What Is the Nature of Consciousness? | Podcast: The Joy of Why

Neuroscience has made progress in deciphering how our brains think and perceive our surroundings, but a central feature of cognition is still deeply mysterious: namely, that many of our perceptions and thoughts are accompanied by the subjective experience of having them. Consciousness, the name we give to that experience, can’t yet be explained — but science is at least beginning to understand it. In this episode, the consciousness researcher Anil Seth and host Steven Strogatz discuss why our perceptions can be described as a “controlled hallucination,” how consciousness played into the internet sensation known as “the dress,” and how people at home can help researchers catalog the full range of ways that we experience the world.

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“The Joy of Why” is a Quanta Magazine podcast about curiosity and the pursuit of knowledge. The mathematician and author Steven Strogatz and the astrophysicist and author Janna Levin take turns interviewing leading researchers about the great scientific and mathematical questions of our time.

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[neilbeni]

Listening to Anil is like a form of meditation for I....
Thank You for this cast 😊

[observerone]

There is (must be) a solution to "What is consciousness ?". Two epistemological 'puzzle pieces' are 1) thought is physically made of forces flowing through the brain's neural structures and sub-systems that include loops, comparitors, differencing and summing, and 2) existence is always and exactly now (the duration of every Now is exactly zero). This is why when being in states of flow, the sense of time disappears. Feeling conscious is 'simply' experiencing those changing, merging, and opposing forces in every moment.

After experiencing this conclusion, and with practice, one can step into this knowable state by simply choosing to BE. The causal continuum of forces (that is the entire universe) is just running; it cannot do otherwise. Enjoy the ride.

[a_bar]

I really hope to solve the mystery of consciousness before I die

[wernerHkeller]

Dependent origination explained like active inference from modelling of sensory signals. Add emergence of everchanging telos (ethics/values) based on integration of everchanging self interests with everchanging interests of others which everchanging telos updates models of prediction and evaluation. Such interacting selves can flock (interact as society) and appear "as if" collective intelligence while each having their own everchanging experience models. That is context for a model of how everchanging neural networks can feel like "being" a continuing unchanging something (self) in the models generating experience; thus, reifying nothing into something. (Hume, Buddha) 🤟

[danielpaulson]

I’m going to go with the Buddha and process it more.

“All that we are is the result of what we have thought. It is founded on our thoughts, it is based in our thoughts.” Verse 1. Dhammapada.

We are born with a certain brain type. We will have fixed qualities that differ from each other. That is core.
Beyond that we become the accumulation of our remembered and emotionally judged mass of life experiences.

When do we remember becoming self aware? Conscious of thinking and remembering? Not just crying infants with life, but lacking the neural connections in the world to be aware. We can’t even see. We are not yet conscious.

Our sense of self follows. Where would it logically emerge from?
The manner in which our brain connects neural pathways.

Then, we need to understand we are all coexisting in and of a quantum field and we share emotions at a deeper level. That can look supernatural. It’s natural. Awareness through the central nervous system not a physical sense.

[ReginaldCarey]

10:58 Aspects such as sensing emotional state or feelings, come about via a process external to consciousness - maybe. Consider mind, it provides meta processing, the ability to reflect on the state of the brain. I suppose being able to perceive one’s own thoughts counts as a part of consciousness.

[ReginaldCarey]

There’s nothing metaphysical about consciousness. It is the ability to perceive the environment. Perception is a combination of sensing and recognizing the space time patterns in the sensory input. For humans it’s our subjective experience of reality. For a plant it might be the signal of a caterpillar consuming it, or sensing a source of moisture in the soil via root fibers, or the direction of a light source.

[ahmoin]

I'm trying to learn about the mystery of BusyBeaver(5)

[calebbrunson]

It’s metaphysically impossible to reduce quality to quantity. Eventually, modern science will have to recognize the primacy of pure awareness, ideas, and meanings from which sensations are instantiations.

Of course that entails a rejection of a quantitative science which cannot explain qualities.

[greatestoneeva]

the divide and conquer strategy will not lead to a wholistic view of consciousness. fyi, i spoke of those qualities as aspects of consciousness in whole.

[a_bar]

If your brain was creating the world, then why, for example, if you were blessed, would people continue to see the same reality that you were watching, and nothing would change except that you lost sight!

[saliksayyar]

Neither the asker, nor the answerer knows.

[daveozip]

I can tell you what consciousness is…

It is an organisational system, it is an extension of the process that adds meaning to data layer by layer as data gets processed by the brain. Each layer adds meaning to the pixels of information until a recognisable pattern emerges. But continue this same process a few more steps and simple recognition becomes more, it becomes alive with meaning and connection.
That is what consciousness is; a process of pattern recognition on steroids.

…you’re welcome!

[AlgoNudger]

Intelligence and Consciousness are the most exploited word, nowadays. 😂