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Unpacking Idealism: Animals and Consciousness

Douglas Axe and Brian Krouse
January 18, 2024
1
Series
Mind Matters
Host
Robert J. Marks II
Guest
Dr. Doug Axe
Duration
23:01
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Audio File (31.61M)

In this episode, co-hosts Robert J. Marks and Brian R. Krouse continue to discuss the concept of idealism with guest Dr. Doug Axe. The topic this time is idealism and its implications for animals and quantum mechanics. Idealism suggests that reality consists of thinkers and their thoughts, with physical objects perhaps being the thoughts of God. When it comes to animals, Dr. Axe argues that their behavior indicates a conscious experience, similar to humans. He also delves into the strange world of quantum mechanics, where particles like electrons exhibit both wave-like and particle-like behavior. This leads to the idea that the physical world is not the base reality. The conversation highlights the mind-bending nature of quantum mechanics and its potential alignment with the concept of idealism.

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Douglas Axe

Rosa Endowed Chair of Molecular Biology at Biola University, Senior Fellow, Center for Science and Culture
Douglas Axe is the Rosa Endowed Chair of Molecular Biology at Biola University, the founding Director of Biologic Institute, the founding Editor of BIO-Complexity, and the author of Undeniable: How Biology Confirms Our Intuition That Life Is Designed. After completing his PhD at Caltech, he held postdoctoral and research scientist positions at the University of Cambridge and the Cambridge Medical Research Council Centre. His research, which examines the functional and structural constraints on the evolution of proteins and protein systems, has been featured in many scientific journals, including the Journal of Molecular Biology, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, BIO-Complexity, and Nature, and in such books as Signature in the Cell and Darwin’s Doubt by Stephen Meyer and Life’s Solution by Simon Conway Morris.

Brian Krouse

Brian Krouse is a software engineer with research interests in the philosophy of mind, computer science, and neuroscience. Krouse has a bachelor’s degree in physics from Whitman College, a master’s in computer science with a focus on artificial intelligence from Arizona State University, and a master’s in applied mathematics with a focus on computational neuroscience from the University of Washington. He was an early employee at GoDaddy (from 1997 through 2013), the domain name registration and hosting company, and spent most of his employ there in software development and management positions, culminating in Vice President of Hosting Development.
Tags
Brian R. Krouse
Doug Axe
Minding the Brain (book)
Robert J. Marks