
Podcast Sententiae
“If We Are Not Free, What Are We Responsible For?” | Dmytro Sepetyi on Consciousness, Freedom, and Science
️ Dear friends, a new episode of the “Philosophical Community” project by the Sententiae Community is out now! ▪️ Host – Vlada Davidenko. ▪️ Guest – Dmytro Sepetyi, Ukrainian philosopher, Doctor of Philosophical Sciences, Professor at Zaporizhzhia State Medical and Pharmaceutical University, whose research focuses on the philosophy of mind, the mind–body problem, free will, philosophy of science, critical rationalism, and bioethics. This conversation explores one of the most challenging puzzles in contemporary philosophy: how can we fit a conscious and free human being into the picture of the world offered by the natural sciences? We discuss consciousness and the brain, materialism and dualism, free will and moral responsibility, artificial intelligence, and the limits of scientific explanation. We also consider why the more deeply we investigate consciousness, the more clearly we may come to recognize the limits of our own knowledge. We discuss: – Dmytro Sepetyi’s unconventional path from mathematics, programming, and social philosophy to the philosophy of mind; – why contemporary science still cannot provide a comprehensive answer to the question of what consciousness is; – physicalism, dualism, and the problem of the place of consciousness within the natural-scientific picture of the world; – where the boundary lies between a scientific worldview and scientism; – whether contemporary AI systems can be conscious and how we could possibly determine whether they are; – free will, the possibility of “doing otherwise,” and moral responsibility; – how algorithms, personalized advertising, and the manipulation of our desires are transforming the problem of human autonomy; – why skepticism about free will may have not only metaphysical but also social and political consequences; – consciousness as a key issue in the bioethical problem of determining human death; – Karl Popper, critical rationalism, and philosophy as a search for truth without claiming to possess it once and for all; – the current state and prospects of analytic philosophy in Ukraine. Listen to the new episode of “Philosophical Community” – link in the first comment. The video version of the conversation is also available on our YouTube channel. We thank NONTHENSE for the musical arrangement of the project. See you in the next episodes of “Philosophical Community”! ️






