Consciousness, Spirituality, and Intellectual Honesty, with Thomas Metzinger

Thomas Metzinger and Michael W. Taft discuss having moral integrity with yourself, intellectual honesty in the pursuit of spirituality, the overlapping goals of science and spirituality, the possibility of a fully secularized spirituality, neurofeedback and virtual reality, mortality denial, the simulation hypothesis, and a whole bunch more.Thomas Metzinger is full professor and director of the theoretical philosophy group and the research group on neuroethics/neurophilosophy at the department of philosophy, Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz, Germany. He is the founder and director of the MIND group and Adjunct Fellow at the Frankfurt Institute of Advanced Studies, Germany. His research centers on analytic philosophy of mind, applied ethics, philosophy of cognitive science, and philosophy of mind. He is the editor of Neural Correlates of Consciousness and the author of Being No One and The Ego Tunnel.Thomas Metzinger’s website.A video of Metzinger’s Spirituality and Intellectual Honesty talk.Read an interview with Thomas Metzinger, entitled “What Is the Self?“Show Notes0:25 – Introduction2:53 – Interesting times in the world4:12 – Summary of Thomas’ talk, “Spirituality and Intellectual Honesty”7:46 – Impact and divided reactions to “Spirituality and Intellectual Honesty”12:43 – Internal moral integrity: belief formation & authority17:05 – Needing a teacher, master or guru21:10 – Surrender, Western enlightenment and the “crazy corner”24:13 – Getting science to say something interesting about human experience26:08 – Neurofeedback glasses for walking meditation; taking meditation into life30:00 – Virtuality and nothingness, consciousness as virtual reality34:03 – Suchness; spirituality as de-immersion from conscious experience, meditating on artifacts36:20 – The feeling of being real, transparently and opacity38:55 – Hyperreality & derealization: hallucinogens, religious ecstasy and seizures40:42 – VR meditation, getting in touch with virtuality42:28 – Reaching earlier brain processing stages through meditation or hallucinogens45:43 – The Ruining Innocence podcast: a half-serious criticism of taxonomies and discussing meditation49:33 – Thomas’ thoughts on the Arrow of Attention; correlates in neuroscience53:20 – Mindfulness of inattention and avoidance, pitfalls of mindfulness56:07 – Discussing Douglas Harding: the Headless Way and immersion; more discussion of the Arrow of Attention1:00:14 – The self as a visual metaphor; the pre-3D lump of sensations and motor babbling1:03:23 – Thomas’ recent studies of subjectivity: the epistemic agent model of self1:09:48 – How it transpires that the Self is not conscious1:11:34 – Questioning science’s value for practice; the moral imperative of trying to improve contemplative practice1:15:12 – Thomas’ critique of the perennial philosophy; strategies of mortality denial1:22:07 – The simulation hypothesis; thoughts in the mind of god1:25:41 – Is suffering real, and how deep does reality go?1:29:05 – A hypothetical merging of science and subjectivity1:31:29 – OutroYou can support the creation of future episodes of this podcast by contributing through Patreon.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.