{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"The Curious Jew","title":"What Does It Mean to Be Alive? R' Steven Gotlib on Consciousness and the Soul","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":3510,"description":"Following our episode on death and the afterlife, Rabbi David Silverstein welcomes Rabbi Steven Gotlib back to the podcast for the flip side of that question: what does it actually mean to be alive? More specifically, why do we have conscious experience at all?\nThey start with what philosophers call the “hard problem of consciousness” and the main secular attempts to solve it. Maybe consciousness emerges once a system is complex enough. Maybe it’s an illusion. Or maybe, as panpsychists argue, consciousness runs through all of reality. From there, they turn to Jewish sources: God breathing life into Adam in Bereishit, the Tanya’s claim that our separateness from God is only apparent, Rav Kook’s idea that the world exists within God, and the Rambam’s view of prophecy as a natural capacity that only a few are allowed to reach. They close with AI. If a machine can imitate a conscious mind convincingly, what separates it from us, and where does the soul fit in?\n\nAbout the Guest: Rabbi Steven Gotlib is a pulpit rabbi serving a diverse Jewish community in Philadelphia. A graduate of the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary (RIETS) at Yeshiva University, he is a frequent contributor to The Lehrhaus, 18Forty, and writes regularly on his personal Substack.\nAMA: In an upcoming episode, R' David will respond to listener questions! Submit them to be considered here: https://forms.gle/EHknAEyZUVFXARWJ7\n\nChapters:\n01:11 From Death to the Hard Problem of Consciousness\n09:22 Materialist Answers: Emergence and Illusion\n23:10 Panpsychism: Is Consciousness Everywhere?\n28:27 Bereishit: Is the Soul Consciousness?\n33:40 The Tanya: Is Separateness from God an Illusion?\n39:39 Rav Kook and Panentheism\n43:35 The Rambam's View\n47:18 AI, Consciousness, and the Soul\n54:26 Where Science, Philosophy, and Religion Meet","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/FCq1WH49ZQtd3nDmAtZFV7zlPbDgmOEiqkK6J_62zc4/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS8yYzkw/ZTlkNWU1YzQ5NmE0/MTNlNjJmZWRhMTY5/NzkzMS5wbmc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}