Donald Hoffman - Is Consciousness Ultimate Reality?

Is consciousness deepest reality, the ground of being of the cosmos? If the question is "What brought all into existence?" the answer is "Consciousness". Some say this is a 'cosmic consciousness' of which our personal consciousness is a small part. Others, that the ultimate consciousness is God. Others, that consciousness and cosmos are both deep reality.



Donald D. Hoffman is a Professor of Cognitive Science, University of California, Irvine.


Closer to Truth, hosted by Robert Lawrence Kuhn, 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.

[david.thomas.]

Donald Hoffman is talking about mathematically modelling consciousness and using those models to predict things in the real world. Thereby we can see that consciousness is fundamental and the material world is in fact, the contents of consciousness.

[mrpaulisherwood]

Finally you are giving this guy some light!!

[timjonesvideos]

Consciousness is fundamental and some day soon materialistic science will have to deal with it, if there is to be further true progress.

[zerototalenergy]

'the eye cannot see itself" there is no other state apart from consciousness. so we can not

[DestroManiak]

I feel like i listened to this interview 3 times already. Its great interview, but ive seen it, probably here.

[dariusdbbowser]

I actually love interviews like this where two people can disagree without being disrespectful to each other or the interview trying to catch him in an awkward position for clicks and views. I also like the Hoffman can defend against critiques of his theory. I understand what Hoffman is saying and I agree with him on his theory, but I also understand why the interviewer has doubts. Hoffman admits his theory is probably wrong, but the strength of it is in his mathematical model which differentiates it from other things like the Simulation theory which has no math backing it. It's just a cool, hip theory.

[dongshengdi]

Why do people cling with such ferocity to the belief in a mind-independent reality? It is surely because if there is no such reality, then ultimately (as far as we can know) mind alone exists. And if mind is not a product of real matter, but rather is the creator of the illusion of material reality (which has, in fact, despite the materialists, been known to be the case, since the discovery of quantum mechanics in 1925), then a theistic view of our existence becomes the only rational alternative to solipsism."
～ Richard Conn Henry is an Academy Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Johns Hopkins University, author of one book and over 200 publications on the topics of astrophysics and various forms of astronomy.

[jb]

Mr Kuhn appears to believe he is inherently connected to the one true reality 😂

[danielgonzaleznader]

I just wanna say y love donald hoffman and i Robert. Big time fan! Keep it up please

[dru]

The conversation is too sped up for you both to explain in depth your ideas. Could you make the interviews longer. Like podcasts.

[joshkeeling]

Well, physics certainly isn't going to advance us any further any time soon. So I suspect we're going to need radically different approaches, in combination with what we make of physics, if we are to advance any further in our understanding of reality. Donald is a smart man.. much more intelligent than I. So I'm not going to judge how he thinks, because he is at least attempting to advance us in our understanding of reality.

[麻遠]

the work he introduced is basically to describe consciousness in mathematical language. the difficulty is not the complexity of mathematical models but still consciousness itself.

[andrewaldrin]

Frequent recent opinions in the discussion about the essence of consciousness refer to phenomena occurring outside (above) the brain. Usually an unresolved so-called “hard problem” is mentioned. It is true that the experience of qualia is difficult to explain by processes of the described neural networks. So I believe that an effective theory of consciousness should be based on the integration of several known theories of consciousness. In particular, the theory of neural circuits realizing imagery should be integrated with the "conscious electromagnetic information field theory (cemi)". One of the theories included in an effective explanation of the essence of consciousness should also be one of the theories linking the experience of qualia with the physics (fine structure)
of the Universe. We published recently an article [ Neural Circuits, Microtubule Processing, Brain's Electromagnetic Field — Components of Self-Awareness. Brain Sci. 2021, 11, 984. ]
which shows how to integrate the explanations of the essential components of consciousness.

[george]

This guy is turning what people thought science could be upon its head

[uncommonsensewithpastormar]

Our only access to both a physical object (like a chair) and a mental object (such as a thought) are through experience. They are both, therefore, categories of experience. Hoffman is correct, therefore, in his monistic view that all is experience (i.e. consciousness).

[Hombudojokarate]

If Space-Time is doomed, does that mean the argument of free will vs determinism is also doomed. Both these contradicting theories assume a linear passage of time with one event affecting another or the order of events already having been determined. However, with Prof. Hoffman's idea, if Space-Time is a construct, then what was, what is and what will be is the same... or have I misunderstood his ideas?

[RoverT]

6:18 “Does anybody agree with you on that?” and “Nobody at this table does” is the most direct I've heard Mr Kuhn disagree with a guest. I appreciate it because this guy was not convincing.

[waynzwhirled]

Even I understand that using mathematics to model consciousness is not fundamentally different from modeling physics.

[patrickl]

Thank you for having Donald Hoffman on your show.

[damienroberts]

Somehow, the idea that consciousness is the non subjective sea our brains play in, tune into, work with, seems intuitively true.