What is consciousness? - Michael S. A. Graziano

Explore the theories of human consciousness and the science of how your brain works to create a conscious experience.

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Patient P.S. suffered a stroke that damaged the right side of her brain, leaving her unaware of everything on her left side. If someone threw a ball at her left side, she might duck. But she wouldn’t have awareness of the ball or know why she ducked. Where does consciousness come from? Michael Graziano explores the question that has vexed scientists and philosophers for centuries.

Lesson by Michael S. A. Graziano, directed by TED-Ed.

Thank you so much to our patrons for your support! Without you this video would not be possible! Annamaria Szilagyi, Morgan Williams, Abhijit Kiran Valluri, Mandeep Singh, Sama aafghani, سلطان الخليفي, Marylise CHAUFFETON, Marvin Vizuett, Jayant Sahewal, Quinn Shen, Caleb ross, Elizabeth Cruz, Elnathan Joshua Bangayan, Mullaiarasu Sundaramurthy, Jose Henrique Leopoldo e Silva, Dan Paterniti, Jerome Froelich, Tyler Yoshizumi, Martin Stephen, Justin Carpani, Faiza Imtiaz, Khalifa Alhulail, Tejas Dc, Benjamin & Shannon Pinder, Srikote Naewchampa, Sage Curie, Exal Enrique Cisneros Tuch, Ana Maria, Vignan Velivela, Ahmad Hyari, eden sher, Travis Wehrman, Louisa Lee, Kiara Taylor, Аркадий Скайуокер, Milad Mostafavi, Rob Johnson, Clarence E. Harper Jr., Mihail Radu Pantilimon, Karthik Cherala, haventfiguredout, Violeta Cervantes, Elaine Fitzpatrick, Lyn-z Schulte, cnorahs , Henrique 'Sorín' Cassús, Tim Robinson, Jun Cai, Joichiro Yamada and Paul Schneider.

[ShauryaSingh-tsoc]

It's amazing that we humans are conscious enough to question What is consciousness which means that we are consciously questioning consciousness and it's reason for existence in this non-conscious world.

[henk-]

I love psychology, neuroscience and philosophy. The immensily complicated ways we perceive the world, think, feel and behave, based on millions of years of evolution, biochemistry, neural pathways and our life experiences is fascinating.

[zmwrzwt]

Everybody asks what is consciousness, but no one asks how is consciousness :(

[tymgamerz]

My school uses your videos to teach science and life

[trans_white_racist]

Few years back, I rode and rolled my quad (ATV), hit my head, and lost my consciousness for 7 hours. During those hours, I was awake, but I wasn't self aware. I helped to roll the quad back upright; I was eating, walking, responding to questions and commands, and repeatedly asking the same question over and over again. I didn't remember a thing before I suddenly woke up on the way back home from the hospital.

The point I wanted to make is: from my own personal experience, I realized when my consciousness was out, I didn't suffer from anything, nor enjoying anything. I was simply a dead man walking. It made me wonder, do small animals suffer when they are in stress or when they register pain. So far, I came to a small conclusion that if a animal can not learn from it's own experience, but only able to behave on its instinct, then that animal does not have consciousness.

[annymus]

Wow...
I still cannot understand why people of my age don’t find this type of things addictive. It is deep and mysterious, and looking at it closer, so interesting...

[shivambahukhandi]

Ted ed just keeps answering the world's most common yet unanswered questions . Thank you for all the knowledge !!

[sebastianelytron]

But how much does consciousness weigh?

[kellyfly]

The brain is manipulative. It often gives misdirections and produces false memories. You can't trust yourself sometimes. Best to write things down instead of trying to remember everything.

[mehdichikh]

I suffered the borderline disorder for over 23 years.
With so much anxiety Not until I came across psilocybin mushrooms treatmentPsilocybin treatment actually saved my life honestly. 6 years totally clean.
Never thought I would be saying this about mushrooms

[justinh]

Depression, heartbreak and good dose of an existential crisis is the ideal way to start a 2020 morning😌

[SciencewithKatie]

Already won me over on this video with the Harry Potter quote! 🌟🧙🏻‍♂️

[mintayza]

Brain: _Quick, think of a snarky comment while you're still early_

[parantapbhardwaj]

i have been waiting for this videos from last 20 years i am 20 years old, thanx ted

[yeahyeahyeah]

As a teacher, I am thrilled by the clarity and simplicity of this explanation. Really well done!

[jsptraveler]

Night: i want to sleep
Brain: No. let s stay awake and remember all your mistakes

[prabhupt]

BRAIN is the most important part of the body
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.
.
.
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Who's telling me this?
THE BRAIN...😰

[sukhrajsohal]

"I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness." -Max Planck (Father of quantum theory and Nobel Laureate)

"As a man who has devoted his whole life to the most clearheaded science, to the study of matter, I can tell you as a result of my research about the atoms this much: There is no matter as such! All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particles of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together. . . . We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent Mind. This Mind is the matrix of all matter." -Max Planck

[a-google-user]

Humans consciousness is not enough to explain what is consciousness!

[icygood]

"Our certainty that we have a metaphysical, subjective experience may come from one of our brain's models; a cut-corner description of what it means to process information in a focused and deep manner".

This sentence (among others) just brushes aside the hard problem (and the mind-body problem) as if there weren't a problem to address at all.

Although actually, such a certainty is the only one we can ever justifiably have. Our experience is everything to which we have any direct access - you can be certain that it's there, as such. Not only that, but you can only really, really be certain that it, alone, is there.

No, friends, our certainty of a metaphysical, subjective experience has not (yet) been explained by neurons alone... and it is very deceptive when people - even, at times, PhD's in cognitive science and related areas - put it in these terms. They're talking here about neural correlates but, for a video titled "What is consciousness?", I frankly expected more "attention" to the very question they posed (but don't take this the wrong way, props anyway for getting people thinking about this!).

Anyway, from their own description, they are equating consciousness to - or defining it as - "processing information in a focused and deep manner". Hand-wavy language aside, what does this answer? Where is the subjective-experience part of this information; how does it happen; why do we experience it? This literally answers none of those questions and might as well be "information pan-psychism", which may be okay if it actually explains why we should expect information, which we currently define in a very specific, but different manner, to also map to consciousness in some fundamental way. IIT hasn't explained this. No one has explained this. Besides that, there's the recurrent frustration when academics seem to confuse self-awareness, self-knowledge, self-reference, or even "social attribution" with experience itself.

Yes, Graziano, looking right at you, now. In fact, I have just watched another video (Closer to Truth channel) wherein Graziano literally answers "Yeah, if there is an internal experience - I would say there isn't in us, either". The question is "what is consciousness" (supposedly) and he literally believes it is NOTHING; that it simply is not. Not just that it is inexplicably "emergent", or some unexplained by-product of physics, but just not there at all!

Now I don't know about your experience, reader, but over on this end, there is definitely something (conscious experience) that is not "produced" by physics as we currently model it. If you want to say that a system with self-reference or self-knowledge or social attribution has conscious experience, you can't just define these to be consciousness itself - you need to show where in these systems - indeed, where in the universe - lie the experiential properties which we observe, in addition to showing why they take the form that they do (which is all neuroscience has generally tried to do). Otherwise, you go the idealist route and show where in consciousness or in experiential properties (however you might define these) lies the universe and the physics we have been modeling.

It is so odd to me that some people will not admit that there are certain things about the universe that we simply do not yet understand.