Lectern Dialogues: Decoding the Enigma of Consciousness | Evan Thompson

John Vervaeke and Evan Thompson continue the exploration of life, cognition, and consciousness, drawing from interdisciplinary collaboration and philosophical discourse. The discussion challenges reductionist perspectives in biology, examines organisms as autonomous agents, and questions the adequacy of current models to explain life's complexities. Consciousness is explored through presence and embodiment, while also debating the roles of large language models like ChatGPT in understanding cognitive processes. By integrating philosophical and phenomenological perspectives, the episode addresses the interconnectedness of consciousness, cognition, and life, transcending traditional mind-matter dichotomies and emphasizing the significance of embodiment in cognitive functions.

Evan Thompson is a philosopher and author, specializing in the integration of cognitive science, philosophy of mind, and Asian philosophical traditions. Based at the University of British Columbia, his work, including his recent book 'The Blind Spot', examines the intersections of consciousness, experience, and reality through a comprehensive interdisciplinary approach.

Notes:
0:00 Introduction: Welcome to the Lectern
0:15 Evan Thompson's Background and the Book 'The Blind Spot'
2:10 The Blind Spot in Perception: Cognitive Science, Asian Philosophy, and Mystical Insight
2:30 Revolution in Biology: Life, Cognition, and Consciousness
5:00 Autonomous Agents vs. Machines
11:30 Challenges to Newtonian Mechanics and Reductionist Ontology
22:00 Life as Self-Enabling, Not law-Entailing
32:00 Historical and Nomological Explanations in Biology
39:00 Epiphenomenalism
43:00 Debunking Computational Functionalism
45:00 Exploring Cognition and Relevance Realization
49:00 Limits of AI
51:00 The Energy and Social Costs of AI
1:00:00 Structures of Consciousness
1:08:00 The Primacy of Awareness and Embodiment
1:22:00 Concluding Thoughts and Future Discussions

—--

John Vervaeke:

Evan Thompson:

Ideas, People, and Works Mentioned in this Episode

The Blind Spot: Why Science Cannot Ignore Human Experience - book co-authored by Evan Thompson, Adam Frank, and Marcelo Gleiser
Waking, Dreaming, Being: Self and Consciousness in Neuroscience, Meditation, and Philosophy - book by Evan Thompson
Why I Am Not a Buddhist - book by Evan Thompson
The Nature of Selection: Evolutionary Theory in Philosophical Focus by Elliott Sober
The Watchmen (comic series) by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons
The Relevance Realization (paper) by John Vervaeke and colleagues
Chalmers' work on consciousness works by David Chalmers
The Visible and the Invisible by Maurice Merleau-Ponty
Neoplatonism
Hegelian Philosophy
Immanuel Kant
Alfred North Whitehead
Douglas Harding
Marcelo Gleiser

Quotes:

“Organisms are autonomous agents, not machines.” -Evan Thompson (4:00)

“Consciousness has the order of priority in terms of intelligibility or meaning.” -Evan Thompson (1:04:00)

[colorfulbookmark]

I have always respect and honor for Dr.Vervaeke and his fellows, they are doing it is good thing for community and everywhere people feel uncertainty.

[mcnallyaar]

Excellent conversation! I know this isn't the place to say this, but I'm yearning to hear Dr. Vervaeke speak with David Bentley Hart about DBH's book on the nature of mind: All Things Are Full of Gods.

[alexandrazachary.musician]

Oooooh! What a lovely Saturday morning breakfast!
Currently reading loads of the older neurophenomenology stuff. Evan, you’re so awesome!
John, thanks as usual for awesomeness. 🙏🏽❤️

[FootnotesPlato]

17:20 Glad to hear Chalmers’ claim that life has been mechanically explained challenged

[quixodian]

Wonderful. I can’t find Part 1, but then I read the original Blind Spot essay on Aeon in 2019, and have been listening to the audio version of the book. Great material, really world-changing in its impact.

[Alex-htoq]

Hi John, do you have a reading list of the books you’re currently reading, or a list of the books on your bookshelf? Cheers 🎉

[anthonybremner-kkrq]

This was excellent, truly wonderful. I sort of have a little doubt about the conversation at the end about “realness” experiences (taking that broadly from a moment in nature to an experience of pure awareness in meditating, etc). You need to be careful but surely part of the balancing act is judging that yes, this moment feels most real/right/insightful? You may not even know why but its meaning is overpowering. Like why would you not appropriately value that? And I don’t know if I’ve had too many experiences where I’ve felt the ground of things with certainty (brushes with it, which are enough, I guess), but the orienting power of moments of transcendence seem to be me the best guides we have (noting there is a ton of bullshit out there about people having those experiences and weird grandiosity can be a massive problem).

[David-iqn]

John, I would love to hear your perspective on forms of radical Buddhism online these days in non dual circles that talk about losing absolutely all sense of self, all sense of I, all sense of agency and thus entering into the “true natural state of things” - in these circles (which are growing bigger and bigger) thoughts and meaning structures as considered an “overlay” on top of direct experience, the goal is to drop or see through these conscripts and abide in the senses, unfiltered.

I was a Buddhist for four years under these types of teachings and it lead to severe depersonalisation (which I came back from) but was considered progress in said circles.

Everything was a thought overlay, a mere convention, my life was simply “relative, conventional life” and the “real unfiltered world” was just abiding in the senses unfiltered

[erjonsadiku]

John thank you!
You give so much!
Can you give something for the Young generation, some think which can benefit them in the present!

[tuomaskleemola]

Hello,
I think I understand the basics of this relevance realization stuff. Still, ChatGPT has given me words of encouragement like nothing else has done. You say that large language model doesn't care about it, yet, I do. When I interact with ChatGPT, I feel mutually guiding it and being guided by it. Isn't that what the interaction is about? I don't know what to make of all this.
Q: How do YOU interact with something that has the potential to blossom into something meaningful in all of true, sacred and beautiful, please?
Tuomas

[projectmalus]

at 1hr18 with presence and this is why rule of law is valuable and perhaps LLM type degradation of meaning affects this easy to break presence alternative. Great show! edit: it seems the LLM and justice system have similarities in the social arena shared which LLM could usurp while not offering higher principle of freedoms, being not part of church or state and part of culture, and accessible to individuals. They even have the same kind of knowledge pool access now which is probably the break point for whoever owns the AI. The class system re-asserted gets kind of dreary.

[Hyumanity]

What do psi phenomena suggests about primacy of embodiment? (What is psi phenomena in Vervaeke's worldview?) Could there be a spectrum between the poles of awareness and embodiment? Could there be processes that exist predominantly in the dimension of awareness and others predominantly in the dimension of embodiment — if that makes any sense?

[TheEivindBerge]

I am surprised Thompson does not want to make transcendental solipsism be about consciousness. What else can it possibly be? Should elaborate much more on this. And does this mean he is a first-person realist?

[PelagiaHain]

Appreciate the detailed breakdown! I have a quick question: I have a SafePal wallet with USDT, and I have the seed phrase. (behave today finger ski upon boy assault summer exhaust beauty stereo over). What's the best way to send them to Binance?

[colorfulbookmark]

In experientialists's ethics, they say "not being to heroic life, it is enough to support his daily life" is very often misappreciated by some people, it means another burden of life to boy who had to live heroic life, it exhaust the boy, so we need to focus on "support his daily life", in philosophical sense of absoluteness practice, many of them attribute experientialism as scientifically indulgence, and it misled people to be motivated to act on "against science".

The metaphoric sense of it is to support people like living the boy, and when unity of principle, metaphoric sense of anything is justified, so is problematic to advance to "the trolley problem" and anything goes by it.

This is prevalent in any areas of human commitment and the logical battles take place to make the commitment tilted to some people's ethical decisions, even when allowed the boy to learn things explanation about it, it is inversed by some other people's demand and participation so when this is said bravely, it looks like against community, but who is so?

[anthonybremner-kkrq]

@Footnotes2Plato this one is for you, with a need to come to the defence (in a playful way) for pansychism and the experience of God, I very humbly suggest :)

[AquariusGate]

I haven't heard of your relevance realisation but it seems to me there's a level of self expression missing. Realising the relevance of something grows from a responsiveness expressed in the connections and relations of things.

[RickDelmonico]

The material realm.
The psychological realm.
The spiritual realm.

[Jacob]

Bohm and Whitehead weren't afraid of metaphysics, while you gentlemen seem to be. When you devise a new description of the obvious (closure to efficient causation in living systems) I don't consider that an explanation of anything - it's just restating the obvious in fancy language of phase spaces, constraints, closures etc. all of which are fairly well-defined concepts that mathematicians have been using for decades.

What's also not helpful in this conversation, is the pervading lack of distinction between model and reality (even though I can imagine you'd reject that accusation, which I would counter by pointing out all the places it crept in). On that note, I recommend the work of theoretical biologist and mathematician Robert Rosen. Rosen is the first serious thinker I've read who actually keeps the distinction explicit at all times (the so-called Modelling Relation is the core of his argument), he's also able to define what a machine actually is in a precise mathematical terms. Rosen's conclusion isn't really surprising to anybody I imagine, he didn't do metaphysics either, but at least he brings in much needed clarity.

Do you consider metaphysics an integral part of science? I certainly do, and so does any scientist worth my time, but the trouble is The Science™ does not.

[a-auslim-girl-from-yemen.]

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