Closer to Truth

[Stookie_]

For the past several weeks, every Thursday morning before work (and right after meditation), this show comes on PBS, and I've been loving it. You don't see stuff like this on TV much. It's called "Closer to Truth - Cosmos. Consciousness. God." It's basically this guy who goes around the world philosophizing with scientists and professors and theologians about... cosmos, consciousness, and god. What I like is that they never postulate any conclusions, but always leave it wide open. He sometimes plays devils advocate with whoever he's interviewing. So much of it is what we debate here. You can watch it online:

http://www.closertotruth.com/

[Summerlander]

I'm gonna have a look at that. Very interesting. Thanks, Stookie!

[Stillwater]

I like this resource alot. I got my side degree in philosophy, and in those studies, the number of fundamental questions I encountered that really go unaddressed and taken for granted by virtually everyone was astonishing to me; very basic questions, like why does the universe exist rather than not exist, why can parts of the universe have first-person ontological exerperiences (our minds), and can there possibly be such an objective concept of "good" even at all never seem to get spoken of, since their short answers seem self-evident, but in examination are anything but; several of them are possible to dedicate your life to exploring, and never get closer to answering; furthermore, many of these questions tend toward recognizing that nearly all of the scientific disciplines for explaining various aspects of our world are fundamentally connected (universe cannot be fully explained without accounting for consciousness, etc).

For these reasons, it is noteworthy to me that this series recognizes the necessary unity of scientific and philosophical inquiry (without taking important questions as answered somehoe a priori, rather than merely going on a materialists-only trip) and draws attention to the immutable  necessity of explaining the several facets with one unifying framework. I also like that the information and interviews are not soley organized as a TV series, but rather as a rubric of related philosophical questions and their explorations. I get the feeling that the interviews were not conducted with specific episodes in mind, but carried out as a body, and episodes sort of coallesced from assembling related interviews together.

A good find as always, Stookie!

[Stookie_]

There was one episode where they ran with the question "if God really existed, what properties would God have?" I think that was my favorite one - they really hit it from all sides.

I get the feeling that the interviews were not conducted with specific episodes in mind, but carried out as a body, and episodes sort of coallesced from assembling related interviews together.

I get that impression too, like they filmed it all for a documentary but split it up into episodes. I've never heard of this guy before, but I really like him.