Christof Koch - What Things are Conscious?

Consciousness is the great mystery of inner awareness. Where does it exist? Humans, obviously. Animals? Which animals? Chimps, elephants, dolphins, dogs? Termites, snails, amoeba, bacteria? What about non-biological intelligences like supercomputers of the future? The question probes the deep nature of consciousness.



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


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.

[Bo-tznw]

Yes, this is an extremely interesting YT-channel, really worth following.
A lot of interesting things being discussed, very ambitious indeed.
That being said, this video seems to be just another of those "Your guess is as good as mine"-ones.
Maybe good so?

[savvytravvi]

If we accept that animals are conscious, then we must dive deep to find the line at which things cease to be conscious. Are insects conscious? Are single-celled organisms conscious? If single-celled organisms aren’t conscious, why? This is my unfalsifiable take, but I think consciousness is one of the fundamental properties to the universe. Everything that exists possesses consciousness, but at differing levels of complexity. Atoms themselves are conscious, and I support that claim with the atom’s ability to absorb incoming information, and then alter its behavior to accommodate that incoming information. This does kinda revolve around me defining consciousness as the ability to react to incoming information, but I do believe that’s what a fundamental definition of consciousness consists of.

[xNazgrel]

Integrated information, illusion, emergent property, epiphenomenon, overrated etc. are all ways to say I have no idea what consciousness is.

[johnbuckner]

So, if Tom Campbell is right, and the whole universe is information, and if a quantum theory of mind is right, would non locality interconnect the complex whole into 1 integrated cosmic conscious system?

Sounds possible; & kind of techno-hippie🧘‍♂️ Good vibrations to you all 💚🎶♾️

[mediocrates]

So, just change "consciousness" to "integrated information"; information viewed from the inside. Wow! More nothing. At least he mentions the difference between awake and not. I'm integrated information... Wow. And you can't say if a pile of neutrons has integrated information? Don't make an analogy: what is "integrated information"?

[philippemartin]

Good morning Dr Lawrence. You are a great men, I realy like you and your freinds too . Sincères amitiés Philippe Martin 😎

[dheerajmalhotra]

All living things are conscious even our material universe from conscious reality. Conscious reality is the fundamental reality in all realities which is govern by Supreme conscious (GOD).

[BugRib]

This theory could be true, but it can't really claim to be a materialist/physicalist theory of consciousnesses.

That's because it has the explanation-less brute fact (in other words, a miracle) built into it that it "feels like something" to be a certain kind of integrated information. In other words, integrated information has conscious experiences.

Now, what do we know about the laws of physics (or biology) that would even slightly suggest that that would be the case? Nothing, that's what.

Not knocking the theory, just pointing this out.

[kerryburns]

I agree with Max Planck, matter is derivative of consciousness.
Consciousness creates everything, ergo: everything material is sentient, in a way appropriate to its need.
People we regard as ancient savages understood this, they would regard us as mostly idiots.

[thevagabondtribune]

Hello! I love y’all’s videos, and thank you so much for sharing the wisdom. I would really like it if you put the date, or treats the year, that the videos were actually filmed, as timelines often have relevance when understanding things such as philosophy.

[radiometer]

Consciousness is a phenomenon that still hasn't been explained yet. Sure it might be an integrated information system of some kind but how does it work? I think that is the real question that needs answering. To date nobody has ever been able to make a robot that can become aware of its own existence.

[KL-mkyn]

We need more of this guy stat. Also, my favorite You tube channel!

[mintakan]

My suspicion is that "integrated information" may be one of those "necessary, but not sufficient condition", for consciousness. He mentions the types of interactions. I suggest a sense of "agency", autonomy, as an additional criteria. Just like a bacterial cell is not just (passively) following Newton's laws of motion. Nor a computer program, taking various inputs, and spitting an output ("integrating information"), in functional form (y = f(X)).

(But when I think of self driving cars, I start to think about my own counter examples, to the notion of "agency".)

One can also ask the question of "feeling" ("qualia") of this agent. In humans, when someone looks at a flower, its an integration of various statistical and multi-modal motifs. The shape of the flower. Texture. Color. Smell. Associated relationships, from past experience, etc. This integration can degraded with alcohol, connections of pieces of information severed, with sleepiness. So integration does play a role in "qualia". One then begins to wonder whether a computer (self driving car, AlphaGo, etc.) has something like this, except currently, still in an extremely crude way? Its just that biological organisms have it, at a much higher resolution, complexity, and degrees of freedom ... But the fundamental principles of "integrated information", internal representation, interiority, subjectivity, agency, ... remain the same (?)

[evanjameson]

this series is excellent as it stretches your thinking--you don't have to come to a conclusion as even the experts on this channel don't have definitive answers but it does expand the thinking process and can confirm much of what you already believe as well. Very interesting stuff.

[Bill..N]

Loved it! The internet PROBABLY is conscious but as the Gentleman uses the word, DIMLY so.. if it were otherwise it seems there should be evidence within the output we observe.. Right now the internet is essentially just a giant memory.. It needs the machine equivalent of a cerebral cortex..A central governor..If there were a single massive CPU capable of neural net learning AND it had full access to the internet...Well given a very little time who knows what could develope..?? One opinion..

[jamesbentonticer]

"Does it feel like something to be the Internet/neutron star?" Wow this show is great.

[bajajones]

Total baloney. No consciousness there.

[holgerjrgensen]

Things can't be Conscious,
Consciousness is Eternal.
the Ability of the Eternal Life.

[greensleeves]

This comes down to whether or not you believe that consciousness is a Primitive or essence. My suspicion is that it is a primitive, perhaps even the Ur-primitive. In that case, the answer to the question "what things are conscious" becomes "all authentically self-existing things." This would not include a door knob or an old boot, because these are forms attributed by a conscious observer. The primitive (consciousness) seems capable of self-organisation into larger and larger wholes, which are themselves expressions of the primitive. We call this situation "living things". So the only things that are not living then become mere aggregrates of low-level expressions of the primitive, rather than a self-organised whole. And this in fact maps very well to our situation.

While I am no great fan of certainties, IMO this is the most likely answer and resolves the fact that we cannot argue from non-experience to experience. Of course we cannot, because experience is a synonym for the Primitive. It is a *poor* version of panpsychism that argues **everything** to be conscious, including a teacup and an old boot, as it fails to distinguish between "organism" and "aggregate" in a plausible way. The primitive (livingness, consciousness, being) does not have an "explanation" (for how could it...the explanation would have to be existence itself, which is no explanation at all, but "expression"). We've deceived ourselves, I would suggest, into thinking that existence has an explanation when it does not, into thinking that 'life' has an explanation when it does not, into thinking that 'consciousness' has an explanation when it does not. I understand why people want these explanations, but I don't think it's the answer...

[jamesruscheinski]

Brain /mind, DNA, quantum wave function are conscious or consciously derived. Also something conscious brings about matter.