Christof Koch - What is Ultimate Reality?

What is the deepest nature of things? Our world is complex, filled with so much stuff. But down below, what's most fundamental, what is ultimate reality? Is there anything nonphysical? Anything spiritual? Or only the physical world? Many feel certain of their belief, on each side of controversial question.



Christof Koch is an American neuroscientist best known for his work on the neural bases of consciousness.


Closer to Truth, hosted by Robert Lawrence Kuhn and directed by Peter Getzels, 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.

[tonybklyn]

"We don't know." I love the blunt honesty and humility.

[kevinhaynes]

Good grief...!!! Until we acknowledge that consciousness is a fundamental characteristic/property of the Universe, rather than just of human beings, then we're not going to understand either 'ultimate reality', or consciousness. Consciousness has emerged from the substance of the Universe, as a mechanism for that substance to be able to understand that substance. Human beings are the Universe. Human consciousness is the Universe. We are not detached observers. We are observer and observed. We are creator and created. 'As above, so below'...!!! Consciousness is of the Universe, and is perhaps the most interesting 'ultimate reality' of the Universe. The human brain is the most complex structure in the known Universe, and consciousness is what it does. There is nothing that comes even close to giving us a better insight/window into the question 'What is Ultimate Reality'...

[Seanus]

Asking this guy that question is pointless. How would he ever know? He can only ever get a slice of Reality. He is a materialist AFAIK.

[suncat]

This video is just rehashing what the father of quantum physics Max Planck knew and expressed in the early 20th century: "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."

[egodaha]

Ultimate reality is our conscious experience. Without an observer, there is no reality or anyone to define reality.

[abelincoln]

We live therefore we are. What is so difficulty here?

Human consciousness & perspective of reality is completely separate from those of animals, as only Humans have the intelligence & physical abilities to believe, worship & build our lives around a God who is an entity outside of our existence, and a world that is all about science & technology and this physical "known" existence.

Chimps may have 98% of our genes, have a large brain and be a primate ... but it will never achieve 98% of what man achieve, think, believe & do 4100 years ago when Abraham was called by God to be the father of nations, and share the One true God to all "primates" of the world. lol.

[TomaszWinnicki]

I would like to see Christof Koch and Jeff Hawkins get into a debate/discussion on consciousness, intelligence, awareness, perception...

[PaulHoward]

Enlarging physics to include consciousness would break physics. Consciousness experiences qualities, and it's not possible to fully explain qualities in terms of quantities. So physics would need to be made qualitative, changing it to a science of meanings, which is semantics.

[Nikolajnen]

I love to ask this question. It's just so mind-boggling to think about - in a fun and entertaining way!

[johnyharris]

I think he's maybe correct in saying we need to enlarge physics. Possibly in a similar sense to how Nima Arkani-Hamed is rethinking physics without spacetime. Radical jumps will be needed and it doesn't appear physicists are going to crack it tackling it head on.

[mikenichols]

Man.. that accent or speech pattern lol. He got into it and the more it came out I was waiting for him to order the March to poland.

[helderalmeida]

The truthful answer " we don't know "

[karlkarlsson]

Can someone explain to me why consciousness is such a big deal? Maybe I'm stupid and don't understand the topic of it, but why would consciousness be anything other then just a biological product of our brain? Universe is shown to have been here billions of years before us. What does consciousness have anything to do with the ultimate of reality, when it's just an evolutionary biological product? No?

[leomdk]

The most perplexing question about consciousness never gets asked. How am I *this* consciousness and not *that* one? I'm not asking 'why', because that could be random chance. I'm asking 'how'. What is the mechanism by which that is achieved? 40 years ago, a baby was conceived, and by some function, that baby was me, not you. What process achieves the location of my experience in this universe? Is it just assumed that if we figure out consciousness, we will also learn this answer ipso facto, or is this simply not a question too many people bother to ask?

[glenemma]

He is one of the few on 'Closer To Truth' who really had anything worth saying.

[rayspencer]

In reality, our four dimensional space time dimensions, and the science /physics that is attached to it, is just a sub set of concsiousness.

[SRAVALM]

What is ultimate reality supposed to mean - heaven? Same as dark matter is Aether, photon is Spirit.

That question is difficult. Maybe we should just contemplate on experience, which will lead us to greater understanding, but than the pretentious pedant sophists come to mock and assail.

We might not entirely be disconnected from ultimate reality. Reconcile thy ethereal self. This place the division of nature we seperate thus define. We should find connection and unify, which may be the state that is ultimate reality, and scripture states the kingdom of heaven is within.
What is ultimate reality -- a recognition within, a wordly denouncment, an higher state of mind.
Simply close your eyes, plug your ears, do not touch -- ask yourself who am I?
I also question, am I to seek out some scientific explanation or somebody else's, or make it my own by applying my God given Intellect and Spiritual creativity thus fashioning my own experience within this cosmos -- perhaps that's the true ultimate reality.

[metoo]

what in the hell is this episode all about -)

[supamatta]

Mmm conscious or quantic effect make mire sense with neg.thermo electro Bombardment. This year its layers of intemporal effects and 1d stuff

[dukegust]

Its like we wanted to forget we are the ultimate reality and dream a fake reality where we are seperate from everything else and we can die and suffer and there can be guilty and innocent. The key ingredient to individuality to not remember the truth of oneness and worship the dream instead of being the truth