Christof Koch - 'Consciousness is not a computation... it's a state of being' - Sentientism Ep:181

Christof is a neurophysiologist and computational neuroscientist best known for his work on the neural basis of consciousness on which he worked with Nobel Prize winner Francis Crick for 24 years. He is the president and chief scientist of the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle. Having originally trained as a physicist, from 1986 until 2013, he was a Professor of Biology and Engineering at the California Institute of Technology in Southern California.
Over the last decade, Christof has worked closely with the psychiatrist and neuroscientist Giulio Tononi. Together they advocate for an Integrated Information Theory (IIT) of consciousness - often seen as a modern version of panpsychism that only ascribes consciousness to entities with some degree of irreducible cause-effect power.

We discuss:
00:00 Clips!
01:09 Welcome
- "My dog... Mr. Felix... a sentient being"
- The dedication from Christof's forthcoming book "Then I Am Myself The World": "... to all fellow travellers on the river of time who howl, bark, cry, screech, whine, bellow, shriek, buzz, sing, speak or those without a voice - for it is only in compassion with all life that we can redeem ourselves."
03:52 Christof's Intro
- Physicist turned neurobiologist
- "I've always been fascinated by the question of #consciousness"
04:45 What's Real
- Growing up in a devout Roman #catholic family, raised kids Catholic
- "One thing that always irked me... the belief that my dogs... somehow didn't have a soul and wouldn't be resurrected... that always bothered me... whatever it is we all share"
- "I lived in two worlds - like many scientists do. On Sunday you go to church and you pray... during the week, the rest of the time, you're a scientist - you try to explain everything using natural explanation... this split... I couldn't support any more"
- "Progressively I lost my faith... I'm a naturalist... I try to explain everything... using natural laws"
- "What's real, the only thing that exists is causal power... that gravity has... that electric charge has... that I have when... I raise one of my hands"
- "... the central aspect which is that I can feel, I have experiences, I can see - all of that is somehow arising out of causal powers"
- A priest acknowledging that non-human animals are "parts of god's creation" and can suffer, but "they do not partake in the same way we do"
- Human exceptionalism "many religions believe that humans are exceptional... we're in charge of the universe... everything gets subsumed under human demands - that struck me as wrong"
- Living in Arabic, muslim-majority countries
- "Who has what faith - it's totally random - it depends where you were born and in which family you were born... how can this be true"
- Doing science, using rational assumptions, Bayesian reasoning, the scientific method
- JW: Topics that draw even some naturalists back towards the mystical: Origins & nature of the universe, life, humanity, consciousness...
- Wagner's "Tristan and Isolde" as inspiration for the title of Christof's new book "they lose their own identity and become one... which includes them and the entire world"
- Conversion, mystical, near-death, psychedelic experiences "The question is - what do they reveal about the universe?"
- Leaving Catholicism "it's not easy... there are many things that are very positive about faith... but there are also very negative things... It puts the roots inside of you and it's not easy to leave that comfort... like looking back at the comfort of a childhood... you can't go back... you grew up... now you realise... life is not a consoling tale for children"
- "The universe is beautiful but it's also terrible and it's up to us to understand it... there isn't a god who's going to do that for us"
13:47 What & Who Matters?
- "Morality... the rules and ethics the deeper part, how should we behave, ultimately has to be to minimise the suffering of all creatures... all sentient, conscious creatures... creatures that can experience."
- "Given we're all products of natural selection - we all have pain and can suffer... that's necessary as part of our evolutionary heritage"
39:45 What are Consciousness and Sentience?
01:14:09 A Better World?
01:17:35 Follow Christof
- "I don't Twitter"

[SellTheWorld]

I love these conversations. Please keep on making them. They are so important.

[georgebates]

Another very interesting podcast. In the 1970's there was an interview show on network television called The Dick Cavette Show. Cavette was widely regarded as the smartest, cleverest, most articulate, most personable, most incisive interviewer of celebrities and other notables of that era. I think the torch has been passed to Jaime Woodhouse.
A couple of additional questions that I wish could have be asked of Dr. Koch: 1. his views on the Penrose-Hameroff model for consciousness that links quantum phenomena going on at a subcellular level inside neurons with conscious experience, 2. with respect to his corticocentric bias towards mammalian consciousness, how does he explain the obviously conscious behavior of laboratory rats and cats that have been experimentally decorticated, and 3. how does he ethically reconcile the killing of laboratory animals like mice to answer esoteric questions about sentience in the very animals whose lives he has just extinguished?
Incidentally, John Sanbonmatsu's eagerly awaited new book, "The Omnivores' Deception", has not yet been published.

[rwess]

Just starting. - I expect a good one...
Meanwhile, The Animal Turn had Gary Francione on. I agree with him a lot, but somehow he also bugs me.
My take away: First abolition (as he advocates), then rights, then welfare - just as happened with human chattel slavery (we're still working on the welfare part.).
Only veganism, grounded in the sentience of the victims (as he advocates), can achieve abolition... Agreed, but single-issue campaigns (such as fur, leather, wool, civet coffee, etc.) can serve the purpose of educating and enlightening about the massive extent of animal "chattel enslavement" - as long as the clear primary purpose is always abolition (not rights or welfare improvements)! Even PETA, the master of single-issue campaigns, has the motto "Animals are not ours..." which is an abolitionist stance.
Gary advocates for a single message and single focus (which is fine), but I think we need to hit on many fronts toward the unified abolitionist end. I agree with him that veganism is the litmus test for any individual, or organization, advocating for sentient beings.
I also want to make some distinctions on what abolition means for "domesticated" and "wild" sentient beings, but that's too much content for a YouTube comment.😁

[rwess]

Quote: "The Western intellectual tradition suggests that in order to be happy, what we need to do most of all is to go out and subdue the world; secure resources, found businesses, run governments, gain fame and conquer nations. By contrast, the Eastern tradition has for a long while told us something very different. In both its Buddhist and Hindu strands, it has insisted that contentment requires us to learn to conquer not the world but the instrument through which we view this world, namely our minds." The School of Life.
- Or, it's merely about conquering your microbiome, your gut bacteria... Most people seem unable...
- Or, maybe it's merely about conquering your stupid taste buds... Most people seem unable... 🙃

[backwardthoughts]

here hes still a physicalist. (dec 2023)

now in interviews from a month ago (april 2024) he explicitly abandons it.

[DrFuzzyFace]

Waay too much host, not enough guest. It was obvious to me, at least, that Christof is orders of magnitude more informed on this subject than was the host. The host was too eager to interrupt and interject his own perspective. Like the rest of us planet-dwellers (me included), there's always room to improve our respective states of imperfection. 😊

[RJ.]

I have heard lots of arguments against religion repeatedly, and some are good ones, but “why dogs don’t get resurrected”, that is a new one.. 😑

[AntiSpeciestMarkoValente]

and video is interrupted by Macdonald's Big Mac ad! By AI?!

[PClanner]

Here is where I cannot agree. Religiosity as a source of morals is a flawed narrative. Consequenently, as we cannot have a dependently and verifiable account of the start of time, we have to take things as we have found them out to be, and modify our thought processes when more information is found out (revealed holds to much supernaturalilty for me).
So the stories of heaven, gods, souls and resurrection do not feature in real life. If we follow that to a natural conclusion, everything based on those stories (and as our history was vocal for the longest time) is skewed and is found to be both incompatible and incorrect for the way our society is turning out. But we cannot change because too much would need to change for reality to be observed.
Sentience is a flawed descriptor because it cannot be correctly categorized. When we understand HOW a thought is constructed, we could move on the correct meaning, but in it's current form, it is an empty, meaningless word.

[timism]

The host talks far too much. Also, has some very odd views and assumptions. Why start bringing homophobia (whatever that is) into a conversation about meta physics and existentialism? He also doesn't seem to realise that if there is no intelligence behind the universe, then there is no logical reason for treating each other and animals nicely. We may as well just do what is best for each of us because we won't he here in the blink of a cosmic eye. No one will care when we're dead, what we did, or didn't do and we're really not alive very long. As George Harrison said, it doesn't take long to get from fifteen to fifty. I'm in my sixties, now and it's going faster and faster