Speaker 1: Today. It's great to have Anica Harris on the podcast.
Speaker 1: Anica is an author whose work touches on neuroscience, meditation,
Speaker 1: philosophy of mind, and consciousness. She's the author of two books, conscious,
Speaker 1: a Brief Guide to the fundamental Mystery of the Mind,
Speaker 1: and the children's book I Wonder. Anica is also a
Speaker 1: volunteer for Inner Kids, teaching mindfulness meditation to children in schools.
Speaker 1: Anica so excited to chat with you today on the
Speaker 1: Psychology Yeah, I'm excited to chat with you too. Hi, Scott.
Speaker 1: Why don't we wonder about consciousness together today? How about it? Okay, yes,
Speaker 1: sounds good. It looked like there are a lot of
Speaker 1: interesting questions that came in on your Twitter feed when
Speaker 1: you were and you were consulting your crowd. Well, you
Speaker 1: have a lot of fans, you have a lot of
Speaker 1: fans and uh, and lot of people on my uh,
Speaker 1: you know, my followers who are very interested in consciousness
Speaker 1: and surrounding issues, which we'll cover today. You know, when
Speaker 1: it comes to consciousness, there really are a lot of mysteries, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, we're we're not talking about like cheese, you know,
Speaker 1: where it's like, okay, we kind of get the molecular
Speaker 1: structure of cheese, like you can get the molecular structure
Speaker 1: of conscious and still not understand what the consciousness is, right,
Speaker 1: And actually at this point you can't get the molecular structure.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, hopefully at some point will that's right,
Speaker 1: but we don't. Yeah, we don't have any of it.
Speaker 1: We don't not even there yet. Yeah, we're well, maybe
Speaker 1: that would be a good starting point in the just
Speaker 1: talking about a little difference between the soft the hard
Speaker 1: problem of consciousness versus the soft problem conscious Can you
Speaker 1: kind of just describe them to Yeah, I think it's
Speaker 1: usually put more in terms of the hard problem versus
Speaker 1: the easy problems, which is a bit of a joke,
Speaker 1: you know, it's a sarcastic comment that they are easy
Speaker 1: problems at all in neuroscience. But so, the idea is
Speaker 1: that the so called easy problems are understanding which brain
Speaker 1: processes and which areas of the brain are responsible for
Speaker 1: different types of experiences, different types of behaviors. You know,
Speaker 1: when I'm looking at red square, what you know, what
Speaker 1: is the correlating state of my brain for that experience?
Speaker 1: The hard problem is why there is any felt experience
Speaker 1: associated with any collection of matter in the universe. And
Speaker 1: so a lot of people, I should say this upfront,
Speaker 1: use consciousness in different ways, and so I should say
Speaker 1: that the way I'm using the word is in the
Speaker 1: most fundamental sense. So a lot of people use the
Speaker 1: word consciousness to talk about self awareness, to talk about
Speaker 1: complex thought, to talk about things that, in my mind,
Speaker 1: are much further down the line than just the fundamental,
Speaker 1: basic sense in which there is a felt experience in
Speaker 1: which there happens to be felt experience in the universe.
Speaker 1: And I've actually been using the word sentience lately. I'm
Speaker 1: doing an audio series now on consciousness, and I decided
Speaker 1: to use that definition because it actually gets at the
Speaker 1: heart of what I mean by consciousness and what's so
Speaker 1: mysterious about consciousness. And the Oxford English Dictionary just defines
Speaker 1: it as susceptibility to sensation, and so it's almost like
Speaker 1: prior to any content, even just just felt experience at all.
Speaker 1: And then you can, you know, put in as much
Speaker 1: minimal content as you want, you know, just seeing the
Speaker 1: color blue, you know, feeling pressure on your hand, even
Speaker 1: you know, creatures that are much less complex than us, say,
Speaker 1: if worms are conscious, which we you know, at this
Speaker 1: point there's no consensus, but if if they were, we
Speaker 1: could imagine them having a very very minimal experience. But
Speaker 1: we can imagine a felt experience versus there being absolutely
Speaker 1: no experience at all, versus you know, what we imagine
Speaker 1: a robot would be or a rock. Right, If a
Speaker 1: worm has any consciousness, there's a felt experience there of
Speaker 1: something of pressure, of a physical sensation of moving through
Speaker 1: the dirt, maybe some sense of moving toward food or
Speaker 1: you know, desire in some very minimal form. So so, yeah,
Speaker 1: so I'm using the word consciousness to point to that
Speaker 1: very fundamental sense, simply a felt experience. Yeah. A. Nagel
Speaker 1: described it so beautifully in this book. You know, its
Speaker 1: like to be a b Yeah, it really. I was
Speaker 1: starting to rain essay with my philosopher friend and then
Speaker 1: we didn't know it was too It turned out to
Speaker 1: be too tricky, which is what is it like to
Speaker 1: be human? What we're trying to think, what is what
Speaker 1: is human consciousness? Well in terms of a playoff that understanding,
Speaker 1: and we sat down we tried to like figure it out,
Speaker 1: and it's just it's too complicated question. We started that humans. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, one of the what are the necessary conditions?
Speaker 1: You know, these sorts of things. Yeah, yeah, an El
Speaker 1: Seth actually has a book coming out with a similar
Speaker 1: title called Being You, which is one of the Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a great title, and it's one of the best
Speaker 1: books on the subject, and he deals with what we
Speaker 1: do know about consciousness and human perception in a way
Speaker 1: that I haven't heard any other neuroscientists described quite as well.
Speaker 1: And he's also giving us kind of the most up
Speaker 1: to date neuroscience. So I highly recommend that book. It's
Speaker 1: out in the UK right now, and I think it's
Speaker 1: coming out in the fall in the US. Oh well,
Speaker 1: maybe I'll get them on my podcast. Yeah, And as
Speaker 1: we're talking about I've actually been using examples from his
Speaker 1: book all the time, so I'm sure come up again
Speaker 1: as we as we get into it. Wonderful. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: do say in your book that if you had to
Speaker 1: pick two, it would be to listen to it'ld be
Speaker 1: Anasath and Julio Tononi. Right, Did I say that in
Speaker 1: my book? You said that? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, you said
Speaker 1: you said, well, if I had to pick that's fine. Cool,
Speaker 1: both great, not Sam Harris not joking, joking, Okay, so
Speaker 1: what was your what was your goal in writing the
Speaker 1: book conscious Like, what was what was the kind of
Speaker 1: motivating force there? You know, it kind of changed and
Speaker 1: evolved as I was writing the book. It began really
Speaker 1: just for a way. I mean, it's almost like what
Speaker 1: you're talking about this project with your friend. It was
Speaker 1: a way for me to sort through all of my
Speaker 1: thoughts about consciousness as they were evolving. So this was
Speaker 1: something I'd been really fixated on for at least twenty years.
Speaker 1: I mean in many ways throughout my life, but since
Speaker 1: I started working with neuroscientists about twenty years ago, it's
Speaker 1: just something that is constantly in my thoughts, and I
Speaker 1: was constantly shifting my view. And it was at the
Speaker 1: point where I started to really ask the question, be
Speaker 1: willing to ask the question, is it possible that consciousness
Speaker 1: is actually a more fundamental feature of the universe than
Speaker 1: we previously thought, or that than we've assumed. And that
Speaker 1: was it was surprising to me that I was becoming
Speaker 1: open to that because I would have rolled my eyes
Speaker 1: at that question, you know, up until that point. And
Speaker 1: I would say that was probably maybe eight to ten
Speaker 1: years ago. And so I just started writing because I
Speaker 1: wanted to sort through my own thought, you know, as
Speaker 1: a philosopher, as a self taught philosopher, very interested in
Speaker 1: the stuff. I just started taking notes, I started writing
Speaker 1: for myself. It was funny at that point, as I,
Speaker 1: you know, I would talk to Sam about my thoughts,
Speaker 1: and I really kept saying, you know, I really feel
Speaker 1: like it's not as crazy as it sounds. It's possible
Speaker 1: that this is kind of the next real revelation in science,
Speaker 1: that consciousness. It's almost like all of these other huge
Speaker 1: discoveries that these ego shattering discoveries of you know, our
Speaker 1: planet is not at the center of the Solar System,
Speaker 1: and life does not require some injection of some magical substance,
Speaker 1: right that that actually, all the stuff in the universe
Speaker 1: is made of the same ingredients, and it's just getting
Speaker 1: reconfigured and reconfigured. And we're not that special, and the
Speaker 1: Earth is not that. I mean, it's special in the
Speaker 1: ways that it's interesting and unique. But each scientific discovery
Speaker 1: kind of shows us that we are part. We are
Speaker 1: part of the universe and not necessarily the center of
Speaker 1: it or the ego of it. And so I started
Speaker 1: wondering if consciousness is the same thing where it's actually pervasive,
Speaker 1: where not in a magical sense, but in a very
Speaker 1: ordinary sense, where it is a feature or a I've
Speaker 1: lost the word property, thank you. Yes, yes, that's the
Speaker 1: word I was looking for. So yeah, so just a
Speaker 1: property of matter or even something deeper, you know, in
Speaker 1: the form of the field. And it's an open question.
Speaker 1: This is not something that I necessarily believe in, but
Speaker 1: there are many more reasons to ask this question than
Speaker 1: I realized. So when I first started writing about this
Speaker 1: and thinking about it, Sam what kind of jokingly, but
Speaker 1: not really as a joke, say don't mention this to
Speaker 1: the neuroscientists you're working with, and you know, don't say
Speaker 1: this at a work dinner. Basically people will think you're crazy,
Speaker 1: and it's true. And so then my motivation started shifting
Speaker 1: and I thought, Okay, what makes a legitimate scientific question
Speaker 1: impossible to talk about? And I'm now convinced this is
Speaker 1: a legitimate scientific question, and so my motivation became to
Speaker 1: be to help explain in very simple terms, why this
Speaker 1: is legitimate science and why we don't know the answer,
Speaker 1: but it is a good question to ask. And we've
Speaker 1: been making a lot of assumptions that the more we
Speaker 1: know about the brain, the more these assumptions are starting
Speaker 1: to be broken down and kind of torn apart. And
Speaker 1: all of these assumptions about things like the self about
Speaker 1: conscious will, they all inform our thinking about consciousness, the
Speaker 1: inform our intuitions about consciousness, excuse me. And so it
Speaker 1: really feels like it's time for us to rethink some
Speaker 1: of these things and to go back and say, Okay,
Speaker 1: what is the latest neuroscience actually telling us about these
Speaker 1: intuitions that we're trusting in order to make assumptions about consciousness.
Speaker 1: So I really I did want to kind of shift
Speaker 1: the conversation and eliminate the taboo if possible. I would
Speaker 1: say though, that the largest reason was once my writing
Speaker 1: became an article, and then the article became a book,
Speaker 1: excuse me. Once the article became a book and I
Speaker 1: was writing this book, I was talking you know what.
Speaker 1: I have friends who are artists and all kinds of
Speaker 1: different people that I hang out with, and I noticed
Speaker 1: that it was the first time I was working on
Speaker 1: a scientific subject that everyone was interested in, and it
Speaker 1: really surprised me. I'm used to talking about a physics
Speaker 1: experiment or a neuroscientist I'm working with on their new book,
Speaker 1: and kind of you know, they are the certain people
Speaker 1: who are interested in that. But a lot of people's
Speaker 1: eyes glaze over and you realize, okay, we ought to
Speaker 1: move on to something else. And consciousness without fail, everyone
Speaker 1: had really interesting questions and the question started driving the
Speaker 1: book really too. So I just loved that this was
Speaker 1: a scientific topic that so many people were interested in,
Speaker 1: and there was not really a single book that I
Speaker 1: could hand over to a friend who wasn't a scientists
Speaker 1: that wouldn't be really difficult to read. And so I
Speaker 1: think this book, Yeah, you did a you did a
Speaker 1: really great service by writing your book. You're upsetre right,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, to to the late person, if
Speaker 1: they pick up like David Chalmers book and Consciousness, their
Speaker 1: eyes are going to glaze over quite frankly, or or
Speaker 1: even it's hard to get through, right, or even you
Speaker 1: know you you touched on that. I should say that
Speaker 1: David Chalmers is the one person I recommend because eily enough.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you're if you're into it and you
Speaker 1: want to go through the academic arguments, it's accessible enough
Speaker 1: that you know it's it's readable but it's work. Yeah,
Speaker 1: thank you for that courication. I mean, he's a he's
Speaker 1: a good friend of mine, and I want to be
Speaker 1: very queer. I'm not saying saying that, like you know,
Speaker 1: everyone's eyes would just glaze over like in a way,
Speaker 1: in a way that they'd be they'd be boring. That's
Speaker 1: not what I mean. But it's very rigorous. It's a
Speaker 1: rigorous idea. Yeah, it's academic. He's awesome. He actually has
Speaker 1: a new book out on whether or not he we're
Speaker 1: living in a simulation. I'm excited. Yeah, so that's interesting.
Speaker 1: He puts it as a as a higher percentage than
Speaker 1: you would think, a probability, higher probability than one would think.
Speaker 1: But it sounds like the idea that you're touching on
Speaker 1: there is what's referred to as pan psychism, right, And
Speaker 1: I've had Philip Goff on my show and uh uh
Speaker 1: and we we had a great chat about it. And
Speaker 1: you know, his works are are are i'd say, semi
Speaker 1: accessible to the general public on this as well as
Speaker 1: his new one, his new one. Yeah, but I I
Speaker 1: just I do think your book did a great service
Speaker 1: as a way of even just stimulating people to want
Speaker 1: to learn more about the topic and kind of get
Speaker 1: into the debates and and you and you lay out
Speaker 1: a bunch of complexities around these topics, and I thought
Speaker 1: we could just go through some of these things that
Speaker 1: make it very difficult to study. Some people might not
Speaker 1: even be aware of why it's difficult. So why is
Speaker 1: it so hard to just figure out that? Is there
Speaker 1: cost serve word? You know? Yeah, well, yes it is.
Speaker 1: It's hard. It's hard. It's hard to find out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well something you know when some people are trying to
Speaker 1: do that, trying to figure out, you know, how to
Speaker 1: do five phi right, is it? Yes, yes, it's the
Speaker 1: integrated information theory I t that's Julia and Christoff Cooper
Speaker 1: working on that. Yeah. Yeah, so he may have that someday.
Speaker 1: But one thing that's really tricky is, you know, kind
Speaker 1: of going back to Chalmers, this idea of zombies. You know,
Speaker 1: it's hard one can have a really rich inner consciousness
Speaker 1: and and for no one to have any idea that
Speaker 1: that's the case from the outside. I felt that was
Speaker 1: my early child that was my whole early childhood is
Speaker 1: I was in special head as a kid for an
Speaker 1: auditory disability had so I was actually zipped up in
Speaker 1: a cloud people. But but I had a rich imagination
Speaker 1: and and even dare I say intellect I was curious, curious,
Speaker 1: and there extreme version of that. Yeah, No, there's the
Speaker 1: extreme version of that which you're alluding to, which I
Speaker 1: talk about in my book. To two cases that we
Speaker 1: know of. One is called locked in syndrome, which which
Speaker 1: some people are familiar with but not a lot, which
Speaker 1: is essentially just a brain injury or disease that causes paralysis,
Speaker 1: complete paralysis of the body, but where the person's consciousness
Speaker 1: is as fully alive and present as you, yours and
Speaker 1: mine are in this moment. And in my in my book,
Speaker 1: I talk about this memoir that was written by Jean
Speaker 1: Dominique Bobi, who had this condition, I believe it. In
Speaker 1: his case, it was due to a stroke and they
Speaker 1: assumed that he was in a coma. He was completely paralyzed,
Speaker 1: and one of his nurses noticed that he had mobility,
Speaker 1: he had the ability to move one of his eyelids,
Speaker 1: and that it seemed that he was doing it intentionally.
Speaker 1: And so it's a long story, but they ended up
Speaker 1: developing a method for him to communicate through choosing letters
Speaker 1: in the alphabet, through a pattern of blinks, and he
Speaker 1: wrote an entire memoir in this condition with somebody interpreting
Speaker 1: the blinks and writing down what he was saying. But
Speaker 1: what he described it was obvious that it would be
Speaker 1: the experience you or I would have right now if
Speaker 1: we just became completely paralyzed. He could see everything, he
Speaker 1: could hear everything, he could think, He was completely himself
Speaker 1: in every other way. And so there's also this condition
Speaker 1: of anesthesia awareness, which is my worst nightmare, where you're
Speaker 1: put under anesthesia for a procedure and the paralyzing drugs
Speaker 1: take effect, but the drugs that are meant to make
Speaker 1: you unconscious for whatever reason don't work or wear off
Speaker 1: too quickly, and so the person is there undergoing a
Speaker 1: medical procedure, a surgery, and they are fully aware. They
Speaker 1: can feel everything, they can hear everything, see everything, they
Speaker 1: just can't signal that they're conscious. And so at the
Speaker 1: very least we know that it's possible for a system
Speaker 1: to have as much consciousness and as much conscious content
Speaker 1: as any human being does without any behavior indicating it
Speaker 1: from the outside. And there's this wonderful I'll send it
Speaker 1: to you. There's this wonderful image that I forget where
Speaker 1: it originated. Someone tweeted it and anil actually retweeted it,
Speaker 1: which is why I saw it. But it was from
Speaker 1: one of those science exhibits where they showed different parts
Speaker 1: of the body. I don't know if you ever saw.
Speaker 1: I think it was called Inner Worlds or something like
Speaker 1: this for Body Worlds. They took people who donated it there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was fascinating, kind of disturbing, but really interesting, so
Speaker 1: people that donated their bodies to science, and I think
Speaker 1: it was it was originated in Germany somewhere in Europe,
Speaker 1: and they showed different systems in the human body, one
Speaker 1: of which was the nervous system, by injecting it with
Speaker 1: some solution that had a color to it, so it would,
Speaker 1: you know, harden and then they would have these displays
Speaker 1: out on these tables. You could see, you know, a
Speaker 1: human who had passed their nervous system and everything else
Speaker 1: stripped away. So someone had taken a picture of this
Speaker 1: and said, if this were alive, it would be conscious.
Speaker 1: And it's really interesting because it looks like it looks
Speaker 1: more like a tree than it does a human being.
Speaker 1: It's you know, it has branches and fibers and it
Speaker 1: twists all around, but it's basically the brain and the
Speaker 1: central nervous system, and so not that trees are conscious then,
Speaker 1: you know, we don't know, but it's interesting to contemplate
Speaker 1: the fact that that is true. This object on the
Speaker 1: table would be conscious if it were alive. And so
Speaker 1: my book and my thinking has largely been around challenging
Speaker 1: our intuitions and challenging our assumptions about what we think
Speaker 1: consciousness is so that we can think more creatively about it.
Speaker 1: You were talking about why it's so difficult to study,
Speaker 1: and one thing actually that came a lot in your
Speaker 1: Twitter thread when people were asking, is you know how
Speaker 1: if anything else is conscious in my body? You know,
Speaker 1: if my fingernails, If there's consciousness in my fingernails, why
Speaker 1: doesn't it hurt when I cut them? Or you know,
Speaker 1: how is it that i'm or when I go to sleep,
Speaker 1: or when I'm under anesthesia when it works? You know,
Speaker 1: then how can you say there's consciousness there? I'm clearly
Speaker 1: not conscious and then I become conscious again. And so
Speaker 1: this is a really good example of how confused we
Speaker 1: are by the illusions that the brain delivers to us.
Speaker 1: And this is partly a function of self largely a
Speaker 1: function of self. And so there are a few different
Speaker 1: ways I can answer this, And I think it also
Speaker 1: gets at this question of why it's so difficult to
Speaker 1: study but so simple example you can imagine, Actually I
Speaker 1: was thinking of a parasite, but I have a better example.
Speaker 1: It's a little bit like a parasite. But when I
Speaker 1: was pregnant, right, I had another human being in my body.
Speaker 1: Most neuroscientists would agree that, at least at the you know,
Speaker 1: the day before she was born, she was basically the
Speaker 1: same outside of the body as inside the body. She
Speaker 1: had consciousness, She could hear my voice. There are all
Speaker 1: kinds of things that are happening in the brain at
Speaker 1: that point. So you could say, well, if if the
Speaker 1: baby's conscious, why why aren't I hearing the sound she's hearing? Why?
Speaker 1: You know, why isn't that a part of my consciousness?
Speaker 1: And then the answer becomes very simple. Of course, there
Speaker 1: can be another center of consciousness within my body that
Speaker 1: I am not aware of. Right so, and you know,
Speaker 1: parasites are another example. If I had a tapeworm, and
Speaker 1: maybe tapeworms are unconscious, But if they are, which isn't
Speaker 1: hard to imagine there clearly can be systems within the
Speaker 1: body where they don't show up in this stream that
Speaker 1: you know that I refer to as me, which is
Speaker 1: essentially memory, and it's largely memory, but it's also a
Speaker 1: sense it almost gets too complicated to get into. This
Speaker 1: is what Onill's book is about. But all the different
Speaker 1: perceptions that give me the sense that there's a that
Speaker 1: there's a me, that there's kind of this solid me
Speaker 1: in here that is somehow separate from brain processing, That
Speaker 1: it's not just that I'm experiencing brain processing, but that
Speaker 1: there's this kind of solid me. But the truth is
Speaker 1: all anyone has access to is for one thing that
Speaker 1: can communicate, right, So the fact that the speaking part
Speaker 1: of my brain is also carrying memory, these like trails
Speaker 1: of memory of all you know, short term and long
Speaker 1: term memory that is me. If let's say two seconds ago,
Speaker 1: or let's say you deliver some type of amnesia drug
Speaker 1: where I now can't remember the last five minutes, we
Speaker 1: wouldn't be tempted to say I wasn't There was no
Speaker 1: consciousness presence in those five minutes, even though now I
Speaker 1: can say no, it's the same, the same experience for
Speaker 1: me as if I had just woken up from a surgery,
Speaker 1: like I wasn't conscious and now I am so. So
Speaker 1: all we have is self report, and we have self
Speaker 1: report from the experience of the stream that is containing
Speaker 1: all their the brain processing that contains all the memories.
Speaker 1: But what we don't know is whether there's all kinds
Speaker 1: of other conscious processes happening within my body that are
Speaker 1: just not part of this stream that can report. And
Speaker 1: so another great example. Sorry I'm rambling on for a
Speaker 1: long time. I was going to bring up split brain research,
Speaker 1: but you look like you have a question. Did you
Speaker 1: want to bring up like I was bringing up multiple
Speaker 1: personalities disorder? Where is that in to all this? I mean,
Speaker 1: they have multiple streams of consciousness that that'll like they
Speaker 1: alternate between which one they do and they identify with
Speaker 1: be aware. Yeah. Yeah, and split brain research again is
Speaker 1: like the most extreme version of that where they actually
Speaker 1: physically I don't know how much your audience will be
Speaker 1: aware of. I don't want to repeat things that you've
Speaker 1: spoken a lot about on your podcast already, but let
Speaker 1: me know if you want me to go into detail.
Speaker 1: This is good stuff, please go with Yeah. So there's
Speaker 1: a procedure where they actually cut the corpus colossum, the
Speaker 1: connection between the right and left hemispheres of the brain.
Speaker 1: They have better interventions now, so it's almost not done anymore,
Speaker 1: but it's done for a long period of time, very
Speaker 1: effective at helping with epileptic seizures that were destroying people's
Speaker 1: lives and putting their lives at risk. So the biggest
Speaker 1: risk in a seizure is when it spreads to the
Speaker 1: entire brain, and so cutting that connection makes it impossible
Speaker 1: for the left and right hemispheres to communicate and for
Speaker 1: any of the electrical firing to pass across, and so
Speaker 1: the seizure would be contained to one to one side
Speaker 1: and therefore really increase the quality of life of the patient.
Speaker 1: Surprisingly with almost no side effects. You really could barely tell.
Speaker 1: The person really seemed and reported that they felt the
Speaker 1: same what they noticed when they started studying these patients.
Speaker 1: And there and there's a ton of written sorry research
Speaker 1: that's that's been written about. And Michael Gazanaga is one
Speaker 1: neuroscientist who's very involved in this research and he's written
Speaker 1: a lot about it. I recommend his books on this
Speaker 1: and Roger Sperry as well. So so they conducted many
Speaker 1: experiments on the split brain patients, and what they discovered
Speaker 1: was that essentially they had it had almost become or
Speaker 1: in reality, had become two people. It's almost like conjoined
Speaker 1: twins where they're sharing a body, but one hemisphere did
Speaker 1: not have access to what the other hemisphere was experiencing,
Speaker 1: and in fact, the two hemispheres end up having different preferences,
Speaker 1: different opinions. There's some really interesting cases. I think it
Speaker 1: was Ian McGilchrist who writes about the patient who one
Speaker 1: hemisphere was an atheist and the other was a zine
Speaker 1: evangelical Christian, and that's very extreme. Most were not that extreme,
Speaker 1: but they were able to in these situations. They can
Speaker 1: test each hemisphere separately, asking the same question and you
Speaker 1: get different answers, and then they're bizarre things that they witnessed.
Speaker 1: Something called hemispheric rivalry, where one hemisphere would be interested
Speaker 1: in wearing a blue sweater and putting the blue sweater on,
Speaker 1: and apparently the other hemisphere did not want to wear
Speaker 1: that sweater, and you see the person actually fighting with
Speaker 1: themselves because the the right hemisphere controls the left part
Speaker 1: of the body, the left hemisphere controls the right and
Speaker 1: so you can actually see a physical fight in some
Speaker 1: rare cases take place, mister Hyde. You know, like, so
Speaker 1: clearly we don't. We can't rule out that there's other
Speaker 1: conscious content and other parts of my body, other parts
Speaker 1: of my brain, other other systems that entail conscious experience
Speaker 1: within my body, even though it's not entering the stream
Speaker 1: that that is me that has the memories and preferences
Speaker 1: that that happen to go along with this particular brain processing. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: and and the really interesting thing is when these kind
Speaker 1: of brain networks that are usually coupled start to become
Speaker 1: decoupled through meditation practices. I don't really so I say
Speaker 1: like that practices, practices, practices, could it be practices anyway
Speaker 1: we're talking science. Did I say it like that? But anyway,
Speaker 1: you know, but I'm really interested in the way they
Speaker 1: can be decoupled through practices like meditation or other, uh
Speaker 1: more spiritual practices. I guess one could call them or
Speaker 1: self transcendent experiences, including even drugs. Dare I say, but yeah, uh,
Speaker 1: in early experience? Sorry ahead, yeah, So for instance, It's
Speaker 1: what's really interesting is when we can, uh we can
Speaker 1: be fully conscious and piercingly conscious of the contents of
Speaker 1: our consciousness but not have our brain areas like in
Speaker 1: the default mode network active that are more tied to
Speaker 1: a self related processing. And that's a that's a cool
Speaker 1: that's kind of a cool state sometimes to play with.
Speaker 1: I don't know if I always one hundred percent want
Speaker 1: to be in that, you know, but but but but
Speaker 1: but through meditation practice you kind of get to this
Speaker 1: state of of of of witness consciousness, right, yes, yes, absolutely,
Speaker 1: And those are definitely the things that the those are
Speaker 1: where the intuitions I have for breaking apart some of
Speaker 1: the assumptions that we tend to come in with. And
Speaker 1: it is it's kind of the typical experience of when
Speaker 1: you take something apart. You take a toaster apart, and
Speaker 1: you put it back together and you understand how the
Speaker 1: toaster works now, right. It's when you can take when
Speaker 1: you can have an experience without feeling at all like
Speaker 1: a self, when you can have experience of even even
Speaker 1: different types of agnosia. So so agnosia, there's a variety
Speaker 1: of different types of agnosia. That's when brain processing goes awry.
Speaker 1: These are diseases. Essentially, you can be in a state
Speaker 1: where sounds and sites are no longer synced. This is
Speaker 1: something our brain does for us. Sound like travel at
Speaker 1: different speeds. These information from the outside world come in
Speaker 1: through our senses. We perceive them at different times. They
Speaker 1: take different You know, it takes a longer time for
Speaker 1: a sense from my fingertips to reach my brain and
Speaker 1: get processed than it does for say the sound if
Speaker 1: I'm if I hit the table, the signal from the
Speaker 1: touch actually takes longer than the signal of the sound.
Speaker 1: But our brain through what are called binding processes and
Speaker 1: weave that together so that in my experience, they seem
Speaker 1: to happen at the same time. So agnosia is when
Speaker 1: these processes aren't working properly. But you can have so.
Speaker 1: So some people have this experience where something goes wrong
Speaker 1: with their brain processing and those sites and sounds are
Speaker 1: not synced, and it's obviously a very disorienting experience and
Speaker 1: a difficult way to live. But this can happen. You
Speaker 1: can have finger agnosia. You cannot be able to tell
Speaker 1: the difference between your fingers. All kinds of things can
Speaker 1: go awry with the brain. But under psychedelic under the
Speaker 1: influence of some psychedelic substances, these types of agnosia can
Speaker 1: can come on for short periods of time, and so
Speaker 1: through meditation and some experimenting with psychedelic substances, it's been
Speaker 1: my way of taking the toaster apart and putting it
Speaker 1: back together. When you drop the sense of self, when
Speaker 1: color and sound and physical sensation all start to bleed together,
Speaker 1: and you have these experiences while you're conscious of a
Speaker 1: very different type of experience than the one we tend
Speaker 1: to have, you realize that your brain is just doing
Speaker 1: something different right when it's when it's when you're experiencing
Speaker 1: a sense of self, the brain is creating that The
Speaker 1: sense of self is a perception in the same way
Speaker 1: that the color red is a perception. When I see
Speaker 1: the color red, I have no information about the light
Speaker 1: waves or you know, about the molecules and what's happening
Speaker 1: at a fundamental level. I just have this felt experience
Speaker 1: of red. And so the felt experience of self in
Speaker 1: the same way is not giving us good information about
Speaker 1: the underlying reality. And so that's what I'm incredibly interested
Speaker 1: in now, and that's what my audio series is about.
Speaker 1: And I'm surprised although it makes sense, but I'm mostly
Speaker 1: talking to physicists actually for this project on consciousness because
Speaker 1: I'm interested in this question about whether it's possible that
Speaker 1: consciousness is more fundamental than we think. And this actually
Speaker 1: becomes a question for physics very quickly. It has to
Speaker 1: be informed by neuroscience, of course, but if it is fundamental,
Speaker 1: then it is a question for physicists. You talked to
Speaker 1: Sean Carroll, Yes, spoken to Sean Carroll. That was a
Speaker 1: great podcast, and we really we really nerded out about
Speaker 1: this topic. Will we disagreed about free will as I
Speaker 1: tend to disagree with a lot of people about free
Speaker 1: will for some reason. Yeah. No. Actually, one of the
Speaker 1: things that I that he and I spoke about, and
Speaker 1: that is, you know, parallel, not not exactly related to
Speaker 1: these things that we're talking about, but often people's questions
Speaker 1: about free will and about this sense of you know,
Speaker 1: are we making choices? And how is it that we're
Speaker 1: not making choices if we're not? And one conclusion I
Speaker 1: always come to, or one it's more like just an
Speaker 1: interesting thought I think, is what does it even mean
Speaker 1: to say that something else could have happened? You know,
Speaker 1: if we jumped forward twenty years, this conversation will have
Speaker 1: gone however it went and the rest of our you
Speaker 1: will have moved into your new place, and our lives
Speaker 1: would have happened. And in what sense can we say, well,
Speaker 1: it could have happened another way. And I would argue
Speaker 1: that we can't. That things are going to happen the
Speaker 1: way they're going to happen, and there is no two
Speaker 1: things happening. Interesting about many worlds is all everything happens, basically,
Speaker 1: And I think it's an interesting conundrum for those of
Speaker 1: us who are convinced that we do not have free will.
Speaker 1: Although I never put it that way, I think there's
Speaker 1: a way to talk about having free will that our
Speaker 1: brains as a system, in some sense have I mean, ultimately,
Speaker 1: I don't think it's free. But it's different to talk
Speaker 1: about the free will of the system of our brain
Speaker 1: versus conscious will. And I'm always very careful to separate
Speaker 1: those because what I think is clearly an illusion is
Speaker 1: conscious will. And the truth is that's the majority of
Speaker 1: what people care about, and that is the illusion that
Speaker 1: gets in the way of thinking about consciousness. Clearly, so
Speaker 1: our brain as a system can still have the type
Speaker 1: of free will that we're interested in, but consciousness it's
Speaker 1: a totally open question whether consciousness has anything to do
Speaker 1: with it at all, And most of the neuroscience is
Speaker 1: pointing in the direction of consciousness kind of being the
Speaker 1: last to know that everything, including the feeling of will,
Speaker 1: feeling of having made a decision, is again another perception
Speaker 1: of the brain and consciousness that all of the brain
Speaker 1: processing happens prior to it becoming a conscious experience in
Speaker 1: the same way that binding does. So there's a way,
Speaker 1: there's a sense in which all of the decision making
Speaker 1: is happening behind the scenes, in the same way that
Speaker 1: the binding of sights and sounds is happening behind the scenes.
Speaker 1: And then what your experience is is I'm making a decision,
Speaker 1: I have the feeling of will I want to do this,
Speaker 1: and now I'm going to do it, and that perception
Speaker 1: is kind of the last thing to happen. Well, we
Speaker 1: can double cook on that. There was a really a
Speaker 1: good quote who came up the quote where there's not
Speaker 1: so good think of conscious as like a bird, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of but more of their roots ian MCA, but
Speaker 1: their root And and I think that that you're quite
Speaker 1: right that cognitive science has really shown as well as
Speaker 1: social psychologists. I should give them some credit to they've
Speaker 1: shown just how much our behaviors and actions in the
Speaker 1: world are are influenced by non conscious processes. My whole
Speaker 1: dissertation was on implicit learning, which is a topic in
Speaker 1: the field of cognitive science, where we can learn the
Speaker 1: probabilistic rule structure of the universe of things, of people,
Speaker 1: so social skills, but also beauty, nature, you know, aesthetics,
Speaker 1: and I linked it to creativity in my dissertation. But
Speaker 1: I found that people differed wildly in their ability to
Speaker 1: implicitly soak up knowledge of things, and that wasn't correlated
Speaker 1: with IQ by the way, So some people do have
Speaker 1: this kind of intuitive, non conscious intelligence more than others.
Speaker 1: So I think that that's quite right. But I think
Speaker 1: that it might be valuable to distinguis between between the
Speaker 1: function of consciousness in terms of what you're kind of
Speaker 1: bringing up, which is, well, what could we have done
Speaker 1: otherwise if we rewinded the tape and had all the
Speaker 1: same conditions versus maybe the function of conscious and why
Speaker 1: it evolved is to help us with error correction in
Speaker 1: the future, to kind of make some changes to things
Speaker 1: that so we cannot be so shortsighted that does that
Speaker 1: does seem to be something unique about humans. I don't
Speaker 1: want to go too crazy with the uniqueness of humans,
Speaker 1: because I really do agree with evolutionary psychologists that once
Speaker 1: you start looking into it more, you're like, well, actually,
Speaker 1: you can go pretty far down. It's interesting. The mechanism
Speaker 1: of choice goes really far down, really to the level
Speaker 1: of plants and a lot of the genes we share
Speaker 1: with plants. I mean, obviously in humans that is, it's
Speaker 1: much more complex. That always becomes more complex, but the
Speaker 1: origin of the actual decision make or what we're calling
Speaker 1: decision making, goes very far back. I'm just going to
Speaker 1: say something else when you were talking. Oh, yes, so
Speaker 1: the evolution argument, Yes, that absolutely makes sense if consciousness
Speaker 1: is serving the function we have always assumed, and it may,
Speaker 1: but it may not. And that is really what my
Speaker 1: book is all about and what I spend most of
Speaker 1: my time thinking about. And I begin my book with
Speaker 1: these two questions for that reason, just to get to
Speaker 1: chip away at the things we most strongly assume about consciousness.
Speaker 1: And so the two questions are related, but they're different
Speaker 1: and important to ask separately. The first one is is
Speaker 1: there any behavior. Is there anything on the outside that
Speaker 1: we can point to that we can say conclusively is
Speaker 1: evidence that there's consciousness present in the system. And we
Speaker 1: already talked a little bit about locked in syndrome and
Speaker 1: how you know that's the flip side of it. But
Speaker 1: at least we know it's possible to not see anything
Speaker 1: on the outside of a conscious system. But is it
Speaker 1: possible that we can say, if you see someone crying
Speaker 1: after they break their arm, you know they are conscious
Speaker 1: or you know, whatever the formula might be. Is there
Speaker 1: something we can always say if we see that, we
Speaker 1: know there's consciousness. And our reflective answer to that is yes.
Speaker 1: And the example I gave is like all the examples
Speaker 1: we would give where we think, if you see that behavior,
Speaker 1: there is consciousness present. I think that's much more of
Speaker 1: an assumption than we realize, and not an evidence based assumption.
Speaker 1: The second question is the one that pertains to evolution,
Speaker 1: which is is consciousness serving a function? Is it actually
Speaker 1: doing something? Is it having an effect? And the answer
Speaker 1: is clearly, we don't know. We do not know the
Speaker 1: answer to this, as the sciences have assumed all this time,
Speaker 1: as have I until ten years ago, and it still
Speaker 1: may be the case. It's I you know, it's it's
Speaker 1: an open question, But we don't know if consciousness is
Speaker 1: serving the function it is serving. And the truth is
Speaker 1: anything we want to point to in human beings we
Speaker 1: can imagine and the truth is very soon there will
Speaker 1: be an AI version of this to point to where
Speaker 1: you can imagine an unconscious AI system doing just as
Speaker 1: good a job as that thing you think we need
Speaker 1: consciousness for and imagine that it doesn't have consciousness, And
Speaker 1: so we don't know. And if consciousness is truly fundamental,
Speaker 1: if there if there just is felt experience, if it
Speaker 1: is a property of matter, and wherever there is matter,
Speaker 1: there is some content appearing in consciousness. Then you know,
Speaker 1: when we feel pain, that is simply what it is
Speaker 1: like to that system. It simply has a quality felt
Speaker 1: quality to it. It's not necessarily helping the system out
Speaker 1: in terms of getting it to avoid pain. You can
Speaker 1: program something to avoid certain things that we categorize, you know,
Speaker 1: what would cause pain. All we're saying is that's what
Speaker 1: that brain processing feels like. Yeah, we don't know that
Speaker 1: it's helping or that we needed it to evolve. Well,
Speaker 1: this is an interesting, h important distinction when when you
Speaker 1: talk about panpsychism is that consciousness is not necessarily equated
Speaker 1: with complexity, right, And I think that's a common misconception
Speaker 1: which opens us up to understanding how plans could have
Speaker 1: a consciousness even though it's not. You're not making the
Speaker 1: argument it's the same consciousness as a human consciousness, right,
Speaker 1: Absolutely not, because it's not. I mean I often make
Speaker 1: different drokes, like we wouldn't expect expect a vine to
Speaker 1: start doing ballet. It's not a human. It's not going
Speaker 1: to act like a human. It's not going to think
Speaker 1: like it is. Just whatever consciousness is in that point
Speaker 1: in space and time, to the extent that that matter
Speaker 1: is different, it will feel different. And I think this
Speaker 1: sense of being a self, if consciousness is pervasive in
Speaker 1: that way, this sense of being a self that our
Speaker 1: brain gives us, there are not many things in nature
Speaker 1: that have that that have that construction, it will be
Speaker 1: a very rare form of experience. The rest of it
Speaker 1: would be much more amorphous and not. The analogy I've
Speaker 1: been giving lately is like bubbles in a pot of
Speaker 1: boiling water, where the water is consciousness, where consciousness is
Speaker 1: some sort of field or a property of matter and
Speaker 1: the bubbles are these perturbations in the field where it
Speaker 1: just things arise. You know, there's a feeling of pressure
Speaker 1: that arises in the universe. There's a feeling of there's
Speaker 1: a sound of middle c there's a you know whatever.
Speaker 1: The equality is that it just keeps kind of popping up.
Speaker 1: And we happen to have these complex brain systems that
Speaker 1: give us this sense that we're this solid self that's
Speaker 1: doing the experiencing, that's moving through time, when in fact
Speaker 1: that doesn't really describe the fundamental reality while at all. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like you said, it's still a great mystery, and there
Speaker 1: are various there's there's well, there's no shortage of different
Speaker 1: opinions on this in my field, right. Roy Baumeister wrote
Speaker 1: a review paper I don't know if you've read it
Speaker 1: on consciousness does conscious He argues that the role of
Speaker 1: conscious is it's in making a causal impact on our
Speaker 1: behavior is actually quite pervasive and extensive, and he lays
Speaker 1: out the different means in which that's the case. I'll
Speaker 1: send you the paper. He talks about implementation intentions and
Speaker 1: in various other things in the field that shows there
Speaker 1: is quite a role of consciousness. But yeah, and then
Speaker 1: that starts baking the question of I don't know I's
Speaker 1: baking the question in the right phrase, but it starts
Speaker 1: to yeah, no, no, I don't think. I always get corrected.
Speaker 1: I always get correct on that. It no, please correct me.
Speaker 1: It ask the it what the question? What does it does?
Speaker 1: It just raises, it raises, it raises. So yeah, so
Speaker 1: that raises No, Okay, I always get corrected on that,
Speaker 1: so but yeah, yeah, it just raises the question. You
Speaker 1: know what extent? You know, how far back do you
Speaker 1: go in terms of the causal things that caused those
Speaker 1: those so called conscious prossies that then caused Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's kind of turtles all the way down. How many yes,
Speaker 1: And there's so many assumptions embedded in all of the
Speaker 1: ways that we even speak about these things that he's
Speaker 1: saying consciousness. But all he knows is the conscious systems
Speaker 1: in the brain that we know are consciousness, Like he's
Speaker 1: really talking about the systems. So, yes, those systems are
Speaker 1: required for that type of learning, and we know those
Speaker 1: systems have consciousness associated with them. But if everything has
Speaker 1: consciousness associated with them, then it's something else about those
Speaker 1: systems that is unique, and that there are many things
Speaker 1: that are unique about those systems. Yeah, and it's interesting.
Speaker 1: I mean, so one of the things that's obviously, you know,
Speaker 1: glaringly obvious that makes consciousness so difficult is we can't
Speaker 1: access it from the outside, right, it is this intrinsic quality.
Speaker 1: And so unless we can have a report, I mean,
Speaker 1: with these split brain patients, if scientists hadn't figured out
Speaker 1: a way to communicate with the right hemisphere, because in
Speaker 1: most people the speaking hemisphere is the left hemisphere, that
Speaker 1: where the language center of the brain is in the
Speaker 1: left hemisphere, and so that's who you're hearing from. Right,
Speaker 1: if they hadn't figured out a way to ask questions
Speaker 1: of the right hemisphere by showing written questions in the
Speaker 1: left visual field or asking them to grab things with
Speaker 1: their left hand, which is controlled by the right hemisphere,
Speaker 1: that hemisphere cannot communicate, don't. It's in their conscious and
Speaker 1: we can't talk to it, and so we really so
Speaker 1: we've always assumed, which of course makes perfect sense. We've
Speaker 1: assumed that unless it's telling us and acting in way
Speaker 1: we know we're conscious. I know I'm conscious. If you
Speaker 1: act like me, I can assume you're conscious to you,
Speaker 1: you're basically doing the same types of things I'm doing.
Speaker 1: When you hurt, when you fall down and hurt yourself,
Speaker 1: you act the way I act when I hurt myself.
Speaker 1: You must be feeling the same thing. And the rest
Speaker 1: of nature is so foreign to us in terms of
Speaker 1: it being different that it just seems impossible. And because
Speaker 1: everything we experience, by definition, is through consciousness, we assume
Speaker 1: that all the things we do and are entail consciousnes
Speaker 1: in a way that other things don't because we have
Speaker 1: we have no evidence for it, and because they're so different,
Speaker 1: and we think our experience it has to do with consciousness.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it's it's difficult to talk about. It's difficult
Speaker 1: to study, and I have I haven't read this paper
Speaker 1: and I will the one that you're referencing. I've heard
Speaker 1: a lot of arguments like that, and the problem is
Speaker 1: they're not distinguishing between consciousness itself and conscious processes in
Speaker 1: the brain. And we only know those are conscious processes
Speaker 1: in the brain because we have reports from humans they're conscious,
Speaker 1: or by analogy, we assume that the mouse, you know,
Speaker 1: when their brain is in a similar state, they are
Speaker 1: feeling conscious. When you know when the mouse looks like
Speaker 1: it's in pain. It's in pain. You know, we can
Speaker 1: make these analogies to creatures that are similar enough to us.
Speaker 1: But yeah, humans are unreliable narrators of themselves too. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna I'm gonna tweet that. I'm gonna that's a tweet
Speaker 1: right there. That's a tweet rate there. I'm wringing that
Speaker 1: down of themselves. Okay, but no, look this, this this
Speaker 1: stuff is it is obviously still mysterious in so many ways.
Speaker 1: And then you know, you have Jeffrey Miller over there
Speaker 1: arguing that consciousness evolved for the function of attracting meats,
Speaker 1: that it allowed us to woo you know, particularly men
Speaker 1: wooing women through the course of sexual selection, through that
Speaker 1: the course of humanity, and that that's he's argued, that's
Speaker 1: the function of cautious There's, like I said, there's no
Speaker 1: shortage of different fears. And if consciousness does arise at
Speaker 1: the level of the brain, if that is, if that
Speaker 1: is actually in fact true, which it might be, then
Speaker 1: that evolution argument makes perfect sense. But we don't we
Speaker 1: don't know that it's true, and we're not even close
Speaker 1: to being able to say that it isn't there at
Speaker 1: this point, there are many reasons two ask the question
Speaker 1: and to and to rather than assume consciousness arises because
Speaker 1: of brain processing, there are many reasons to go down
Speaker 1: the path of assuming it's fundamental. And then when you
Speaker 1: go down that path, that evolution argument completely falls apart,
Speaker 1: and you're just talking about behavior and sensing in the
Speaker 1: same way that that an AI that were designed to
Speaker 1: do exactly that thing to attract me to you know,
Speaker 1: you it's you can It's not obvious when you look
Speaker 1: at the details that an felt experience of the processing
Speaker 1: is necessary for the processing to take place. Yeah. No,
Speaker 1: it's a really excellent point. Just to kind of circle
Speaker 1: back on the free will thing for a second. I
Speaker 1: don't know if you watched my podcast episode with Sam
Speaker 1: Harris about this. Did you watch an I mean it
Speaker 1: was it was like four hours, three hours I heard
Speaker 1: and I mean, this is this is a debate he
Speaker 1: and I. This is a debate I started getting into
Speaker 1: when I was twelve. Actually the first time I had
Speaker 1: a debate but will I was twelve. My mom, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's never ending. It's never ending, right, the never ending
Speaker 1: you're ending? And yeah, I don't anyway, go ahead. I
Speaker 1: did not see it, but I can imagine how it
Speaker 1: went well regardless of you don't need to watch it.
Speaker 1: You know, his views on the topics are my views.
Speaker 1: We basically share a brain on this. Yeah. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: I was going to ask, like, is there anything that
Speaker 1: you disagree with Sam about in the realm of constiousness
Speaker 1: and free will where you like or even vehemently disagree
Speaker 1: with him about or are you both really much on
Speaker 1: the same page about this? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, there's no.
Speaker 1: I mean, the way I described that that we share
Speaker 1: a brain is basically across the board, and I think
Speaker 1: given who each of us are, it wouldn't work otherwise. Okay, No,
Speaker 1: I mean I was his first editor and was able
Speaker 1: to do that because we Yeah, I mean, we think
Speaker 1: very similarly, and I think that that's why we connected
Speaker 1: in the first place. I think that's adorable. If I
Speaker 1: can use that, if I can use that word, I
Speaker 1: think I love you know, that's that's wonderful. Okay. So,
Speaker 1: uh so, then therefore I can extrapolate that when it
Speaker 1: comes to the question of free will, you're you're not
Speaker 1: a You're not a compatilist, compatibilist, You're not a compatibilist.
Speaker 1: You don't think that sort of a Daniel Dennet's arguments,
Speaker 1: for instance, are particularly compelling. Uh that you would want
Speaker 1: to call any of that in any meaningful sense a
Speaker 1: free will? That it's worth wanting? No, And I I mean,
Speaker 1: I yeah, I've had many had hours of debate with
Speaker 1: Dan Dennett and I and I love him, and I
Speaker 1: think he's he's wonderful, and I cleared him to be
Speaker 1: a friend. But we, yeah, we do nothing but debate.
Speaker 1: I think, I mean, there are a few things I
Speaker 1: could say about it if you want. I think having
Speaker 1: having the argument again is probably not worth past time.
Speaker 1: I just want to hear some of your thoughts about it.
Speaker 1: You know, I think you know it. Ultimately, I think
Speaker 1: it's important to see the truth and be able to
Speaker 1: grapple with the truth. And you know, as far as
Speaker 1: I can tell, until someone can can change my mind,
Speaker 1: it seems very clear to me that free will as
Speaker 1: a concept doesn't even it's even hard to describe what
Speaker 1: one means. I don't I don't think it's something that
Speaker 1: is operating in the universe. But I can also say
Speaker 1: that that's often not a useful fact to keep in mind,
Speaker 1: especially in human psychology when raising children, when you know,
Speaker 1: talking about behavior and positive psychology and meditation and all
Speaker 1: of that. And I sometimes will it's not a perfect,
Speaker 1: perfect analogy, but I sometimes make the analogy to you know,
Speaker 1: understanding that the earth is a sphere, you know, if
Speaker 1: you're if you're building a house, and even just in
Speaker 1: your everyday life, you do not need to keep reminding
Speaker 1: yourself that the earth is a sphere to get on
Speaker 1: with your day. You can basically act like the world
Speaker 1: is flat and everything's going to be fine, you know,
Speaker 1: and in many cases your life will go better. Your
Speaker 1: daily life is going to go better if you're how better?
Speaker 1: How better assuming that the world around you is flat?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah? And so I well, I think it's important
Speaker 1: to not lie to ourselves and not to not be
Speaker 1: afraid of the truth always. I mean, I feel like
Speaker 1: this is an important value that people like Dan Dennett
Speaker 1: often are worried that people, you know, the I won't
Speaker 1: quote him as saying this, but but other philosophers like
Speaker 1: him will say, well, yes, ultimately that's true, but it's
Speaker 1: too destabilizing, it's too scary to people. You know, everything
Speaker 1: is going to fall apart if we if we tell
Speaker 1: people that, and I actually think one that's not sustainable.
Speaker 1: If science is marching toward a truth, it's it's you
Speaker 1: can't avoid the truth, and so we kind of owe
Speaker 1: it to ourselves. It can be a destabilizing fact to people,
Speaker 1: and I think we owe it to ourselves to find
Speaker 1: a way for it to not be destabilizing. But I
Speaker 1: also think there is really it's it's not necessarily easy
Speaker 1: for everyone to find, but there is an available framing
Speaker 1: of this, which is to me kind of the epitome
Speaker 1: of spirituality or of a spiritual experience. Even though I
Speaker 1: always hesitate to use that word, that there's actually a
Speaker 1: lot of good that can come out of this realization
Speaker 1: that it can be freeing. It can be very helpful
Speaker 1: to people with mental orders illness like OCD. I actually
Speaker 1: interviewed a couple of people for this documentary series I'm
Speaker 1: working on, talking about how understanding the brain processes were
Speaker 1: responsible for their behavior was so helpful in managing it
Speaker 1: and also giving themselves a break at feeling like myself
Speaker 1: is why do I do this? Why do I keep
Speaker 1: acting this way? Don't why don't I have you know,
Speaker 1: why can't I will this thing away when you can
Speaker 1: in fact realize the universe is kind of unfolding, and
Speaker 1: we have this magical experience of witnessing it, of having
Speaker 1: an experience of it unfolding in the way that it is,
Speaker 1: and that's all we know at this point. There's a
Speaker 1: lot more to discover. But there's something beautiful in the mystery.
Speaker 1: There's something beautiful and not knowing, and there's something freeing
Speaker 1: and realizing that you don't have as much control as
Speaker 1: you think you do, and you're not even really a
Speaker 1: separate all the entity that is apart from the universe.
Speaker 1: You are of the universe. We're all part of this
Speaker 1: thing that's unfolding, and we're witnessing it happening. From one
Speaker 1: point of view, I think that to a large degree
Speaker 1: that it can be very frank I would all, since
Speaker 1: I am a compatibilist, don't hate me. But since I
Speaker 1: am a compatibilist, I do think I could make a
Speaker 1: rigorous case for why there's something freeing as well to
Speaker 1: know that there are certain things that you can do
Speaker 1: as well, so I could see it both ways. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And that's where I like, and that's another reason why
Speaker 1: I like to distinguish conscious will from free will while
Speaker 1: you're talking about is kind of brain processing. Our brains
Speaker 1: are not closed systems. So you and I this entire
Speaker 1: time have been worth far apart. But our ideas are
Speaker 1: affecting each other's brain patterns. You know, all of that is,
Speaker 1: all of that is absolutely true, and when again, this
Speaker 1: is a place where thinking about conscious will ill being
Speaker 1: an illusion is not very useful and can just be confusing.
Speaker 1: When you're talking about the effects of meditation on the brain,
Speaker 1: the effects of connecting with people, the effects of thought,
Speaker 1: certain types of thoughts, all of those things are part
Speaker 1: of the system of the brain that is interacting with
Speaker 1: the world around it. And there are better and worse
Speaker 1: ways to feel in the world, and healthier and less
Speaker 1: healthy ways for your brain to be interacting with itself
Speaker 1: and with the outside world. Yeah, I hear you. If
Speaker 1: you and Sam are judges in a courtroom someday, I
Speaker 1: would love to present my case for why I think
Speaker 1: that some of the things that people mean by free
Speaker 1: you will truly mean by it, and what they really
Speaker 1: want for as their own autonomous organisms that are cybernetic
Speaker 1: systems that have goals that they do have those things legitimately,
Speaker 1: legitimately have those things someday I want to put all
Speaker 1: my aductions in a row. Is that the right metaphor?
Speaker 1: I am terrible metaphors. I mean, I probably don't totally
Speaker 1: disagree with you. I mean I think the brain, the
Speaker 1: brain has that. Ultimately, what the fundamental reality is we
Speaker 1: don't know. And ultimately it's hard to see, you know,
Speaker 1: where where the actual freedom is because there's a lot
Speaker 1: of eye in those statements, which is fine when you're
Speaker 1: talking human psychology, but underneath it all, yeah, yeah, that
Speaker 1: I isn't really there. So I really see it as
Speaker 1: two levels of conversation, and the level of conversation you
Speaker 1: want to have and that you think is important I
Speaker 1: totally agree with. And it's a bit of a mess
Speaker 1: to try to have both conversations at once, I think,
Speaker 1: but we should try to do it because it's fun,
Speaker 1: because it's it's just fun. I mean, not not right now,
Speaker 1: but I'm saying, you know, let's keep up the conversation.
Speaker 1: We're not going to settle it. We're not going to settle.
Speaker 1: But I really appreciate your perspective. I really do. Just
Speaker 1: the remaining a couple of minutes we have to take.
Speaker 1: Can we talk about I Wonder, which is your children's book.
Speaker 1: I loved it, I I got I got chills as
Speaker 1: I was reading it. I don't know, maybe maybe it's
Speaker 1: just like we're on a similar frequency there, you know,
Speaker 1: about the importance of of all and wonder in the world.
Speaker 1: I mean, I wrote a book called Trends. I'm not
Speaker 1: trying to pug my book, but I wrote a book
Speaker 1: called Trends words. Oh, you've mailed you a copy. But
Speaker 1: I'm really profoundly interested in the latest science of all.
Speaker 1: For instance, A W E. And I created an all
Speaker 1: experienced questionnaire, published the scientific paper on this with my
Speaker 1: colleague David Aiden. I'll send that to you. No, I mean,
Speaker 1: I feel like that's my that's my best antidepressant is off.
Speaker 1: Me too, Me too, me too? And actually I so
Speaker 1: I it's funny. I like, I've known you for a while,
Speaker 1: but I met you, and I've only listened to a
Speaker 1: couple of your interviews, one of which was one where
Speaker 1: you where you talked about your childhood. It was with
Speaker 1: oh my goodness, I'm spacing on his name Andrew Yang.
Speaker 1: Thank you. Yeah, I can't believe I forgot his name
Speaker 1: and I know him. Do you like that conversation? I
Speaker 1: loved that conversation. It was so interesting for me to
Speaker 1: hear about your childhood. And I'm sure a lot of
Speaker 1: your your listeners know know your experience. And although my
Speaker 1: childhood was very different, there are a lot of similarities really,
Speaker 1: and so I can see how you would connect with
Speaker 1: I wonder because it really was a book that I
Speaker 1: wrote that I wanted to read with my daughter, but
Speaker 1: because I wished someone had read a book like that
Speaker 1: to me when I was young, and I wish someone
Speaker 1: had spoken that way to me when I was young.
Speaker 1: Me too, Me too. I had all these questions as
Speaker 1: a kid, Uh, you know what, what's that? What's that
Speaker 1: in there? Like they saw me only through the lens
Speaker 1: of disability, you know. So they're like, you know, you're
Speaker 1: not allowed to ask questions. You're in special ED. It's like, wait, really,
Speaker 1: I didn't know that was a rule. But so, can
Speaker 1: you tell me about how your conversations with your daughter
Speaker 1: inspired you over the years to want to write such
Speaker 1: a book. Yeah, so I say this a bit in
Speaker 1: the author's note that I noticed. So it was something
Speaker 1: I had already noticed in my work with scientists. So
Speaker 1: I had been working at that point, I'd been working
Speaker 1: for least ten years, about ten years working with scientists
Speaker 1: who are trying to make their work more accessible to
Speaker 1: the general public. So mostly editing popular books for the
Speaker 1: general public on the brain, on physics, and coaching people
Speaker 1: for accessible talks like ted Talks, things like that. But
Speaker 1: my passion was really to get as much science accessible
Speaker 1: to the rest of the world as possible. And in
Speaker 1: that work I could see how often people got uncomfortable
Speaker 1: not knowing something about a subject, and how quickly people
Speaker 1: would say, oh, I was terrible at math in school
Speaker 1: like that. Basically they just shut the door immediately because
Speaker 1: they're so uncomfortable with that feeling they had as a
Speaker 1: kid and that they have now. And it's really pervasive
Speaker 1: in our culture that this reaction to the feeling of
Speaker 1: not knowing being so negative. We're either ashamed or we're afraid.
Speaker 1: I mean, those are the two main feelings that come up.
Speaker 1: And it's interesting when I was interviewing some developmental specialists
Speaker 1: when I was writing the book, a couple of them
Speaker 1: I convinced them otherwise, but a couple of them their
Speaker 1: first reaction to me was, Oh, no, you should never
Speaker 1: say I don't know too a child. It's too scary.
Speaker 1: And I just thought, that's so interesting. It's so deep
Speaker 1: in the culture that no one has even questioned this.
Speaker 1: And I say it to my daughter all the time,
Speaker 1: and she's not scared. We have these big conversations, and
Speaker 1: I realized we were really just teaching our culture and
Speaker 1: teaching our children that it's shameful or scary to not
Speaker 1: know the answer. And then I saw the other side
Speaker 1: of it with my daughter when they get to an
Speaker 1: age where it's just inevitable everywhere you go people ask
Speaker 1: the way they converse with toddlers as they'll say like, oh,
Speaker 1: what color is this? And what's your doggie's name? And
Speaker 1: how many feet do you have? Or you know, they
Speaker 1: ask them simple questions that they can answer and then say, yah,
Speaker 1: you knew the answer. And I noticed that when she
Speaker 1: got asked a question she didn't know, she started kind
Speaker 1: of there was an avoidance happening really early, and so
Speaker 1: it was really a book that I almost was writing
Speaker 1: more for the parents than for the kids. I wanted
Speaker 1: to give parents a language for having these types of
Speaker 1: conversations with their kids and for fostering and celebrating this
Speaker 1: feeling of not knowing, of just completely reframing it, especially
Speaker 1: for parents who know this already intuitively, like parent, you
Speaker 1: know someone like you. I say this and you totally
Speaker 1: you know, you get it immediately. But a lot of
Speaker 1: parents then don't know what to do with that, or
Speaker 1: are still afraid to talk to their kids. Thanks for
Speaker 1: listening to this episode of The Psychology Podcast. If you'd
Speaker 1: like to react in some way to something you heard,
Speaker 1: I encourage you to join in the discussion at the
Speaker 1: Psychology podcast dot com. That's the Psychology Podcast dot com. Also,
Speaker 1: if you'd prefer a completely ad free experience, you can
Speaker 1: join us at Patreon dot com slash psych Podcast. Thanks
Speaker 1: for being such a great supporter of the show, and
Speaker 1: tune in next time for more on the mind, brain, behavior,
Speaker 1: and creativity.