The Scientific Problem of Consciousness 

"I've been lucky enough to hang on to them" Well, very relatable really. I've had many moments like that, one of them was when my 12 yr old self was studying gravitation for the exams, and suddenly asked my father "well what newton told us about how gravity works, what the relation between the distance, the masses and the force is, but what exactly is gravity? " He replied "it just is" And left it at that. But I needed my answer, I googled it to find this on Wikipedia "acc. to GR it is the consequence of the distortion of the spacetime around the object, the trajectories of the objects around it are influenced by the geometry of that distortion" As a child, that was too much to take in, and with exams and school on the brink, I eventually forgot about it.... Now that I'm a teenager, I realised that this is important to me. Even tho no one around me is interested, I still am, and that's all that matters.

I've had so many experiences with my consciousness. My first experience comes when I tried to stop peeing the bed. In the dream I would go to the bathroom and pee. The problem was, that wasn't a real bathroom. The way I stopped this habit was to finally realize I was dreaming. The dead giveaway was a toilet appearing out of the desert. I had to ask myself a lot a questions in the dream. It still felt consistent. Real...Then I was just looking at the cactus just behind the toilet. I then forced myself up and ran to the bathroom. Some years later I was placed under anesthesia when I had a surgery. The doctors were waiting for me to wake up. I was taking a bit longer than usual. So they went to go get my parents lol. I was in that dream, I was sitting on a porch just like at my grandparents house. There were multiple entities I was talking to. (I am not religious or superstitious ) I told them "ok well it's time for me to go" Then I opened my eyes and saw the nurse walking towards me with my parents. My mom told me "She said you were still asleep". Out of all chances, I woke up just when they walked up to me. I found that a bit odd. Some more years later I was in a dream and it was a beautiful sunset. I went to go read something on a piece of paper and could not see it at all. So I tried everything in the dream to see that paper. While in a dream I somehow also saw my closet. This threw me for a loop. I could not read the damn paper, I was in a dream walking around in a city with a beautiful sunset and then I also saw my ugly closet. It took me a while to realize what happened while I was in the dream. Apparently I tried to read the paper so hard that I opened my eyes WHILE SLEEPING!!! So I was experiencing the dream and also looking out into the world. THAT WAS AMAZING!!! I woke myself up to see if that closet was indeed a real closet I was looking at in the real world. The last thing that happened to me in my dream was I had full control of it. Usually I have like 50% control, (it's a great time to catch up on studying. All I have to do is to study until I fall asleep and then I dream about the stuff lol) and some times even more control. This one was special, I don't know why I was fully aware, but I was doing all sorts of stuff. I then met someone with a riddle in my dream. When they asked me it, I felt so smug, I was grinning. The reason being it's my dream, It's my brain I know everything in it. So I told a great answer to the riddle. I was waiting for my prize and they told me it was wrong. Then told me the actual answer which was far superior to what I said. It was then I realized (I could be wrong) my consciousness is a passenger in the brain. The brain is hiding information from me. I wanted to quickly write down that damn riddle, I went to go find a pen and paper. Then when I tried to remember it I couldn't. I REALLY HATE THAT !!! When I can't remember my dreams but I know they occurred. Sometimes I can remember it exactly. Sometimes I know they happened and then I am thinking about it just when I wake up...but then poof it's gone!! Unable to even think about it. I know many times my dreams helped me solve problems where after I was stuck on something, I woke up and instantly knew the solution. I want to expand this dream thing. Maybe VR. A place where you build up your personal translation from your self language to the universal languages. For example, mathematics. When we are young, we are supposed to be learning that universal language. Yet in the U.S.A many are left behind and are never taught to connect their personal language to the universal language of mathematics. The personal language is how YOU perceive things in the universe. The universal language is a way to find common ground with others in this universe. A VR world where all the keys to your personal language and the universal languages reside. Where you can use your personal language unimpeded and just try everything not burdened by the universal languages rules. Then when you get something, the translation can be created to translate it or maybe the key already exists.

"I'll see it when I believe it" - very good phrase

We are decoding the secret of consciousness in a world made by our consciousness

"If everybody would agree that their current reality is a reality, and that what we essentially share is our capacity for constructing a reality, then perhaps we could all agree on a meta-agreement for computing a reality that would mean survival and dignity for everyone on the planet, rather than each group being sold on a particular way of doing things." - Francisco Varela

“I’ve just been lucky enough to hang onto them.” What a great thing to say about curiosity. Most people get through life by sticking with what they know, but some can’t get through life without poking what they don’t know with a stick. Sure the bear might bite but what’s bear science without danger?

just waiting for this guy to eventually be on Lex Fridman podcast.

The idea of vedanta about consciousness written thousands of years old is mind blogging and deeply fascinating as well .

When I was a kid I asked "why am I me instead of me being someone else being me? Or instead of me being someone else?" My answer was "lol, if I wasn't going to be me then who would be?" I figured that if someone inhabits my body and has all of my experiences then nothing else much matters; they actually ARE me.

I also experience lucid dreams. In the beginning I didn’t know what they were called or that other people also had them. I have never met anyone else who has but have read about others. When I attempt to explain them to friends and family the usual bored response is: „They’re just dreams Chris.“ For me they are thrilling and ecstatic experiences but frustratingly infrequent. They start while I am in a typical dream scenario, completely carried along by whatever script my deeper consciousness has concocted, and then suddenly my normally waking conscience self will realize that I am dreaming and in the dreamworld. Instead of the experience growing duller or somehow less real it suddenly becomes what I can only describe as hyper-real. Everything is vividly detailed, colorful and tangibly solid, with a compelling richness and intensity both perceptually and emotionally. At this point the dream plot ends and I am suddenly free to do whatever I want. Usually I try to go as far as I can to test the limits of this thrilling environment often touching and examining things along the way. In the past I would sometimes confront people I met there by excitedly stating: „This whole thing is just a dream! „ to which I might receive an unexcited, tolerant and knowing little nod in return. I have also said at times to the inhabitants of this realm: „If this is all just a dream then it must be my dream and therefore you all must be fake!“. (Unassailable application of logic here.) The response to this is often something like an indignant: „Excuse me, but I am not - fake! „. I then usually accept their declarations of independent autonomous reality without further questioning and am a bit chagrined at my rudeness. I find this a fragil mental state out of which it is easy to fall. The problem is that if I lose focus I return to a normal dreaming state and if I concentrate on the fact that there must be a sleeping Chris lying somewhere I suddenly wake up. It becomes very important to me to try to bring back evidence that this other world is just as real as the waking world. Of course all my efforts here prove fruitless. I have tried various strategies such as memorizing street signs, newspaper headlines, and once even tried to return with a fist full of cherry tree blossoms. I had them gripped tightly in my fist and then I woke up lying in bed with my eyes closed. I could feel them still clutched in my hand and while lying flatly on my back, I opened my eyes and as stealthily as possible, so as not to break the spell, I looked down at my hand as I slowly uncurled my fingers and-damn it! … my hand was empty. [It just occurred to me that if my hand had been full of blossoms this would still prove nothing and no one would believe me and I would risk ending up in a psych ward! ] This is such a fascinating psychological experience that I wish it were the subject of serious study as I think it could be a useful tool into exploring the nature of consciousness.

I think the issue can be summed up as this: we know how consciousness is structured in the brain, but we don’t understand why those structures create consciousness. Particularly, what about their function creates consciousness?

I believe that psychedelics and other anesthetic dissociates like ketamine are the key to understanding this problem. If you have ever had a powerful experience on either class of these drugs you will know what it is like to breifly "lose" consciousness while still being able to experience. This is what the term "ego loss" refers to. You completely lose any sense of "I". You can still experience light, sound taste and touch, you can make decisions, you can predict actions but you are simply along for the ride. "You" are not making the decisions, "you" are not experiencing events. They are just happening outside of your control. It is single handedly the most powerful experience of my entire life and I think it highlights really what "consciousness" is. Its the sense of "I" that allow you to command the world around you. It is the illusion of free will.

One of the first things we need to do is divide "consciousness" into its smaller parts. For example, the parts might be something like : - perception of the world around us - analysis to gain an understanding of what we perceive - decision making about what it means - decisions about what we want to do in and with the world around us (sometimes called our free will) - how our MIND causes our brain to cause our body to do what we want it to do - memory - reflection and contemplation - etc. Once we have decided on how we should divide up the component parts of consciousness, then we can go on to learn about each part separately, and then eventually start to understand how the parts work together to make up the whole of human consciousness.

The term "dimension" in physics means a parameter that some structure possesses that must be known to fully understand that structure (position, motion, or anything else that cannot be left out in its complete description). If there is a complete, mathematically describable "Theory of Everything" in physics, it will supposedly give ALL such parameters or at least the pieces that such parameters are formed from (as neutrons and protons are made up of smaller quarks). By this description, any function or process that we discover would be "emergent" in that, no matter how bizarre (such as emitting X-rays when you peel a roll of cellophane sticky tape (true!) or the like), the reason for the results found can be ultimately run back to the laws in this Theory. This seems to cove all physical or energy relationships in the universe. However, while such a Theory can be used to describe how a digital computer or even a biologic structure like a muscle or neuron works -- physically and electronically and in any other sense -- in what possible way can such things related to consciousness like "self-awareness" or concepts like "honor" or "jealousy" or any other emotion that we "feel" directly applicable to our conscious mind be emergent in the above paragraph's meaning? How can you bend and stretch and twist the Theory to handle consciousness, meaning the "I think, therefore I am" parameters? The emergence of consciousness in all of its meanings seems to require new dimensions in our universe that are not physical like those in the assumed Theory. The fact that our universe allows the various consciousness-related things (whatever such a "thing" might be) implies a much more complicated set of rules than in that Theory, much like there may be physical dimensions that will be needed in that Theory that one cannot directly observe (the wave/particale duality of Quantum Mechanics will NOT allow the wave part to EVER be directly observed, since it is resolved to be just the CHANCE of the particle being observed when and where it is, so this is already such a necessary, but not physically reachable, "dimension" needed in the full description of the given particle). Can the unreachable dimensions that parametrize the things related to consciousness be found and measured in some as-yet-unknown manner, like the wave part of Quantum Mechanics? This would require that consciousness be described in some manner that allows some kinds of "quantity" that can be measured in some ways, so that tests of how these quantities that make up consciousness can be performed that allow patterns to be created that allow the definition of the correct types of dimensions for this study. If you never heard of "time" before, imagine how much would it take to even identify what it was and how it affects the physical world, since it has no physical part that you can examine under a microscope or other normal sensor. So we have a problem of first getting the underpinnings of the various dimensions that constitute what a conscious mind is so that we can figure out the rules that govern what it can and cannot do and how it does what it does. THEN we have to figure out what such dimensions mean to our universe as to its true structure over and above the Theory, meaning that the Theory is no longer "of Everything", just the physical part (like defining the chessboard in a chess game). At the moment, we are far from such an ability to break down consciousness into its components, whatever they may be. Major project!!!

Our mind is a super master of writing new scenarios based on past unpleasant and distasteful events only to heighten our egos. That's where the incessant self-talk originates.

I think there is an assumption that the brain is solely responsible for consciousness and we just don't understand how. What i'm interested in is if findings about the 'gut brain' and the brain gut connection may also play a role. It would be interesting to take the types of scanning research and experiments expanded beyond the skull to include the whole body. Specifically to see if there's any relationship with activity in the brain-gut, but also more generally to see if there may be other areas within the body that have a related response. The idea of having a brain in your gut is relatively recent, so it's not out of the realm of possibility that there may be other areas within the body that may contain similar phenomenon. Perhaps identifying additional contributors to the effect of consciousness outside of the brain will provide new insights that can aid in the development in the field.

Thanks for Anil with his great answers for consciousness science.

One who really craves for the understanding of consciousness should try delving into this ancient Indian philosophical school called 'Advait Vedant'. I'd recommend watching an hour long intro talk on this topic by Swami Sarvapriyanand which is titled 'The power of Om'. Nothing religious, just a remarkable take on our understanding of this world, ourselves and the divine consciousness within us.

Consciousness seems like one of those things where even if we figure out what kinds of computational processes give a being consciousness, we still won’t be able to answer the question of “why?”

He gets it. “Consciousness IS everything”. Robert Lanza explains this in depth in his Biocentrism books. It’s fascinating.

The question as to the problem of consciousness is as spiritual and philosophical as it is scientific. We live it everyday and in the first person and yet, as to the very "what" of it, it remains the most profound mystery. Not only that, but the very question as to the origin of consciousness, it has itself as its origin. In pondering consciousness it ponders itself. It is always already presumed and assumed in everything we do yet it is never made explicit. Consciousness, along with the raison d'etre for the whole universe, remain the most fascinating existential puzzles of all time.

while he cites chalmers, i think he says he, seth, is working on where the hard problem manifests itself, where conscious phenomena arise, rather than how they arise and what they are. he doesn't seem to be talking about what, biologically, make conscious phenomena different from other biological/neurological "calculations". am i missing something?

The more research is put into the brain, the more complex the brain becomes.

is there any kind of scientific documentation how mind works on the people totally loss their sensory input? how they form reality and give identification to their environment?. this is the one interesting case related about mind/brain.

Actually, the hard problem of consciousness is whether it is transferable or not. I think it is impossible to answer, since it is a qualia problem.

Consider the homunculus problem. The little man who sees what we see in our head. For materialists this cannot be. So how would you answer it: the observer observes itself. What if a conscious observer is able to look at the outputs of its own processing and pattern recognize on itself.

Once we understand what consciousness is and how it works, everything will change. I don’t think many people are aware of this..

i wish there was such rich content available for everyone when i was young

I'm 30, and I've been haunted by those same questions since I was a child... not that I'm afraid, as I'm not, but rather like it's the universes greatest mystery. And I hate not knowing.

Exquisite choise of background music. Aside from extremely interesting topic covered in the video. Thanks editor san! edit: very outro song is "Sweet awakening" by Adam Double, for those wondering

I have been lucky enough to be introduced to these wonderful topics by somone but unlucky as i couldn't understand the beautiful world this could behold earlier. As i am understanding and knowing more about it,it's such a wide interesting question to think of.Who are we?does our consciousness define us or we define them? A hearty thanks to the one who introduced me to this world !

The only place where you can find meaningfull answers about consciousness, is inside your own head. But you can only study the _contents_ of consciousness, not the consciousness itself. Studying the behavior of the contents of consciousness, is intelligence studying the behavior of intelligence.

Matter makes consciousness or consciousness makes matter? If someone copies me, which one will still be me? If both, how will it feel the split? Will it feel? How If I can only be one? What decides which one will be me? If both, will I see both? If we are just atoms, then if we construct against the atoms then resurrection is possible? Will it be me? If qualia is caused by matter, everything is conscious? Or maybe everything matter is made off consciousness?

Great Interview! Don't understand why you included the epilepsy triggering scenes, though. They could have simply been cut from the video.

He's right. The dilemma of consciousness dissolves only when we stop over mystifying it.

"Life is not accompanied with this grand sense of mystery anymore" - I beg to differ. I believe this "sense" will find its way back science. Here and there it already has.

A very nice video, thanks! That the brain/mind somehow models external events and from that creates and internal reality is useful. It seems to me that awareness of self as an object in that event-set is basically our internal conversation with our self. Perhaps, that internal conversation has much in common with how we learn from others. Most of what we know we learn from others, discursively. I have always wondered about what is in common and what is not.

It's been my experience that woefully few people actually wonder about the self. It seems many people aren't 100% conscious. My "awakening" so to speak took a bit longer, to my late teens. I started to look at myself from the outside viewing myself like I do others instead of just reacting to everything like an automaton. This led me to notice that not all people "wake up" and have that experience. But if they do, it usually happens as a child. I've only ever once met a person who became aware of themselves late in life, and that was thanks to drugs. I don't really have the words to explain it properly, but it really does seem like people are differing levels of conscious.

My description of consciousness is: informationally connected matter. The more complex the network is in a collection of matter, the higher the level of consciousness we'll likely say that it has. I've got a video about this, with some simple models that help show how this works on a chemical level, if anyone is curious about the idea. The more detailed "how" of human brains is basically: lots of different chemicals, all interacting, thus generating vast amounts of diverse information at many different levels of connection (from atomic bonds to all manner of electromagnetic waves). Asking what "consciousness is" in a specific way is kinda like asking what Bach's Brandenburg concertos "is". It's sort of a nonsensical question. These are both complex interactions of many different things that can be perceived in a variety of different ways. So there's no single, simple is-ness to them.

The real question that needs to be explored is whether Conciousness is created by the brain.

Ugh, why must there be rapid blinking visuals in this.

Main problem with this limited anthropomorphic position is in overlooking the fact that the human body is a collective of trillions of beings (bacteria, viruses, fungi, etc.) and the totality of organisms found in a meat-bag synergistically create consciousness. Easily verified scientifically with Psychobiotics-if you alter the digestive microbiome you directly affect the thoughts and emotions of the person. Consciousness experienced is not a "singularity" just because linguistically we say "I".

His determination and intelligence are so inspiring.

Consciousness, an internal answer for external question. Every creature, has its own consciousness. Level of consciousness depends to understanding of external question.

Mind and Consciousness they are different they are not same. Consciousness is more deeper than the mind. The mind changes but the Consciousness doesn't change.

Yogic Science already discusses all these and reaches fantastic and convincing answers .........

Great endeavor! And yes, we will need to rid ourselves from lots of philosophical and psychological ballast to make progress. The fastest route might come through Artificial Intelligence. Two related developments we can already observe: The first is that a rudimentary notion of 'self' emerges naturally in a robot, that realizes how one part of his percept is always there... and develops a concept for it. The second is that the latest Natural Language Processing (NLP) models, such as GPT-3, trained on just predicting the next word (very much in Anil's spirit of how the brain works as a prediction machine), exhibits lots of emerging capabilities and has forced linguists and philosophers to redefine the very terms and concepts they use to describe language (the 'pipeline model of language' is going the way of the 'Aristotelean celestial spheres'). We will hopefully live to see the 'mystery of consciousness' unravel!

Anil, the perception of 'I' or the 'Me' does not come from the brain. That origin of that perception is metaphysical. No matter how much understanding we have with the interaction of the neurons in our brain, we will not be able to track down the source of consciousnesses as something within the brain. Your work is important to help humans understand how the brain function to animate the body and how the body affects the brain to conjure up emotions. Perhaps we might one day, be able to understand how the brain and our body connects to the metaphysical and have a glimpse of the source of consciousness.

Consciousness is the playground where singularity splits into observer and observable. It’s the playground for cause and effect

I love exploring talks about the brain and its emergent properties. What makes me a wee bit concerned is when the placeholder term 'consciousness' is used as an agency for something that the speaker is claiming or alluding to. Using an unknown, a gap in our knowledge, to describe a phenomenon may not be very helpful. Whatever consciousness is or is not, I do hope that our brightest minds can one day model it or may we move on to other hypotheses which may help us to better understand life and the universe. 🧠🐈

This makes sense because any predictions or notions you have. Have to be based on what you do know and the unexpected is unknown. How do you expect the unknown you can't but you can improve that I am betting with meditation and some mindfulness that were take break sit by yourself and rewind and mull over what you are doing why and other thing ect. This is a good way to generate new ideas that are more accurate but you have to be honest with yourself brutally honest for it to be worth anything.

Consciousness is just conformational change. If i hit a rock with a hammer, the rock is conscious of the event as much as it is changed by it. I am only conscious of this video as much as the patterns in light and sound have changed my network of conformational changes that rationalizes current change with past change (eye proteins, neural stimulations). When these people speak of "consciousness" they mean ego, which always opposes consciousness as it opposes change within itself. The universe is made of consciousness (changes by interactions), but is indifferent to human ego beyond the impact it makes on the world and the world's impact upon it. Namaste.

I have lucid dreams which means I know that I’m dreaming. I experience Qualia in my dreams. Also I’ve done experiments in my dreams one interesting experiment was shifting my focus back-and-forth between a leaf and the bush. I was unable to see both the leaf and the bush at the same time in my dream, some thing that I’m able to do in real life.

When the brain turns sensory information into electric signals of neurons, is matter being turned into energy? And if matter being turned into energy, could that explain conscious experience?

Often times, consciousness researchers attempt to differentiate between that which is conscious and that which is responding to its environment through sensed reactions gained through millions of years of evolution. I would argue there is no difference between the two, but others disagree and often try to figure out which elements you need to remove to remove the conscious experience. Once their research is done, they often come to the conclusion that the many specialized components of the brain construct the various aspects of the conscious experience. If you remove any of those components, the experience becomes less and less "conscious".

It's sad to see that since I studied psychology, some 20 years ago, there haven't been many advances really. Disappointing. I think consciousness is a natural consequence of complexity.

Foremost thing is to experience the existence of "SELF", the "I" that says internally "I EXIST". Not knowing this "SELF" of "I", the discussion of CONSCIOSNESS would NOT have any sense.

There is no 'brain basis of consciousness'. But there is a consciousness basis of reality and everything that exists.

A question that's always bugged me; We are a part of the matter that is the Universe. Would the Universe actually 'be' if we weren't here to observe it's existence?

Hey Anil you are the hero of the century you have confirmed what i have been reading in the bible long ago.. thank you for this great revelation

All about finding taste and feeling

It feels as though I (that is the entity/ consciousness within me that is perceiving this reality and that I identify as being the self that is “me”) am the universe looking back at it’s self, and that is both within and consists of many subtle infinites that are all fractal in nature.

Dear Seth: It would be wise and beneficial to take into account and big consideration that by disgrace, we still have current DUALITY dominating and predominating humans - so, there are dual energies feeding/supplying/administrating/putting into function, etc., the electrical apparatus we call the brain. So, one energy is the usual mind/ego (the impostor energy, the double inverted of the soul) and this is what tell us "I'll believe it when I see it" - the real and truthful energy is the soul/conscience (the authentic us) and this is what tell us the other way around "I'll see it when I believe it"

There is no compelling reason to think of "consciousness", as separate and distinct from "the objects of consciousness" (sensation, thoughts, feelings, intuitions, and dreams). When these "objects" are not present where is the "consciousness"?

“Belief is the relief to the brief mischief of our grief.” Cree y crearás.

I'll share a memory that may help in understanding what consciousness is: At 32 yrs I was walking around at a flea market & a book on a stack of books jumped & turned without anyone moving it (which definitely caught my attention). I grabbed it & read a sentence that matched a memory of a sentence said to me by another white foggy soul in the shape of a sphere while being that same description just before entering the womb of my future mother. That sentence was "You'll become part of a New Age movement". I bought the used book for .50 cents (my best purchase ever) and got immersed in metaphysics, reading other books on the same subject. I happened to have just met a woman who was also into the same subject & we bonded in part due to a mutual interest in personal power, karma, dharma, syncronicities etc. It changed my life for the better and I also came to realize that we all have a soul, so I wondered what the dynamic is between the body/mind & soul. This is my theory: That all life forms have a soul, not just people. The DNA to support a certain thought level in an individual is = to the thought level of the consciousness. If the DNA alters through education or experience to support a higher thought level, the consciousness elevates to match it, meaning they always balance at the same thought level. At physical death the DNA support that thought level drops to zero, breaking the bond & the soul separates to later fuse with another life form to continue to ascend to higher, more energetic thought levels back in the direction from whence it came, full consciousness. So as mass in stars release thermal energy, it descends in overall energy level in the universe, consciousness energy overall is ascending, which is an energy exchange. At the conclusion of the Big Crunch this composite of all the souls in the universe at a peak thought level, transfer their thought energy in the form of thermal energy into the One black hole it overlaps, causing it to heat up & expand into a new universe. Consciousness is reduced to minimal which isn't bad because it will be billions of years until life gets started on planets like Earth, then those bits of consciousness fuse with microbes to initiate a symbiotic positive loop exchange between species evolution (Darwin) & consiousness evolution (two layers in each life form) to ever higher, more energetic thought levels in successive lives and more evolved species...

If anyone is intersted Anil does a talk at the RI, it's quite good.

What if consciousness is divided into different consciousness? consciousness of self, do we need to be in this material world to understand self, can I feel self if I was just the energy or electricity of my neurons floating in space? Consciousness of inanimate objects and animate objects, then adding them together we may be closer to understanding.

Is there not a better word than prediction? To me prediction implies a future event, whereas our experience of our environment is purely of past events. I think it is a bit "thin" to use the concept that we predict that continued or refined exploration of our environment will match our current model, is sufficient to focus so much on a very charged word.

E=Mc2 defines the relationship of Energy and Mass but surely that cannot exist without information exchanges. If you want to “locate” consciousness you have to understand all information transfers with infinite variables, but it’s a good start.

So does Seth think consciousness emerges or is created in the brain? That seems like the fundamental question... The Hammeroff / Penrose microtubule model says consciousness emerges... But I'm not clear what Seth thinks ..

I fookin' love Anil Seth. I'm proud to be a Beast Machine

Interestingly, the hard problem of consciousness is not a scientific one, because you can't actually define or describe it in reasonable terms. In fact, it can't be even proven that problem is real.

Is there a video comparing the consciousness of an average awake person, one sleeping, one passed out from alcohol, one overdosed and passed out on weed, one in a coma?

we are stuck inside our own minds... we have 5 sensory tools we use in order to fulfill our survival needs... we don't know anything, we have no clue of what's happening around us, or of what we are... reality is a forever mystery. we are like ants trying to make sense of the backyard, not knowing how further reality goes. and we can't even grasp what we can't perceive. i'm depressed for this reason

Consciousness is surely THE mystery - as it's all we have.

One peculiar word usage is ‘expected’. That sounds like a deterministic concept of prediction. Let’s ask though is it is a neural network it projects connectivity across the brain. So patterns are captured over time then the connectivity across the whole of the brain seems to be ‘predictive’. But that seems to me a weak version of understanding connectivity. It implies a logic over connectivity that I think is wrong. Is in my view trying to assert that a sort of computational prediction happens rather than building a sense of meaning to connectivity. Especially in the way the whole of the body is linked to the world. A subtle but telling flaw in the presentation.

the roblem is not how consciousness came to existence but how initially "we thought" about building it up.

I've often thought that the brain in concert the other major organs of the body and the neurological systems, pulmonary, vascular and all of the sensory organs synchronize or work syncreticly to produce The Cinematic effect we call consciousness. The role that memory plays cannot be understated. The multiple intelligences as per Howard Gardner and the great Geniuses like Leonardo DaVinci and also The mystical experiences of the great Seekers meld together to form one's own personal consciousness. So it must vary from Individual to individual. I have read that the indigenous Australian people of the first day, suggest that their Consciousness swings constantly to the outscape and back to the inscape in a figure eight contiguous Loop configuration. Your thoughts?

"how the the brain built ..." it fails right from the premise, when you start from a bias you can never really come to the reality.

I would like to ask this guy just one QUESTION - What do you mean by consciousness ?

Is there any research regarding how IQ correlates to consciousness?

Life exists between the maximum and minimum. Unlike a machine... life is a systemizing act of two & three point differentializing!!! That connective path between the "Spirit of the God of love" versus the convective path between the spirit of the ant-god of love is critical as to the working-mass. Which one do you apply working-mass to?

Brain is like a TV 📺 and Consciousness is the electrons flowing through wires creating images and voices on TV. One can have a person like moving TV with battery of electrons. Without flow of electrons TV is like a dead bossy. With web cam it can analyze the surroundings. Consciousness is little more than electrons

Bernardo Kastrup should be speaking in this channel

I was so excited at the first few seconds of this video thinking they were going to play the “Little Einsteins” theme! 🤣

Good luck! Too many known unknowns and unknown unknowns to make any serious hypothesis. What is Chemistry, is not QED in action? Is not any even subtle chemical reaction emitting em photons that when not absorbed can travel all the Universe or propagate from cell to cell? I would prefer to start trying to understand how the simplest organism can understand if it is touched by something or what is food or danger: probably just Chemistry but he understand or memorize something of the environment or is just automatic?

ending was beautiful

The concept of consciousness was invented by humans before they knew what it should be. Thus, searching for an answer to what it is before we even know what it ought to be is therefore futile. Many have tried to give a definition of it but it has usually just ended up being a threshold value of "this is consciousness at this level and this is not", where the threshold is fundamentally arbitrary.

Hi quanta magazine.. Pls could you do a favour by covering a series for how all these fabulous and knowledgeable people went on the journey of making scientist. especially neuroscientist .. As I also want to become one in field of my interest currently I am in high school and I don't know what courses particularly we should get in order to get into research... I hope you are able to understand what I mean to say... Currently I am at biology majors and want to persue research specific field in medical science but I don't know any course other than that of being doctor (M.B.B.S). pls try to start this series... Friend pls support so that my problem could be solved👍👍👍pls

What happens whwn person is near to the end of life? Have you experienced allergic reacion which is quite severe and blood presure goes quickly down and you have breathing difficulties too? It is not pleasant to experience something like that.

Start by defining consciousness, or coming up with a few definitions of consciousness.

If consciousness isnt life why do we say nonliving things to objects that dont have consciousness??? May be language barrier or something

I once heard a song in my dream. Im not a musician but i was learning this song in the dream, i know the lyrics, i can still hum along, but that song does not exist. Ive searched everywhere. No song with that particular order of lyrics but ive heard similar tunes. Im actually more into visual arts.

There is no problem. The problem is people insisting that consciousness is something that it's not.

This guy is perfect

finally a video on exactly how I think about consciousness.

what's the device he's using for light therapy?

I’ve just finished his new book - really fascinating

In the West, consciousness is awareness. But its more than that.