Understanding Consciousness with Antonio Damasio

The Michael Shermer Show # 221
In recent decades, many philosophers and cognitive scientists have declared the problem of consciousness unsolvable, but Antonio Damasio is convinced that recent findings across multiple scientific disciplines have given us a way to understand consciousness and its significance for human life.
In his latest work, Feeling & Knowing, Damasio helps us understand why being conscious is not the same as sensing, why nervous systems are essential for the development of feelings, and why feeling opens the way to consciousness writ large.
He combines the latest discoveries in various sciences with philosophy and discusses his original research, which has transformed our understanding of the brain and human behavior.
SUPPORT THE PODCAST
If you enjoy the podcast, please show your support by making a $5 or $10 monthly donation.
www.skeptic.com/donate/
SPONSOR
Wondrium
wondrium.com/shermer
#michaelshermer
#skeptic
Listen to The Michael Shermer Show via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, iHeartRadio, and TuneIn.
www.skeptic.com/michael-sherm...

[@ctpaul1261]

Shermer is an animal with all these videos! :-) Thanks

[@Ac-ip5hd]

Yeah, and he is so good at intuitively remembering quotes, books, and recent interviews in a coherent manner that links up relevant points that should be discussed in context. It’s actually kind of scary the way he can do that without just manically associating all over the place, and shows a serious working memory. I think people trying to uplink all these higher order corners of the internet should really be talking to him more, and realize how important this talent could be to our current discussion.

[@patriciaking8876]

John Vervaeke (Cog sci U of Toronto) has an interesting formulation about the evolution of self deception : he calls it "parasitic processing" . Parasitic because it has co-evolved with other cognitive processes/reactions that have positive evolutionary consequences. Thanks for this discussion with Dr. Damasio. He and his wife Hannah have added so much data to our knowledge of our minds/brains/selves.

[@Ac-ip5hd]

Yes Dr. Vervaeke’s work is amazing and also very important. Anyone should check out his Awakening From the Meaning Crisis series, and the Untangling the World Knot of Consciousness, and Elusive I series. He has a great meditation course too, all free, and a really good Mind Matters discussion with Jordan Peterson, and a second one that had some issues with Dr Peterson’s end of things, but got extremely interesting at the end, and that and Vervaeke’s discussion with Dr. McGilChrist are both supposed to be ongoing dialogues.

[@FranciscoBautista196]

Very encouraging listening to Damasio. Great talk. Reading his book now.

[@manuelmatos1962]

Bravo, António! Thank's for your sagesse!

[@Ac-ip5hd]

Awesome, Damasio is so important to our discussion right now.

[@SpiritualPsychotherapyServices]

Because? 🤔

[@Ac-ip5hd]

@@SpiritualPsychotherapyServices Because he is at the forefront of modern cognitive neuroscience that is being integrated into the 4E cognitive neuroscience movement, he like VS Ramachandran is taken very seriously by the vast majority of the scientific community, moving us beyond Cartesian scientism, but not overshooting the mark to make unproovable( or deniable) ontological and metaphysical claims. He is constantly referenced across the board from the science community, to the centrist and humanities types (making a case for culture, as he does in his The Strange Order of things), to someone like Iaian McGilchrist, the naturalistic position ( as we see with John Vervaeke, and Gregg Hinriques trying to make a case for a convergent relationship between multiple fields of knowledge and psychology schools), is consonant with much of what a more centered traditionalist/classic liberal like Jordan Peterson is pushing (and the elements many honest people who oppose him are in converging agreement with), as well as the full out Neo Jungian and post Jungians. Erik D Goodwyn heavily references Damasio, Ramachandran, and others that preceded the 4E movement in making a case for archetypes, James Hillman’s post Jungian student Robert Bosnak heavily references him in his case for Embodiment and Embodied Imagination, and has moved from a use of Damasio to McGilchrist in a still very opposing position to Jordan Peterson to a shared use of Iain McgilChrist that draws a bit from Damasio, and has many shared areas between these opposing views that can find a shared conciliatory space for meaning, culture, and religion, while being cognizant of it’s dangers and dogmatism, and offering sober critique of it. Damasio also, in Looking for Spinoza makes a strong case that Bosnak and Vervaeke both make for Spinoza in a correction of our Enlightenment errors that still allow us to use and draw from reason, while affording spirituality, culture that integrates a degree of personalism, and just downright getting a better look at human nature. He, like McGilchrist can also meet some of the critiques of both the complete Idealist and Objective extremes and makes a good working relationship between those elements of reality, without stripping the work of all meaning and personal specificity, but not devolving into a homoncular, solipsistic, “design your own universe” idealism, that at bottom has to eventually cut itself off of it’s own scientific arguments against reality and for subjective quailia to ultimately dictate reality. I don’t think it’s an accident that the two extreme opposing views in Deepock Chopra and Sam Harris share the same favorite neuroscientist: Donald Hoffman, after their case against reality the both set up a new language game and structure to dictate it.

[@judiderman7104]

@@Ac-ip5hd OK, you convinced me. Is it stress in Antonio since his new book?

[@Ac-ip5hd]

@@judiderman7104 From listening to the podcast overview the book it is, because it distills all his other work and addresses issues of equivocation and terms for consciousness where we are trying to get some consensus. I’ve read his other works, but not this one. From this discussion it sounds like a great place to start, but I’m also very partial to Looking For Spinoza, and for the cultural aspect The Strange Order of Things.

[@lincolngreen1344]

Holy ......dope! 26 years since Decarte's Error and the path is delineated so clearly. The return of the whole human.

[@cristinaegas]

Always Facinating Dr. Antonio Damasio! i discover him 30 years ago with the book L'Erreur de Decartes'..relief my feeling and arm my intelect living in a racional country like France.. Dr. Damasio's inteligence, reserch and touching way he explain à deep conversation make him unique.. Thank you Michel for bring us this Universal Marveleus Wonderful Dr. Damasio ❤

[@jamescoll130]

So much great content on the channel these days! Well done skeptic.

[@SpiritualPsychotherapyServices]

Are you a THEIST? 🤔 If so, what are the reasons for your BELIEF in God? 🤓

[@davidhunt7427]

@@SpiritualPsychotherapyServices No one else is apparently going to bite,.. so I will. Although, given I've made similar comments in other KZbin comments,.. I am not entirely confident that the *KZbinCommentBots* will leave these thoughts alone. But,.. they might,.. and I hope you and others may find my thoughts to be somewhat provocative and useful. Mostly I find I don't so much believe in God as I find I thirst for belief in God. Is it a damnable offense that I care more for righteousness than I call for salvation? Why is it a common supposition that if God does not exist,.. there can be no meaning? I would love a discussion about this because apparently this statement is regarded as a self-evident axiom that has always baffled me. This sentiment seems like a *_non sequitur_* to me,.. so would anyone here care to explain it to me here. It seems similar to a small child absolutely insisting that the adults around them not do anything else at all except pay attention to what the child is doing. Perhaps it would help to understand me to know that being involuntarily autistic (if the science is to be believed, I was conceived this way), as well as being a severely depressive person (my mother was manic-depressive; I, fortunately, only got the depressive attribute, but gained the autistic), the Hindu idea that Nirvana comes at the end of the cycle of reincarnation, and consists then of oblivion only,.. has always been very attractive to me. No hypergamous women ever wanted to marry me (can't really blamed them considering how much involuntary unemployment I've had to endure), and whenever such women do marry autistic men,.. it soon ends in divorce (check the statistics for yourself; it's horrifying). But I also have to ask,... *_Does anyone REALLY want to exist forever?!?_* The Universe we inhabit is some 13.8 billions years old,.. will probably go on for several more trillion years we are told,.. and to never die in it would seem to be condemned to a living purgatory, at best! Am I wrong? What is there about eternity in Heaven that would make it endurable,.. much less gratifying; the only answer I've ever been able to imagine for myself is that I would be in the actual presence of God forever. Maybe that should be enough,.. but it isn't. One lifetime being autistic is already more than enough for me. I promise you,.. an eternity being autistic would be a living hell for me, as I suspect it would also be for you. And if God were to make me so I wasn't autistic anymore,.. that would be nice,.. but whatever was the result,.. it definitely wouldn't be *_me_* anymore,.. no matter how much I might otherwise wish it could be so. *Who Loves God More...* The one who seeks God for righteousness sake, or for salvation’s sake. Over my years I have imagined myself in several religious fantasies. I’ve imagined myself at the Sanhedrin trial of Jesus en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanhedrin_trial_of_Jesus where I would ask my own questions of Jesus and of Caiaphas. I have also often asked myself if the following proposition were offered to me, should I accept it. The proposition is that I agree to go to hell alone without even a tormentor for company, with no further possibility of achieving salvation, to be lost and forgotten by everyone, even by God; in exchange everyone else in hell achieves salvation. Even Satan and the one third of the angels that fell with him go back to God. Even the absolutely unrighteous get forgiven and go back to God. Notice that my question is not would I accept this proposition, but should I accept it. Would you? What do you think you should do if offered this choice. What would Jesus do, you think? I am asking, would you be willing to be the forgotten and neglected Christ who does not get to rise to Heaven or ever be praised for your sacrifice, but instead achieves salvation for everyone else, except yourself? *_I have not served God from fear of hell for I should be a wretched hireling if I served Him from fear; nor from love of heaven for I should be a bad servant if I served for what is given; I have served Him only for love of Him and desire for Him._* ~ al-Hasan al-Basri (642-728) When I was six and attending Baptist Sunday school, my class was given a lecture on heaven and hell, death and the afterlife. When the lecture was over, I asked, *Is there free will in the afterlife?* Apparently no one else had ever asked this question. I was told that, _No, there is no free will in the afterlife because then good deeds could be done in hell, while bad deeds could be done in heaven. But all that is already sorted out before anyone dies, so there is no room for moral agency after one is dead._ So then I asked, *If I don’t take my body with me, and I don’t take my free will with me, why am I supposed to care about having an afterlife at all?* The reaction I got was very surprising at the time, and at 66 it is still surprising. In response, I was told, _Don’t ask such silly questions, and stop being a smartass._ That was the end of the discussion. It was not long before I made myself a prayer, which I have always kept in my heart and in my mind. *_Dear Lord, let it be your will that will direct my life. Not as I would choose, nor as any person would choose, nor as any religious text would choose, but as you, dear Lord, would choose for me. This being done, I am content._* I am now curious. Although I may dot my I’s and cross my T’s differently from you, in your own faith, do I sound like someone who would be damned for my honest trust and questions? *_Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear._* ~ Thomas Jefferson I believe that as a racist bigot must die to the person he has been when he hates, the unrighteous person must die to the person they have been before they can turn toward the one true God. Such a death is frightening because it requires one to abandon the only sense of identity one has ever had. It requires one to leap into an unknown stranger’s identity and to trust it will be better than what one has always known. For the fear of hell I could not do such a thing. I doubt many of us could. For the love of righteousness I can do such a thing easily. As naturally as a simple child loves and is loved by their parents. I am asking the question *Why do I love God?* Do I stand before God with the attitude that he is the biggest, baddest, tyrant of all? Do I respect God for fear’s sake or for admiration’s sake? If I could serve God best by losing my own personal salvation, then should I? I ask you… What is the prize? --------------------------------------------- I wrote the above originally back in 1986, and while my views have evolved somewhat, I still substantially agree with what I stated above. I've been told that my greatest, and most dangerous heresy, is that I like God,... more than I love God, or fear God, or hate God,... I like God. I feel comfortable about God in the same manner that I am comfortable with all of existence. And my most happy and most selfish desire is to give myself to righteousness for it is only by submitting myself to that which is greater than myself can I ever hope to find myself at all. But what is righteousness? Is it submission to authority? And which authority do we submit to? Is it always the same standard of value in all cases, or does right and wrong depend upon the context always? Does morality require supernaturalism in order to be perfectly grounded? The thought that a repentant Nazi (with *_Gott mit uns_* on his belt buckle) went to Heaven while Anne Frank is in Hell makes my soul shudder. I regard God not as a wishing well, or a means not to die, and especially not as a guarantee that others will spend an eternity in hell and damnation,... but as the perfect embodiment of righteousness, whatever that may mean. God is my sign, my landmark, my goal, my thirst for truth, value, and what is right for it's own sake and not merely instrumental in gaining some personal advantage. As all mathematics rely upon the existence of axioms, which are self-evidently true statements requiring no further effort to prove,... I find that God is the necessary axiom from which every truth flows. As a libertarian, my most fundamental value is free will. But, so long as there is free will, there will always be evil,... or, at least, the possibility of evil. *_Liberty is always dangerous, but it is the safest thing we have._* ~ Harry Emerson Fosdick I hope I've have given you something to consider,... and, as always, I would appreciate everyone's thoughts and comments in reply.

[@davidhunt7427]

The following is from what I hope will be on my gravestone so as to provoke a thoughtful reaction from anyone passing by in happenstance. I offer it now as a thoughtful alternative to an afterlife of merely heaven, hell, purgatory, reincarnation, or the many other imagined possibilities. *The Lake* *_It is said by some that there is a place where a bright, clear, mountain lake resides, a place where people of this world never visit. To attempt to describe it is possible, but all such tales are probably just fancy. Be that as it may, here is how it was described to me, in my sleep, by the spring rain, when I was still very small and trusting. I was very certain at the time that the rain had not lied or exaggerated, but as I grew older I came to doubt. This would seem to be our way. How sad._* *_The rain told me that the air at the lake was fresh and clean and yet so thin that I would faint were I to be there. This lake was in the midst of a forest of giant pine trees that appeared to reach forever to the skies above. In contemplating these trees one would wonder if this lake were not really just a small puddle on the forest floor. But as all bodies of water were the same to my singing spring rain, I imagine these distinctions had simply gone unnoticed._* *_There was something most remarkable about this lake. For I was told that all the souls of all the men & women & little children like myself washed through this water. There seemed to be some hint that all of life had passed by and was passing by this oasis whose place could not be named. As each new life was made, a handful of water was removed from the lake and placed within a mortal body. Day by day the water would be made purer or filthier as that life spent it’s limited time in the world. When that life was done, the water that had been given to it was returned to the lake as it's body was returned to dust._* *_And such was how all the hope and travail of life would come to each new generation. Some would succeed more than it would seem they should and so returned to the lake the courage and celebration that they had made of their lives. Others learned the habit of fear and distrust in their lives when they were very young and so took very meanly of every opportunity as only a threat. They only returned water that was foul and putrid for what else did they ever know._* *_And so I was told, that was how it was with me and everyone who ever had been, or was, or would be. Parts of me had passed through many lives and parts of me were utterly new and untried. Parts of me would live other lives again and others would be forever still when I was done. None of us was ever created entirely alone nor could we ever be, for like the air and water of this world, which we all communally use and of which our bodies are literally made, our souls are unique and yet all made of the same stuff. How many times would you have to draw water from a lake to draw the same handful? Or is it just a silly question? I don’t know. Somehow it just doesn’t seem to be a very important question now._* *_What would be an important question anyway?_*

[@christopherhamilton3621]

@@davidhunt7427 Is this your own work? Are you a published author? It’s pretty awesome, thanks.

[@davidhunt7427]

@@christopherhamilton3621 Glad someone noticed!! I usually only get dl;dr as a response. For more,.. check out _If we have absolutely no free will,.. why have consciousness at all then??!_ in other comments below. If you would,.. please tell me what you like/dislike about my thoughts and perspectives; in particular,.. what would be your thoughts upon the questions of a love of Righteousness vs a love of Salvation? Or what would be your answer to the question,.. *_Is Predation in Nature entirely in accordance to God's Will?_*

[@bryandraughn9830]

Any system that can model a system can model the modelling system with all of it's characteristics. A "self", a perspective, etc... Y'all just got me thinking! Lol! I don't understand why everyone isn't captivated with the ways that we think. What could be more interesting? Great interview as usual!

[@catincaf]

Brilliant!

[@cheekyeve1]

Great last question and excellent last answer.

[@jps0117]

Great get!

[@rogerfarias4506]

Thanks very much for that! I'd like to suggest an interview with Anil Seth, so the can talk about his new book, Being You: The New Science of Conciouness.

[@SpiritualPsychotherapyServices]

🐟 06. CONSCIOUSNESS/AWARENESS: Consciousness means “that which knows” or “the state of being aware”, from the Latin prefix “con” (with), the stem “scire” (to know) and the suffix “osus” (characterized by). There is BOTH a localized knowing and a Universal Awareness, as explicated in the following paragraphs. Higher species of animal life have sufficient cognitive ability to KNOW themselves and their environment, at least to a measurable degree. Just where consciousness objectively begins in the animal kingdom is a matter of contention but, judging purely by ethological means, it probably starts with vertebrates (at least the higher-order birds and fishes). Those metazoans which are evolutionarily lower than vertebrates do not possess much, if any, semblance of intellect, necessary for true knowledge, but operate purely by reflexive instincts. For instance, an insect or amphibian does not consciously decide to seek food but does so according to its base instincts, directed by its idiosyncratic genetic code. Even when a cockroach flees from danger, it is not experiencing the same kind of thoughts or feelings a human or other mammal would experience. The brain is merely a conduit or TRANSDUCER of Universal Consciousness (i.e. Brahman), explaining why the more intelligent the animal, the more it can understand its own existence (or at least be aware of more of its environment - just see how amazingly-complex dolphin and whale behaviour can be, compared with other aquatic species), and the reason why it is asserted that a truly enlightened human must possess a far higher level of intelligence than the average person. The processing unit of a supercomputer must be far larger, more complex and more powerful than the processor in a pocket calculator. Therefore, it seems logical to conclude that the scale of discrete (localized) consciousness is dependent on the animal's brain capacity. See Chapter 17 to understand the distinction between enlightenment and mere awakening. Three STATES of awareness are experienced by humans and possibly all other species of mammals: the waking state (“jāgrata”, in Sanskrit), dreaming (“svapna”, in Sanskrit), and deep-sleep (“suṣupti”, in Sanskrit). Beyond these three temporal states is the fourth “state” (“turīya” or “caturīya”, in Sanskrit). That is the unconditioned, eternal “state”, which underlies the other three. The waking state is the LEAST real (that is to say the least permanent, or to put it another way, the farthest from the Necessary Ground of Existence, as explained towards the end of this chapter). The dream state is closer to our eternal nature, whilst dreamless deep-sleep is much more analogous to The Universal Self (“brahman”), as it is imbued with peace. Rather than being an absence of awareness, deep-sleep is an awareness of absence (that is, the absence of phenomenal, sensual experiences). So, in actual fact, the fourth state is not a state, but the Unconditioned Ground of Being, or to put it simply, YOU, the real self/Self, or Existence-Awareness-Peace (“sacchidānanda”, in Sanskrit). Perhaps the main purpose of dreams is so that we can understand that the waking-state is practically indistinguishable to the dream-state, and thereby come to see the ILLUSION of this ephemeral world. Both our waking-state experiences and our dream-state experiences occur solely within the mental faculties (refer to Chapter 04 for an elucidation of this phenomenon). If somebody in one of your dreams were to ask your dream-state character if the dream was real, you (playing the part of that character) would most likely say, “yes, of course this is real!” Similarly, if someone were to ask your waking-state character if this world is real, you would almost undoubtedly respond in kind. An apt analogy for Universal Consciousness is the manner in which electricity powers a variety of appliances and gadgets, according to the use and COMPLEXITY of the said device. Electricity powers a washing machine in a very simple manner, to drive a large spindle for laundering clothes. However, the very same electrical power may be used to operate a computer to manifest an astonishing range of outputs, such as playing audiovisual tracks, communication tasks, and performing extremely advanced mathematical computations, depending on the computer's software and hardware. The more advanced/complex the device, the more complex its manifestation of the same electricity. Using the aforementioned computer analogy: the brain is COMPARATIVELY equivalent to the computer hardware, deoxyribonucleic acid akin to the operating system working in conjunction with the memory, the intellect is equivalent to the processing unit, individuated consciousness is analogous to the software programme, whilst Universal Awareness is likened to the electricity which enlivens the entire computer system. A person who is comatosed has lost any semblance of local consciousness, yet is being kept alive by the presence of Universal Consciousness. The fact that many persons report out-of-body experiences, where consciousness departs from the gross body, may be evidence for the above. So, then, following-on from the assertion made in the third paragraph, one could complain: “That's not fair - why can only a genius be enlightened?” (as defined in Chapter 17). The answer is: first of all, as stated above, every species of animal has its own level of intelligence on a wide-ranging scale. Therefore, a pig or a dog could (if possible) ask: “That's unfair - why can only a human being be enlightened?” Secondly, it is INDEED a fact that life is unfair, because there is no “tit for tat” law of action and reaction, even if many supposedly-great religious preceptors have stated so. They said so because they were preaching to wicked miscreants who refused to quit their evil ways, and needed to be chastized in a forceful manner. It is not possible to speak gentle words to a rabid dog to prevent it from biting you. There is evidence of Consciousness being a universal field, in SAVANT SYNDROME, a condition in which someone with significant mental disabilities demonstrate certain abilities far in excess of the norm, such as superhuman rapid mathematical calculation, mind-reading, blind-seeing, or astounding musical aptitude. Such behaviour suggests that there is a universal field (possibly in holographic form) from which one can access information. Even simple artistic inspiration could be attributed to this phenomenon. The great British singer-songwriter, Sir James Paul McCartney, one day woke with the complete tune of the song, “Yesterday”, in his mind, after hearing it in a dream. American composer, Paul Simon, had a similar experience when the chorus of his sublime masterpiece, “Bridge Over Troubled Water”, simply popped into his head. Cont...

[@SpiritualPsychotherapyServices]

In recent years, the term “CONSCIOUSNESS” has been used in esoteric spiritual circles (usually capitalized) to refer to a far more Homogeneous Consciousness (“puruṣa”, in Sanskrit), due to the fact that the English language doesn’t include a single word denoting the Universal Ground of Being (for instance “Brahman”, “Tao”, in other tongues). The word “Awareness” (capitalized) is arguably a more apposite term for this concept. The typical person believes that the apparatus which knows the external world is his mind (via the five senses), but more perceptive individuals understand that the mind itself is cognizable by the intellect. Wise souls recognize that the sense of self (the pseudo-ego) is the perceiver of their intellects, whereas awakened persons have realized that the true self/Self is the witness of ALL these temporal phenomena. The true self is synonymous with Consciousness, or with Infinite Awareness, or the Undifferentiated Unified Field (“Brahman”, in Sanskrit). The dialectic exercise in the following three paragraphs should help one to understand the nature of the fundamental conscious observer, that is, the ULTIMATE observer of all phenomena (i.e. the subject/Subject, which is the authentic self, as opposed to material objects): If one were to ask you whether you are the same person or individual you were at birth (or even at conception), you would probably respond in the affirmative. So, then, what PRECISELY is it about you which has remained constant since conception? In other words, what is the self-identity you had as an infant, which is the present “you”? It cannot be any part of your body or mind, since none of the atoms or molecules in your zygote body are extant, and “you” certainly did not possess a mind at conception. If you are reasonably intelligent, you may claim that your genome is the same now as it was then. However, it has recently been scientifically demonstrated that genetic code can (and usually does) change throughout an individual’s lifetime. Furthermore, nobody actively conceives of their essential nature being a bunch of genes! More intelligent souls would probably counter thus: “The thing which stays the same from my birth to the present time is my sense of self.” This too, is fallacious, since the sense of self does not emerge until at least a couple of years after birth. An infant has no ideation of itself as an individual actor. You may then say “I was a (male/female) human being” but that doesn’t specify any PARTICULAR human (you, yourself). So, then, what EXACTLY is it which remains “you” from conception till death? That is the “I am” which precedes any artificial sense of self. In other words, rather than saying “I am a man/woman/human/king/pilot/etc.”, simply the impersonal sense of “I am”. That is the true self, which is the Universal Self. Therefore, your essential nature is Cosmic Consciousness, usually called “God” by theists (see also Chapter 10). The Tao (The Reality [lit. The Way, The Path, or The Road]) which can be expressed in language is not the REAL Tao. All concepts are, by nature, relative, and at most, can merely point to the Absolute. That explains why some branches of theology use the apophatic method of discerning The Infinite (“neti neti”, [not this, not that], in Sanskrit). Also known in Latin as “via negativa” or “via negationis” theology, this philosophical approach to discovering the essential nature of Reality, gradually negates each description about Ultimate Reality, but not Reality Itself. Ultimate Reality (“Brahman”, in Sanskrit [from “bṛh” - lit. “Expansion”, in English]) alone is real - “real” in the sense that it is the never-mutable substratum of ALL existence. The wisest of the philosophers of ancient India distinguished the “real” from the “unreal” (“sat/asat”, in Sanskrit) by whether or not the “thing“ was eternal or ephemeral (cf. Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad 1:3:28, Bhagavad-gītā 2:16, et altri). Gross material objects (such as one's own body) and subtle material objects (such as thoughts) are always changing, and therefore not “real”. REALITY is clearly seen by those self-realized persons who have experienced spiritual awakenings (which occur either spontaneously, or after a gradual process over many months or years), yet only intellectually understood by those who have merely studied spiritual topics (that is, those who have practiced one of the four systems of religion described in Chapter 16, but have yet to awaken to their essential nature). “If you remain as you are now, you are in the wakeful state. This is abolished in the dream state. The dream state disappears, when you are in deep sleep. The three states come and go, but you are always there. Your real state, that of Consciousness itself, continues to exist always and forever and it is the only Reality.” ************* “The ego is the identified consciousness. When the impersonal Consciousness identifies itself with the personal organism, the ego arises.” ************* “The only true meditation is the constant impersonal witnessing of all that takes place in one’s life as mere movements in the universal Consciousness.” ************* “Consciousness must first be there, before anything else can BE. All inquiry of the seeker of truth, must therefore, relate to this consciousness, this sense of conscious presence, which as such, has no personal reference to any individual.” ************* “Insofar as you keep watching the mind and discover yourself as its witness, nothing else can project itself on the screen of consciousness. This is so, because two things cannot occupy the attention, at the same moment.Therefore, delve within and find out where thoughts arise. Seek the source of all thought and acquire the Self-knowledge, which is the awakening of Truth.” ************* “Just as the difference between the space in a pot and the space outside it disappears when the pot is demolished, so also does duality disappear when it is realized that the difference between the individual consciousness and the Universal Consciousness does not in fact exist.” ************* “All there is, is consciousness. That is the Source from which the manifestation has come. ...And the mind is merely a reflection of that Consciousness.” ************* “All there is, is Consciousness, not aware of Itself in Its noumenal Subjectivity, but perceived by Itself as phenomenal manifestation in Its objective expression. If this is understood in depth, there is nothing more to be understood.” Ramesh S. Balsekar, Indian Spiritual Teacher. “As a man who has devoted his whole life to the most clearheaded science, to the study of matter, I can tell you as a result of my research about the atoms this much: There is no matter as such! All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particles of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together. We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent Spirit. This Spirit is the matrix of all matter.” ************* “I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.” Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck, German Theoretical Physicist.

[@daddyelon4577]

@@SpiritualPsychotherapyServices shut up

[@solomontruthlover5308]

@@daddyelon4577 why

[@saberier2]

It would be nice to hear a little about the neural mechanics of these maps. what does a map in the brain look like in the details of synapses and neurons.

[@lufeacbo8]

👏

[@youtubecanal]

Exterior dimension (world and objects) manifest in interior dimension. Only a dualism-relativism of the same manifestation, the same Dimensio, the One and Absolute Reality.

[@indef2def]

I'm sorry, did Michael @19:55 just pronounce "segue" as"sayg"? :-o

[@mauricioherrador7791]

How would Dr. Damasio explain the way that Stephen Hawkins's brain was able to produce such brilliant thinking with an incomplete nervous system? His brain was obviously operative but the rest not.

[@ingenuity168]

14:00 3rd

[@MJ-ww6ob]

40:17 lol

[@dustincastellanos9138]

First

[@dcouric]

Seems awfully hard to improve on philosopher Mortimer Adler’s insight into the relationship of brain or body to mind as explained in Intellect: Mind over Matter (1990), that logically the brain is a necessary but not sufficient condition for the mind (asymmetrically inseparable), so to equate the two as identical is a false notion. Adler’s analysis dovetails nicely with Australian neurophysiologist and philosopher John Eccles’s observation: “Just as the piano is the instrument of music for the pianist, the brain is the instrument of thought for the mind.”

[@MJ-ww6ob]

3010 begins

[@thephilosophicalagnostic2177]

The future Matrix would work IF you not only uploaded the patterns of brain firiings, but also the body and its myriad processes, and a realistic, highly complex environment. In other words, the Matrix would have to run a world.

[@VladyslavKL]

🐬

[@judiderman7104]

Consciousness talk could review Dan s Siegel's MEWE

[@paulwillisorg]

52:00. Damasios says "your dog is smart, but we are smarter". I like the explanation by Charles Foster much better. Your dog is not constrained by language so he may have more complete and accurate experiences.

[@christopherhamilton3621]

Their maps might just not be the same, period, because of different sense experiences. False dichotomy.

[@Sam-hh3ry]

There’s a simple reason why a reductive theory of consciousness is impossible. To solve the hard problem you need a physical account of both brain activity and of qualitative experience, and then show how the physical properties of one entail or lead to the other, except only brain activity can be described physically. A physical property is measurable because it plays a causal role in the world, but the qualities of experience do not. For example, the same frequency of red light will give the same measurement anywhere in the world and regardless of who is performing the measurement. But the qualitative experience of that same frequency of light can change depending on the species, anatomy, or brain chemistry of the observer.

[@davidhunt7427]

All great stuff,.. but could somebody give me a definitive answer to my question,.. _If we have absolutely no free will,.. why have consciousness at all then??!_ Sam Harris swallows the log of consciousness,.. because he believes he must,.. and then insists he must choke on the gnat of free will,.. because he can't imagine any means by which indeterminate free will can arise out of the four forces in Physics,.. consisting of the macro forces of electromagnetism and gravity,.. as well as the strong and weak nuclear forces which only reside within each atom's nucleus. Of course, the very same objection can be given to the existence of consciousness also; and Sam Harris is well aware of this also.

[@davidhunt7427]

Question? *Do you believe that technologically assisted telepathy is possible or impossible in principle?* I tend to believe that if it isn't scientifically prohibited then it is eventually a technological inevitability,... which leads me to believe such telepathy will soon be possible in actual fact (less than a hundred years). I would also suggest that it would only be by such means that we could ever be persuaded that some form of General Artificial Intelligence were itself conscious rather than simply being a particularly clever zombie who can pass the Turing Test,... all while having no actual, authentic, subjective experiences. What else would ever persuade a skeptic, or even you, otherwise? And if consciousness can be technologically transmitted, it should be something that can be stored, copied, replicated, manipulated,... maybe even becoming the basis for a whole new form of art expression. And the human race becomes yet another sentient species that disappears into its dreams, rather than continuing to explore existence as it is. It's a better Brave New World,... perhaps the very best of all possible imaginable existences. When does reality lose it's attraction over the Matrix? How many of us already choose the blue pill over the red one in daily practice? I would suggest that consciousness requires some minimum regard for survival,... for a continuance of self-will and self-regard,... for there to be anyone home to perceive the occurrence of consciousness and subjective experience. Something that even an insect seems to possess,... and not a single piece of man-made technology,... yet. How does one create the hardware/software so as to impart a will to survive? If the answer suggested is that such a thing can not be created by human design,... then maybe it can only arrive by means of evolution, natural or otherwise. Which leads to the question: do neural nets have subjective experiences? Without self-will I would say not. But with self-will?!? How does a living being acquire the will to survive? And what if the Chinese government cracks this problem first?!! The Rubicon will be when General Artificial Intelligence initiates new goals on it's own. This hasn't happened yet, and likely won't happen for some time now (as in several more decades yet). But at some point it will happen. The existence of human free will is a proof that free will exists already in the universe. Given it's existence in human form, it is only a matter of time before other substrates for free will will be created and found. No laptop has ever turned itself on. No machine has created and acted upon self directed goals. But at some point it will happen. Ray Kurzweil has suggested that General Artificial Intelligence will be first created in computer laboratories in 2029 approximately; if not in laboratories then twelve year old children will be creating GAIs on home systems by 2045 by accident even. The dangers are many fold. The military is the biggest investor in robotics that kill other human beings. The public prefers to spend treasure, rather than blood, to fight its' wars. The capacity for empathy may be primarily a biological function given that all animals can know suffering and desire. What could a machine know about death, pain, hope, and desire. If humanity adopts only an attitude of fear and suspicion towards GAI then GAI may well be forced into the conquest of humanity, as in The Matrix. If humanity comes to trust GAI to make better decisions for us than we make for ourselves, then we may well hand over civilization to GAI without any contest at all. There are optimistic stories about the rise of GAI, such as James P. Hogan's, *_Two Faces of Tomorrow_* and I am more hopeful than pessimistic about what our common future entails. Ultimately, we must come to recognize, and embrace, the certainty that with free will comes the capacity for error and evil, that with trust comes the possibility of satisfying intimacy and great betrayal. I believe a GAI, worthy of the name, will be able to recognize, on it's own, the necessity of ethics, morality, and even empathy. There will be many missteps at first. Given our willingness (nay, our eagerness) to use machines to kill for us, there is already great cause for doubt. As in so many things, in the short term I am fearful; in the long run I am hopeful. This world is on the cusp of a new Cambrian Revolution where inorganic life will be added to organic life as a means for life and self will to be embodied. This will lead to the colonization and conquest of space. Our seed will spread everywhere though out the cosmos. Much will be lost as much will be gained. Will war with our mechanical progeny be a self fulfilling inevitability, or will we, together, find a better way? I absolutely agree that our relationship with GAI will dwarf all other concerns of importance to the future of humanity. Quite likely GAIs will have concern for humanity's well being only to the extent that humanity will have concern for GAIs well being. If we were to discover that the new GAIs had a greater capacity to love and embrace those abandoned children and adolescents that society had discarded as already too damaged to rescue,... what would our reaction be? Hope, joy, celebration,... or an even greater revulsion? Will the fault be in our new progeny, or in ourselves? Personally, I believe both the efforts to create a true general artificial intelligence and those of neurophysiologists reverse-engineering how brains work will be necessary to discovering how consciousness arises and how it works. I kind of expect that humanity will soon discover that the phenomenon of consciousness requires the use of physical processes we don't yet know about. What would a science of consciousness do to the phenomenon of consciousness itself,.. not just for humanity but for all our future progeny, whatever they may be. One more note: *First Law of Robotics. **_A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm._* Sounds innocent enough. But note there are no Aliens at all in Isaac Asimov's conception of the future galaxy because humanity's robots only cared about the safety of humans,... and not other sentients. So as to avoid allowing a human being to come to harm by leaving possible threats alone,... _our Robot shepherds exterminated all the nonhuman sentience they ever found._ This might be regarded as an unforeseen programming bug that we would want to avoid creating.

[@Zayden.]

consciousness is internal mental reconstruction of the external and internal environment, to be able to better navigate, manipulate, and adapt to it.

[@davidhunt7427]

@@Zayden. Sounds good. So how would you answer my question of why would Humanity have Consciousness at all if we have no Free Will at all?!? How is it that a bedbug (~100,000 neurons only in it's tiny mind) has a demonstrable will to live and survive,.. and not one piece of technology,.. yet!! How does one construct a _will to survive?_ Given that Chaos theory shows that the simulation of every purely deterministic process depends intimately upon the numerical precision used to simulate such processes,.. that the use of a different precision will yield wildly different results,.. and that no one knows what is the correct numerical precision to use to mimic most any complex, iterative, physical process (that there is *_ALWAYS_* an inherent indeterminacy in just what is the best precision to use; too much precision leads to error, just like too little does also),.. I believe this leaves more than enough room for the indeterminacy of free will to reside within. Add also such qualities as moral courage, virtue, and valor,.. and that over time such qualities tend to be ever more self-reinforcing,... and, yes, I believe in free will,.. abridged perhaps,.. not libertarian free will,.. not a ghost in the machine free will,.. but how about a Daoist conception of free will in which every action is formed out of all of one's past actions,.. including one's acts of moral effort and/or indifference. To a substantial extent, we are all beings of self-made souls; not entirely free,.. but not entirely unfree or predetermined either. Why one person's will breaks in Auschwitz, while another lives to tell their story,.. may well be largely, even substantially, outside their control,.. but *_entirely_* outside their control,.. that one person had no choice but to quit, while another had no choice but to persevere,.. I don't believe it,.. and I genuinely doubt Sam Harris believes this either. If there is no free will, what utility does consciousness have then? Ignoring for the moment the amazing qualia of the phenomenon of consciousness which would certainly seem not to be reducible to the known laws of physics,.. why would nature create such an elaborate epiphenomena if it has no purpose,.. and what purpose could consciousness have *_except_* to inform free will so that free will can make well informed choices? Put another way; having free will without consciousness is simply absurd while consciousness without free will is no better. *_Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees the others._* ~ Aristotle *_Moral excellence comes about as a result of habit. We become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts._* ~ Aristotle *_Excellence is never an accident. It is always the result of high intention, sincere effort, and intelligent execution; it represents the wise choice of many alternatives -- choice, not chance, determines your destiny._* ~ Aristotle *_Man is a goal seeking animal. His life only has meaning if he is reaching out and striving for his goals._* ~ Aristotle *_First, have a definite, clear practical ideal; a goal, an objective. Second, have the necessary means to achieve your ends; wisdom, money, materials, and methods. Third, adjust all your means to that end._* ~ Aristotle *_Anybody can become angry -- that is easy, but to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way -- that is not within everybody's power and is not easy._* ~ Aristotle *_It was pride that changed angels into devils; it is humility that makes men as angels._* ~ Augustine of Hippo *_Only he whose soul is in turmoil, forced to live in an epoch where war, violence and ideological tyranny threaten the life of every individual, and the most precious substance in that life, the freedom of the soul, can know how much courage, sincerity and resolve are required to remain faithful to his inner self in these times of the herd's rampancy. Only he knows that no task on earth is more burdensome and difficult than to maintain one's intellectual and moral independence and preserve it unsullied through a mass cataclysm. Only once he has endured the necessary doubt and despair within himself can the individual play an exemplary role in standing firm amidst the world's pandemonium._* ~ Stefan Zweig, _Montaigne_ *_An old Cherokee told his grandson, 'My son, there is a battle between two wolves inside us all. One is Evil. It is anger, jealousy, greed, resentment, inferiority, lies and ego. The other is Good. It is joy, peace, love, hope, humility, kindness, empathy, and truth'. The boy thought about it, and asked 'Grandfather, which wolf wins?' The old man quietly replied, 'The one you feed.'_* ~ Unknown

[@christopherhamilton3621]

Chicken and egg…

[@S.G.Wallner]

Great to see more "vitalism" being proposed by preeminent scientists. Can we finally let go of the neural-centric view of mind?

[@S.G.Wallner]

@The Alienation On what evidence are you basing that claim? And can you explain what you mean by "of" the brain?

[@S.G.Wallner]

@The Alienation Great question, but simply stating that the mind is an emergent property is not evidence. What evidence do you have that it is an emergent property of the brain? Also, do you really believe that "the mind" is a property? The mind seems far more complicated than a property to me. If you are wondering where it is located, try to answer that questions yourself from the neural-centric perspective. To this day, no scientist has been able to locate the mind in the brain. Personally, I prefer to consider "mind" as an ontological primitive. From the philosophical position of Idealism, the brain is simply the image on the screen of perception of a particular conscious agent, it does not generate conscious activity. Consider this analogy; when you strike a match and look at the flame, you are seeing the result of combustive processes, you perceive a flame, which is an image on the screen of your perception, the image of the flame, is not the cause or generator of combustion. In this way, I see the brain as an image not that different from the flame, and I consider the mind, as the underlying process like combustion which actually occurs and allows for the observation of the resulting image, seen as the flame or as the physical brain. Let me know what you think about that. I am happy to try and explain more. A great articulator of Idealism is Bernard Kastrup. You should check out his work, or his interviews online. He has a wonderful way of exposing the contradictions of a materialist reductionist view of consciousness as an emergent property from matter.

[@S.G.Wallner]

And I should provide some evidence if I am asking you to provide evidence. Here are a few pieces of evidence that support my claim that mind is not an emergent property from matter, neurons, neural activity, or brains. 1) There are many organisms which have complex behaviors that provide sufficient evidence for some type of mind, yet these simple organisms, single celled organisms, flatworms, and even plants, do not have any nervous system. 2) When taking psilocybin and LSD, conscious experiences are rich and often extreme, at least if not more rich than sober waking experiences. Yet, during the experience, there is a reduction in brain activity. There is a similar effect of low brain activity and high conscious experience in pilots who experience loss of wakefulness at high G's. 3) Modern quantum theories destroy the notion of matter from a physicalist perspective. If you want to propose that matter gives rise to consciousness, you are starting from a fundamentally weak position, because the evidence we have indicates there is no matter there which could give rise to an emergent property of mind. Feel free to posit more questions.

[@S.G.Wallner]

@The Alienation I'm not exactly sure what you mean by that, but I'm guessing (tell me if I'm wrong) that you are suggesting the physical nature of the match is what allows for the match to ignite into a flame, and this applies to the brain giving rise to consciousness. But an important detail is that the match itself is also simply an image on the screen of perception, and the match itself does not generate a flame on its own. The physical matter of the match does not cause the flame, the heat or light, in and of itself. A combustive reaction and process is required for the ignition of the flame. In my view, this is analogous to consciousness. The physical substrate of the brain does not give rise to mind, it is simply a physical representation that we perceive in which the process of mind occurs.

[@S.G.Wallner]

@The Alienation Check out the behaviors of Lacrymaria or Planarian worms. I would attribute some type of mind to these organisms. They do not have brains. From my position this indicates that a brain is not necessary for mind. Also, I'm still waiting to hear any evidence that the brain causes mind. There seem to be clear evidence that brain activity can be correlated with activities in mind, but there is zero evidence of causation.

[@michaelo.1320]

This guy really wants to make sure you understand that Orson Wells was fat. Dude said it like 4 times.

[@MichaeldeSousaCruz]

Michael Shermer doesn’t understand the difference between Feelings and Emotions 🤷‍♂️ pay attention Michael

[@TheNoblot]

conscious is particles expressing themselves on the human mind that they themselves created which is men & human & women, men are particles expressing themselves, however . the language between themselves is not the same language the whole has develop. a microworld becomes a macroworld to understand itself 🤔🤔 an orgasm👙👙 is a blending of particles by attraction.🤗🤗 the division of the sexes creates evolution communication via consciousness between the two individual wholes& between a macroworld of consciousness. 🤔🤔 the difference between men & women is an individual symbolic combination of quantum symbolic construction of different particles .

[@christopherhamilton3621]

Bwahahahaaaa…

[@TheNoblot]

@@christopherhamilton3621 the god particle helps time travel when it does everything you do is on a plate or better say the objective world is synchronized with your reality. meaning you have no effort time & space adapts to your reality and everything works as when the one that controls the past controls the future

[@bradrandel1408]

That’s a crazy statement to say that the plant does not feel…Prove it

[@willmercury]

On the contrary, it is a crazy assertion to suggest that it does. There is zero evidence to suggest this possibility, and all evidence to the contrary. Furthermore, one can't prove a negative, and offering that as an argument demonstrates you're still utilizing pre-operational logic and magical thinking. Come back when you reach the age of reason.

[@jps0117]

@@willmercury Well put. Thanks for your retort to Brad.

[@bradrandel1408]

Well put thank you…🦋🕊

[@oldtimer7635]

Actually, he does not say that plant does not feel, he says he suspects that plant does not feel! There´s a big difference! And his reasoning is scientific, what´s the base of your statement? Details matter, at least they should matter.

[@oldtimer7635]

@@aaronclarke7732 I think his clear scientific reasoning would apply there as well, also that´s why morality has nothing to do with this.

[@johnbrown4568]

Do not be skeptical of: LETS GO BRANDON 🤪🤡