Unlocking The Mystery Of Human Consciousness | Sam Harris [Deleted Scene]

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TRANSCRIPT
So one of the mysteries about consciousness is why it should arise in the first place. We have all of these complex systems in the world which are purely physical right. They did they need not entail some interior mental dimension and they seem to get along fine without there being any interior mental dimension.

So for instance in the brain of a living person right there are all these neurophysiological events that are chemical and electrical events and these cause behaviour, right. These cause everything we see physiologically in a human being and any behaviour you see whether it's a speech or vision or any form of perception certainly movement. All of this can be explained in terms of one physical event causing another, or so it seems. And if that's the case well then it seems like you should be able to have a system that doesn't have any mental life associated with it that is just a a physical automaton in some sense, which performs all of the functions of a human being but is in fact a zombie. And many philosophers talk about a zombie in this sense a zombie is not a a dead person come back to life but it is is this thought experiment of a a humanoid creature that has no mental life. That has no consciousness. You know it's not so far fetched because it may in fact be lawfully impossible or just as a fact of the physics of our universe impossible. But it's not so far fetched that it would be possible because. most of what you are as a person is or at least seems to be a zombie. I mean most of your mental life most of what you've managed to accomplish behaviourally even emotionally even on some level cognitively happens in the dark. You know it's not illuminated by consciousness.

So if you're understanding anything I'm saying right now. Your decoding English words as they come out of my mouth. I'm making these sounds and you are effortlessly understanding at least some of what I'm saying. You were doing that by processes which you can't consciously inspect. If I say a word that you suddenly don't know or if I if I make a grammatical error neither of us are in a position to inspect those processes consciously. And this is true with how you beat your heart and how you maintain balance and how you do many of the things that supports your conscious life. When you feel your body in space, right. When you engage something like proprioception. You feel where your hands are in space. That is conscious. The feeling of of having a hand, say but most of what the brain has to do in order to produce that conscious experience is happening in the dark. So why isn't everything happening in the dark. That's that is the mystery of consciousness.

But many scientists philosophers seem to take this one step too far and say things like consciousness is or may be an illusion. In my view consciousness is the one thing in this universe that can't be an illusion. Yet no matter how confused we are about everything that we might be in a dream we might be running as simulations on some alien supercomputer. You know I might be a brain in a vat and to the world that I experience doesn't exist. There's no end to to the kind of confusion I might suffer at this moment. But the one thing I can't be confused about is that something seems to be happening. There's something there's something that it's like to be me. Whatever I am. And that is the fact of consciousness, right. That is whatever its relationship to the brain or whether I even have a brain whatever its relationship to physics. I could have everything wrong. The one thing I can't have wrong is that something seems to be happening right now. And that is all consciousness is.

#SamHarris #Neurophysiology #Consciousness

[islammovie]

Arabic subtitles are now available for Islam and The Future of Tolerance.

[markp]

Seems like you guys shot enough footage for a trilogy - Love it, it's the gift that keeps on giving - thanks

[letsgoBrandon]

"...consciousness is the one thing in this universe that can't be an illusion." It's kinda THE point of the word consciousness. You could be imagining all the things you are conscious of, but there is zero doubt that you are conscious of them.

[freethinker]

I guess 80% didn't make the final cut, probably because they contained the most controversial material

[nyworker]

"Why Not Happening In The Dark"...a philosophical conundrum or the ultimate in begging the question?
Sam is talking about emergence or why do certain functions emerge into space and time others "doesn't"?
Well...not everything requires space and

[vikkorner]

Religion is for the helpless buds trying to make a good life.

This is a panel discussion about Islam without one Muslim scholar. What a joke.