How the Brain Constructs Reality: Interview with Andy Clark

A Pastor and a Philosopher Walk into a Bar

Every now and then we like to talk to someone who is an expert in something we know almost nothing about. What better topic than philosophy and neuroscience? Andy Clark is Professor of Cognitive Philosophy at the University of Sussex, and is a well-known voice within philosophy of mind, pushing the boundaries of how we conceive of the brain, its connections with our environment, and in his new book, how it actively constructs our experience through prediction. The book is The Experience Machine: How Our Minds Predict and Shape Reality. We have a delightfully nerdy, scientific, and humble conversation with Andy about everything from why we sometimes feel our phones vibrating when they're not there, to whether AI can match human brains, to psychedelics, to whether there is a hard problem of consciousness. We even get him to talk a bit about religion. We barely scratch the surface, but it was a lot of fun!
The beverage we taste in this episode is Blanton's Single Barrel bourbon from Buffalo Trace Distillery.
Audio note: we weren't able to use our standard recording setup for this one, so if we sound a little odd, that's why. Apologies!
To skip the tasting, go to 6:53.
You can find the transcript for this episode here.
Image credit: The New Yorker Magazine

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1. How the Brain Constructs Reality: Interview with Andy Clark (00:00:00)

2. Beverage Tasting (00:02:48)

3. Interview (00:06:53)