Living Mirrors with Dr. James Cooke Anil Seth on the neuroscience of consciousness | Living Mirrors #60
Jul 21, 2021
Anil Seth, a Professor of Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience at the University of Sussex and editor-in-chief of the journal Neuroscience of Consciousness, dives deep into the mysteries of consciousness. He discusses the complex nature of consciousness and its philosophical implications, exploring innovative techniques like the Zip and Zap procedure in diagnosing consciousness states. Seth also challenges perceptions by framing them as brain constructs and examines consciousness across different life forms, raising thought-provoking ethical questions about the potential for machine consciousness.
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Consciousness Defined as Subjective Experience
- Consciousness means there is something it "is like" to be that organism.
- It's distinct from intelligence or having a self and involves subjective experience.
Distinguishing Hard and Real Problems
- The 'hard problem' separates explaining function from explaining why experience exists.
- Addressing the 'real problem' involves mechanistic explanations to predict the qualities of conscious experiences.
Intuition Not Required for Understanding
- An explanation of consciousness need not be intuitively satisfying to be scientifically valid.
- We often unfairly expect consciousness explanations to meet a higher intuitive standard.
