Can Brain Alone Explain Consciousness? | Episode 1607 | Closer To Truth

Can physical facts about the brain account for mental experiences of the mind? Has philosophy of mind made progress? We take a 15-year journey with John Searle and David Chalmers.

Season 16, Episode 7 - #CloserToTruth

Closer To Truth host Robert Lawrence Kuhn takes viewers on an intriguing global journey into cutting-edge labs, magnificent libraries, hidden gardens, and revered sanctuaries in order to discover state-of-the-art ideas and make them real and relevant.

Closer to Truth presents the world’s greatest thinkers exploring humanity’s deepest questions. Discover fundamental issues of existence. Engage new and diverse ways of thinking. Appreciate intense debates. Share your own opinions. Seek your own answers.

#Brain #Consciousness

[pietropizzorni]

I misread the title and thought it was "can Brian alone explain conciousness", like it was the journey of a guy trying to research all by himself...still captures my imagination

[zenbum]

For 20 years I've been obsessed with this same mystery. I've ravenously consumed every popular book published by Searles, Chalmers, and many others. Meanwhile, Kuhn has been sitting in their dens (and laboratories), chatting with them. I'm jealous. But of course I'm grateful for getting to watch these conversations here.
I agree with Kuhn that no substantive progress has been made on solving this mystery. Why not? It's very frustrating.

Are we perhaps just asking the wrong questions? Science, by definition, provides objective, 3rd-person explanations. Consciousness, by definition, is a subjective, 1st-person phenomenon. Is it, by definition, absurd to seek an objective explanation for a subjective phenomenon? Maybe it should be trivially obvious that objective theories can't possibly explain even the existence of subjective phenomena. Maybe we have simply tried to stretch the category "explanation" too far.

[NickManeck]

One of the finest series, aptly titled "Closer To Truth." It may seem disappointing we haven't found the truth yet. The producers never said we would. They only promised us of getting Closer to the Truth.

[joseavendano]

This is probably one of the most amazing and outstanding topics in current discussions at academia and in the world, and you've made an amazing job!

[bennguyen]

I like how David explains that panpsychism has the same problem as the hard problem.. namely, how do the smaller agents of consciousness combine to form the the type we experience.

[aidan-ator]

"Correlation isn't the same as explanation." What a powerful quote that both sides can use.

[rezamahan]

thank you for your excellent interviews and narratives, Robert.

[Zking]

Looking in the brain for consciousness is like looking in the TV for people

[neilcreamer]

The problems of understanding consciousness all seem to be based on trying to reconcile it with the physical world yet none of these academics is questioning the hidden assumption: is there any evidence we can find for something behind our experience or is experience all there is?

I’ve not seen Robert discuss dreaming in his videos yet it is one of the most useful tools for illustrating the potential problem with materialism, either exclusive or as part of a dualism. Our dreams contain all the elements we see in what we call our waking life: the world, other people like us with apparent inner life, thoughts, sensations, emotions and the idea of ‘me’, the one experiencing the dream. Yet no-one would dispute that all of this takes place in the mind.

It is commonplace to assume that dreams occur in our minds, that we each have a mind and that the mind has something to do with a brain but what evidence is there for this reasoning? All the information on which we build these assumptions is experienced in exactly the same sort of scenario as we would find in a dream. The only substantive difference between what we call reality and a dream is recognised only after we have woken up from the dream. While we’re in the dream the vast majority of us experience it as though it were real. If a dream is seen as absurd it’s only absurd on reflection after waking.

Given that the entirety of a dream can seem exactly like waking life while we’re experiencing it why do we believe that there is anything to this reality other than the experience we are having?

[elgaen]

“If we knew how the brain constructs consciousness” Well, sir that’s the crux of the question. The scientific issue is that you’re imposing restrictions on your future observations. In other words you’re looking for what you already believe to be true not simply for what is true.

[Northwind]

Awesome episode. I like that it showed the same two philosophers over the course of 14 years

[snowkracker]

After listening to people’s stories of out of body experiences I have to say that I don’t think that consciousness is all in our brains. Too many times we have heard of people being completely unconscious in a coma but somehow the person is able to explain in detail the happenings around them while they’re being operated on or in other cases where they’ve been in a bad accident and they’re hovering above the scene and are able to give specific details and even what was said in some cases.
I think that it’s more like our souls enter a human body and animate it with consciousness. Once our souls leave that body it is dead but our consciousness moves on in the form of energy.

[Kremlin]

You know how deep this stuff is when you're high_

[EugeneKhutoryansky]

What made me change my opinion on this subject are the "Near Death Experiences" where people afterwards accurately gave detailed accounts of information they could not have possibly known, such as the details of what people in the neighboring corridors were doing. In cases where such data exists, it is hard to dismiss this as the brain playing tricks on us.

[rawkeeper]

To me it looks so simple. The brain let's us think, speak, remember etc and all these things together is what forms our consciousness.

[kylebowles]

I mostly agree with John. Consciousness seems to require at least some of the properties of the brain (processing, memory, input and output, etc) so for objects with small bandwidth like a fly, a much lesser consciousness will be experienced until essentially zero is reached in an object like a rock. This places plants, viruses, and computers in non-zero territory, right where they belong.
Humans are much better at the easy part, writing down equations (GR, QM), than optimizing the function's input for certain desired properties (Schwarzchild, Kerr, superconductors, consciousness, fine tuning) because optimization is a different class of problem called NP Hard.. because it's hard.. have patience

Love the history of CTT in this episode!

[bobs]

A brain is something you touch, see, hear, smell, taste etc whereas consciousness is experienced inside directly. They are different aspects of the same thing and we have different means of experiencing them.

[zaphodsndhead]

Regarding John Searle. Exploring something with objective, scientific reasoning means going into it WITHOUT bias. If you go into inquiry with your mind made up you force the data to fit the mold you have created in your mind. David Chalmers seems to delve into this with open eyes and an open mind.

[robotaholic]

I love the John Searle lectures on Consciousness! I've seen them MANY times lol and I TELL MY ARM TO GO UP AND THE DAMNED THING JUST GOES RIGHT UP!

[codyhenrichs]

I have out of body experiences, I am conscious of being me during these experiences. Due to this I know consciousness works through the brain but doesn't come from the brain.