Chasing Consciousness

The podcast explores the concept of free will and its connection to mindfulness meditation. They discuss the experimental evidence for the existence of free will and its implications for personal moral responsibility. The guests, including Susan Blackmore, share their insights on the illusion of free will and its compatibility with consciousness. The podcast also delves into the concept of dependent origination and explores the connection between separateness and oneness. They discuss the concept of form and emptiness and the challenge of studying consciousness without mental constructs.

In this episode we explore a User Interface Theory of reality. Since the invention of the computer virtual reality theories have been gaining in popularity, often to explain some difficulties around the hard problem of consciousness; but also to explain other non-local anomalies coming out of physics and psychology, like ‘quantum entanglement’ or ‘out of body experiences’.  As you will hear today the vast majority of cognitive scientists believe consciousness is an emergent phenomena from matter, and that virtual reality theories are science fiction or ‘Woowoo’ and new age. One of this podcasts jobs is to look at some of these Woowoo claims and separate the wheat from the chaff, so the open minded among us can find the threshold beyond which evidence based thinking, no matter how contrary to the consensus can be considered and separated from wishful thinking. So who better than hugely respected cognitive scientist and User Interface theorist Don Hoffman to clarify all this. Donald D Hoffman is a full professor of cognitive science at the University of California, Irvine, where he studies consciousness, visual perception and evolutionary psychology using mathematical models and psychophysical experiments. His research subjects include facial attractiveness, the recognition of shape, the perception of motion and colour, the evolution of perception, and the mind-body problem. So he is perfectly placed to comment on how we interpret reality. Hoffman is also the author of ‘The Case Against Reality’, the content of which we’ll be focusing on today; ‘Visual Intelligence’, and the co-author with Bruce Bennett and Chetan Prakash of ‘Observer Mechanics’. What we discuss: 11:20 Seeing the world for survival VS for knowing reality as it truly is 13:30 Competing strategies to maximise ‘fitness’ in the evolutionary sense 21:30 The payoff functions that govern evolution do not contain information about the structure of the world 29:30 Space-time cannot be fundamental 37:45 A User-Interface network of conscious agents 41:30 A virtual reality computer analogy 53:30 User Interface theory VS Simulation theory 01:08:00 The notion of truth is deeper than the notion of proof and theory 01:17:30 Is nature written in the language of Maths? 01:27:00 Consciousness is like the living being, and maths is like the bones 01:44:00 Being and experiencing being may co-arise 01:48:00 Different analogies for different eras References: Donald Hoffman - ‘The case against reality: Why evolution hid the truth from our eyes’ Nima Arkani-Hamed - ‘Space-time is dead’ Nima Arkani-Hamed - 'Reductionism is dead' Local Realism is false Noncontextual realism is false Don Hoffman - Objects of Consciousness paper Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem

What are the implications of Einstein’s predictions? Has our understanding of reality integrated the implications of this thinking? His General and Special theories of relativity have completely changed the way we see gravity, energy, mass, space and time, even size - but how? Physicists may find it easy to understand what his ideas mean; like this quote “The distinction between the past, the present and the future is nothing but a stubbornly persistent illusion”. But for us, the general public, just thinking that the the arrow of time is an illusion, is enough to give us a bad headache and leave us wishing that Newton was right after all. But that’s not what we do on Chasing Consciousness, our mission is the same as always, to update our world view to match new theories. Now this sounds like no small feat, but have no fear, all will be be clarified by a man with a skill for presenting complex ideas in a way we can all understand, one of the worlds most published popular science writers, Professor Paul Davies. Paul Davies is a Cosmologist and Professor of Physics and Director of the Beyond Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science at Arizona State University. His work has covered topics as far reaching as Cosmology, Quantum Fields and Astrobiology, with a sprinkling of the Search for Extra terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) and cancer research to boot. He’s the bestselling author of almost thirty popular science books, his many awards include the Templeton Prize and the Faraday Prize of the Royal Society. He is a Member of the Order of Australia and even has an asteroid named after him! Quite a career! His new book ‘What’s eating the universe’, that covers many of the topics we’ll touch on today, is out now. What we discuss in this episode: 00:00 Intro 08:00 ‘The universe is about something’ 16:00 The warping of space time 22:00 The implications of gravity slowing time 31:25 Time and Space are relative, and can change and move like matter 36:00 Arrow of time VS Block time - ‘Time is just there’ 38:30 Matter is energy or Mass is a form of energy 42:00 The table isn’t solid, its mostly empty space 44:30 Did time start at the Big Bang? 49:00 Time doesn’t flow universally, it’s what clocks measure 52:00 3 big origin problems: the universe, life and consciousness 1:03:00 John Wheeler - the ‘bendy rubber’ analogy of space time 1:05:00 Einstein’s famous quotes explained 1:08:00 Intuition according to Einstein References: Paul Davies ‘What’s Eating the Universe: And other cosmic questions’ An Einstein Ring (A warping of space time) Full Isaac Newton quote, ’Absolute, true, and mathematical time, of itself, and from its own nature, flows equably without relation to anything external’ St Augustine quote ‘The world was made, not in time, but simultaneously with time’ Nima Arkani-Hamed ‘Space Time is Dead’ lecture (from 14.20) John Wheeler ‘Pregeometry’ Mach’s Principle

How can out of body experiences be explained? What theory of reality could accomodate such a phenomenon? Today we have the extraordinary topic of the science and physics of Out of Body Experiences to get our head around! Many brain scientists have reduced this common experience to a mix of physiological and brain chemical effects, maintaining that no perceiving consciousness actually leaves the body, rather it is a form of hallucination and distortion of body schema. Not knowing when these experiences will spontaneously occur has made them hard to study in the lab. However, certain researchers have developed a method for inducing the experience, allowing for deeper study. Following that study some new theories of reality have developed that could include such an experience and even others like Near Death Experience or NDE, and Controlled Remote Viewing which we’re evaluating in this second series. One such scientist is our guest today physicist Dr. Tom Campbell! He’s an experimental physicist who’s worked for over 20 years developing US missile systems for the Department of Defence, specialising in developing cutting edge technology, large-system simulation, technology development and integration, and complex system vulnerability and risk analysis. He began researching altered states of consciousness with Bob Monroe at Monroe Laboratories in the early 1970s. He helped design experiments and develop the Binaural Beats technology for creating specific altered states, and became an experienced test subject and trainer too. After many years studying consciousness, and out of body experiences he wrote the book ‘My Big TOE’, as in ‘Theory of Everything’, which describes his model of existence and reality from both the physical and metaphysical points of view. PART 1: Testing Out of Body Experiences 00:00 Intro 06:00 Balanced left right brain thinking 09:00 Out of Body Experience is a bad term, but neutral 13:00 Consciousness is not projected from the body 21:30 Testing Bob Monroe’s OBE phenomena 32:00 The experiment that confirmed it was real 36:00 Alpha Numeric information is not the same type as image, pattern or metaphor 46:00 The weirdest stories Tom’s encountered 55:00 Non-embodied consciousnesses encounters 01:05:00 Binaural beats to aid getting out of body explained 01:20:00 Theta brainwave is the state you need to be in to explore your consciousness PART 2: The physics of Tom’s ‘My Big T.O.E’ (Theory of Everything) 01:25:00 Consciousness evolves by lowering entropy, finding more order and structure Full show notes at Chasingconsciousness.net References: My big TOE book series Monroe Institute MBT events (binaural beats) ‘On testing the simulation’ One of Tom's scientific papers Tom's You tube channel MBT

Why is Panpsychism gaining popularity? Is it coherent to say consciousness emerged out of non-consciousness? What can we deduce from a universe fine tuned for life? In this episode we have the important job of finding out what Panpsychism is all about, and why the philosophical position is gaining more and more traction in philosophy, but even with physicists and other scientists. The idea that consciousness is the fundamental nature of the physical world is by no means a new one, and it does seem to resolve some of the problems of how consciously experiencing lifeforms could have evolved out of non-conscious non-living material. But most materialists balk at the idea and consider it absolutely bonkers, for reasons we’ll find out as we attempt to pay respect to the criticisms of the position too. So fortunately, to navigate this tricky philosophical quagmire we have one of the best known and most passionate supporters of panpsychism, author and professor of philosophy at Durham University Philip Goff. Philip’s research focuses on how to integrate consciousness into our scientific worldview. He argues that the traditional approaches of materialism, that consciousness can be explained in terms of physical processes in the brain; and dualism, that consciousness is separate from the body and brain, face unresolvable difficulties. His first academic book, Consciousness and Fundamental Reality was published in 2017 and his first book aimed at a general audience, Galileo's Error: Foundations for a New Science of Consciousness, was published in 2019. He also has a podcast, Mind Chat, which he rightly hosts with a philosopher of a completely opposite point of view. And he’s involved in a book of essays on consciousness which will be out this year called ‘Is Consciousness Everywhere? Essays on Panpsychism’, which is a collection of essays by scientists and philosophers published in Journal of Consciousness Studies. The contributors include Carlo Rovelli, Sean Carroll, Lee Smolin, Anneke Harris, Christoph Koch, and Anil Seth, several of whom appear in this series of Chasing Consciousness. What we discuss 00:00 Intro 06:00 The unanswerable questions 09:30 Panpsychism explained 12:30 %32 of philosophers are now opposed to materialism 19:30 Neural correlates don’t describe the subjective contents of experiences 21:10 Arguments for Panpsychism 23:00 Consciousness from Non-consciousness: the evolutionary problem 26:20 Materialist counter arguments 44:45 Public observation and experiment is not the full story 54:30 Block Universe implications for panpsychism 01:06:45 Meaning, value and mystical experiences References: Galen Strawon: why he believes Panpsychism Eric Schwitzgebel ‘Crazyism’ article Sabine Hosselfeld “Electron’s don’t think” article David Chalmers on Consciousness might collapse the wave function Full references and show notes at Chasingconsciousness.net

In this episode we learn everything we need about how food relates to our mood and state of mind. We’re going to lay out the fundamentals of how different food groups and qualities of food influence directly our mental and physical health; how the gut species depletion and inflammation are key consequences of the changes we’re seeing in western industrial diet, and we can counter that tendency with some simple tricks. Alex Laird is a medical herbalist with more than 20 years' clinical experience. Trained in biomedicine and plant pharmacology, she treats patients in the only NHS herbal clinic based in a UK hospital at Whipps Cross, and she is a fellow and council member of the College of Practitioners of Phytotherapy (CPP). She worked with Breast Cancer Haven UK for 20 years, using nutritional therapies for cancer. Alex has undertaken clinical research, is a visiting lecturer, has published numerous research papers, and is the co-founder of the charity Living Medicine. She is also the author of the new book ‘Root to stem’ which talks about seasonal foods and remedies for strong health and immunity that can be found growing literally in the hedgerow around your house! Please buy me a coffee if you're enjoying the show here What we talk about: 05:00 An epiphany with nature 07:00 Nutritional Psychiatry and the Gut microbiome 08:40 Evolution with unrefined foods VS modern refined sugars 17:00 The need for minerals and phytonutrients 13:10 High protein/ lo-carb approaches 18:10 Variety is key, the research says 20:20 Phytotherapy 21:20 Inflammation explained 26:30 Acidification and pH in the body 33:00 The gut microbiome 40:00 Reciprocity in nature and life: Feeding diversity 44:00 Crucial gut and fecal microbes via vaginal birth 46:00 Contact with soil and pets (spores, fecal microbes) 46:30 Immune response load needed regularly to maintain health 48:30 The overuse of antibiotics in humans and animals 50:20 Gut disbiosis explained and solutions 55:50 Immunity evolved alongside bacteria and viruses and needs their load 58:30 Supporting Innate and adaptive immunity 1:00:00 Germ theory 2.0? - healthy immune response load 1:04:00 The ‘Root to Stem’ philosophy - Diversity, reciprocity, interconnectivity 06:00 Our relationship to the seasons sustained by seasonal foods 06:55 Reconnecting to nature, ourselves and to community 01:09:10 Plant medicines we might not be aware of 01:10:25 Phytonutrients explained 01:15:30 Dietary fibres and prebiotics 01:18:10 Fermented foods and probiotics 01:24:00 Connection to nature 01:28:00 Sacred = in service to life References: Alex Laird’s association 'Living Medicine' Breast Cancer Haven UK Graham Rook, Old Friends Hypothesis, UCL Karin Moelling - ‘Viruses, more friends than foes’ Tim Spector, British epidemiologist and gut microbiome specialist The College of Practitioners of Phytotherapy www.thecpp.uk www.herbalalliance.uk European Scientific Cooperative on Phytotherapy www.escop.com  Association of Foragers  https://foragers-association.org

Audio Note: There’s a short background sound at 10 mins, it only lasts for 5 mins and it was during an important a point about the role of feelings in reasoning, which was too crucial to the topic to cut out. In this episode we have the fascinating topic of understanding how feelings play a part in reason and consciousness. We’re also going to be learning how feeling is different from sensing, and if internal feelings and homeostasis, which evolved far earlier than other elements of our perceptual systems, can tell us anything about the evolution of human consciousness. To get to grips with this we the hugely influential Portuguese neuroscientist Antonio Damasio. Damasio is professor pf Psychology, Philosophy and Neurology at the University of Southern California and the founder of their important ‘Brain and Creativity Institute’. He’s written many important books like ‘Descartes Error: Emotion, reason and the human brain’ and just out the subject of most of our discussion today, ‘Feeling and Knowing: Making minds conscious’. I’m extremely grateful to previous guest Jonas Kaplan, who works for professor Damasio at USC, for arranging this interview. Check out his fascinating interview Episode #9 ‘The Backfire Effect’ on the neuroscience of belief. Please donate a cup of coffee if you're enjoying the show What we discuss in this episode: 00:00 Intro 02:49 The importance of creativity in science and life 08:30 Creativity can be slow, not always a flash of intuition 09:12 Brain and body are intertwined in the creation of consciousness 14:00 The importance of emotions to reason 17:00 Homeostasis explained 19:15 We have feelings to provoke us to get something that we need 21:15 Feeling is different from sensing 28:00 Sensing predates the nervous systems and feelings in evolution 31:50 Consciousness is related to feelings and they allow knowing 33:15 Artificial intelligence will not be conscious and feeling, but could copy vulnerability 36:28 AI didn’t evolve from surviving like us 38:15 It’s not just the brain - from the start it’s been interrelated with the body 40:30 Will robots suffer? 42:20 There’s no Hard Problem of Consciousness, it’s just physical evolution 47:00 Does awareness of awareness have an evolutionary reason? 48:30 The feeling system is ancient and early in our conscious evolution 51:30 Consciousness isn’t an illusion it’s a representation of your self and the world 53:13 The mind instinctively creates maps and patterns, even ones that don’t exist References: ‘Feeling and Knowing: Making Minds Conscious’ 2021 ‘Descartes’ Error: Emotion, reason and the human brain’ 1994

Can we have conscious experiences after clinical death? In this episode we have the bizarre phenomena of Near Death Experiences to examine. The intense experience reported by about %25 of patients whose hearts are restarted after a short time of clinical death, has fascinated researchers for many years going right back to Plato. However, advances in cardiology techniques in the last 50 years have permitted doctors to save many more people, and thus to study the phenomenon in a controlled manner: so, exactly how many people have the experiences, exactly how dead they were at the time and so to start assessing the controversial part of this discussion, whether these experiences can be explained in simply neurobiological terms or if there is evidence that consciousness can ‘survive’ clinical death, if that is in fact the best way to talk about it. So who better to help us understand this than cardiologist, scientist and author Dr. Pim Van Lommel from The Netherlands. During his 35 year career as a Cardiologist, Dr. Van Lommel saw the need for a detailed study on this to nail down the physiological variables like medication, length of time without oxygen and to connect those to the psychological data, about the content of the experiences and how long they remained influential in the patients lives. The prospective study he spearheaded was published in the respected Lancet medical journal in 2001, and his book about the research ‘Consciousness beyond life, the science of the near death experience’ was published in 2007. He also recently won second prize in the Bigelow Foundation for consciousness studies essay prize, which discusses the study and its implications. Full references, shownotes and links here Please donate a cup of coffee if you’re enjoying the show What we discuss in this episode: 03:19 Common experiences during an NDE 05:30 NDEs are possible even when the brain is fully functional e.g. Fear of death emergency 06:44 Carl Jung’s NDE was the first description of viewing planet earth from above 07:45 Transformation of world view via NDE + STEs (Spiritually transformative experiences) 08:14 Scientific curiosity about NDEs in clinically dead brains 11:00 1988-1998 Pim’s medical and psychological study of NDEs 17:15 Examining neurobiological explanations 27:45 Implications: consciousness must be non-local and the brain an interface 38:30 NDEers report heightened intuitive skill, empathy, precognition and telepathy 46:00 Organisations researching post-materialist science 51:50 Is the information perceived in an NDE different to normal perceptive information? 54:00 Non-local information exchange 59:30 Heightened sense of interconnection with nature and other beings - oneness 01:01:00 Life review: Experiencing from a different consciousness’ point of view References: Pim’s book ‘Consciousness beyond life: the science of near death experiences’. Pim’s medical and psychological study Pim’s Bigelow essay prize text 2022 Bigalow Insitute for Consciousness Studies IONS The Journal of Consciousness Studies

How do we integrate the intense experiences of psychedelic therapy for long term benefits? Can we apply those learnings to existential exploration in general? In this episode we have the fascinating topic of ‘psychedelic integration’ to get our head around. Integration is a crucial part of any psychotherapy process, but perhaps even more so when those suffering experience psychedelic compounds in their treatment program. Many subjects of the new psychedelic treatments for depression and ADHD, have life changing experiences that often go against everything they have come to believe about themselves and the world. So regardless of how positive that can be to the meaning of their lives, it’s clear that some pretty sensitive guidance and processing needs to take place for the therapy to shift their day to day life long-term. And interestingly the same tools we’ll discuss can be used for all of us to navigate our own existential exploration. So who better to help us explain this and offer some tools for navigating these tricky experiences than clinical psychologist and author Dr. Kile Ortigo. Kile is the founder of the Center for Existential Exploration in Palo Alto California; he’s hugely influenced by psychologist Carl Jung and Jospeh Campbell and specialises in treating trauma, PTSD, depression, anxiety, and addiction, with a particular sensitivity to gender identity issues. He’s just written a book about the topic Beyond the Narrow Life: A Guide for Psychedelic Integration and Existential Exploration What we discuss in this episode: 00:00 Intro 06:00 Integration in therapy 09:44 Integration of psychedelic experiences 12:13 Preparation for the unknown - Kile’s new book ‘Psychedelic integration’ 17:00 Re-finding initiation; analogy with preparation 21:00 The risks of self-initiation 23:25 Is meaning built into existence? 28:00 Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey 31:30 The symbolism of the battles in the myths 34:00 The shadow - ‘a moral problem’ Jung 35:00 Monomyth is a misnoma 38:00 The Heroine’s journey - Maureen Murdoch 41:30 MDMA therapy for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder 43:45 Preparation - medicine journey - integration; 3 Arcs 46:00 The risk of re-trauma if the patient is not prepared 49:45 The rewards from existential exploration and integration 54:00 The exciting mystery of the unknown - making friends with the unknown References: Kile’s new Book Beyond the Narrow Life: A Guide for Psychedelic Integration and Existential Exploration, 'The Shadow' according to Jung Collective Unconscious episode #6 Individuation according to C.G.Jung Jospeh Campbell’s Hero’s Journey episode

This episode covers the fascinating science of mindfulness meditation. The massive explosion in popularity of meditation, has brought about a quiet revolution to the frantic western mind with the result of a complete change in our societies approach to stress management, happiness and well being. Today we’re going to get to the bottom of what happens to the brain when we meditate and why it’s so beneficial. But we’re also going to find out what happens to our levels of happiness, satisfaction, mental health and physical health if we meditate regularly over a long period of time. We’re also going to think about how society and business at large will evolve if these techniques continue to be introduced to our schools and companies. So who better to help us find out what all the buzz is about than award winning professor of clinical psychology at Santa Clara University, Dr. Shauna Shapiro. She’s a fellow of the Mind and Life Institute co-founded by the Dalai Lama, who we’ll be discussing a bit today. She also lectures about and leads mindfulness programs internationally; and she’s even brought mindfulness to pioneering companies including Cisco Systems and Google. She has published over 150 articles and is the author of several books, like ‘The art and science of Mindfulness’, and ‘Good Morning I love You’ and has just released The ‘Good morning I love you’ guided journal. What we discuss in this Episode: 00:00 Intro 05:37 Study results: Increased attention, memory and academic success, lowered activation of the Amygdala, reaction to pain 09:00 Better regulation of the nervous system 10:00 Effects of longer term meditation practice 11:00 Our happiness base line can be changed with practice 13:30 Intention and repetition’s relation to neuroplasticity 16:00 Journalling to set intention and maintain practice 17:00 Journalling for memory, health, mood, immune system and sleep 18:00 Morning theta state - more malleable brain 20:00 Advice for beginners getting started on meditation 22:00 Breath as a tool for relaxation 24:20 ‘Name it to tame it’ - Increased resilience and acceptance 27:00 Historical undervaluing of the coping function of emotion 28:30 Emotions only last 30-90 seconds, apart from their intellectualisation 30:00 Rise of polarisation and negative bias hacking by media - Mindfulness and compassion as a solution 33:00 Self-compassion leads to wider compassion and implicit bias reduction 34:00 The insular (compassion centre of the brain) is muted when someone is very different to you. 35:00 Knee jerk reactions (amygdala) reduced with regular meditation 37:00 Shauna’s meditation workshops in the military and companies References: drshaunashapiro.com Good Morning, I Love You: A Guided Journal for Calm, Clarity, and Joy Shauna Shapiro Altered Traits, Daniel Goleman and Richard J. Davidson  Changing happiness set points - Dr. Tal Ben Shahar - Happiness Studies  Andrew Huberman Lab, ‘Sigh breath’ research https://governmentscienceandengineering.blog.gov.uk/2021/11/26/is-a-sigh-just-a-sigh/ ‘Name it to tame it’ UCLA study. https://www.scn.ucla.edu/pdf/AL(2007).pdf Alleged Viktor Frankl quote “Between stimulus and response lies a space. In that space lies our freedom and power to choose a response. In our response lies our growth and our happiness.”