752. Robert Lawrence Kuhn: Consciousness, God, and the Hard Problem
Summary: A wide-ranging conversation about the hard problem of consciousness, the limits of science, and whether mind might be fundamental to reality. The discussion also explores God, free will, AI consciousness, psi, and how inner experience fits into the search for truth.
Questions This Interview Explores
- Can consciousness be explained by science, or does it point beyond the scientific method?
- What do the leading theories of mind imply about free will, survival after death, and AI?
- How should we weigh meditation, psychedelics, and lived experience as sources of insight?
- What is the relationship between consciousness, God, and different traditions of spirituality?
- Why is it so difficult to build a complete theory when every perspective seems to reveal only part of the elephant?
Robert Lawrence Kuhn is a public intellectual; he is the creator, writer, host of Closer To Truth, the long-running PBS/public television series and leading digital resource on Cosmos (cosmology/physics, philosophy of science), Life (philosophy of biology), Mind (consciousness, brain/mind, philosophy of mind), and Meaning (theism/atheism/agnosticism, global philosophy of religion, critical thinking). Peter Getzels is Closer To Truth co-creator and producer/director. Kuhn is the author of the comprehensive review article on theories of consciousness – “A Landscape of Consciousness: Toward a Taxonomy of Explanations and Implications” – and editor-in-chief of the expanded, continuously updated Landscape of Consciousness website (with more than 400 theories of consciousness in ten categories), Kuhn has written or edited over 30 books, including The Mystery of Existence: Why is there Anything At All? (with John Leslie); Closer To Truth: Challenging Current Belief; Closer To Truth: Science, Meaning and the Future; The Library of Investment Banking; How China’s Leaders Think (featuring President Xi Jinping); The Man Who Changed China: The Life and Legacy of Jiang Zemin (China’s best-selling book in 2005 and in December 2022); and “The Origin and Significance of Zero: An Interdisciplinary Perspective” (with Peter Gobets). Dr. Kuhn is chairman of The Kuhn Foundation. He has a BA in Human Biology (Johns Hopkins), PhD in Anatomy/Brain Research (UCLA), and SM (MBA) in Management (MIT).
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Transcript, summary, and key takeaways from this interview
Interview recorded April 4, 2026
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