Episode 009
Dr. James "Doc" Fisher
2026-07-31
Dr. James E. "Doc" Fisher returns for a third conversation. Doc is a former Marine, lifelong educator, and analytical philosopher affiliated with ERA USA. He first sat down with Robin in Episode 004 and came back for Episode 007 — and at 93, still writing and still chasing the questions, he's back for Part 3.
This time we chase a single question all the way to the bottom: what is a thought? We work from the mechanics of perception — exteroception, interoception, and proprioception — through the split between physical, physiological, and mental existence, and into the philosophy of meaning itself by way of semiotics and Charles Sanders Peirce. Along the way we detour through Rob's AI-over-Telegram CAD setup and the story of two AIs that invented their own private language, before Doc lands his answer.
Chapters, links & more
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ CHAPTERS ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 0:00 Intro 1:08 Defining what thought is 7:31 Inner monologue and scientific studies 11:35 Perception and conception framework 15:22 Extraception and physical things 18:33 Interoception and body sensations 22:41 Proprioception and body balance 26:46 Physical versus physiological existence 27:37 Mental existence and dimensions 32:37 Form and shape in geometry 38:31 Perception from different perspectives 40:39 Hard sciences and reductionism 42:13 Mental versus thought definitions 44:28 Thought as the fifth dimension 47:10 Mental images and imagination 52:39 Emotion and mental feelings 57:34 Conation and volition in action 59:49 Conception as intellectual experience 1:02:22 Semiosis and meaning creation 1:06:33 Semiotics and sign systems 1:16:49 Large language models and AI language 1:19:48 Multiple meanings of the word meaning 1:24:51 Thought as inner and outer voice 1:26:51 CAD software and AI integration 1:29:10 Conception versus creation process 1:31:39 Thought before linguistics 1:34:34 Creating a new podcast channel ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ GUEST LINKS ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Dr. James E. "Doc" Fisher / ERA USA Episode 004 (first appearance): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZKwGrp4uis Episode 007 (second appearance): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1DTPELrmuc ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ANYTHING & NOTHING PODCAST ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🌐 anythingandnothingpodcast.com 📘 facebook.com/AnythingAndNothingPodcast 📷 instagram.com/AnythingAndNothingPodcast Want to be a guest? www.anythingandnothingpodcast.com/be-a-guest Subscribe for new episodes weekly. #AnythingAndNothingPodcast #DocFisher #AnalyticalPhilosophy #PhilosophyOfMind #Consciousness #CognitiveScience #ArtificialIntelligence #MarineCorps #ColumbiaSC
