The real problem of consciousness with Anil Seth | Living Mirrors #60 clips

Anil Seth is a professor of Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience at the University of Sussex and a leading expert on the neuroscience of consciousness. He is the editor-in-chief of the journal Neuroscience of Consciousness and is also the co-director of both the Sackler Centre for Consciousness Science and the Canadian Institute For Advanced Research’s program in Brain, Mind, and Consciousness. He has a new book coming out called Being You.

#neuroscience #consciousness #brain
Welcome to Living Mirrors with Dr. James Cooke. Living Mirrors is a new podcast in which neuroscientist Dr. James Cooke will be interviewing people on topics like consciousness, science, spirituality, meditation and the renaissance in psychedelic research. Subscribe now wherever you get your podcasts.

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We live in a world filled with suffering, where attempts to help have been split into largely separate scientific and spiritual communities. As a spiritually engaged neuroscientist I hope to communicate how these seemingly separate world views can be reconciled. I produce weekly videos on topics at the intersection of neuroscience and wellbeing, including consciousness, meditation and psychedelic science.

Dr. James Cooke:
Neuroscientist, writer & speaker, focusing on perception, meditation, psychedelics, mental health and wellbeing.
PhD in Neuroscience, Oxford University
MSc in Neuroscience, Oxford University
MA in Experimental Psychology, Oxford University

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[l.ronhubbard]

David Chalmers, Anil Seth, James Cooke! It's like my dream team of thinkers!

[rooruffneck]

Anil sounds like someone back in the day claiming that because they could predict nearly all eclipses, they had "dissolved" the need to really understand what was happening and how. But I love the guy. Just amazing how people find ways to avoid talking about consciousness as fundamental.

[MakeDemocracyMagnificientAgain]

The Binding Problem is a strong argument for Open Individualism, in my opinion.

[rooruffneck]

His vitalism analogy perfectly points to his blind spot. In that case, the mechanic theory did not introduce a new ontological category as explanatory; whereas, in the case of consciousness a new ontological category is imagined (and comes from consciousness) and then assumed as fundamental to consciousness.

[l.ronhubbard]

I personally believe that plants are conscious, that there is "something that it is like" to be a plant. Do you have any thoughts on this Dr. Cooke?

[mikefraumeni]

Excellent discussion although I have a difficult time when scientists and medical professionals use the term 'real' to describe something. What does 'real' mean in medicine or in science in general? I would be much happier if Anil Seth spoke of "the organic problem of consciousness" as I think this defines more accurately what he is getting at. 'Real' is just everything and anything to be honest, it doesn't have a meaning to me in an academic sense, while studying something of a biological nature as 'organic' means something to me.

[koffeeblack]

Panpsychism and its analogues can never be radical enough because its rational basis fundamentally conflates causal and ontological categories. A cause can only be understood as a functional description relating other relations of function, generalized by mathematical language but ultimately signifying nothing beyond these relations of function. To say there is an electron is just to say there are functions of a certain sort, but this does not tell us the ontological category of functions. Physicalism is a more egregious conflation of metaphysical and scientific methodology. It's all an absolutely incoherent discussion premised on a category and nothing more. To say you're not interested in the hard problem means no more than that you are not interested in metaphysics but only useful mathematically articulated models for seeing functions in relation to each other.

[RVEEATOR]

What on earth is he saying? When we have a sufficient stack of mechanistic explanations..the ‘problem’ of consciousness will ‘dissolve’!!?? This appears to miss the whole point and amounts to ‘solution by avoidance’..very shallow and utterly unpersuasive

[TasteMyStinkholeAndLikeIt]

Expert in consciousness with nothing useful to say whatsoever