Subhash Kak - What is Consciousness?

Consciousness is what we can know best and explain least. It is the inner subjective experience of what it feels like to see red or smell garlic or hear Beethoven. Consciousness has intrigued and baffled philosophers. To begin, we must define and describe consciousness. What to include in a complete definition and description of consciousness?

Subhash Kak is Regents Professor of Computer Science Department at Oklahoma State University in Stillwater.

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.

[Praveen-orce]

You cannot understand consciousness without Indian philosophies. It’s the correct and necessary route

[Dion_Mustard]

I could never grasp the concept of consciousness until I had two out of body experiences, and numerous lucid dream states, whereby my consciousness was "non-local", so to speak. And now I am pretty confident when I say consciousness is not limited to brain. I would never have accepted such a concept until it happened to me.

[depro]

Nikola Tesla is a good example of having a connection to uncommon knowledge. He had his epiphany moment when he envisioned the rotating magnetic fields came to him in a flash. His concept of the rotating magnetic field changed our society globally.

[NataliaCh]

This echo again is killing this interview

[brex]

The Sound is a Little Bit off… but quality content as allways! Keep up the good work

[nis-ilumma]

Highly interesting.
The human mind is capable of anything - because everything is in it, the whole past and the whole future. With help from feedback loops...

[ShivMathur]

Firstly in my understanding consciousness is beyond words. It can only be experienced. Consciousness is the omnipresent energy fabric. Consciousness gets revealed through this body. It reveals itself to itself through itself. Consciousness differentiates the human mortal body with the immortal cosmic source. It is the link to our source of origin or the creator. It is not perceivable in the normal plane or spectrum of human intelligence or in the dimensions of space and time. When you go beyond space and time that is when you experience something that cannot be described in words.

[billyoumans]

The Vedantic conception of consciousness makes more sense to me than any other. Pure physicalism is impossible to refute, and it seems that one day it will offer a picture of consciousness that is complete- an account of how it emerges from matter- neurons- and now quantum phenomena. But it has not even the barest beginning of a hypothesis as to how unconscious matter could arrange itself in ways that could give rise to consciousness.

In the Vedantic conception, consciousness can’t be known as an object, because it is only a subject. Therefore the attempt to understand it as we understand any object will never succeed. Consciousness will always elude the observations of our senses and instruments and remain tantalizingly outside of human understanding. It is not something that can be understood, it is that by which we understand everything.

Of course this assertion is strictly off limits in our current materialist paradigm. It’s magic, it’s “woo-woo.” At some point, however, I believe this paradigm, like all before it, will collapse under the weight of the anomalies it cannot account for, among which the primary is consciousness.

[benbarkerdreaming]

The Dreaming is a better example of natural understanding from where we come from ... Because .. it maintained Australia and it's culture and practices for 10s of thousands of years... These lore extend from outside the reality we live

[TheTroofSayer]

Great points: 0:52 - "There is also a binding" - Can definitely come on board, the idea of nonlocality of self. At 1:29 - "... superposition of all possibilities" resonates with quantum contextuality & phenomenology at the subatomic domain. At 5:42 "The Vedic view... associational knowledge" - Association (CS Peirce) as fundamental, absolutely.
Regarding Subhash Kak's references at 1:16 & 4:00 to Schrodinger (a Copenhagen Interpretation). We are going to have to confront the inconsistencies between Quantum Contextuality and the Copenhagen Interpretation. They can't both be right, and we're going to have to eventually bite the bullet on this.

[djtomoy]

Conseusnness is that feel you get when you know you’re rite about something

[tedgrant]

He keeps asking that question.
I suppose he hasn't yet had a satisfying answer.
Based on experience, I think consciousness is fragile.

[kfwimmer]

Wow super good! Please interview Dr. Edwin Bryant at Rutgers.

[bigpicture]

“All that we are is the result of what we have thought. The mind is everything. What we think we become.” - Buddha. This describes the process or the mechanism, but not the cause. It is fairly self evident that if there was no "mind" or was no "thought", then it is pointless to say that anything exists AT ALL. It is that which enables "Awareness", "Self Awareness", "Knowing", "Understanding", "Perception" etc. But that does not answer the question of: "from what or where does thought arise"??? It appears that "thought" cannot apprehend its own source, so we just put a name on it and call it God. Or the various other names that the Hindus have for this. But "thought" appears to arise from within us, so then it can be described as "The God Within". Or, I AM, THAT I AM.

[jamesruscheinski]

consciousness of causation? what might consciousness of causation imply?

[stellarwind]

Where does perception happen in the brain? How can an organ made of water, fat, and protein perceive anything?

[jamesruscheinski]

could human awareness of subjectivity be connected to consciousness of causation?

[Ishan]

First, observe that you, the consciousness is the witness of the cosmos, including this body and mind (thoughts, intellect, memory, and ego).
Then, realize that this same consciousness is present in all individual experiencers.
You will then understand that this cosmos, from all individual POVs, and all bodies and minds are appearances within that one consciousness.

[tcuisix]

I would have liked to have been taught this rather than christianity growing up

[chyfields]

Schrodinger was not the creator of quantum reality.