Colin McGinn - Why is Consciousness so Baffling?

How does consciousness weave its magical web of inner awareness—appreciating music, enjoying art, feeling love? Even when all mental functions may be explained, the great mystery—what it 'feels like' inside—will likely remain. This is the 'Hard Problem' of consciousness. What could even count as a theory of consciousness, even in principle?



Colin McGinn is a British philosopher, currently Professor of Philosophy and Cooper Fellow at the University of Miami.


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.

[KpxUrz]

While walking away with no greater number of answers, I must say that McGinn certainly offers a more complete and intelligent discussion of consciousness than I have heard from many others.

[assortedtea]

Hands down one of the best episodes of CTT

[InPursuitOfCuriosity]

What a thought-provoking and intriguing topic to explore! I am baffled that this channel has such a low subscriber count. I guess most of the Youtube community just doesn't care about the big questions and is content on being consumed by distractions.

[Spideysenses]

This is probably the best explanation of why Consciousness is so mysterious that I've ever heard. Even better than Chalmers and that's saying something.

[cvsree]

Q: Who does consciousness baffle?
A: consciousness 😆

[deepshikhabanerji]

We are going on and on in circles without moving a step forward.

[PrestonPittman]

Everything that I'm conscious of is directly linked to the entire universe that allows us to live within! My consciousness uses my eyes, my temperature, breathing, and reasoning thought process to understand the Universe. My Conciousness seems to me is a Spirit, which has been spoken of as something that will exist forever, and not dependant on the very body which fed my conciousness to continue into the afterlife!

[dongshengdi]

CONSCIOUSNESS IS A FUNDAMENTAL BUILDING BLOCK OF NATURE:
…
non-duality of nature.
The universe exists Both as physical and spiritual or metaphysical in nature.
ie. body and mind.
…
The connection between consciousness and quantum mechanics.
There is No objective reality. Physical matter only exists when it is observed after the wave function collapses.

…

"The observer gives the world the power to come into being, through the very act of giving meaning to that world; in brief, No consciousness; no communicating community to establish meaning? Then no world!" - Physicist John Wheeler

[tekannon]

Mr Khune and Colin are so gifted in their understanding of physics and their views on consciousness show us how well they have looked at every slice of this mysterious experience. Here's a lay person's view. I think we are being much too complex. This is what I think consciousness is: Consciousness is what could be called a membrane that holds all the moving parts of the mind in place. It’s nature’s way of providing the support system necessary to the brain for its role in thinking and coming to conclusions and taking decisions. The ‘membrane’ of conscious is nature at its best in coming up with a solution for making the thinking process work in 4 dimensions. Like in a human cell, the membrane holds all the key elements together so that they can function. Consciousness in the human mind is an invisible membrane that permits all the necessary parts of the brain to be able to link up. Imagine it like a hologram where suddenly all the parts can communicate with each other. This is Mother Nature’s way of allowing the brain to be able to make the 400 decisions it must make every second for the human body to function. The invisible membrane allows all of the mental functions to be able to operate like thinking, emotions, dreaming.

[jmeyerable]

Endless confusion between consciousness and the mind, without clarity of definition between the two, helps continue this debate.

[spiralsun]

Back 25 years ago I was making that argument he makes about evolution not preparing us to understand brain tissue. I went so much farther with it but no one could even begin to understand what I was saying.

I left graduate school in behavioral neuroscience and evolutionary psychology after 4 years and wrote a book 20 years ago about how we have an “Evolutionarily limited” world view that is not only key to understanding consciousness but everything else too.

I left graduate school because I thought everyone was wrong and they were! It’s amazing how much things have changed now. Thanks 🙏🏻

[citizengoodman]

Consciousness is necessary for the universe to exist.

[Fsvzj]

Because it’s difficult to see out your own particular frame of reference. We have a practical working functional definition for consciousness for 20 years

[grumreapur]

The driving factor behind consciousness is surely the need to make the body survive? Almost all emotional states can be chalked up to a love or fear response, or to put it on a survival standpoint, safety and danger. We grow into this state of understanding our place within the culture we are born where the world quickly imprints itself upon our behaviours. It pushes to understand that world for survival and procreation, so to take the unknown, which it could construe as danger, define the boundaries of that response to pass it into comfort ie safety.

[rooruffneck]

If he is open to the idea that our intelligence simply can't understand consciousness, he must be open to the idea that we have unintelligently assumed that consciousness is a product.

[Kostly]

Consciousness has always existed. It wasn't created and therefore, can't be destroyed. I'd love to hear an explanation of how consciousness is an emergent property of matter from a diehard materialists. It sounds quite ridiculous to say, "brains gave rise to consciousness". That's just magical thinking.

[reggielavoie]

Its crazy to think that our brain is trying to figure itself out.

[iphaze]

He so casually says that consciousness emerges in the brain, but what if consciousness was a frequency that the brain has learned to receive and interpret for us? Do we know that it didnt emerge from an external factor? We certainly didnt “create” it, because before consciousness existed - at least in the way we perceive it - there were still *things* .. and why would they even be there if they were never meant to explore the reason for their being there?

[soubhikmukherjee]

You've to be a non-dualist to understand consciousness. If you try to ground it in material reality, you're simply fooling yourself.

[leandrosilvagoncalves]

For God's sake interview Bernardo Kastrup!