Philosophy Cognitive Science
217 episodes listed below
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Ai Generated. Human edited. Introductions and summaries of important books in philosophy and the interdisciplinary cognitive sciences. Modified and curated to improve listening experience. This channel not eligible for monetization due to YouTube's "reused content" policy. If you'd like to help support us on Patreon.
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
A conversational guide to books that makes theories of mind, perception and human cooperation legible through distinctions, examples and thought experiments.
Branches of Philosophy Podcast turns demanding books into extended two-voice explainers, moving carefully from a central proposition to its implications.
A vibrating tendon can make an arm feel longer; your certainty about perception gets shorter.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A clear, structured tour of how the word "I" becomes a deep philosophical problem.
The episode turns the single word "I" into a careful philosophical problem, tracing how self-reference runs into circularity. It follows Jose Luis Bermudez's effort to explain self-consciousness through empirical psychology and developmental biology, then shifts to ecological…
A sharp, unsettling argument that asks where experience actually lives.
This episode takes a bold swing at a slippery idea: that consciousness is not trapped inside the skull, but tied to the physical thing being perceived.
A serious AI-risk episode that turns a huge warning into a clear, grounded argument.
The episode treats the case for artificial superintelligence as a warning, not a stunt. It starts with the 2023 open letter and then follows the book by Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nate Soares at MIRI, where the core claim is stark: staying on the current path could end in human…
A practical look at how hard it is to know yourself.
This episode treats self-knowledge as a practical problem, not a polished ideal. It sets up the gap between the tidy figure who always knows what he believes and the rest of us, who move through muddled thoughts, surprise impulses, and blind spots.
A clear look at why mental states still resist easy explanations of aboutness.
Angela Mendelovici's The Phenomenal Basis of Intentionality takes on a hard question: how thoughts, perceptions, and dreams can be about anything at all.
A steady tour of sentience, projection, and why location matters in experience.
The episode starts with a hard thought experiment: if vision, hearing, pain, temperature, and even proprioception dropped out, what would still count as experience? That setup gives Austin Clark's A Theory of Sentience a clear target.
A sharp portrait of a philosopher whose ideas became a public event and later drew controversy.
Henri Bergson emerges as a philosopher who became a Paris sensation, drawing mathematicians, poets, suffragettes, priests, actors, and engineers to his lectures.
A clear reading of Foucault's argument that knowledge is organized historically, not naturally.
The piece frames Michel Foucault's The Order of Things as a study of how Western thought arranges knowledge across eras. It moves from Renaissance interpretation to classical order, then to representation and classification, with Las Meninas used to show the tension between…
A host and three academics dissect one topic weekly, from archaea to the Tudors.
Philosophy argued aloud, with dry edges.
New scholarship, patiently brought into focus.
CMU, recorded before it gets polished.
Seminar-room depth on Russia and Eurasia.
This episode frames Heidegger's book as a challenge to Kant's usual reception.
Branches of Philosophy Podcast episode [199] centers on Dennis Schulting’s book, Apperception and Self-Consciousness in Kant and German Idealism, with Kant’s 'Copernican turn' and apperception as the main focus.
The hosts open on a big question.
The episode asks what actually makes humans human.
Ted Honderich’s Mind: Your Consciousness is What and Where?
Branches of Philosophy Podcast [203], "The Intercorporeal Self: Merleau-Ponty on Subjectivity By Scott L.
J.J.
Branches of Philosophy Podcast covers Michel Foucault's The Order of Things as a history of how Western thought sorted language, life, and wealth across different eras.
Branches of Philosophy Podcast [206] focuses on the 10-minute 1946 Cambridge confrontation later nicknamed “Wittgenstein’s Poker,” placing Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Karl Popper in Room 3, Staircase H, Gibbs Building at 8.50 p.m.
The episode turns to James J.
Branches of Philosophy Podcast [195] on Edmund Husserl’s Ideas I centers on “General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology,” with the hosts using cup, tone, and book examples to separate contingent fact from eidos.
Branches of Philosophy Podcast episode 197 uses Tony Cheng's book on John McDowell to ask how a human "I" can be both a rational subject and a natural animal.
It starts with the ordinary fact of seeing.
That tiny word, I, causes the trouble.
Consciousness steps outside the skull.
The warning opens at the deep end.
Self-knowledge sounds simple.
A deep philosophical exploration of Angela Mendelovici's phenomenal intentionality theory, which argues that intentionality (the directedness of mental states toward objects) is identical to phenomenal consciousness (the felt, subjective quality of experience).
It opens with a thought experiment about slowly losing every sense, including proprioception.
Branches of Philosophy Podcast episode 208 centers on Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber’s The Enigma of Reason, which argues that human reason is an adaptation for social life rather than a tool for solitary truth-finding.
Branches of Philosophy Podcast episode 207 centers on Peter Carruthers's book, Phenomenal Consciousness: A Naturalistic Theory, and its claim that the hard problem of consciousness may be scientifically explainable.
It's an area that gets right to the heart of, you know, what it even means to ha
Michael Gazzaniga's Who's in Charge?
The episode follows Henri Bergson from Paris sensation to a more complicated intellectual legacy.
Julian Beggini’s The Great Guide presents David Hume as a practical philosopher, not just an abstract thinker, and the episode keeps returning to his line that “experience” is the “great guide of human life.” The discussion moves from Hume starting at Edinburgh before age 12 to his collapse into “the disease of the learned,” then to his recovery through exercise, social time, and moderation.
This episode explores the philosophical roots of the 'hard problem' of consciousness, tracing it back to Galileo's decision to exclude subjective qualities from science.
Branches of Philosophy Podcast [190] centers on James Barrat's Our Final Invention and its argument that AGI could quickly become ASI with existential risk for humanity.
Branches of Philosophy Podcast [189] centers on Manuel DeLanda's Philosophy and Simulation, The Emergence of Synthetic Reason and uses knives, thunderstorms, and Conway's Game of Life to explain emergence.