Imagination and Consciousness
29 Jun, 2000
120 Epistemology
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the question of consciousness, our sense of self, and how we are able to imagine things when they are not there, which are problems that have troubled the great minds of philosophy for thousands of years. Consciousness has been linked to language, has been married to the mind and divorced from the body; it has been denied to animals, opposed to the subconscious and declared irreducible, but still it defies definition, and the debate rages on as to why we evolved it at all. But perhaps science will finally provide the answer.
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Guests
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Professor Gerald Edelman No other episodes
Director of the Neurosciences, Institute in California - Igor Aleksander
3 episodes
Professor of Neural Engineering Systems, Imperial College, London -
Margaret Boden No other episodes
Professor of Philosophy and Psychology, University of Sussex
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Programme ID: p00546vr
Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00546vr
Auto-category: 128 (Philosophy of Mind)
Hello (First sentence from this episode)
Hello. The question of consciousness, our sense of self and how we're able to imagine things when they're not there, are problems that have engaged the great minds of philosophy for thousands of years.