Video and audio
What is actually in consciousness?' A discussion of Ted Honderich's Actual Consciousness, Royal Institute of Philosophy, London 2016
'What is the relevance of the history of philosophy to philosophy itself?' (2014) A video of a lecture at the Collegio Ghislieri, Pavia
'The mental states of persons and their brains' (2014) A video of a lecture in the Royal Institute of Philosophy's Mind Self and Person series.
Five Books on Metaphysics (2014) An interview with Nigel Warburton for the Five Books website
Three podcasts from Nigel Warburton and David Edmunds’s Philosophy Bites series:
Mind and body
Non-existence
Animal minds
'The nature of existence' (October 2013) A podcast of a lecture at the LSE's Forum for European Philosophy
'Free will' (October 2012) A video of a discussion at KCL between Lisa Appignanesi, Declan Donnellan, Patrick Haggard, Simon McBurney, Timberlake Wertenbaker and me
An interview with me at 3AM magazine (2012)
'The personal/sub-personal distinction and the point of view of consciousness' (May 2012) A podcast of a talk given at a conference at the Institute of Philosophy in London on Daniel Dennett’s personal/sub-personal distinction
'Why humanism?' (June 2011) A video of a talk about some questions to do with religion at How the Light Gets in, the arts and ideas festival in Hay-on-Wye.
'Animal reason' (June 2011) A video of a debate at How the Light Gets In between John Harris, Colin Blakemore, Mary Midgley and me
'What is distinctive of human thought?' (December 2010) A podcast of my inaugural lecture at Cambridge. The text is here
Philosophy, Logic, Science, History (2010) A podcast of my contribution to a conference on the nature of philosophy in Cambridge, organised by Alexis Papazoglou
Mystery and Evidence (September 2010) A piece for the New York Times’s ‘The Stone’ philosophy blog. I distinguish between science and religion on the grounds that -- although they both make factual claims -- scientific thinking involves rigorous sensitivity to evidence in a way religious thinking does not. I suggest that this is because religious thinking has at its heart a conception of the world as mysterious, and that this mystery is part of the meaning that the religious see in the world. I speculate that this difference might explain the worldwide appeal of religious thinking, an appeal science lacks.
Appearance and Reality (March 2007) This is the text of my inaugural lecture as Director of the Institute of Philosophy in London. In his bestselling book A Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking says that Wittgenstein’s remark that ‘the sole remaining task for philosophy is the logical analysis of language’ demonstrates how far philosophy has lost sight of its ambitions since the great days of Aristotle and Kant. I explain what Wittgenstein might have meant by this, if he did really say it (he didn’t). And I show how, far from being a ‘come-down’ as Hawking says, the project of early analytic philosophy fits squarely within a central traditional theme of Western philosophy: appearance and reality.
Knowledge of Mind and Knowledge of Brain (April 2007) This is the text of the 3rd ‘Brain and Mind’ public lecture in the University of Copenhagen, organised by Dan Zahavi at his Center for Subjectivity Research. I argue that the problem of consciousness is not a result of ignorance, but of confusion; we will not understand consciousness by coming to know some extra fact, but by re-arranging what we already know. In particular, reflection on consciousness shows that it is not a simple quality which attaches to every conscious state, and that it is therefore unlikely that it will be explained by being ‘correlated’ with a simple neural quality.
Why Humanism? (November 2007) This is the text of my Bentham Lecture at UCL. The Bentham lecture is an annual event, sponsored by the UCL Philosophy Department and the British Humanist Association. I took this opportunity to criticise (from an atheist’s point of view) some aspects of contemporary humanism: its tendency to see itself as an alternative to a religion as a world view; its exaggeration of the role played by religion as the cause of the world’s problems; its insistence that religion is irrational and not merely false; and its exaggeration of the importance of cosmological belief, both as a part of religion and as part of the response to it. I argue that atheists should tolerate religion, so long as its practioners obey the rule of law. This is not because their views are necessarily worthy of respect, but because we should be trying to achieve what John Gray calls ‘a type of toleration whose goal is not truth but peace’.
The Soul (March 2004) This is the text of my inaugural lecture as Professor at UCL. It was intended for a nonspecialist audience. It outlines and defends the importance of the Aristotelian concept of substance for understanding the mind and its place in nature.
Obituary of David Lewis (October 2001) An edited version was published in The Independent on 23rd October 2001.
'What is the relevance of the history of philosophy to philosophy itself?' (2014) A video of a lecture at the Collegio Ghislieri, Pavia
'The mental states of persons and their brains' (2014) A video of a lecture in the Royal Institute of Philosophy's Mind Self and Person series.
Five Books on Metaphysics (2014) An interview with Nigel Warburton for the Five Books website
Three podcasts from Nigel Warburton and David Edmunds’s Philosophy Bites series:
Mind and body
Non-existence
Animal minds
'The nature of existence' (October 2013) A podcast of a lecture at the LSE's Forum for European Philosophy
'Free will' (October 2012) A video of a discussion at KCL between Lisa Appignanesi, Declan Donnellan, Patrick Haggard, Simon McBurney, Timberlake Wertenbaker and me
An interview with me at 3AM magazine (2012)
'The personal/sub-personal distinction and the point of view of consciousness' (May 2012) A podcast of a talk given at a conference at the Institute of Philosophy in London on Daniel Dennett’s personal/sub-personal distinction
'Why humanism?' (June 2011) A video of a talk about some questions to do with religion at How the Light Gets in, the arts and ideas festival in Hay-on-Wye.
'Animal reason' (June 2011) A video of a debate at How the Light Gets In between John Harris, Colin Blakemore, Mary Midgley and me
'What is distinctive of human thought?' (December 2010) A podcast of my inaugural lecture at Cambridge. The text is here
Philosophy, Logic, Science, History (2010) A podcast of my contribution to a conference on the nature of philosophy in Cambridge, organised by Alexis Papazoglou
Mystery and Evidence (September 2010) A piece for the New York Times’s ‘The Stone’ philosophy blog. I distinguish between science and religion on the grounds that -- although they both make factual claims -- scientific thinking involves rigorous sensitivity to evidence in a way religious thinking does not. I suggest that this is because religious thinking has at its heart a conception of the world as mysterious, and that this mystery is part of the meaning that the religious see in the world. I speculate that this difference might explain the worldwide appeal of religious thinking, an appeal science lacks.
Appearance and Reality (March 2007) This is the text of my inaugural lecture as Director of the Institute of Philosophy in London. In his bestselling book A Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking says that Wittgenstein’s remark that ‘the sole remaining task for philosophy is the logical analysis of language’ demonstrates how far philosophy has lost sight of its ambitions since the great days of Aristotle and Kant. I explain what Wittgenstein might have meant by this, if he did really say it (he didn’t). And I show how, far from being a ‘come-down’ as Hawking says, the project of early analytic philosophy fits squarely within a central traditional theme of Western philosophy: appearance and reality.
Knowledge of Mind and Knowledge of Brain (April 2007) This is the text of the 3rd ‘Brain and Mind’ public lecture in the University of Copenhagen, organised by Dan Zahavi at his Center for Subjectivity Research. I argue that the problem of consciousness is not a result of ignorance, but of confusion; we will not understand consciousness by coming to know some extra fact, but by re-arranging what we already know. In particular, reflection on consciousness shows that it is not a simple quality which attaches to every conscious state, and that it is therefore unlikely that it will be explained by being ‘correlated’ with a simple neural quality.
Why Humanism? (November 2007) This is the text of my Bentham Lecture at UCL. The Bentham lecture is an annual event, sponsored by the UCL Philosophy Department and the British Humanist Association. I took this opportunity to criticise (from an atheist’s point of view) some aspects of contemporary humanism: its tendency to see itself as an alternative to a religion as a world view; its exaggeration of the role played by religion as the cause of the world’s problems; its insistence that religion is irrational and not merely false; and its exaggeration of the importance of cosmological belief, both as a part of religion and as part of the response to it. I argue that atheists should tolerate religion, so long as its practioners obey the rule of law. This is not because their views are necessarily worthy of respect, but because we should be trying to achieve what John Gray calls ‘a type of toleration whose goal is not truth but peace’.
The Soul (March 2004) This is the text of my inaugural lecture as Professor at UCL. It was intended for a nonspecialist audience. It outlines and defends the importance of the Aristotelian concept of substance for understanding the mind and its place in nature.
Obituary of David Lewis (October 2001) An edited version was published in The Independent on 23rd October 2001.