Plato's Cave
A philosophy podcast hosted by the lowly grad student, Jordan Myers
Displaying all 6 Episode of Plato's Cave with the tag “usc”.
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Ep. 78 - Identity Arguments for Materialism: David Papineau (Consciousness pt. 5)
August 31st, 2025 | 1 hr 33 mins
brain, cave, color, consciousness, dualism, epiphenomenalism, experience, frank, grad school, graduate, group, identity, jackson, jordan, mary, materialism, mind, myers, pain, papineau, phd, philosophy, physicalism, plato, plato's cave, reading, scientist, state, the gap, university of houston, university of southern california, usc
In a much more enjoyable article, David Papineau argues for materialism with respect to consciousness by arguing that the mental and physical are identical, and identities don't need explaining. (Please excuse the instances of weird underwater-sounding audio...I have no clue what happened there.)
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Ep. 77 - Epiphenomenalism, Naturally (Consciousness pt. 4)
August 24th, 2025 | 1 hr 32 mins
analogy, belief, causation, cave, chalmers, consciousness, dualism, epi, epiphenomenal, epiphenomenalism, grad school, graduate, group, jordan, mind, myers, phd, philosophy, physicalism, plato, plato's cave, reading, theory, train, university of houston, university of southern california, usc
This was a weird episode in the sense that over half of the discussion never saw the light of day (or at least never saw your inner ear). We were quite frustrated with parsing this paper, and you can start to hear that in the final third. It's a paper called "Epiphenomenalism, Naturally," which I think is better read than discussed. But, either way, here's our discussion.
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Ep. 76 - The Hard Problem of Consciousness (pt. 3)
July 16th, 2025 | 1 hr 23 mins
awareness, cave, chalmers, consciousness, david, fundamental, grad school, graduate, group, hard, information, jordan, mind, myers, phd, philosophy, plato, plato's cave, problem, reading, university of houston, university of southern california, usc, zombie
In this episode, Adam and I discuss David Chalmer's formulation of the hard problem of consciousness.
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Ep. 75 - Chalmers' Nonreductive Theory of Consciousness (Consciousness pt. 2)
June 12th, 2025 | 1 hr 54 mins
awareness, cave, chalmers, consciousness, david, fundamental, grad school, graduate, group, hard, information, jordan, mind, myers, phd, philosophy, plato, plato's cave, problem, reading, university of houston, university of southern california, usc, zombie
In the second part of our series on the philosophy of mind, we discuss the second part of David Chalmer's seminal paper: Facing up to the Problem of Consciousness. We discuss the basics (and yes, it took 2 hours for the basics) of his nonreductive theory of consciousness.
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Ep. 74 - Mary the Color Scientist (Consciousness pt. 1)
April 29th, 2025 | 1 hr 31 mins
cave, color, consciousness, dualism, epiphenomenalism, experience, frank, grad school, graduate, group, jackson, jordan, mary, mind, myers, phd, philosophy, physicalism, plato, plato's cave, reading, scientist, university of houston, university of southern california, usc
In the first episode of this new series on the philosophy of mind, we dive into Frank Jackson's famous paper, "What Mary Didn't Know." The paper and conversation raises questions about whether the mind is merely physical and how intuitions play a role in this philosophical debate.
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Plato's Cave: The Return
April 24th, 2025 | 10 mins 42 secs
cave, grad school, graduate, group, interview, jordan, myers, phd, philosophy, plato, plato's cave, reading, southern california, university, university of houston, usc
I'm doing my PhD at the University of Southern California!