Unlocking Consciousness with Dr Stephen Wolfram: AI & Philosophy | Ralston College
Release Date: 07/05/2024
Douglas Murray: Reconstructing our Culture | Renewal and Renaissance: A Ralston Symposium
The Ralston College Podcast
Douglas Murray, revered cultural critic and author, delivers the highlight of Ralston College’s symposium of “,” a lecture exploring the theme of cultural reconstruction. Delivered from one of the beautiful, stately galleries of Savannah’s Telfair Academy, the audience is treated to an intimate address that is both deeply moving and inspiring of hope. Murray’s talk begins with the sober reflection that civilizations are mortal and share the fragility of life. He recounts how the loss of confidence experienced after the catastrophes of the World Wars led to the development of...
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What does it take to spark a new Renaissance?
The Ralston College Podcast
In February 2025, Ralston College hosted a landmark symposium in Savannah, Georgia, bringing together leading thinkers, artists, educators, and students for a searching conversation about the renewal of our shared culture. Over the course of a wide-ranging roundtable, speakers explored the collapse of higher education, the need for sacred space, the conditions for reawakening beauty and truth, the integral importance of literature, music and architecture, and the crucial role of the young in rebuilding a meaningful culture that can inspire and endure. This conversation is not an academic...
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Why We Tell Stories: Greg Hurwitz & Jonathan Pageau in Conversation
The Ralston College Podcast
“Why We Tell Stories” is a discussion between Greg Hurwitz & Jonathan Pageau which took place on January 31, 2025. In this exchange, two prominent professionals in creative fields discuss the place of passion, productivity, and integrity in the context of their careers, and offer insights which range from guiding, general principles to concrete, practical advice. Over the course of their discussion with each other and with the students, they field questions about the artistic process; about the public attention they’ve received for their work; about the lessons they’ve learned; and...
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The Enduring Consolation of Philosophy with Stephen Blackwood
The Ralston College Podcast
“The Enduring Consolation of Philosophy” is the keynote lecture delivered by Dr Stephen Blackwood at the 2024 Symposium of Medieval and Renaissance studies. In this talk, commemorating the 1500th anniversary of Boethius’ The Consolation of Philosophy, Dr Blackwood shows why this work is more relevant than ever. After takinging stock of the “meaning crisis” and our dire need for depth, Dr Blackwood meditates on the first great insight of the Consolation: that the remedies of the self must emerge from the self. The complex and intricate structures and patterns of Boethius’ work are...
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Dr Iain McGilchrist in Conversation with Ralston College’s Students
The Ralston College Podcast
In this intimate question and answer session, conducted in March 2024 with the students enrolled in Ralston College’s MA in the Humanities, the world-renowned psychiatrist, philosopher, and literary scholar Iain McGilchrist explores topics that animate the collective intellectual life of Ralston’s student body. Answering questions that range from the metaphysical heights of theology, liturgy, and religious life to the tangible depths of scientific inquiry and medical progress, Dr McGhilchrist challenges his interlocutors to think deeper about the relationship between mind and matter,...
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The Sophia Lectures with Iain McGilchrist - Lecture 3: Finitude and the Infinite
The Ralston College Podcast
In his final , “Finitude and the Infinite,” Dr Iain McGilchrist grapples with the vital role that the imagination plays in the perception of reality, and what this power can disclose about reality itself. He shows that imagination has the capacity to make contact with an illimitable, irreducible, and inexhaustible world, one that presents itself to us under the aspects of finitude and infinitude. Beginning with the English Romantic poets, McGilchrist shows how these artists resisted the habits of perception that can be associated with the brain’s left hemisphere. This part of the...
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The Sophia Lectures with Iain McGilchrist - Lecture 2: Symmetry and Asymmetry
The Ralston College Podcast
In his second Sophia Lecture, Dr Iain McGilchrist gives a bracing, counterintuitive account of the fundamental categories of our experience of the world. McGilchrist shows how fundamental binaries—such as stasis and motion, simplicity and complexity, order and randomness, and even straight lines and curves—do not occur in nature in ways that conform to our assumptions about an inert, independent, and predictable universe. Drawing from disciplines as disparate as physics, mathematics, biology and art, McGilchrist shows that asymmetry is not simply a principle of vitality, harmony, and...
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The Sophia Lectures with Iain McGilchrist - Lecture 1: Division and Union
The Ralston College Podcast
This lecture, like the very essence of Ralston College’s mission, explores the profound interplay between division and union—a relationship that illuminates the nature of wholeness itself. Dr Iain McGilchrist delves into the insight that the whole is far more than the sum of its parts; it is a dynamic synthesis, a living interplay that transcends reductionism. Drawing on analogies from music, nature, and the human brain, McGilchrist reveals the delicate harmony between separation and connection, a truth exemplified most vividly in the brain’s two hemispheres. Here, division and...
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Dr Iain McGilchrist on the Cultivation of Wisdom
The Ralston College Podcast
A conversation between Dr Iain McGilchrist, neuropsychiatrist, philosopher, and literary critic, and Dr Stephen Blackwood, President of Ralston College, on the occasion of Dr McGilchrist’s March 2024 visit to Savannah to deliver Ralston College’s annual Sophia Lectures. Dr McGilchrist discusses his experience spending time with Ralston College students, his reasons for accepting the College’s invitation to deliver the Sophia lectures, and the necessity of leisure for deep thought. Applications for Ralston College’s MA in the Humanities program are now open.
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The Education of Iain McGilchrist, Part II: Medical School and Beyond
The Ralston College Podcast
The second part of a conversation between the renowned literary scholar and psychiatrist Dr Iain McGilchrist and Ralston College president Dr Stephen Blackwood about Dr McGilchrist’s remarkable educational trajectory. In this episode, Dr Iain McGilchrist explains how he left his successful career as a literary scholar to pursue training as a psychiatrist and how his combined study of literature, philosophy, and neuroscience informed his later academic work, including his books The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World (Yale University Press, 2009) and...
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Dr Stephen Wolfram is a renowned computer scientist, physicist, and entrepreneur who earned his PhD in particle physics at 20 and became the youngest MacArthur Fellow at 21. As the founder of Wolfram Research, he has developed groundbreaking technologies widely used by university researchers in engineering, physics, mathematics, and computing.
How can computational thinking and philosophy together unlock the mysteries of human consciousness and the universe?
In this Q&A session, conducted in February 2024 with students enrolled in Ralston College’s MA in the Humanities program, the renowned physicist and computer scientist, Dr Stephen Wolfram, explains his own intellectual trajectory and explores the intersection of computational and philosophical inquiry, particularly in the age of AI. In the course of this wide-ranging conversation, Dr Wolfram discusses computational irreducibility, the nature of mind, the ethics of AI governance, and the growing value of a liberal arts education.
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00:00 Introduction: Dr. Stephen Wolfram's Genius and AI's Impact on Humanities
01:30 Welcoming Dr. Steven Wolfram
02:15 Steven Wolfram's Early Life and Achievements
05:10 The Power of Computational Thinking
07:20 The Ruliad, Philosophy, and Computational Language
15:15 Q: Exploring Computational Irreducibility and Emergence
21:25 The Ruliad and the Nature of Reality
32:30 Q: The Role of Computational Thinking in Education
41:05 AI Governance and Ethics
46:35 Q: Bridging STEM and Humanities for Better AI Ethics
48:40 Building Wolfram Alpha
50:35 Q: Plato and Balancing Innovation in AI
01:05:25 Q: Probability and Unpredictability: Insights from Nassim Taleb
01:09:35 Q: Human Consciousness and the Computational Soul
01:22:35 Conclusion: Reflections on Learning, Philosophy, and the Future of Education
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Authors, Ideas, and Works Mentioned in this Episode:
Gestalt entities
Computational irreducibility
Computational equivalence
The second law of thermodynamics
Plato, Republic
AI Governance
Utilitarianism
Arrival (film)
ChatGPT
Nassem Talib, The Black Swan
Colin Maclaurin
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Additional Resources
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