The Science of Consciousness | Scientific Controversies

Why do “I” experience life? Who is this “I”, the self? Is she real? Is consciousness possible without this sense of self? Is consciousness important, a lasting feature of the universe? Or is consciousness a failed evolutionary experiment?

Conversations on consciousness can be laden with magical language, borderline mystical and meaningless. Yet biologists and neuroscientists seek a concrete, scientific understanding of it. Consciousness emerged from a continuum of increasingly complex biological systems. Some scientists hypothesize that living beings evolved a schema of self, the ability to direct attention, and then a self-aware consciousness. Humans place themselves at the end of this evolutionary progression, but is this misguided? Scientists struggle to see through their own mind’s tricks, striving for the rewards of greater understanding, and a more profound connection with nature.

Pioneer Works Director of Sciences, Janna Levin, hosts neuroscientists Anil Seth and Joseph LeDoux to discuss consciousness, and to see ourselves as less apart from, and more a part of, the rest of nature.

This project is supported by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Program in Public Understanding of Science and Technology, bridging the two cultures of science and the arts.

[lungflogger]

The moderator is Janna J. Levin is American theoretical cosmologist and a professor of physics and astronomy at Barnard College. She earned a Bachelor of Arts in astronomy and physics with a concentration in philosophy at Barnard College in 1988 and a PhD in theoretical physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1993. Wikipedia

[ericdovigi]

The moderator talks too much, talks over the guests, interrupts them, changes the subject too quickly. Please take a step back and let them talk.