Mindscape 168 | Anil Seth on Emergence, Information, and Consciousness

Patreon: / seanmcarroll
Blog post with audio player, show notes, and transcript: www.preposterousuniverse.com/...
Those of us who think that that the laws of physics underlying everyday life are completely known tend to also think that consciousness is an emergent phenomenon that must be compatible with those laws. To hold such a position in a principled way, it’s important to have a clear understanding of “emergence” and when it happens. Anil Seth is a leading researcher in the neuroscience of consciousness, who has also done foundational work (often in collaboration with Lionel Barnett) on what emergence means. We talk about information theory, entropy, and what they have to do with how things emerge.
Anil Seth received his D.Phil in Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence from the University of Sussex. He is currently a professor of cognitive and computational neuroscience at Sussex, as well as co-director of the Sackler Centre for Consciousness Science. He has served as the president of the Psychology Section of the British Science Association, and is Editor-in-Chief of the journal Neuroscience of Consciousness. His new book is Being You: A New Science of Consciousness.
Mindscape Podcast playlist: • Mindscape Podcast
Sean Carroll channel: / seancarroll

[@judgeomega]

this is what real philosophy should be. laying out models with the minimum use of vague antiquated terminology and concepts. anil is bringing philosophy into the 21st century and grounding in with real science from information theory.

[@daarom3472]

Real "philosophy" ended with Wittgenstein/Gödel, they basically solved all remaining problems or made them redundant. We don't need philosophers anymore, we just need our cutting edge specialized thinkers to be able to think philosophically and being able to place their ideas in a broader scientific context.

[@siroutrage1045]

@@daarom3472we don’t need philosophers we just need people who think philosophically 😂😂😂😂 I don’t need an automotive mechanic I just need a guy who can fix cars. Philosophers like Dennett, Kripke, John N Gray and Josh’s Bach have made great contributions since Godel.

[@rohanjagdale97]

I was waiting for this episode since long time. And here it is!

[@LucGendrot]

You wanna talk about coarse-graining? At the level of this podcast episode, I find that the whole is far greater than the sum of the topics discussed. 😁 No seriously, this is one of the best episodes you've ever produced! It ran the gamut from high to low level, and at no point did I feel like I wasn't understanding something, despite the topics being far outside my wheelhouse. I also didn't feel like anything was being dumbed down for the audience. Completely captivating.

[@James-ip7zk]

The conversation I was waiting

[@robocop30301]

I've revisted this a few times, and each time it is fantastic. Thanks.

[@swan2799]

These are among few podcasts worth listening. Thanks Sean Carroll:)

[@SandipChitale]

I think that if we stop thinking of consciousness as A thing, and instead think of consciousness is a conventional word to encompasse a large spectrum of phenomenon exhibited by living organisms. Then note that there may be qualitatively different explanations for diffferent subspectrums of phenomenon. For example, perception such as seeing color, withdrawing hand from hot stove, thinking about concrete and abstract things and finally the subjective experience. To me explaining the subjective experience or thinking abstract thoughts are only the two things for which we do not have a good explanation. I kinda like the word Marvin Minsky used for consciousness i.e. a suitecase word. A suitecase may contain shaving kit, clothes, book, food, laptop. Each of these may have qualitatively different interesting things we can say about. If we think of consciousness the above way the silly concepts like panpsychism simply disappear as consciousness is not A SINGLE thing which needs to exist fundamentally.

[@bryandraughn9830]

It occurred to me that a self monitoring, sensory, organizing system, lol, only has to have a single instant of it's own existence. Then, it's just a matter of smoothing together all of those instants into a "consciousness" or, a state of "being". It's not surprising that it's difficult to understand looking from the inside out. I agree with you. There's definitely too diverse an array of functions to generalize into a single term.

[@Mayadanava]

A suitcase word, in philosophy its called a synthetic proposition. Matter is also a synthetic proposition there is no thing called matter It is a series of fields and forces with predictable behaviours. These concepts break down far enough back in time, far enough into black holes and in small enough that observing it makes it's rules break down. e.g. the amount of energy to observe tiny distances/time is enough to cause a fundamental breakdown in our rules. You are also trying to say that Mind/consciousness is also a synthetic propostition. Micheal Levin has some interesting approaches. But what set of synthetic propositions of matter enable a series of synthetic propositions of consciousness? I do not understand how stating that consciousness being fundamental is silly? I find it no more silly than the concept of emergence.

[@Life_42]

One of the best KZbin channels ever to exist!

[@downhillphilm.6682]

how many neurons does it take to "emerge", where one less neuron there is NO consciousness but add one more and BOOM ..... consciousness?

[@davegrundgeiger9063]

Add me as one more person gushing about the brilliance of this podcast. Two of the planet's most lucid thinkers. Regarding terminology: "weak" emergence strikes me as a much *stronger* phenomenon than "strong" emergence. The notion that you can have objectively new modes of understanding -- modes that can't be predicted from fundamental properties without evolving a full simulation -- *without* introducing new fundamental laws of physics or contradicting the ones we have is absolutely astonishing and magical. Give me "weak" emergence any day!

[@alexanderjohnson2309]

We need some video for the this. Even just a zoom or Teams video.

[@bertpineapple3738]

Awesome - I always need to bring my A game to follow.

[@TheOddy80]

Your ideas about perception and how the brain interprets and predicts reality fits with how psychosis works as well. I've experience a few of those where "reality" really felt like it warped both in strange ways and according to my wishes. While it was ongoing I actually had a small part of my brain working against the psychosis and even as insanity unfolded according to all senses this little voice protested and hypothesised that it was only illusionis cooked up by my mind overruling my sensors. This is how I've mostly thought about psychosis and the mind/brain since. I think it helps me stay sane as I'm usually able to force my brain to behave if it starts acting up, resulting in 25 years with miimal drug use and only one psychosis more than 10 years ago now.

[@DestroManiak]

The question remains: why would any of this feel like anything at all.

[@Daniel-ih4zh]

Conscious experience from stimuli can't be accounted for in of itself, but only relative to other stimuli. For instance, if someone was to have monochromatic fluorescent blue beamed into their eyes since they were conscious - and only that - they would say they lack visual stimuli. I.e blind. Perhaps this is a starting point.

[@andrear.berndt9504]

Thank you, excellent new episode!

[@wthomas7955]

Excellent stuff!

[@spaceinyourface]

As below, this is the one I e been waiting for. ✋

[@paulkita]

These guys are on the same wavelength

[@charliesteiner2334]

I'm not so sure emergence is rare. Maybe because I'm intuitively thinking of it in terms of Kolmogorov complexity? If you have a bunch of small parts interacting locally according to a computer program, it seems like it's almost inevitable that there will be macroscopic properties of this collection that you can predict using less computation than all of the component parts.

[@jirivesely5697]

I like Sean Carroll, because he is rational, meaning: he doesn't buy into ideas blindly, while he doesn't exclude other ideas at the same time! We should simply explore every permutation and what we do will be determined by what we can do ATM, it will come naturally so... Philosophers who are like: "just because we can't currently explain consciousness -> it is immaterial." No!!! we are just a blip on time-scale of the universe, this is logical fallacy... Knowledge takes time! I hate both scientists which say stupid stuff about Philosophy and philosophers which do the same!!! They are both chimpanzees... There is need for a science to give empirical observations/facts and then there is need for a Philosophy to interpret it and come to conclusions, which works kinda both ways... It is just different part of inquiry about our world...

[@ralphclark]

I would propose that emergence occurs at levels of description where complexity is maximised. Complexity being that property of an arrangement that happens when entropy is neither minimised nor maximised

[@petermartin5030]

Consciousness is a process running in the brain. It takes input from external processes in order to track and predict what they will do. It generates outputs with the aim of being able to survive and replicate. This process becomes aware when it takes input summarising its own state, and tracks and predicts what itself will do - it recognises itself as a process. This includes measures of how well it is surviving and reproducing. Free will results from its outputs being available to it to inform future processing. 'Free' here means attributable to conscious decision-making, so that outcomes can drive learning that will improve future decision-making.

[@petermartin5030]

I feel that predictive power is a key element here.... that is to say how much, and how far ahead in time one can accurately predict divided by the amount of data needed to make that prediction .

[@dajandroid]

I was wondering how the coarse grain analysis, represented by the individuals listening and understanding the concepts of this episode, can lead to an emergent group consensus on what consciousness is? (Will a group consciousness emerge from the information in this Mindscape 168?)

[@tb-cg6vd]

Mark my words, Anil Seth will become one of the UK's most treasured intellectuals in a decade or two. Top bloke.

[@isedairi]

Sean, have you read Merleau Ponty or Evald Ilyenkov?

[@robbyr9286]

58 minutes, they've mentioned coffee at least 3 times- works for me!

[@aclearlight]

Wonderful, enlightening discourse. It's a great gift to live in a moment when we have such ready access to rich discourses like this (and with the ability to rewind!).

[@thewiseturtle]

Emergence is just complex behavior that shows up from simple rules. If we see reality as having two possible rules: contraction/stability/natural-selection/matter and expansion/change/random-mutation/energy and let them interact in all possible ways, as modeled in Pascal's triangle, we get a purely random deterministic system that allows ALL patterns of matter and energy to emerge.

[@thewiseturtle]

This is what we see as evolution and entropy.

[@ratbullkan]

I think our specific form(s) of consciousness is not substrate independent, but the phenomenon of an entity experiencing qualia might be nevertheless

[@SandipChitale]

For all the chaos on social media and negativity on the internet we should also be grateful for a podcast like this that we can listen to whereby leading minds of our time discuss the most interesting problems facing humanity using science is working on. IMO this cannot be highlighted enough. And on the other side close minded religious crowd is quibbling about petty things. It should be also noted that the high tech fruits of science and technology are used by the religious yet they so ungreatfully diss science, science of vaccination, evolution and climate change. On the other hand, in certain polite situations they come begging to science to say that there is no conflict between their religious ideas and scientific theories.

[@1qtaz]

Don't people in dark, warm water tanks start hallucinating? I've thought that a mind uploaded into a computer would go mad without stimulation. Plus, the lack of control, you could not ensure the machine would have power. Besides, the idea of being in a simulation means someone else with consciousness has created the simulation. Turtles all the way down.

[@bryanroland9402]

The rules that govern the behaviour of fundamental particles led to chemistry once things had cooled down enough, which somehow produced self-replicating structures that don't copy themselves perfectly in an environment whose resources are limited making competition a necessary factor. Hey presto: life, something that was once thought to be a magical phenomenon (Bergson's élan vital). After a few billion years, life produced Charles Darwin, who identified that extra, higher-level ingredient, the mechanism we call natural selection, whose explanatory and predictive power has made it the central theory of biology. Isn't this a glaringly obvious example of strong emergence? Am I missing something? And could David Chalmers and those who subscribe to his ideas learn something from Bergson's mistake?

[@justinlevy274]

Builds a lot on Thomas Metzinger's work, highly recommend Metzinger

[@SandipChitale]

Yay!

[@ravisavanur9405]

Sean, you made a comment about Chairs be and Tables being "emergent" from atoms. I thought temp,pressure etc are emergent properties of large # of atoms. Chairs and tables are created or made .

[@Vlasko60]

"Coming into existence" is one definition of emergent.

[@scottkoshland2475]

By your definition epileptics is downward causation and strong emergence.

[@frazmus7]

Please interview Bernardo Kastrup.

[@markcounseling]

56:00 Sean Carroll almost, but not quite, discovers what consciousness is

[@SandipChitale]

I keep hearing people (intuitively) say that subjective experience is the only thing they are sure of. Well, not so fast.. They say it about the situations when their brains were in normal working condition. I think they will not be able to say it if their brain is damaged or it is under influence of drug or anasthesia, at a magic show in Las Vegas, watching an optical illusion, having a dead brain. This basically is a big strike against idealism. My point is that the consciousness/self aware/subjective experience phenomenon only happens in a normally working brains. In other cases when the brain is not in normal functioning state, it may not be the case that the holder of the brain should rely on their conscious experience. I have seen a brain without consciousness, I doubt anyone has seen consciousness without a brain.

[@mrbwatson8081]

Your argument is a problem for materialism not idealism. It’s materialism that needs to explain how a physical object void of qualities can effect my experience of qualities? Under idealism all is mind. An inanimate object like a hammer or drug under idealism IS also mind not my mind not your mind but mind at large. Under idealism the hammer or drug is not conscious in and of itself but is part of the inanimate universe that is conscious as a whole. My mind your mind under idealism are an activity of the universe one of localisation. Our minds have a boundary which entails perception. Perception means we don’t see things in and of themselves but we perceive a representation. Our mind represents universal mind as matter hammer drug. So under idealism it’s obvious a drug can impinge on my experience. You argument falls flat:)

[@baydprit]

What happened to vetting your guests' mics so that they wouldn't be speaking to you through a tin can??! Great conversation despite the audio quality :)

[@jimmycrosby]

Sean Carroll is a great public speaker/ intellect. He is a reliable source of information in a range of areas. Absolutely brilliant.

[@ShamanicKnight]

So.... If consciousness can emerge at the organisational level of the brain.... Can 'god' emerge at the far higher level of complexity of the whole universe...?

[@thephilosophicalagnostic2177]

I think emergence is everywhere. In the physical world, the biological world, and the human world.

[@_ARCATEC_]

Em'ergent Salient'c Xeqtion of EQescence in Expsitation. d6/d5/D4/d3 d2 d1. EIEIO. ACB similar to XZY. If I is the space between us an beyond us yet connected (isomorphic) , then E is the energy within and without us. •e(i(mE)I(eM)i)e•

[@ycart_tech6726]

I am confident that over the coming few millennia, the above post will gradually make sense.

[@calvingrondahl1011]

Emergence feels consistent with everything else. Live flows and here we are. A special creation seems dishonest even if it is true.

[@tookie36]

Emergence still sounds like magic. Maybe more hard science will close the gap but we surely aren’t there now for a good Bayesian

[@robbie3252]

Love your vides Sean first to comment lol

[@Mastermindyoung14]

Vijeo

[@carnap355]

noone cars

[@carnap355]

][[ppo

[@HarryNicNicholas]

@@carnap355 beep beep. robbie does.

[@MrJustSomeGuy87]

Have Terrence Deacon on the show!!!Pleeeease…

[@HonkletonDonkleton]

43:10 nonsense

[@chrisstanford3652]

🤗🤗 🧠

[@bryandraughn9830]

People who claim to know the limitations of the physical universe are just making the claim. They haven't discovered any such limitations.

[@Nword3390]

why would the phenomena of sentience not be sufficient in your view, to be that limit?

[@downhillphilm.6682]

but the flock of birds is only a flock to us, the witnesses, not to the birds. they don't know they are a flock....no other entity that we know of literally knows what a flock even is.....are we not just imposing a discriptor on to a genetic behavior that apparently has some Darwinian root? we invent this word "emergence" to define behaivor that we can't otherwise understand....might as well use "god" or "allah" or "mickey mouse".....right?

[@Vlasko60]

Every word is invented.

[@Mayadanava]

A richer ontology... hahahaha. A table has no independant existance outside of consciousness. I couldn't stop laughing at the request for the minimal amount of entities leading into that claim. Tableness requires consciousness for existance. The minimal number of ontological entities is 2. Tableness has independant existance... I want to meet this magical table. Then this arguement leads into give us unlimited time to explain everything (Neurons in this case producing minds) cause yeah. We have some limited explainitory power. Matter produced tables... and I am out of this conversation.

[@rajeevgangal542]

Why do people of Indian origin in UK sound so similar? Slight nasal tone...rohin the cardiologist comes to mind

[@Vlasko60]

Anyone who believes consciousness can exist without a physical brain has to prove consciousness can exist without a physical brain. Game over until then.

[@mrbwatson8081]

A physical brain is consciousness. A 🧠 is what consciousness looks like from a certain perspective. Hence the correlation:)

[@Vlasko60]

@@mrbwatson8081 Again, proof required.

[@tookie36]

@@Vlasko60 proof required that the brain creates the consciousness. Hard problem is still here and the next best guess is consciousness is an illusion. So you’re stuck with personal experience, reasoning, etc… and that leads to idealism :)

[@Vlasko60]

@@tookie36 Everywhere there is consciousness there is a physical brain until proven otherwise. Nice try.

[@tookie36]

@@Vlasko60 if you could prove that you’d be famous. It’s still undecided if brains produce consciousness or if consciousness itself is an illusion. You sir have a gap in your reasoning

[@RoboWhisperer]

We are just computers, our body is the physical hardware. The body and nervous system receive the inputs from the external world. The brain is a combination of biological firmware to get the system to boot. It then runs software that has evolved to be part DNA and part ethereal algorithm, both the operating system and applications. RAM is all our memories. While we only appear to be thinking about one thing at a time, we do have multiple processes all working in the background... Consciousness is just the inacting part of the software. It takes it from background to foreground to is if it must carry out an action in the physical world. We learn through imitation, our software just copy's what it sees. Meme, as Dawkins might say. We don't make perfect copies and we get mutations and the evolution of the applications running in the brain. A child wouldn't know how to speak except we teach it. Our brain evolved with DNA, our software with learning and passed down through education. It's wisdom that makes use humans that bit more special right now

[@mrbwatson8081]

Ethereal algorithm... :)

[@mrbwatson8081]

No son you are not a computer. Ok :)

[@SebastianLundh1988]

The first few minutes of this video were disappointing, and a sign of how little Sean understands the topic.

[@primus4cameron]

Which he, with appropriate humility, confessed. Fortunately the podcast is way longer than a few minutes.

[@SebastianLundh1988]

Yeah, but this was just agony.

[@primus4cameron]

Sorry to read that. But surely, therefore, life's too short to suffer the whole podcast. Any recommendations for a "what IS consciousness" ingenue like myself?

[@andanssas]

@@SebastianLundh1988 in a beautiful day, with pleasant environment, good company and all your needs met, you got too close to a branch which scratched you. It's a mere incovenience and it won't stop you enjoying the day, but if you choose to focus on it, tell others about it and let your mind be affected by it, you just decided to waste a beautiful day in your life... It was your conscious choice that made you experience that agony.

[@garyraab9132]

@@andanssas rather than a conscious choice...the ‘agony’ is an emergent unsubstantiated opinion from the hidden brain...much like the flight, fight, or freeze response, when circumstances become too complex, too agonizing, for understanding...human primates, from my observations, have a genetic propensity to make up, fabricate, stories for events and circumstances that are beyond their comprehension...and go on to label their unsubstantiated opines, conscious choice. One need only study the molecular biology and biochemistry of a cell infected by a virus to get a sense of emergent complexity coupled with uncertainty and randomness. An unsubstantiated opinion is far from emergent complexity.