4, 2016 —
Robert Wright & Christof Koch
The Wright Show
- The search for non-human consciousness
- Consciousness in the organic and inorganic worlds
- Measuring consciousness
- Lucky us: The universe breeds consciousness
- How scientific and spiritual worldviews can enrich each other
- Artificial intelligence is not (necessarily) artificial consciousness
- The Allen Institute for Brain Science and its mission
TAGS Buddhism | cognitive science | consciousness | ethics | evolution | panpsychism | physics | science | spirituality | technology | the future
Oct 26, 2016 —
Robert Wright & David Chalmers
The Wright Show
TAGS cognitive science | consciousness | evolution | human nature | mind-body problem | physics | psychology | science
Oct 19, 2016 —
Robert Wright & Sam Harris
The Wright Show
- Sam Harris, mystic and atheist
- The mystery of consciousness
- Is mysticism more like science than like religion?
- How religion makes progress
- Sam’s case for intolerance
- The root causes of extremism
- Religious and secular reasons to do good
- Ways religion may be closer to the truth than atheism
- A secular approach to death
TAGS agnosticism | atheism | Buddhism | Christianity | cognitive science | consciousness | death | empathy | ethics | evolution | history | Islam | meditation | mind-body problem | mindfulness | mysticism | nationalism | New Atheists | perception | poverty | psychology | religion | science | self | spirituality | tribalism
Oct 10, 2016 —
Robert Wright & Jonathan Gold
The Wright Show
- The seminal Buddhist philosopher Vasubandhu, hero of Paving the Great Way
- Buddhist and Darwinian arguments for reality not being as it seems
- The ‘hyper-reductionism’ of Buddhism
- Meditation and the doctrine of emptiness
- Does the Buddhist view of causality leave room for agency?
- Are the past and the future real?
- Hindu and Buddhist versions of non-duality
TAGS Buddhism | evolution | free will | Hinduism | human nature | meditation | mindfulness | perception | philosophy | psychology | religion | self | spirituality | time
Oct 2, 2016 —
Robert Wright & Hugo Mercier
The Wright Show
Sep 17, 2016 —
Nikita Petrov & George Young
- What is Russian cosmism?
- The religious side of cosmism
- Cosmism as a response to the challenges of the 20th century
- Nature as a temporary enemy and eternal friend
- Pavel Florensky, the Russian da Vinci
- Plant life as a spiritual ideal
- The father of the Soviet space program, and his weird spirituality
- Cosmism and transhumanism: Compare and contrast
- Cosmism as a Russian propaganda project
TAGS Christianity | consciousness | death | evolution | history | human nature | mysticism | occult | philosophy | politics | religion | science | spirituality | technology | the future | transhumanism
Jul 5, 2016 —
Robert Wright & Steven Nadler
The Wright Show
TAGS ancient philosophy | atheism | Buddhism | Christianity | Donald Trump | enlightenment | ethics | evolution | Judaism | meditation | mysticism | philosophy | politics | religion
Jun 13, 2016 —
Robert Wright
The Wright Show
Jun 11, 2016 —
Robert Wright & Daniel Kaufman
The Wright Show
Feb 13, 2016 —
Daniel Kaufman & Massimo Pigliucci
Sophia
- What constitutes an explanation in the natural sciences?
- Looking for a categorical difference between natural and social sciences
- Biological and social explanations of human behavior
- The difference between the narratives of social and physical sciences
- Does social science explain events or their interpretations?
- Must a science have “laws”? Are there social scientific laws?
Feb 9, 2016 —
Robert Wright & Daniel Kaufman
The Wright Show
Jan 25, 2016 —
Robert Wright & Jeremy England
The Wright Show
- Jeremy’s new theory and the origins of life
- Wrestling with the second law of thermodynamics
- Self-organizing systems and self-replicating ones
- Natural selection as a special case of more general physical laws
- The role of ritual in Jeremy’s Jewish faith
- The laws of physics were written by people, not God
Dec 19, 2015 —
Robert Wright & Lawrence Krauss
The Wright Show
Dec 13, 2015 —
Robert Wright & Donald Hoffman
The Wright Show
- Natural selection doesn’t build brains to see the truth
- How perception is like a graphical computer interface
- Don’s theory: It’s consciousness all the way down
- Is there a chicken-and-egg problem with this theory?
- Don describes his consciousness formula, sans math (phew)
- With this theory, life is more interesting—and painful
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