Susan Greenfield - Is Consciousness Irreducible?

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Why is consciousness so contentious? Neuroscience can increasingly explain many facets of consciousness, but what about conscious awareness itself? Some philosophers claim that although facets of consciousness-such as how we see edges or colors-can be explained, we have no possibility of explaining, in purely physical terms, the experience of consciousness.
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Susan Adele Greenfield is a British scientist, writer, broadcaster, and member of the House of Lords. Greenfield, whose specialty is the physiology of the brain, has worked to research and bring attention to Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease.
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Closer To Truth, hosted by Robert Lawrence Kuhn and directed by Peter Getzels, presents the world’s greatest thinkers exploring humanity’s deepest questions. Discover fundamental issues of existence. Engage new and diverse ways of thinking. Appreciate intense debates. Share your own opinions. Seek your own answers.

[@bretnetherton9273]

Awareness is known by awareness alone; is the sole irreducible axiom of reality. To put forth a syllable to the contrary is but to concede.

[@davidpalmer5966]

A good conversation. I incline toward panpsychism myself, but I admired Ms Greenfield's honest scientific rigour: as a scientist she must assume that the brain is the cause of consciousness. This shows why philosophy is necessary: to ask the questions and entertain the speculations that are outside the bounds of science. What irritates me is when scientists promote a materialistic philosophy and call it science. Scientists study material processes. Philosophers speculate about the nature of reality. The two disciplines are not competing; they should work in an intimate two-step.

[@k-3402]

I agree, but let's not heap all the blame on scientists. Philosophers are also guilty of not deferring to scientists when and where it's appropriate.

[@numericalcode]

I like the insight on variable levels of consciousness. I think children are also more conscious of the moment while adults are more conscious of hypotheticals.

[@jacobwatts2292]

I enjoyed this talk, great guest

[@SpiritualPsychotherapyServices]

Great and lowly are RELATIVE. 😉 Incidentally, Slave, are you VEGAN? 🌱

[@jan-erikjones9376]

I’m grateful for these CtT videos. They are a great treasure on the internet. Thank you TLK. I’m sympathetic to Susan’s insistence that consciousness is natural, but the reducibility issue is different. The idea that reduction of consciousness to the physical states is a starting place, i.e., a stance, that needs to be fully explored before irreducibility should be accepted is in tension with her idea that the reduction could be beyond our conceptual categories but still be reduction. That’s true, but more than a starting place, it’s an a priori philosophical commitment that seems unfalsifiable.

[@simonhibbs887]

Suppose you have a conscious visual experience and you write about what it meant to you, thus causing a physical action in the world. At the same time we use a scanning device that traces out the physical activity and it's causal propagation in your brain, from the optical signal through your eye, to the brain’s cognitive processes, to the neural signal that activated the motor neurons that caused you to write. We would have established that your conscious experience caused the physical activity, and we would have established that the physical processes in your brain caused the same physical activity. That would demonstrate an identity between the conscious experience and the physical neurological process.

[@HighPeakVideo]

@@simonhibbs887 Ordinarily the visual experience would be had without reporting the consciousness of it. So the cognitive processes that report the conscious experience would be additional monitoring of the actual raw experience processes. But these monitoring processes could only report on the functional aspects of the raw processes that form the content of the experience. But that monitoring of the raw experience information processes could be done externally - such as by your scanner. The implication of what you say is that if the brain's monitoring processes could analyse and report the conscious experience had by the raw experience processes, then the scanner too could observe the experience - there would be a third person observation of the first person experience. Do you regard that as credible?

[@simonhibbs887]

@@1st-Harmonic >”Why do some people make complex what in truth is simple? It takes a mind to understand a brain. The mind forms before the brain remembers what the mind has observed in real time. With more time and focus Mind becomes more aware, a higher consciousness forms by will. Every mind is uniquely woven by internal and external realities.”
 If it’s so obvious, why is pretty much every non-physicalist account of the kind you give above completely different? Just look at the comments on this channel. The descriptions of spirituality, how it works, what it means, how this or that emerges from the other. They’re all completely different. How can that be? It’s almost as if there is zero evidence for the causal chain of processes you gave above and it’s -completely made up- based on vague feelings and intuition .

[@simonhibbs887]

@@1st-Harmonic I've no problem with the use of the term spirit in everyday language. In some ways I consider myself a spiritual person, in the sense that I am interested in the human condition, human experience and how that has been understood historically. I see it as referring to particularly deep introspection on the nature and meaning of our experiences. I just don't think that spirit is something separate from our bodies, or that there are supernatural phenomena, gods and angels and ghosts and such. I think in the modern world with the rationalist approach to knowledge we can leave superstitions like that behind.

[@vivekbhat2784]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/qWjGnGVjeNx_Z68

[@njhoepner]

I think she's right on both points: it would be unscientific to presume up front that consciousness is something we can't scientifically investigate or explain, AND that the path forward is to start measuring levels of consciousness. I'm also intrigued by the idea that other animals have consciousness, maybe at different levels...trying to measure and study that could tell us a lot too.

[@marcelor.aiello5050]

Fascinating chat!

[@chrisjetko4220]

Robert I loved this episode what a great conversation!

[@pjbarnestx]

To say that there are degrees of consciousness is a step in the right direction, and I think it's even more complicated than that. There are multiple taxonomies or ways to categorize the different types of experiences, such as: (1) external vs. internal, (2) positive vs. negative, (3) "flavors" like red vs. blue, or chocolate vs. broccoli, (4) volitional vs. non-volitional. It gets even more complicated when you consider how our consciousness interacts with other parts of our brain like the hippocampus (memories) and prefrontal cortex (making decisions) and motor cortex (moving our bodies).

[@fredm5180]

Dear Mr. Robert, thank you for this incredible interview. You are truly a gentleman and I apologize for my infinite ignorance clearly expressed in my opinions. As described by the interviewee, science must first do what it can. The science management process is what will prepare us for the inevitable. However, it may be important to remember that a radio is just a device for decoding a signal emitted by another device capable of capturing an individual's voice. Our brain is just a radio. At least that's how we know how to use it, in general. Consciousness is still far from that. Some arguments sound like asking an electronics technician while listening to the radio, to confirm whether someone is on the other side of the emitting device by turning it off. The same experience she mentions can also give us clues in the opposite direction. If I'm not mistaken, placebos worked for creatures that also didn't have a brain. Thank you very much for this interview.

[@chantlive24]

Thanks

[@LearnThaiRapidMethod]

Susan is absolutely right. And I think the main reason is that we are mostly NOT conscious about just about everything that goes on in our bodies, brain or the world around us. So to consider ourselves (or other animals) as conscious beings is a bit meaningless, because we’re not. The fact that we have a tiny pineal of (fairly fleeting) consciousness seems almost an after-thought, like the occasional sparks in a fire that blink into existence and then are gone. The fire is what it’s all about, for humans, animals and perhaps even reptiles, insects and perhaps even plants. I think the question is: what makes these sparks somehow connected to each other (not necessarily as a unified whole, but little islands of connectivity) and with a duration (or “memory”) that outlives the individual sparks?

[@endover422]

How can we make long plans for the future (if the assembly lasts only milliseconds)?

[@dwilson540]

I wonder, is a clock greater than the sum of its mechanical parts? Do we have something emergent? Is consciousness more than the sum of the parts?

[@ultimateman55]

For all those saying that this woman missed the point, I disagree. She's fully aware of the Hard Problem of Consciousness and she understands that the arguments she's putting forth do not solve it. What she IS doing is elaborating on the real scientific research that can be done to actually investigate conscious states, which could then just MAYBE be used as a spring board in order to be able to begin to understand consciousness. If you believe that what she is saying is completely useless and could never IN PRINCIPLE begin to attack the Hard Problem, then you're effectively defining the problem as one that is IN PRINCIPLE unsolvable. Taking that view, you could be a philosopher, but you could not be a scientist, because you assuming a priori that the methods of science cannot solve the problem. It could very well be that the Hard Problem is unsolvable by the methods of science, but she is a scientist and assuming such things does nothing to help her reach her goal. In order to tackle the hard problem as a scientist, you must first assume that it is, in principle, solvable.

[@tedgrant2]

What we know is that we start out being an unconscious single cell. That cell multiplies by dividing and cells start to differentiate. Gradually, consciousness develops, but it doesn't last long.

[@edmatzenik9858]

The very concept of the irreducible is interesting. Everyone knows, for example, what time is but it's notoriously difficult to define, could that be because it hasn't been reduced to smaller parts or attributes?

[@scienceexplains302]

Is there something to a traffic jam that can’t be explained by cars? Yes, but it’s not supernatural.

[@XiDingArt]

Robert was doing a great job guiding her to understand the real philosophical question and for a moment it seemed that she was finally getting what it's all about, but in the end she circles back to the neural correlates of consciousness and fell into the abyss of the explanatory gap

[@silversurfer4441]

Exactly. It was her own "get out of jail free card. "

[@sentientflower7891]

There are no souls so that isn't an option.

[@dvdrtrgn]

What do you call falling into the abyss? She was diagramming a utility for science to increase understanding. Turning on the lights won’t suddenly explain everything.

[@missh1774]

This was interesting

[@magicmjk09]

It seems that during her argument, the notion of Causation faded away and Correlation took its place. But Robert preferred not to pursuit the distinction and let the talk flow.

[@p0indexter624]

interesting !

[@kallianpublico7517]

Meaning is rereducible. The source of meaning? Demonstrable consistency or anomaly from subjects from consciousness? Subjects including Nature: animals, matter, flora, in all conscious forms; and theory from rational thought, reviewable by self-conscious ratiocination or linguistic definition or logic. Logic being the rereducible form of linguistic definition not by taxonomy but by pretext and rule.

[@eternalme6077]

Consciousness to me reminds me of some of the Zen philosophy sayings like Consciousness is like a sword that can cut, but cannot cut itself....or an eye that can see but cannot see itself etc. ❤

[@kdub9812]

a light that cannot illuminate itself

[@DickusCopernicus]

How is it that scientific explanation is spoken of as reduction? Is it that physical explanations are somehow considered as destroying what some want to be the magic of reality? If at some end point of understanding, where life is found to be just an evolved organic machine, the mystery would evaporate, and hence we as humans would no longer be special.

[@hugosadyayalaayala3470]

lastima. en ingles solamente. no video bibliography in spanish for this theme.

[@mohdnorzaihar2632]

Wondering the schizophrenia, downsyndrome individu/patients consciousness/unconscious

[@TheRealTomWendel]

Are her “assemblies” the physical form of Dennett’s “multiple drafts”?

[@whycantiremainanonymous8091]

And in the end, we're back with a correlation, when the gap is in the logic. The way that we account for physical processes is always and necessarily from the perspective of an (idealized) external observer. Consciousness is a first-person perspective. Physicalist accounts are therefore logically barred from coming up with a mechanism that would account for consciousness. It's a category mistake to think such an account is possible. That's also why the "zombie" argument can work: if there existed a true materialist account of consciousness, the materialist would have a proof that the creature they're describing is not a "zombie". The problem is that materialism, being a dominant worldview among educated people nowadays, would foster attempts to define the problem away: We hereby declare that this assemblage, or whatever else, simply *is* consciousness. Subjective experience is declared irrelevant. Problem "solved". Philosophers of language tried to pull a similar trick with the notion of "meaning" (simply defining it, by fiat, to be identical to the truth conditions of a sentence, even if the resulting "meaning" would appear absurd to any normal language user). I suspect many such attempts will be made regarding consciousness.

[@stevefrompolaca2403]

does the chicken come before the egg? does desire trigger the brain or does the brain trigger desire?

[@adamkallin5160]

It’s certainly tricky to explain anything in terms of matter. Because we know that matter doesn’t actually exist. Zoom in and it just disappears.

[@gordonpepper1400]

Is she saying, and people below, that the brain evolved (central nervous system) in order to protect the body? And hence these lines of communication between brain and body. The mind (self thinking / ego) I think is just an evolutionary process of the brain.

[@tomnottynobody8507]

Some form of body is required for consciousness. If there is nothing to take in the experiences of said consciousness then how conscious could an entity be? Our senses being triggered is what gives us the "feelings" we experience. Without a body, what is having the experience? How is it having an experience? The brain and body working together is what makes us us.

[@numericalcode]

Correct. And the brain is body.

[@science212]

She's a great british scientist.

[@PetraKann]

Great?

[@shramanaascender]

ha

[@garychartrand7378]

Yes. A legend in her own "mind".

[@Zerpentsa6598]

Actually, the last one was Maxwell, and that was it.

[@levansaginashviliskidney8726]

​@@Zerpentsa6598Dirac is quite good, no?

[@williamburts5495]

The truth is nothing could be known to underlie consciousness like consciousness underlies material phenomena, by awareness animating our senses the senses, mind, and intelligence can perform their functions in relation to the self. But to perceive of an existence underlying consciousness is problematic since to perceive of such an existence would require that it would flow along the stream of consciousness or awareness for it to be known thus making it content within awareness rather than underlying it like awareness underlies material phenomena, thus such an existence is unrealizable.

[@tedgrant2]

I can't explain the rules of chess. They are a complete mystery to me. Where did they come from ?

[@michaelmckinney7240]

A very interesting conversation but one that in the end sheds very little light on the ultimate source and nature of consciousness. Notice the use of the term "get out of jail card" used twice by Susan Greenfield. It's a somewhat unfortunate phrase in that it infers any explanation of consciousness that posits its origination as something other than brain activity is an intentional avoidance of the hard work of empirical science in finding a materialistic brain based source of that consciousness. If we begin with a commonly heard assertion from a growing number of neuroscientists stating that "consciousness is a fundamental property of the universe" and then only consider the question of how our personal experience of consciousness is generated, we're discounting and as a result entirely missing an important aspect of this question. If it's true that consciousness is universal and present from the beginning it should manifest itself in empirically measurable ways and not only that but this "universal consciousness" should be intelligible and immediately recognizable as something akin to our own experience of consciousness. So the question is; do we see these tell tale hints of consciousness that are exhibited in the observable phenomenon at work in our cosmos? The answer is; we do. Opinions widely vary but so far, no other explanation can account for the uniformly observed tendency of matter to self organize into the emergent complexity of an evolved universe. If mind in the form of universal consciousness is not and never was present in our cosmos then empiricists like Susan Greenfield are tasked to explain how and more importantly what is driving the inexorable universal process of evolved emergent complexity. How could matter flawlessly self assemble into the structural complexity needed to produce animate life if consciousness was not present from its inception? If you take two heart cells and separate them on a microscope slide you'll see them pulsate as they normally would in the heart. As the heart beats, they also beat. They don't beat in sync until they touch. When this happens one cell delays its beat and then synchronizes its beat to match the other. For this to happen some form of energy and information must pass between the two cells. In other words some unseen organizing principle must be present to orchestrate this synchronicity, something conscious that has the power to change the behavior of matter at this level. Only a preexisting universal consciousness presently offers the best explanation for a universe that appears formulaic in its uncanny balance and inexplicably perfect design. The valuable contributions of neuroscientists like Susan Greenfield are essential in framing the unsolved questions about the source of "consciousness" but in the end all empirical answers to the mystery of where and how consciousness arises will reach the same dead end. Science, at least presently, is simply not capable of acknowledging the reality of something that lies beyond its empirical methodologies. To do so would be tantamount to an admittance that a transcendent agent might be at work in ordering the universe because if one accepts the notion of a "universal consciousness being at the heart of all existent reality then it strongly infers the presence of a supreme being and this is anathema to all empiricists because their particular form of group think looks askance at such "religious" considerations. One might say that "group think" doesn't take place because all rational inquiry is solely motivated by an objective search for truth but this is more of an ideal than a concrete reality. Every scientist is a part of a larger community of scientists and they tend to reflect commonly held attitudes about certain subjects and at the top of the list is any notion that an "ultimate reality" may be beyond their reductionist based methods of research.

[@flowingriverr123]

She won't wait for the question to complete.

[@calandula4099]

I would reframe the zombie argument a little bit. Instead of stating a highly hypothetical philosophical zombie (which may very well be not be able to exist), i would just point out that every scientific explanation of the processes in the brain does not contain phenomenal experience in it's scientific description. Like you can't possibly conclude from that objective scientific approach alone that the brain must have phenomenal experiences. The only way you'll ever know that a brain can have phenomenal experience is by your own experience. But nothing about a purely objective, physical description of a brain tells you that it has phenomenal experience. It just doesn't follow from feedback loops, neuron assemblings and other physical processes, no matter how complex they are. Phenomenal experience just doesn't reveal itself from the purely objectiv, physical description of the brain, because you can understand all those processes completely without the presence of phenomenal experience. And i think the point of this argument is the same as the "philosophical zombie" argument, but it avoids the discussion of the possibility of philosophical zombies and instead gets straight to the point of the zombie argument.

[@jamesruscheinski8602]

human awareness reducible to brain matter, brain / matter reducible to energy, energy reduction to time, time reducible to consciousness?

[@piehound]

I admire her for saying a tautology doesn't make a real argument. It's very easy to fall into that trap. And from my academic years i know the use of repetition is often relied upon to convince us of truth. While truth follows no such pattern.

[@halleuz1550]

You are aware that any logically valid inference can be expressed as one tautological formula?

[@piehound]

@@halleuz1550 I'm aware i like the smell of my own farts.

[@halleuz1550]

@@piehound Yes, sure. Let's leave it at that. I don't think your fascinating insight can be bested by any rational argument.

[@halleuz1550]

@@1st-Harmonic I am not familiar with *any* standard of rationality under which the fart comment comes out as relevant to the discussion.

[@1SpudderR]

The challenge is ......!? We appear to operate in the Conscious domain- BUT! We do not operate in “The Conscious Consciousness domain”!? Our awareness Quantum Perception is always from The Subconsciousness. So the brain is a transmitter/receiver of multiple data forms, operating information manipulation/exchange/language/dialogue...Subconsciously. All before we are Consciously Perception Aware Of it!? Then of course by then it is (Data fractionally but definitely)in the past!?

[@stephenzhao5809]

... 0:15 I try to encapsulate the problem if I can in one simple sentence and if I were to do that right now with you I'd say the fundamental question to understand our inner subjectivity that feeling of what it is inside is is it exactly the same as the brain in terms of some traslational effect or is there something about consciousness that has to be go beyond the brain something irreducible at least from the standpoint of brain science that that's my question 0:47 Susan: yeah. ... I think if we assume there is some element that's not tractable to science something that is irreducible then that's a get out of jail free card okay that means (well that was very clear I didn't say not not susceptible to science I said not susceptible to the brain ) okay ( that's a distinction?) okay nonetheless as a brain scientist 1:10 as a brain scientist I would regard that as a get out of jail for free card that is to say whatever I did whatever I showed you whatever experiments I did whatever theories I had in brain terms we could always have this get out of jail for free card say oh but there's the extra thing and this extra thing is the thing that really counts and this extra thing is something that we as brain scientists can't touch now I don't find that very helpful it reminds me of um a cartoon slide I often show when I give talks where you have these pgy male scientists of course stereotype male scientists 1:46

[@pingzhang7698]

Imagine that your brain cells just like a group of synchronized birds, they are flying north, you are thinking quantum mechanics; they are flying south, you are playing piano; they are flying east, you are mowing the lawn; they are flying west, you are swimming in your pool, meanwhile some birds are still in north direction, you are partially still thinking about quantum mechanics! All the sync systems are spontaneous process which obey the second law of thermodynamics, mathematical description may not solve the problem: “How does order emerge out of chaos”. In reality, all sync systems are counterintuitive: order is disorder; disorder(chaos) is order. When sync is phase locked, energy is even, and entropy reaches maximum; when sync is phase unlocked, energy distribution is uneven, and entropy decreases. Your brain cells act just like school of birds and fish are in sync. All these sync systems obey the second law of thermodynamics, which entropy reached maximum. When brain cells are in sync, without any extra energy input, the sync will last as long as your life. Sync is energy conservative system which is spontaneous process as well as our memories, imagine some events happened in your childhood. So, let it go! Sync yourself!

[@silversurfer4441]

As a materialist who can't account for the immaterial nature of consciousness, she's the one who's pulling the get out of jail free card. It's called promissory materialism.

[@radscorpion8]

bahahahaa "the immaterial nature of consciousness". We don't even know what consciousness IS, much less what causes it. If you haven't even defined something then how can you claim whether it is a physical process or not? Just because you feel something doesn't mean its not physical. That's the whole point of the investigation. The problem with immaterial theories is that they are basically unscientific. There is no way to quantify whether they exist or how they exist. They can't be tested. They are completely undefined. Materialism, on ther other hand, is at least a HYPOTHESIS that can be TESTED, and it is being tested more and more as time goes on.

[@steelearmstrong9616]

She’s doing exactly that. Poor Robert, he’s Hurd it a million times already. Must feel like ground hog day with every interview. I feel his frustration

[@stoneysdead689]

How is saying that we should exhaust materialism before moving on a "get out of jail free card"- after all, materialism got us this far and is nowhere near being exhausted- they've barley gotten started in fact. Besides, it's not like there's a ban against the type of research you're referring to- you just can't get ppl who control the big money to invest in it. But it is taking place- and so far, nothing- no results worth talking about. Neither side has any reason to act as if they have it figured out- they don't- period.

[@simonhibbs887]

Do you happen to have a proven, rigorous explanatory model of what it means for something to be non material, how the non material can have effects in the material world, the processes by which the non material phenomenon gives rise to different conscious states, and how information from the material world propagates to the non material? Maybe we should call it promissory dualism. The physicalist model gives us the ability to investigate and characterise the relationships between conscious processes and brain processes. It’s a model we can investigate and reason about. That’s what neuroscientists are doing, and the results have been tangible results, many of which are medically actionable and are improving people’s lives. Can you give me any comparable results from dualism, panpsychism and the other models?

[@Archimedes_1]

​​​@simonhibbs887 I think that the importance physicalism cannot be overstated. However, aren't ideas like dualism and panspsychism also essential, if we are to probe the _fundamental_ nature of consciousness?

[@Resmith18SR]

I like how she said how great ideas like the one she had about continuously variable gradients of consciousness seem to happen when on holiday while relaxing by the pool. I believe Einstein also said that's how he came up with his General Theory of Relativity, while relaxing by the pool. 😂😂😂

[@arthurwieczorek4894]

For an elaborate examination of the levels of consciousness as reflected in animal behavior read the ethologist Konrad Lorenz. Behind the Mirror, 1978.

[@georgwrede7715]

While the tale of Newton "getting it" when he saw an apple fall down might be simple folklore, most of us have actually had similar experiences. Therefore, the bit about pool-side cognitive results does seem plausible.

[@Resmith18SR]

@@arthurwieczorek4894 I have read Lorenz and thought he was great.

[@catherinemoore9534]

A case of 'when a door is closed there's less chance to find the exit'

[@vivekbhat2784]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/qWjGnGVjeNx_Z68

[@JamesBS]

Dude, you have to interview Bernardo Kastrup.

[@cerizzamax]

Hypothetical summary: I hope in a miracle and when this happens, if it is happened inside Science, I will not call it anymore a miracle.😊filling the gap outside of ongoing Paradigma, not so easy.🥸 Thank you Kuhn, and thanks to your guests willing to expose themselves on such a puzzling subject.

[@PetraKann]

Is irreducibility conscious?

[@rtk3543]

I love the thought of Pan consciousness.

[@WayneLynch69]

It is intriguing

[@sentientflower7891]

Pan is a trickster. Beware.

[@ahmedzaidazam]

My question is how can those assemblies be invoked so that a primate other than human could be made conscious that matches a ten year old human.

[@trubador09]

I like the idea of degree of consciousness and measuring that Also, what would we constitute as being conscious. I can be awake, but my mind can drift. Where did I go? Yet, I carried on doing my work or even driving my car. I know I was having thoughts and they seemed important, but I can't recall them; I can't retrieve them. They are gone forever. Or, are they?

[@Resmith18SR]

The question is does anyone believe that neuroscience will ever develop to the point in the future of being able to predict and say that if we stimulate or manipulate certain areas of the brain or neurons then we can say what particular memory, emotion, or thoughts a person is experiencing? Are particular individual thoughts, emotions, memories, hallucinations, completely identical to specific brain states? My belief is they are not.

[@dr_shrinker]

Science already does this.

[@stephenowen5229]

I had a conversation with a brain scientist the other day who made the bold statement that using brain scanning technology 'we can know what you're thinking'. I had to push back and tell her that this was simply untrue. She clarified; if you ask a patient to think of a cat a particular area of the brain becomes active, if they think of a dog, another part of the brain becomes active. All well and good. But that only means that when asked to think of a cat or dog they can identify an area of the brain which becomes active. It tells them nothing about how a feel about the cat or dog. I lean towards the idea that consciousness is not an emergent property. However, there is scant evidence to support this idea, so I'm constantly pulled back over to the idea of the brain producing consciousness, which then implies that consciousness has some subtle material properties, but it doesn't feel that way to me. Truth be known, I simply don't know. I'd love a definitive answer before I die though.

[@Resmith18SR]

@@dr_shrinker Ok, cite the specific studies.

[@garychartrand7378]

​​@@stephenowen5229The " subtle material property" that you referred to is the physical wiring in the brain that allows it to be a transceiver. If this is correct, it highly suggests that consciousness is outside of the brain. People talk as if consciousness is a one way thing but it is a two-way thing. It's what allows God to know what is in your heart and mind. Otherwise, if it just picked up consciousness, it would be a receiver instead of what it actually is - a transceiver. One day scientists will find, either on purpose or by accident, the brain circuitry that allows this communication and they will find that it is redundant to each half of the brain. Don't worry about it. When you die you will get the answer to this and any other questions you may have.🙏❤️

[@dr_shrinker]

@@Resmith18SRwant studies? Then do your own research. You doubting me doesn’t make me wrong. I’m not going to spend hours looking for stuff I learned years ago, just to educate you.

[@tomazflegar]

Brain and the mind are not the same thing. Maybe it's time for the scientists to expand their scope of what they are talking about. If you want to discuss something you need the comon ground for discussion. And how can you speak of my subjective if you do not now what fully it means for me? :-P

[@simonhibbs887]

A computer and the running of a program are not the same thing. One is an object, the other is an activity of the object. Objects and their activities are distinct ontological categories, but you can't have an activity without an object or objects performing it. We can't experience the running of a piece of software on a computer, but we can fully describe it in physical terms.

[@dr_shrinker]

Mind is the product of the brain.

[@threestars2164]

Brain = mind.

[@tomazflegar]

@@threestars2164 brain cant have first person experience, for that needs mind. And mind cant experience physical, for that needs brain. They are different side of the coin. Brain cant experience emotions, thoughts, feelings in first person, but can sense. Brain stuff is physical, nind stuff mental

[@ivanbeshkov1718]

Consciousness is a golden box that is better left empty than filled with newspaper clippings.

[@r2c3]

even reaction time of single cell organisms vary to a certain degree from one another and their level of environmental awareness control must originate intracellulary unless the process is fully automated and there's no need for a physical control unit...

[@fabiocaetanofigueiredo1353]

Nice try... but.. nope Her quantifying unconsciousness is like quantifying "cold" I admire, though, how very convinced she is that her hypotheses are correct

[@thomassoliton1482]

The attempted refutation of SG’s model of consciousness using the “zombie” argument is invalid. There is a good reason besides being a tautology. Consciousness appears to require a very complex neurophysiological interaction between innate, hardwired drives and learned models of the world that enable us to adapt to maintain homeostasis - everything from body temperature to blood glucose to sex. It would be impossible to program a “robot” to emulate or respond the same way as any adult - say Elon Musk - at least at the current level of technology. Therefore the supposition that such a machine could be built and would not be conscious is untenable.

[@jjay6764]

It’s simple. If the soul is quantum information then it can’t be destroyed. If we have a quantum mind then are thoughts and memories can never be destroyed. They will always exist in the spacetime quantum error correcting code. 💯💯

[@sdmarlow3926]

Hmmm. Disagree with her on correlation and "seeing consciousness" in the types of brain activity we can capture today. Also don't agree with there being levels of consciousness. It's a bug, not a feature, of evolution. Our self-awareness doesn't come from some external ether or a manifestation of elementery "conscious" elements. We can't see our thoughts being made; only hear them as an echo once they are expressed, using the same wetware we use to understand the expressions of others. She is mostly correct on the feedback loop, between mind and body, but doesn't seem to have the full picture (I'd argue she is already a bit far down the reductionist ladder to see it). We have thoughts in our left hemisphere that trigger a reaction in our body that are "read" by the right hemisphere (root of subjective experience), and then those feelings get associated with those thoughts, leading to those "what it feels like" moments Chalmers and others will never find. This mind-body-mind loop is a kind of neo-dualism, sans the metaphysical and religious aspect.

[@kennethmalafy503]

Consciousness is not a "physical" property, it can not be reduced (sorry guys). Consciousness is the basis of this whole universe, we will never understand it because we are it. To understand something, you need perspective. We lack the necessary perspective to understand it be cause we are it.

[@SandipChitale]

Considering neuro-science and psychology and computer science and AI and AGI are making inroads into slowly understanding more and more on consciousness, it definitely seems like opposing panpsychism and dualism and idealism are becoming fashionable fads again. They will pass.

[@Resmith18SR]

Imagine a Universe where we as individuals could tune into other peoples exact thoughts and inner consciousness like we do with radios and radio frequencies? The irreducibly, private nature of our minds and consciousness is probably the reason we don't have much more conflict in the world than we already have.

[@TJ-kk5zf]

An episode of Gilligan's Island dealt with that

[@Resmith18SR]

@@TJ-kk5zf And we all know what the Professor was thinking about MaryAnn.😂😂😂

[@TJ-kk5zf]

@@Resmith18SR but did she know what I was thinking about her?

[@garychartrand7378]

I think that at our present level of consciousness you are correct. It would be dangerous for conflict because a lot of people operate from Fear. A higher consciousness that would operate from love and Truth would be a very different story.

[@TJ-kk5zf]

@@garychartrand7378 good luck with all that

[@elvill419]

Yes, consciousness is four paired optimizations And a wave function called Balsamic.

[@kuyab9122]

DAFUQ

[@HunterTiberisBojangles]

It's at 10:06 when we get to the meat of the matter...

[@markberman6708]

The efforts to understand she talks about are very important, as is the strive for more knowledge about all things. There are and will be great advantages to moving the needle of understanding the mechanics of the brain and body, we need this, progression on this is a must. But it should be looked at as was the discovery of penicillin... there will be, however, no point at which a scientific finger can be stuck in the brain goo and eureka, we got it. Who we ultimately are is a combination of our physical reality (our bodies) and that which is not physical (our minds if you will).

[@michaelboguski4743]

How about when you're a youngster and you don't have self-consciousness? Only in pubescence when adult hormones express does one develop self-consciousness to the full effect. So it's hormone derived; these extraordinary molecules of evolution run the machine called Consciousness.

[@festeradams3972]

Twelve minutes, 58 seconds Vs. "We don't know enough to know"....

[@matterasmachine]

all matter is conscious. Simple beings that built us through evolution

[@JohnSmith-bq6nf]

That contradicts physics as Sean Caroll points

[@matterasmachine]

@@JohnSmith-bq6nf Sean carol is fairy tales specialist

[@threestars2164]

So people are on the same level as rocks?

[@matterasmachine]

@@threestars2164 Rocks have simpler algorithm.

[@tedgrant2]

Is unconsciousness reducible ? Can you be half unconscious ? I was three quarters gone the other night after drinking a bottle of whisky.

[@arthurwieczorek4894]

I'm wondering about the implications of 'irredicable'. Does it implies 'It works perfectly or it does not work at all' ? It seems to me that if consciousness can work in a reduced capacity then, I guess, it is not irreducible.

[@simonhibbs887]

In this context reducible means explainable by reductionism. This is the idea that we can explain phenomena in terms of the action or behaviour of their parts. In this case that we can explain our mental experiences and behaviour in terms of the activity in the brain. Reduce as in make smaller or simpler is a different meaning.

[@aroemaliuged4776]

If it isn’t irreducible it is Ordained 😅

[@treasurepoem]

9:45 I think what Susan Greenfield said goes along with what I've been saying for awhile that a brain is also like a consciousness filter and receiver that besides running the body it tones down and differentiates our consciousness from among animals from it's more powerful and original source which IMO is God Almighty. It may also control our abilities to imagine or dream and maybe even our intelligence, intuition or any external knowledge not known before, and in animals their instincts.

[@tez383]

So much of what Greenfield espouses is based on materialist ontological/metaphysical assumptions. Rather than being arguments for materialism, most of what she says simply shows her unconscious bias for materialism. In philosophy, that's called 'begging the question'. Meaning that she's using the very thing in question as the foundation her argument. AKA circular reasoning. Let's keep in mind that there are no equations or experiments that provide substantial evidence for materialism, much less prove it. Yet she acts as if every other theory requires proof while materialism gets a pass, or in her terms, a get out of jail free card.

[@philosopher0076]

Agreed. She also neglected to take NDEs into consideration and they are in fact, evidence, data. SMH.

[@threestars2164]

Yeah sure bud, materialism is wrong everything is supernatural!

[@tez383]

@@threestars2164 No one said anything about supernatural. We're talking about consciousness and whether or not consciousness or matter is fundamental. That's all. Supernatural has nothing to do with the conversation. Bringing it in is a co-op out; low-hanging fruit for those who have nothing of value to add. It's largely used as a blunt tool to invalidate anything that doesn't fit into the materialist paradigm, which, again, is entirely assumed to be true with no actual emprical evidence. Do you understand that? Additionally, the entire concept of 'supernatural' only makes sense from a materialist perspective, by and large. A lot of what materialism deems to be 'supernatural' is, really, just natural phenomena that don't fit into its ASSUMED understanding of reality.

[@RyanK-100]

A little boring, but maybe the most important video I have seen on this topic. I get Greenfield's argument. We would not be acting the same (optimized for survival and reproduction) without the inner states. The inner states ARE the evolved, running processes of the brain.

[@scienceexplains302]

*Panpsychism, cosmic consciousness, and souls don’t explain consciousness,* either. They have much bigger problems than brain-generated consciousness. If they ever address that on this channel , I have missed it. The assumption seems to be that if we cant explain brain-generated consciousness in great detail, then the explanation must be something we have almost no evidence for. It’s a false dichotomy fallacy.

[@threestars2164]

Why would something that is occurring to us all the time be something supernatural in the first place?

[@scienceexplains302]

@@threestars2164 It is an analogy. Just because something can’t be explained by the physical components, doesn’t mean the process is supernatural.

[@Zerpentsa6598]

She's conscious that she doesn't really KNOW. She has some theories but no one really knows.

[@phk2000]

Two minds trying to grasp the un-graspable..... Like trying to get your mind to understand infinity. Can't be done!

[@demitrac.9082]

I'm still waiting for neuroscience to provide a reasonable explanation as to WHY nature found it necessary to insert inner qualia ??? "we are a way for the Universe to experience itself"

[@longcastle4863]

My guess is that inner qualia gives some advantage for adaptation and survival over a purely stimulus response kind of processing of environmental and internal stimuli. And thus it continued and continues to be Selected for by Nature with generally increasing complex over time.

[@threestars2164]

There is hardly a metaphor to describe the irrelevance of our lives and the universe agrees considering how hostile it is to life.

[@ADAMSIXTIES]

"Get out of jail free card". What the hell?

[@stellarwind1946]

Matter is not subjective. There’s your first problem in reductionism.

[@simonhibbs887]

Matter is not an activity, yet you cannot have an activity without something to perform it. So activities and objects are distinct ontological categories, yet indivisible. They are different views on the same reality. If subjective awareness is an activity then reductionism is applicable to understanding it.

[@michaelstacey5298]

Of course matter is an activity. That's the most fundamental understanding of matter

[@simonhibbs887]

@@michaelstacey5298 Actually that’s a good point. I’m trying to play ball with the object/subject distinction for the sake of argument. In philosophy objects and activities are different ontological categories, and I’m formulating my argument in terms of ‘playing by the rules’ in that arena. In other words even if for the sake of argument I accept the terms stellarwind’s objection is made in, it’s still wrong. To go down your rabbit hole, quantum objects are continuous transformations of state. However the equations of QM also resolve to discrete states. So we can talk about discrete states (objects) in QM and we can talk about transformations of state (activities). So while I agree the usual ontological categories grossly simplify the underlying reality, I think it is possible to do a conceptual mapping between the physical reality and the philosophical ontology. Fun digression, thanks.

[@0-by-1_Publishing_LLC]

(2:30) *SG: **_"And this extra thing is something that we as brain scientists can't touch."_* ... A brain scientist who feels they can adequately explain the existence of consciousness would be like an oil paint manufacturer claiming to be able to explain the existence of Michaelangelo's Sistine Chapel. Regardless of my opinion, I like how she communicates her position.

[@simonhibbs887]

I don't think this analogy holds. I think the equivalent of the oil paint manufacturer would be an organic chemist. They study the chemical materials that organisms including their brains are made of, but they do not study the function of an organism. A brain scientists studies not just the materials of the brain, they study the actual function of the living brain and it's neuronal architecture. They ask people the experiences they have, ask them to perform various tasks, all while recording and studying the signals in the brain at the same time. Which signals come before, at the same time, and after decisions and reported experiences. This is more analogous to a biographer watching Michaelangelo actually paining the Sistine Chapel, noting what he does before during and after a painting session, and asking him about the materials and techniques he is using. All while videoing the whole thing. Is that the same as actually painting the Sistine Chapel? No of course not. But if you do want to learn how to do that, it's a good way to start.

[@PetraKann]

Oil paint??? The Sistine Chapel is a “fresco”. The entire ceiling is a fresco, which is an ancient method for painting murals that relies upon a chemical reaction between damp lime plaster and water-based pigments to permanently fuse the work into the wall.

[@0-by-1_Publishing_LLC]

@@simonhibbs887 *"I don't think this analogy holds. I think the equivalent of the oil paint manufacturer would be an organic chemist. They study the chemical materials that organisms including their brains are made of, but they do not study the function of an organism."* ... Okay, I'll accept your refutation. Since the "brain scientist" is purported as potentially being able to explain where "consciousness" comes from, who or what would be the art-world equivalent for explaining where Michaelangelo's Sistine Chapel masterpiece came from? *"This is more analogous to a biographer watching Michaelangelo actually paining the Sistine Chapel, noting what he does before during and after a painting session, and asking him about the materials and techniques he is using."* ... Then afterward, this biographer should be able to simply mimic the mechanics Michaelangelo used to paint the Sistine Chapel and create a masterpiece of his own, correct? *"Is that the same as actually painting the Sistine Chapel? No of course not. But if you do want to learn how to do that, it's a good way to start"* ... What would be the equivalent for a brain scientist who studies how people demonstrate their self-aware consciousness? In other words, how would a brain scientist teach someone (or something) how to demonstrate consciousness after watching someone (or something) that already demonstrates one? *Takeaway:* Consciousness isn't like bowling. With bowling, you can observe how someone holds the ball, how they roll it, and where they aim, but that doesn't translate to how someone creates a masterpiece or how a self-aware consciousness is made manifest.

[@0-by-1_Publishing_LLC]

@@PetraKann *"The entire ceiling is a fresco, which is an ancient method for painting murals that relies upon a chemical reaction between damp lime plaster and water-based pigments to permanently fuse the work into the wall."* ... Thanks for the Wikipedia quote. Just swap out "pigment manufacturer" for "oil paint manufacturer" in my opening comment and you're good to go!

[@NeilEvans-xq8ik]

I think consciousness is explainable, but not in terms of physical mechanisms. I think physical mechanisms processing information can explain the contents of consciousness, but the sheer being-ness of consciousness is related to a level of reality more fundamental than both self, world and information. I think we'll see a recovery of the kind of metaphysics we had in philosophies like neoplatonism and the Classical Theism of David Bentley Hart, etc. I think consciousness in people is a necessary feature of Being itself. Existence cannot exist without consciousness of itself. It's like a great tree, with Being being the trunk and all of us are as branches flowing out from it and ultimately returning to it. Consciousness is caused by Being itself, in a vertical type of causation, rather than being caused by previous states of the physical world, in a more horizontal sense of causation. Sorry. I'm rambling. Just my guess. I'd appreciate any critique.

[@threestars2164]

None of that is scientific.

[@adamsawyer1763]

Very odd thought from this guest - a continuum of consciousness. Makes no sense. Sure, you can easily imagine different conscious entities being conscious of more or fewer feelings or states. You can in fact experience a single conscious entity being conscious of more or less feelings. However, i don't think it makes the slightest sense to consider a gradient of degrees of consciousness itself. Either an entity is conscious of something, anything at all, or it's not conscious. The fact it may be conscious of more or fewer things now than earlier or than some other different entity is or was is irrelevant to the presence of consciousness itself. She is muddling up what one is conscious of with whether or not it's conscious at all. She wouldn't understand or register my point though because she is assuming a-priori that consciousness itself is generated by the brain. If you assume that's true then yes, her statements make sense. If however you don't assume that's the case, as i don't, then you can easily see that while what she suggests might be true it certainly isn't necessarily the case AND you're open to some quite different hypotheses.

[@BugRib]

Neuroscience isn't about _explaining_ consciousness, and it's not even trying to (even if some brain scientists mistakenly think that it is). So I don't know what "get out of jail free" card she's talking about. And it doesn't matter if it doesn't help neuroscience to acknowledge that there's a legitimate "Hard Problem of Consciousness". Whether it helps them or not, there is in fact a Hard Problem. And most scientists and philosophers agree that there is a Hard Problem, even if many or most of them don't see the implications of this Hard Problem--namely that physicalism can't logically be true. IMHO, of course.

[@BugRib]

That said, I like her.

[@BugRib]

...But based on her "way out" of the Hard Problem idea, she clearly doesn't have the first clue about what makes the Hard Problem hard. IMHO.

[@BugRib]

I mean, she's really smart and everything, but for some reason, some brilliant people have this weird blind spot where they just can't grasp what the Hard Problem of Consciousness actually is. One thing's for sure, she's completely missing the point of the zombie argument, most likely because she can't "see" the Hard Problem. What is this Hard Problem blindness all about? Are some people philosophical zombies? Is she a zombie? I'm actually kind of serious. 🤔 Okay, I'll stop talking to myself now.

[@dianneforit5409]

“All brontosauruses are thin at one end; much, much thicker in the middle and then thin again at the far end. That is the theory that I have, and which is mine, and what it is, too.” ― Anne Elk 1974 The Brain Monitors the World, the Mind Models Possible Worlds Although 'consciousness' is plainly an umbrella term, one useful definition is - ‘being aware of being aware’ So, why is that relevant? Well, the frequency of whole gene duplication is comparable to that of single base mutation (point mutation). Indeed, the actual process of evolution is more correctly the consequence of point mutations subsequent to gene duplication. It is the fundamental mechanism by which higher animals vary their genomes and just one more way creationist parables misrepresent/misunderstand evolution and genetic mutation. Nonetheless, this replication of segments or chunks of a chromosome (large-scale chromosomal rearrangement) automatically duplicates any genes that are present and thereafter, for those genes, two separate regions on the chromosome become capable of producing the same gene/protein product. However, as each continues to remain under the same feedback control for enzyme synthesis, the system continues to operate fairly reliably. More importantly, as there’s now a backup there exists the opportunity for one of those DNA strands/sequences/genes to vary slightly, although initially its action will typically be on the same organ to produce a similar outcome. Over time, however, organs and/or biological processes can develop additional attributes and eventually entirely separate systems may come into existence. Necessity is not Sufficiency Now, we may not know exactly what consciousness is, but oddly we do know what it is dependent upon - more calories. Greater neural complexity requires more energy. Indeed, the real reason that other animals haven't attained equivalent consciousness is not because humans are the fortunate recipients of some fluke of genetic mutation, similar 'starting' mutations have and are happening all the time in many other species. Our road to consciousness uniquely ENDURED because each stepping stone on the path was energetically supported. (I know why but I ain’t tellin’) The critical point here is you can't just acquire a bigger/smarter/comscious brain simply because you need one. Irrespective of its ultimate potential, to endure, every step of encephalization, which only occurs courtesy of natural variation, must be energetically balanced by the immediate environment, not future possibilties. Basically, 'natural selection' can only 'select' from that which already exists. The obvious implication being, you can't use the 'behaviours' and 'intellect' provided by a large brain, in order to accumulate the energy required to support a large brain, before you first get that large brain. And, to get large/r brains to first endure and spread, not selectively, but stochastically, through both the population and future generations there must first be sufficient excess energy to support greater general variation. Otherwise, if along the way, you put your extra energy into a larger brain, but your neighbours put their extra energy into reproduction, then your cleverness will inevitably dissipate and disappear into the wider community. (So, why didn't at least some still stick their extra energy into expanding the general population? Again, I know why but I ain’t tellin’.) Nonetheless, this all implies that prior to achieving/evolving 'consciousness', there must have been an initial excess of energy to permit a non-random, large-scale increase in a number of specific cerebral cortex neurons, not the energetic converse. And, statistically, the most likely mechanism for this to have occurred would have been whole gene duplication. In fact, the alternative, tweaking regulator genes to randomly pack in more neurons everywhere across the CNS is more likely a recipe for disaster. So What? So, what would happen if the genes associated with constructing the cerebral cortex neural architecture that integrates and initiates unconscious responses to the information from our physical body’s organs and senses underwent large-scale duplication? Although obviously not consciousness by any definition, with further mutation there could still be the potential for two slightly different sensory feedback systems. Perhaps two independent but similar sets of neural pathways operating in tandem, but slightly out of time/phase/sync. One monitoring the world, the other monitoring the monitoring. A possible path to being aware of being aware? The admittedly questionable quality of the preceding paragraphs aside, five aspects of human conscious do nonetheless defy dispute ― It exists. It consumes calories. It has only recently been attained. It resides in a biological mind, and - It is essentially the product of gene variations shaped by Natural Selection into advantageous integrated or coadapted gene complexes. If this were not the case, if 'consciousness' were free from the laws of physics and/or biology, then why aren't other less neuro-complex animals commenting in this column? In the end however, perhaps the real answer is best epitomised by this very program. Because if you're asking what's the unique adaptive advantage of human consciousness, then plainly the 'question' is the answer.

[@vm-bz1cd]

I LOVE it when Kuhn plays devil's advocate (although I think secretly and deep down he is a spiritualist) takes the "opposite" side of the materialist argument and win's easily! 😀

[@dvdrtrgn]

Flat-earth believers won easily at one time. Do you really feel like you’re winning?

[@brianlebreton7011]

Great video. I think however that correlations between collaborating groups of neurons only deepens our knowledge of how the brain enacts consciousness. I think that once that list of correlations gives a gradient of levels of consciousness, then several NDE-brain complete-neural-activity-measurements need to be captured for scientists to assert the absolute requirement for some minimal neural activity for continued life/consciousness. ie a flatlined brain has to be found conducting this type of neural activity despite being flatlined to account for continuous conscious experience. If there’s no measurable activity anywhere, then I believe scientists are grasping at any explanation rational or not to discount these experiences.

[@longcastle4863]

Near death experiences have been investigated. And although meaningful to the people who have them, they have otherwise been found to not provide the kind of data needed to address the question of life after death. Also, regarding your comment about scientists not wanting to look at uncomfortable results: are you kidding?! Any discovery proving life after death would be considered the most important discovery in all of history and be a shoe-in for the Nobel Prize. On top of that the discoverers would become very wealthy and famous, with the books sales and speaking tours, and automatic tenure at any University of their choosing. No scientist would turn a blind eye to that kind of discovery. The impulse to hide from the truth, is a religious impulse. Not a scientific one.

[@simonhibbs887]

There's a study "Surges of Electroencephalogram Activity at the Time of Death: A Case Series" on pubmed. It reports on 6 examples of patients that died under ECG monitoring, in which a burst of brain activity was recorded after their blood pressure had fallen to zero. "The BIS spikes last for a few minutes at maximum, but usually last between 30-180 seconds." A BIS "processes electroencephalographic signals to obtain a value, which reflects the level of consciousness of the patient." So it seems dying patients actually display quite considerably elevated levels of brain activity for a significant period of time after their blood pressure has collapsed.

[@caricue]

I hate it when they talk about human philosophical zombies as if that could be a real thing. I'm glad she shut him down with that talk. You can't just make up some nonsense and then use it to make a point. In fact, all the AI that is being created today are indeed philosophical zombies and we see how limited they are. There has to be "someone in there" in order to have understanding, knowledge or intention. All the AI can do is be a clever simulation.

[@ultimateman55]

Agreed. The philosophical zombie almost certainly cannot exist. And, even if it did, it may very well be that we could never, even in principle, confirm whether or not it does or doesn't have inner experience, just like we won't be able to know for sure if/when the first conscious computer is created. I also really liked that she talked about "bringing the brain back into the body" because too often people talk like brains and bodies can exist separately when quite clearly that is not the case. The details here, the intricacies and complexity of the body-brain system, clearly matter a great deal and cannot be ignored in the search for the understanding of conscious experienc.e

[@caricue]

@@ultimateman55 So far, you can easily tell that all the current AI's are zombies. It would even be easier in a human. Just ask them a question that doesn't have an established answer and they will be stuck. Eventually they will use brute force and clever workarounds to make the AI close enough to get the job done, but a clever interlocutor will always be able to use their imagination to trick it into revealing that there is no one home.

[@protonman8947]

The causation-correlation reply is a red herring. Causation is implied when an antecedent mechanism is found to be both sufficient and necessary for a given outcome. Neural activity fits that bill. We have known for nearly a century that external electrical stimulation of a locus on the cortex will engender a novel conscious experience. Blocking neural activity eliminates consciousness. There is therefore no sound reason to speculate ad hoc regarding additional "spooky" causation that arrives somehow from the "aether", without there being any evidence for such. That manner of thinking is the residue of dogmatic religious dualism that many people appear unable to relinquish. Susan Greenfield did well in this interview.

[@dnn8350]

She completely misses the point of the so-called zombie argument. Nobody is suggesting that zombies actually exist, because, as she rightly points out, their constitutional insensibity entails that their structure and function couldn't literally be identical with that of an actual human and consequently they are, by assumption, an impossibility in the actual world. But that's not the point. The real point is that the so-called zombie is, necessarily, a closed and complete description of the physiological structure and function of a human *in purely physical and behavioural terms*. From the point of view of any science derived from the closed and complete laws of physics, the "zombie account" must therefore be a similarly complete account of human structure and function - including its evolutionary origin - *without any recourse to "inner states" as an explanation*. Consequently, from this physicalist perspective, which is the one from which she makes her arguments, consciousness as such an "inner state" does not and cannot participate in the explanation of human behaviour.

[@simonhibbs887]

Suppose you have a conscious visual experience and you write about what it meant to you, thus causing a physical action in the world. At the same time we use a scanning device that traces out the physical activity and it's causal propagation in your brain, from the optical signal through your eye, to the brain’s cognitive processes, to the neural signal that activated the motor neurons that caused you to write. We would have established that your conscious experience caused the physical activity, and we would have established that the physical processes in your brain caused the same physical activity. That would demonstrate an identity between the conscious experience and the physical neurological processes.

[@dnn8350]

@@simonhibbs887 But that's not the point of the zombie argument. By your own description, the generalised neurological account, supervening as it does on physics, is already a complete and causally closed explanation of behaviour, which is everything that requires explanation on the assumption of physicalism. Your assertion that it further "causes" an "inner state" that is itself causally irrelevant, takes us right out of this paradigm into completely unexplained territory. A rigorous explanation of *my* or *your* behaviour doesn't depend on or require anything other than the assumption of the paradigmatic chain of objective physical causality. Your suggestion that the objective physical account is, nevertheless, somehow "identical" to the subjective inner state simply hijacks the term to stand for something inexplicable. I've seen this arm wavy sense of "identity" simplistically analogised with the identity of Mark Twain and Sam Clemens, or the morning and evening stars, but whereas a schoolchild would have no difficulty in easily grasping how these alternative descriptions refer to identical physical entities, the same can hardly be coherently argued for objective brain function and subjective inner state. The fundamental problem, which has been recognised for centuries, and has not changed with the onward march of the physical sciences, is why or how causally closed and complete physical processes should appear to be accompanied by inner states that are themselves, moreover, necessarily causally irrelevant. Either it is the case that some entirely novel and unforeseen physical principle is at work, or the paradigm itself has run out of road.

[@HighPeakVideo]

@@simonhibbs887 Ordinarily the visual experience would be had without reporting the consciousness of it. So the cognitive processes that report the conscious experience would be additional monitoring of the actual raw experience processes. But these monitoring processes could only report on the functional aspects of the raw processes that form the content of the experience. However, that monitoring of the raw experience information processes could be done externally - such as by your scanner. The implication of what you say is that if the brain's monitoring processes could analyse and report the conscious experience had by the raw experience processes, then the scanner too could observe the experience - there would be a third person observation of the first person experience. Do you regard that as credible?

[@simonhibbs887]

@@dnn8350 I dont think inner states are causally irrelevant, in fact my account above only works because I say that the inner experience causes us to write or talk about how it feels. If that were not true, and the inner experience was not causal, then there would be nothing for the physical activity to be identical to. On the one hand I think the account I gave is a complete argument. It’s not possible to say that we write about how something felt without agreeing that the feeling caused the writing. Yet we also know that the physical causal chain of events in the brain caused the writing. At that point physicalism is simply proven true. We know in this case that the physical activity and mental activity are identical. We don’t even need to know how or why to know that logically this must be true. However I’m an optimist and I think we will eventually be able to explain how or why it is true. Everything about conscious experience seems to be informational. In an information processing system we say information such as a picture of my daughter caused a an activity, such as face recognition software tagging the photo with her name, and we say that electrons flowing through transistors caused the same activity. These are just different ways to talk about the same activity. The fact it’s a picture of my daughter caused the tagging, and the physical process in the computer caused the tagging. Yet we know that processing information is an entirely physical process. Perceptions, concepts, experiences, these are all about something and information is about something. So it seems to me that experiences are informational activities or processes. We perceive, introspect, process, transform and integrate information in specific ways, and these introspective informational transformations are the content of experience. We don’t fully understand it yet, but we’re continuously making progress with models such as Global Workspace Theory, Integrated Information Theory and others.

[@dnn8350]

So which is causing the subsequent behaviour, the neurology or the inner state? If the latter, there is a seamless continuity of physical causality. If the former, there is a profound explanatory gap. If both, overt causal overdetermination. At this point "identical in some way" explains precisely nothing. In Greenfield's own phrase, it's just saying "And now a miracle happens". Don't you see the point? It's what Robert was trying to get her to acknowledge, but he's too practiced in these arguments to continue to press the point with someone lost in their particular paradigm. The point, to reiterate, is that physicalism is a closed and complete causal system that can make no appeal to supernumerary phenomena that don't and can't participate in its system of causality. So when you appeal to "inner states" or, equally, "information", you are attempting to add these intrinsically mentalistic concepts to a physical paradigm that simply can't accommodate them. What is needed is a paradigm shift. This conversation didn't produce one.

[@maxpower252]

No.

[@longcastle4863]

For those saying consciousness is some other kind of thing we haven’t discovered yet, it seems to me the biggest hurdle they have to get over is the fact that consciousness only occurs in biological life. And is clearly and fully a product of Biological Evolution, with varying levels of consciousness clearly evident and dependent to a large degree on where one sits on the phylogenetic tree.

[@threestars2164]

No of course not, there was a time when there was no consciousness on this planet. We evolved from non-conscious life.

[@longcastle4863]

I think consciousness at its most basic level just means to be aware. Of external environmental stimuli through our five sensory perceptual systems and of internal stimuli (our needs, wants, hopes, preferences, emotions, dreams, fears, moral code, ethics, memory, etc) by means of reflection.

[@pazitor]

Anyone who has undergone total anesthesia knows that in that state, the inner clock stops, the mind is off. Upon recovery, the self pieces itself together, a bit off kilter from the lack of a recent memory connecting to "now". Mind is material, 100%.

[@Resmith18SR]

But it's still mind. Mind is not identical to whatever anesthesia does to the brain. Are drug induced hallucinations identical to the drug affecting the neurons in the brain?

[@kiers1970]

Yes. That's totally what I felt every time I've been under. Once before I went under I had a brief conversation with the anaesthesiologist (?) I'm off into a time machine I said...strangely, to me maybe! she said no one had ever expressed this before.

[@Resmith18SR]

​​​@@kiers1970Like the particular dream I had last night. Unpredictable, and like I entered a different world connected to issues that I'm not aware of or thinking about when I'm awake. Also awareness of time is distorted so when I awake after dreaming it feels like many more hours have passed than what actually did.

[@dr_shrinker]

@@Resmith18SRyou might not have been aware of, but you did have prior experience with. It’s not possible to imagine, recall, or remember a thing you have never experienced. Even sub conscious experiences and thoughts are derivatives of actual experience

[@Tritamer]

How can we tell mine is above it? Are you suggesting mind is present for it, but not affected by the anesthesia?

[@Maxwell-mv9rx]

Neurosience doesnt know How figure out conscieuness so Far . She describes consciousness keep out neurosience proceedings. It is lacking emperism verification.

[@OfficialGOD]

lmao

[@philosopher0076]

This is an old interview, probably 15 years ago, but I still am shocked by how this woman just totally does not take NDEs ( Near Death Experiences ) and the decades of hard scientific tesearch that's been done on them into deep consideration. She is a typical hard materialist.

[@Corteum]

A rock-hard material dogmatist who is too scared to admit that materialism - as a theory of consciousness - is a dying cause.

[@philosopher0076]

@@Corteum Agree.

[@Maclabhruinn]

"This woman", Baroness Susan Greenfield, is a famous distinguished scholar and long time Professor at Oxford University, where she made significant advances in the treatment of Parkinson's and Alzheimer's. She has also (obviously) taken a keen interest in the neurobiology of consciousness. I can't speak to her current position; but having listened to some of her recent lectures, I am sure she still takes a materialist approach to the mind. And why not? Near Death Experiences are as amenable to a rigorously scientific analysis as any other mental phenomena; they haven't conclusively invalidated a basically materialist understanding of consciousness. The NDE evidence might have persuaded your opinion; and if so, fair enough; but it's not like some utterly conclusive counter-evidence that she is willfully ignoring.

[@uninspired3583]

Lol, ndes. I don't think we agree on what "hard science" is.

[@NeedsEvidence]

@philosopher0076 It looks like you are a typical hard non-materialist not understanding decades of hard scientific research. Also, why would NDEs point at anything outside a physicality of an almost dying brain? Amazing how touchy people get when confronted with the possibility of understanding consciousness on purely physical grounds. Hurt ego?