Anil Seth

speaker

1,118 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2026 last heard 28 Jul

Anil Seth’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.

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Know Thyself · E205 - Anil Seth: Your Perception of Reality & Self Is a Hallucination · 28 Jul 2026 podcast

I can see the appeal of that too.

But yeah, I think ultimately we can't determine coherence.

these among these metaphysical views we can't decide among these metaphysical views simply on the basis of the kinds of experiences that that we have and uh but it's a challenge to hold these things lightly isn't it i mean we we want certainty you want something something some solid foundation on which we can build everything else and it's it's yeah there's there is a discomfort um

I tend to be materialist, but yeah, ultimately I don't know.

And I have to be comfortable with that uncertainty too.

Yeah, I think I do.

There's a sort of point at which, so there's a naive materialism

which would say like all that exists is like maybe particles bouncing off each other and somehow they produce consciousness as this separate phenomenon and we have to understand like how consciousness is produced much like steam might be produced from a kettle.

I don't think that's not the kind of materialism that I'm in favor of.

I think it's rather that consciousness is a property entailed by properties of physics.

It's a slightly weird word, but it just means it's a property of matter, not a property generated by matter.

And in that sense, it is kind of compatible with these things like dual aspects, monisms, where you say there's just one kind of thing and

And maybe from the inside it feels like consciousness and from the outside it looks like matter.

I find that fairly reasonable.

But because...

When in my everyday work, when we think about what material things are, I am thinking about things like neurons, things like neurotransmitters, things like eyes, ears and objects in the world.

Then that kind of dual aspect monism is a bit less helpful in the everyday world in which we live.

Because in that world, there are objects and we have our perceptions of objects and we have brains.

And so it becomes again a pragmatic view that I think holding materialism sort of pragmatically and lightly is helpful.

But yeah, dual aspect monism.

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