Consciousness and its Physical Substrate - Christof Koch - 11/2/22

©2022 California Institute of Technology

[slurvtrutl]

Koch always gives the comprehensive lecture

[jamesruscheinski]

of the two conscious experiences, the first is subjective emotion, the second is conscious perception and thought?

[fgs]

And why reality can't be a physical substrate of consciousness itself? This exposition is really basic, void and full of presumptions

[socksumi]

Is consciousness even a thing? Maybe it's not a noun but a verb.

[zenbum]

Christof begins speaking at about 3:36.

[jojarac]

How Christoph can be that convinced matter exist by itself, when even quántum mechanics, as incomplete as it is. Suggest/proves that the pixels of our reality are just basically jiggles/ripples of underlaying phenomena, not existing by themselves. It is beyond me.

[jamesruscheinski]

conscious perception in brain of external nature? particles from nature are processed into energy (maybe virtual particles?) by the brain?

[jamesruscheinski]

have subjective awareness when sleep? and subjective emotion when dreaming?

[jamesruscheinski]

causative power in brain is related to equation of causation with space and time? and related to speed of causation squared in the conversion between energy and mass?

[jamesruscheinski]

might there not be causation in and of consciousness? the neuronal correlates of consciousness could demonstrate that consciousness is present or exists without causation?

[jamesruscheinski]

conscious thought / mind interaction between human beings and physical nature?

[jamesruscheinski]

can differentiate phenomenalogy as subjective from function as conscious?

[stormoffists]

Im not sure I buy that you can "dissociate consciousness with computation". What does that even mean to separate something from computation? Its just the series of steps to arrive at some new state. It certainly seems consciousness could be described or enveloped by that?

I currently think of consciousness as more of a meta computation, one where a lot of the computation, our inputs, are how our other computations are doing. With an ability to recall some prior state. To recognize a change, and do a comparison.

It sounds like a horrendously complicated computation, with tons of inputs, lots of feedback, and many intermediate representations to even calculate those inputs, but it still feels like a computation to me. Thats not to say that its diminished by that. Its more beautiful that consciousness would come about from that.

[RossettiAries-sw]

Brown James Hernandez Ronald Garcia Frank

[jamesruscheinski]

how does energy interact with physical matter in brain?

[EsatBargan]

Wilson Patricia Lee Karen Taylor Frank

[GaryHurd]

From the introduction to a book chapter in preparation;

Irrational Materialism

The brain is meat. We experience all thought and emotion as result of neurochemistry, and neuroanatomy.

That is physical. That is materialism.

When we dream we are rewiring the long term memory of our brains. Our brains are literally not the same when we wake up as the were when we went to sleep.

That is physical. That is materialism.

BUT....
We have fictions, we have misunderstandings, we have hallucinations that all are expressed in that material context.

That ain't materialism anymore. We have religions. We have irrational materialism.