Rebecca Goldstein on the Meaning of Matter, Philosophy, and Consciousness | Closer To Truth Chats

Rebecca Goldstein discusses the meanings of "matter", philosophy in science, the hard problem of consciousness, and her decades of experience as a fiction and non-fiction writer.

Follow Rebecca Goldstein on Twitter @platobooktour

Rebecca Newberger Goldstein is a novelist and Professor of Philosophy. She has written ten books, a number of short stories and essays, and biographical studies of mathematician Kurt Gödel and philosopher Baruch Spinoza.


Closer to Truth presents the world’s greatest thinkers exploring humanity’s deepest questions. Discover fundamental issues of existence. Engage new and diverse ways of thinking. Appreciate intense debates. Share your own opinions. Seek your own answers.

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[ailblentyn]

I think I like this raw, underproduced style just as much as the full production. It's always been the quality of the conversations that matters.

[eismscience]

Thank you for posting all of these fascinating conversations.

[szclimber]

Thank you for this series and all the great content you have been sharing

[steveodavis]

Consciousness seems to feed on its desire to seek knowledge and meaning in existence. A never ending journey of seeking for answers. Many settle for a limited dogmatic belief and stifle any additional desire to seek. Once you believe you possess truth you stop thinking and have no desire for contrary information that disputes what you choose to believe. This leads to conflicts in life expressed in politics and religion.

[tarnopol]

We're about as unique as every other species. Except perhaps in our narcissism, which may well be unique. But, bombardier beetles poop acid. That's pretty impressive. Some ants can follow scent paths with maybe a few molecules per unit of distance (I forget exactly). That's pretty impressive. That we've been eating our way through the entire planet, destroying as much as we can, hurtling toward destruction while asking, "What's it all about? Can I find meaning?"

[Bill..N]

I enjoyed the interview..Rebecca seems to be a humble person whose intellectual honesty shows in her reluctance to make unsupported assertions..As a scientific materialist, I DO take umbrage with any argument that suggests an equivalence in uncertainty between physics and other philosophical constructs that explain reality..An understanding of QM was first necessary before the electronic age could emerge.. Much MORE than a useful "Methodology" for beneficially manipulating our environment, physics and the scientific worldview is revealing HOW the universe works..Thats an assertion to be sure, BUT there is evidence and support to back it up..One mans opinion, Peace....

[steveodavis]

A deep longing to matter is universal to individual consciousness. Probably accounts for all the varieties of political and religious dogmas and doctrines that affect us all. Primacy of ego?

[austinsullivan]

This wonderful discussion brings to mind recent experiments which show that using quantum mechanics to observers can have equally valid points View. That seems like a topic that would be perfect for your series. Thanks so much!👍🏻

[johncormier]

To anyone disliking these videos, I'm just curious as to why you felt the need to dislike the video. What about this and others like this don't work for you?

[HUZksw]

To matter, or say to belong and to be recognized ... when did that become a new idea? Or is was there something new "under the sun" here that I missed?

[cosmoslogic]

We have no choice but to matter since this chance of life we had no say about being born in a world that life is born to what year we fall into. To be young is the start and being old is the end of life knowing the time frame you lived in and feeling good about the fact that you did the best job of being human. Everything is energy across the whole cosmos this is a fact jack.

[mintakan]

She defies my stereotype of a "philosopher". Very easy to listen to. Very clear.

On the issue of "matter" and "consciousness", I suspect the notion of "matter" is still too basic. She does mention "mathematics", which is a step towards the metaphysical direction. But "mathematics", if these means expressing everything in terms of equations, may still be too simple. (I assume she means it in a broader sense.) The tendency nowadays is to express everything in terms of ""computation" (e.g. Wolfram, Joscha Bach).

Maybe one tangible approach to exploring the interface between matter and "consciousness" is in abiogenesis. Biological life, is a form of "consciousness". (Definition of terms?) The first cells is a "proto" version of it. It has a very specific structure, cell wall, separating "self" from "environment". Associated with this is a set of processes, energetics, defying entropy. There is a noticeable difference between animate and inanimate objects.

(I heard we recently discovered a potential bio-signature in Venus's atomosphere. If this turns out to be true, that there is life, it adds to the broader picture, of how widespread life can be.)

[varshahushare]

Thanks for the information of global warming matter, first human suffering human being problem, past destination in universe, all projects questions to problem making solution

[srikanthtupurani]

I feel Only things that exist are conscious agents and some concepts of conscious agents. Mathematics, numbers are concepts. Even matter, space, time are concepts. This approach even if it is correct will not be of much use if we want to create new technology. Dumb matter paradigm is more helpful and this way of thinking has helped humanity in achieving great things like science and technology. Even if we believe in dumb matter paradigm we end up with spacetime and some dancing fields in space time. These fields appear more like mathematical objects. They are not some concrete objects.

[mehdibaghbadran]

When scientists does not have enough evidences to be able to proof some phenomenon, then good, philosophy, of course will proof that subjects.

[natphil]

Pinker is bad at cogsci/psych/linguistics and Goldstein is bad at philosophy. Perfect match.

[GroovismOrg]

What matters is our ability to create music & entrain to Flow with The One! Groovism is the belief system we've all been endowed with!! www.groovism.org is our non-profit's web site. Currently with clips of our daily streamed Grooves. Soon to Be 24/7, streaming from around the planet!!

[xspotbox]

Meaning is a philosophical term, but flow of natural forces is not, energy will balance out regardless if anybody understand why or how it will happen. This would imply that flow of energy does have a meaning, since process is physical necessity. In mater of fact, physical phenomena are conditions for psychological meaning. Than we should distinguish between serious expectations and illusions, even when there's no physical possibility for something to continue towards desired ending, people can still find process meaningful. This principle is useful for technologies, we understand nature will stop some apparatus from working when stored potentials will run out, but we can plug in devices into external sources of energy and physical process will continue.
Does this mean we can enforce our will over nature? If yes, than meaning of nature must be very weak principle, easy superseded with technological means. But if this is true, than meaning is vital for advance of human species, we must make one ourselves or nature will not allow us to cross physical barriers.
Question is, what happens once energy potentials get exhausted, what does it mean to extend very purpose why nature exist? Problem is, it's not clear how far can we go, there must be some limit before material nature will resist to our endeavors and make us stop. It's like, this universe is designed for physical mechanics, it exist because physical laws are so fine tuned. This natural stability prevent catastrophes like all things happening at once or impossibility of traveling back in time, but this doesn't prevent same physics inside our head to imagine whatever we want. And i find this fact very weird, sooner or latter magic will escape biological confinement and change entire unverse.

[librulcunspirisy]

👍, good to see you take a break from theologians.

[philippemartin]

Yes it is programme but I beleive Humains have the nessesary to be able to created or own "univers" and to contrôle it with a thermal boundray and way more colapsing hydrogène atom into are build univers will give us are own black Hole. This is posive Wright. sincères salutations philippe Martin