Christof Koch - Can Consciousness be Non-Biological?

If consciousness is 100% physical, we would have to conclude that the same kind of consciousness that we experience as humans can be generated by non-biological entities (eventually).

[tunahelpa]

Dr Kuhn is so lucky to be able to have these discussions with so many disparate thinkers at the top of their fields. In this case, discussing consciousness with a genius; I could have listened for another 6 minutes. So well done. Of course, consciousness can't be detected, measured, or otherwise affected by material things (other than by disabling its host), so they're discussing angels on heads of pins, . But a fun discussion anyway.

[PatrickLHolley]

While I very much appreciate the wisdom of this person, I am disappointed to see that our culture is still holding onto a materialist view of reality. It is time we made the shift from believing the all reality is generated by matter, and embrace the reality that all matter is the product of energy and spirit which is prior to it.

[IdeaRefinery]

If consciousness isn't something you have, but something you tune into then it's conceivable a machine could achieve sufficient complexity that "a consciousness" could arise around it. But it's hard to imagine a machine every being able to say "Me" or "I".

[robertjkuklajr]

I dont think we will ever be able to truely recreate the mind. Just like we cannot create life from nothing.

[adohmnail]

Outstanding breakdown of extremely complex ideas. Great work! I mean obviously genius work but just on the ability to convey such complex notions well.

[onetruekeeper]

Recreating a brain does not guarantee consciousness will appear in that brain. It could possibly mimic consciousness but it might still be devoid of any sentience.

[trucututrucutu]

Our consciousness is progressive. Remember your first birthday?

[danzigvssartre]

What a mess Koch has dug for himself. First he says that the brain is an ordinary physical system that generates consciousness, then he says that we must "expand the laws of physics to include consciousness." How can a system that is described by ordinary laws of physics produce something (consciousness) not describable by ordinary physics? You can't avoid "philosophical traps" by just ignoring them.

[hoffmanitochka]

Koach so attractive man ❤️‍🔥😍😍 I'm in love with his accent 🔥

[bittertea]

1:33 "That is a given. *-mumbles something-* I am given that you can really use it"
""These are very dangerous philosophical mind games that philosophers like to play and it's not clear whether we can actually do that in the real world."

He handled that really well. People tend to fall in the philosophical trap.

[fingerofthomas]

how could this complexity which intelligent human cannot recreate arise by random process?

[stephenlupoli]

I thought you wrote a whole book on how consciousness CAN’T be computed. I’m confused.

[JohnCahillChapel]

Koch is preaching a dogma of faith which is that "the brain gives rise to consciousness" not that "consciousness gives rise to brain function and artefacts of thought". The interviewer's question 'presumes' this dogma, though I think it was intended to indicate more than mechanistic inevitability. The real problem for Koch's claim to 'being scientific' is that he has not proved nor disproved that article of faith... it is his given, the given of his faith, and in all the discussions and talks I have listened to, the_talk_down_to presumptive_close, buried_in_complexity rhetoric is the bluff, just like my original insurance salesman! Everything must fit material metrics for it to exist, which is of course the antithesis of 'eternal' which, BTW, is necessary whichever way you jump on origins. He and many other (maybe be most other) heavily funded neuro-geniuses, by assuming this dogma, specifically reduce human potential to this paradigm ... mechanistic inevitabilities. They also simply brush off the actual phenomena of wide human experiences and the reason is, on the one hand, they do not fit their preselected and predetermining, pre-emptiveparameters, but on the other more important hand, they have not experienced those phenomena... or did not notice that they had. In other words, as in all faiths, "as a man thinks in his heart (let's say 'his head' here, ) so he becomes" and as these geniuses extrapolate and become the fathers of this 'faith', so they and the victims of their applications become the creations of their dogma that humans are machines. They do exactly what they sarcastically grate about re other 'religions'. But that is why such are so heavily funded by power; funding of these dogmas arises from the lust for power, the need for grants and more grants, and the desire to corral mass human output via robotic conditioning through brain function and information masquerading as consciousness (per se). If you can reduce all notions of human consciousness and consequential intelligence to measured data points, approved and edited information via controlled distribution based in algorithms, you have a brilliant new feudalism. These 'feudal lords', the experts and their masters, the patent holder-funders, tend not to see themselves as subjects of their own inventions. They are above all this. Mocking and bleating utterances against 'ghosts' and 'drivers in the control seat' are trite, crass give-aways that actually reveal a weakness in their posture i.e., smiling insults aimed at philosophers, psychologists and meditator-types reveal unintelligence and a neurotic need to dispense with the unknown, undefined and inscrutables. Mocking asides are spat out purely to buttress the foolish posture that says that "although we know very little about it, we will pontificate on it regardless, and we will not consult with other more mature seekers; and you serfs will listen because we are the funded experts in this new fad field." Well, in fact, there are those who have gone before who have actually been conscious, not just at the mental objects and senses level but well beyond that, and one of the truly bright ones did say (also) that 'not self' [no self] could be found in the senses i.e., via sheer empiricism. Hence one could say, from his perspective, "Well, of course you will not find a self that is constructed by the senses! Egos are constructed of senses!" His preference and experience of consciousness came, however, not by working with mental objects as with these lads of measure, things, labels and impermanence, but by specifically silencing all of those phenomena and seeing beyond the clutter which is so cherished in the "information age"; they saw and were convinced not by constructing convenient utility out of the fragments that were left after the criteria were reduced to the insignificance and uncertainty of relativism and impermanent 'fact' . Who are we kidding? The next generation has no choice but to make their name out of proving the geniuses of this generation to be in error. If it were not so, their could be no future for the fields and no tenure. The money and endless cycles of illusionary progress are dependent on relative supposition touted as fact which they never really know 'that or what it is'. What they constantly prove, given a decade or so after their retirement, is the impermanence of their facts and that all our knowing is fragile and constructed out of our essential unknowing. All efforts to nail down existence to the parameters of scientism fail, given a few short years. Newton had a good run... though he did dabble in the 'dark side' quite enthusiastically. "Einsteins' these are not, yet even Albert had to change his mind on a number of things. But these fellows are not setting out to demonstrate WHETHER or IF consciousness arises out of the brain', they are going to find a rationalisation that shows "HOW consciousness arises from the brain!" Presumption! Consequent upon the kind of 'seeing' that others e.g., the Buddha and many predecessors and successors and Jung and Co experienced, there was humility and compassion, the injunction to find out for yourself. "Explore your own being, awareness, self and existence. Don't be told by these experts or by us! Find out! But I think it is the same with most 'majors'. At some point in one's studies, particularly if one does not mature, the student really believes that 'this field of mine will save the whole of mankind. I am studying the panacea'! We become so occupied in our field that it becomes the lens through which one sees the whole world and all its potentials and pains. This is naive, but very, very common. Who concluded, proved and mandated the notion that the study of the nervous system, particularly of the brain, was/is co-extensive with the study of consciousness? This nonsense is particularly obnoxious because it is largely centred on the brain, i.e., not on the nervous system e.g., of the stomach! That to me is quite telling and I think it has to do with a few concrete factors: i. Narcissism ii. Over-intoxication with fMRI machines, iii. the capacity to dazzle with complexity and fattiness. In the east, many will not point to the head when referring to consciousness as these fellows do. Many easterners, (and I myself) point to the heart and/or the stomach. Others even point to their throats or their testicles (chakras). Of course, those who are not conscious beyond mundane clusters of data, so-called intelligence (memory and closed-system logic), algorithms, toothaches, sex drive and one, some or all of the the material senses, and those whose whole identities are tied up with a 'faith' like scientism cannot afford to really and sincerely and consistently say, "I do not know about consciousness beyond my thoughts and the relative findings or my pre-emptive parameters." If you do not know because your own consciousness does not know, you have not proved your own consciousness to be the extent of the potential of seeing and knowing in anyone other than perhaps yourself. You cannot say much at all about it. It is all a presumption based in ignorance tat is actually confessed at times, and is therefore is promoted by mere rhetorical form (i.e., bluff). The assumption that you actually do know that the mundane artefacts of your brain function actually do define consciousness per se, points not to proof but to (at least potential) blindness, not to any form of 'enlightenment'. It would be far beater to do neuroscience for the purposes of basic health, not to mimic consciousness potential that you know nothing about. Even John Searle says, "There's one mistake we've got to avoid and that is the mistake of supposing that if you simulate it you've duplicated it. This is a deep mistake imbedded in our popular culture, that simulation is equivalent to duplication, but of course it isn't!" This is not just embedded in popular culture.... it is rife throughout the digital industries. It is the basis for the liturgy. In this very discussion (the video above), Koch is willing to strip the notion of consciousness down to the effects we can observe by the senses... which, it should be noted have already been stripped down by the limited pre-emptive parameters of the method itself.This is fatal, not for scientism, but for those who are subjected to the findings of these fellows and the extrapolations and applications emanating from them! ... not the least being this kind of preaching and propagandising. Furthermore, correlates indicate many things, but are not the thing itself and they do not necessary speak to 'cause & effect' or 'the direction of flow' or the lack of it. "Interpretations" of data are just that, interpretations, and often, as here, predicated upon predetermining research/researcher per-emptive parameters, e.g., matter and mechanistic interactions are all there is, there is nothing more. That syndrome, that cycle is more concretely Calvinistic than the the Canons of Dort! God forbid!

[winstonchang]

I am looking at millions of pixels of the image of Dr. Kuhn and Dr. Koch
frame by frame and I think they are talking and debating....
The point is, how easily are we humans "fooled" into thinking that there is such a thing as consciousness.

[caricue]

Biological means alive, so no, dead things will never be conscious. Consciousness is how it feels when matter is alive.

[winstonchang]

We know water is two hydrogens and one oxygen....
Yet when we jump into billions of such hydrogens and oxygen....for five minutes, we drown....
We cannot "break" that illusion....

[viswavijeta]

Functionalist! As long as we have the functional relationship between neurons, we have recreated consciousness. Koch believes that human connectom can produce consciousness. And there is a gradient of consciousness depending on the complexity of the functional network. From fly to insect to rodents to primate, the complexity of the nervous system increases and hence we go up the gradient of consciousness.

What do you think think, is Koch correct?

[davidroberts]

Artificial Intelligence will most probably be differently intelligent. We have 5 senses to gain experience. A well-connected automaton may have upwards to 10, 20, 30... senses to gather world experience and self-awareness.
Will that mean this construct is more intelligent that humans? Who knows?

[walterbishop]

It can be none biological as life itself was originated from none biological matter, but the tricky question is how it made the decision at the first place to become alive and why!

[kokomanation]

I thing sophisticated AI software might be even more important than advanced neural circuitry for consciousness to emerge