Adventures in Awareness

Christof Koch | Bernardo Kastrup: neuroscience & ultimate reality

Jun 26, 2025
Bernardo Kastrup, a philosopher with extensive backgrounds in ontology and artificial intelligence, teams up with Christof Koch, chief scientist at the Allen Institute for Brain Science, renowned for his insights into consciousness. They dive into Integrated Information Theory (IIT) and its intriguing implications for understanding consciousness and free will. Their discussion challenges perceptions of reality, touching on topics like the nature of self, the interplay between consciousness and memory, and the philosophical dimensions of AI consciousness.
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INSIGHT

Neuroscience Grounds Introspection

  • Bernardo values neuroscience because it anchors introspection and corrects self-deception in mind studies.
  • He finds Christof's empirical rigor essential to reliably study consciousness beyond solo introspection.
INSIGHT

A Noetic Experience Shifted Koch

  • Christof recounts a powerful experience that shifted him toward analytical idealism and prompted dialogue with Bernardo.
  • He seeks ways to reconcile daily mechanistic neuroscience work with that idealist insight.
INSIGHT

IIT Models Experience As Causal Power

  • IIT models consciousness via a substrate's transition probability matrix and its unfolded causal power.
  • A conscious experience maps to that intrinsic causal structure, explaining differences between experiences.
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