PAIN: The power and the pain (Part 2 of 2)PAIN: The power and the pain (Part 2 of 2)
All In The Mind
BBC Baghdad correspondent Andrew North was struck down with a debilitating illness after reporting on the US invasion in Iraq, paralysed with acute pain as his immune system attacked his nervous system. After reporting on and witnessing the pain of others, he was forced to confront his own. In this series, Andrew investigates the perplexing experience of pain. In Part 2 - the expression and suppression of pain - what works? All in the Mind's podcast this week features The Nature of Consciousness Debate with Paul Davies, Susan Blackmore and David Chalmers.
30:00•8 Mar 2008
Cats, Robots and Red Traffic Lights: A Lively Debate on Consciousness
Episode Overview
- Consciousness may differ in complexity and richness across animals, humans and babies rather than simply existing in fixed levels.
- Language and the capacity for an inner narrative might help create the powerful human sense of a persisting self.
- A machine could, in principle, be conscious if it reproduced the right kinds of complexity or even the illusion of selfhood.
- Consciousness and self-consciousness are separate: people can have rich experiences without a strong, continuous sense of self.
- Ethical questions about abortion and animal suffering depend not just on whether something is conscious, but on how rich that consciousness might be.
“Somebody once said if the mind was simple enough that we could understand it we'd be too simple to understand the mind.”
Curious about how far science can go in explaining what it feels like to be you? This archived edition of *All In The Mind* throws listeners into a lively public debate on consciousness, packed with big questions, sharp humour and a few brain-bending thought experiments.
Instead of the scheduled program on pain, the show shares a recording from The Australian Science Festival, where host Natasha Mitchell moderates a spirited panel: psychologist and writer Dr Sue Blackmore, philosopher Professor David Chalmers, and astrophysicist Professor Paul Davies. Together they tackle everything from animal minds and baby awareness to artificial intelligence and the ethics of abortion.
You’ll hear them puzzle over whether your cat has a sense of self, what a “consciousness meter” might tell us, and if a machine could ever really be a person. At one point, Chalmers jokes about an imagined device: “I could wave the consciousness meter over Sue's head, searching for consciousness… ah, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep. I got a little bit of it,” capturing the mix of playfulness and deep enquiry that runs through the event.
The panel wrestles with whether consciousness comes in gradual shades or switches on at a threshold, and whether it’s tied to language, memory, or an “illusion of self”. Questions from the audience push them into tricky territory: coma and locked-in syndrome, severe memory loss, the moral status of foetuses and animals, and whether the human mind might simply be too limited to fully understand itself.
If you’re drawn to big, philosophical puzzles and enjoy smart people disagreeing (politely) about what a “self” even is, this debate offers plenty to chew on. It won’t tell you how to fix your life, but it might change how you think about who – or what – is actually having that life.
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