Speaker 1: That is what consciousness is about. It's about creating the
Speaker 1: not disputable fact that I am doing my perceptions and
Speaker 1: you are doing your perceptions, and the two channels of operation,
Speaker 1: and then the two kinds of operation are over the
Speaker 1: same type that they are occurring in different organss. Hello,
Speaker 1: and welcome to the Psychology Podcast. Today we welcome doctor
Speaker 1: Antonio Dimasio. Doctor Demasio is an internationally recognized neuroscientist whose
Speaker 1: extensive research has shaped the understanding of neural systems and consciousness.
Speaker 1: With over one hundred journal articles and book chapters, he
Speaker 1: has earned many prestigious awards throughout his career. Currently, he
Speaker 1: serves as university professor, the David Dornzeif Professor of Neuroscience,
Speaker 1: Psychology and Philosophy and Director of the Brain Creativity Institute
Speaker 1: at the University of Southern California. His books Descartes Erra,
Speaker 1: Looking First Notza Self, Comes to Mind, The Strange Order
Speaker 1: of Things and Feeling and Knowing have been published in
Speaker 1: translation and are taught in universities throughout the world. In
Speaker 1: this stimulating episode, I talked to Antonio Demasio about consciousness.
Speaker 1: People often think that the mind and consciousness are the
Speaker 1: same thing. But doctor Demasio disputes this notion. He argues
Speaker 1: that it's the complex relationship of both our brains and
Speaker 1: bodies that makes sentient thought possible. Homeostatic feelings like hunger
Speaker 1: and pain developed before emotions, and along with it came consciousness.
Speaker 1: We also touch on the topics of perception, mental illness, evolution, panpsychism,
Speaker 1: AI and machine learning. So it's with great enthusiasm that
Speaker 1: I now bring you doctor Antonio Demasio. It's nice to
Speaker 1: finally meet you. We have some mutual friends in common.
Speaker 1: I am dear friends with Mary Helen and Maardino Yang. Oh,
Speaker 1: very highly of view, and it's just yeah, she's having
Speaker 1: a beautiful career. She was I think the first person
Speaker 1: we appointed to the Brand Creativity Institute. Now seventeen years ago. Wow,
Speaker 1: time really does fly. Wow, that's how long ago you
Speaker 1: guys started that. I remember when you started the institute
Speaker 1: and yeah, that's exactly it. Very exciting. Well, today I
Speaker 1: definitely want to discuss our mutual interest in the neuroscience
Speaker 1: of creativity. But I wanted to start off today's episode
Speaker 1: going back all the way back to nineteen eighty nine.
Speaker 1: One of my favorite papers of yours in the journal
Speaker 1: cognition called timelocked multi regional retroactivation. Now we're going to
Speaker 1: have to explain and unpack what in the world that
Speaker 1: means to our general audience of listeners. But the reason
Speaker 1: why I wanted to double click on that because I
Speaker 1: think that was a really seminal paper. I hope you
Speaker 1: agree of modern day brain network systems research on consciousness.
Speaker 1: I see that as a really seminal sort of early ideas.
Speaker 1: So could you kind of unpack a little bit what
Speaker 1: that paper showed. So we were interested in the idea
Speaker 1: that as you, as you manipulate knowledge, perceptions of every kind,
Speaker 1: different considerations that we make on what we're perceiving and
Speaker 1: what we are thinking about based on those perceptions on
Speaker 1: all of that needs to be stored in some way,
Speaker 1: and the storage, in all likelihood proceeds by creating arrangements
Speaker 1: of memories, of traces of all of those events near
Speaker 1: the places in the brain where they are formed to
Speaker 1: begin with. So we have a number of portals into
Speaker 1: our brain that largely come out of the dominant perceptual systems,
Speaker 1: particularly of course the visual and the auditory, which clearly
Speaker 1: dominate in most individuals. And then all the other senses
Speaker 1: that we know of. And what is interesting is that
Speaker 1: those the channeling of information from the sensory probs that
Speaker 1: are located in the periphery of our body and also
Speaker 1: the periphery of our nervous system and the central part
Speaker 1: of the nervous system, they all land in different parts
Speaker 1: of the brain, which is of course predictable, because we
Speaker 1: have a channel that goes, for example, from our eyes
Speaker 1: to a particular region of the cortex, which happens to
Speaker 1: be visual context, and then the place where the things
Speaker 1: that you're hearing right now that I'm hearing of my
Speaker 1: own voice, they land in another place. And then out
Speaker 1: of those humps where information is being sent to you
Speaker 1: have the possibility of creating a sort of encircling where
Speaker 1: you have not only the immediate processing of what is
Speaker 1: being channel at the moment. In this case, for example,
Speaker 1: I'm looking at your face and your bookcase behind you,
Speaker 1: You're listening to my voice and probably looking at whatever
Speaker 1: I have behind me, and so there's that early sensory processing.
Speaker 1: But then all around there are structures that can actually
Speaker 1: take a part the information that is coming in and
Speaker 1: provide storage for that information, sometimes in a piecemeal form,
Speaker 1: sometimes in a whole holistic form, So you have the
Speaker 1: possibility of creating memories for what is being processed right now,
Speaker 1: and then, depending on how important those things are for
Speaker 1: your life, they may stay on as permanent memories and
Speaker 1: be transformed, or they may be just disposed of in
Speaker 1: the course of life. And then what it's interesting too,
Speaker 1: is that most of the time our perceptions are not
Speaker 1: occurring in one modality only. So for example, right now,
Speaker 1: there is a visual perception that we're both having an
Speaker 1: auditory perception, but also lo and behold, we have the
Speaker 1: perception quote unquote of what is happening in our own body.
Speaker 1: For example, if all of a sudden you would be
Speaker 1: you could be feeling hungry or thirsty, or you could
Speaker 1: have pain somewhere, that would be perceived as well, except
Speaker 1: that that would be arranged in a different kind of system.
Speaker 1: There is a cortical component to it too as well,
Speaker 1: but by and large it doesn't happen in the cortext
Speaker 1: that the most important parts they happen in the brainstem.
Speaker 1: They happen in the spinal cord. So you can have
Speaker 1: all of this fabrication of traces of things that are
Speaker 1: happening to you, inside your body and around you. They
Speaker 1: go to specific points in the nervous system, not in one.
Speaker 1: It's very interesting as a parenthesis that very often people
Speaker 1: that don't know anything about the brain or about the
Speaker 1: mind studied in detail, can perfectly well believe that all
Speaker 1: of this is going into one great big tank, one
Speaker 1: great big sink, and it's all put together. But it isn't.
Speaker 1: It's all separated at birth. It's all separated and goes
Speaker 1: into different points. And those different points where it occurs,
Speaker 1: they already are signed of a convergence of signals, and
Speaker 1: then from there they can go to another set of
Speaker 1: stations where further integration of the signals is done, and
Speaker 1: by again, the process of convergence of signaling is a
Speaker 1: little bit of a pyramid going into a point. And
Speaker 1: then eventually you can and have combinations of those different pyramids,
Speaker 1: of those different cooking points and create something that is
Speaker 1: much larger. That's the great picture than I had for
Speaker 1: the convergence from multiple reagions. And then what is interesting
Speaker 1: is that eventually you can have a combination of facts.
Speaker 1: For example, right now I'm talking to you, I have
Speaker 1: my perception review. I know that I'm talking to you
Speaker 1: about this particular process, which is really a process of
Speaker 1: learning and categorization and memory making. But I also know
Speaker 1: that I just talked to my assistant and we talked
Speaker 1: about a couple of specific things that I need to
Speaker 1: get done as soon as I'm done talking to you.
Speaker 1: And I'm also looking at a page from Corriela said,
Speaker 1: that's the paper where there is a review of my
Speaker 1: new book. And it's very good. How it says it's
Speaker 1: a lovely title, Body and Feeling the romance of Damasio.
Speaker 1: I love it. I love it better than that. It's
Speaker 1: done by actually by a major measure Italian biologist anyway.
Speaker 1: So all of this stuff is being integrated. And what
Speaker 1: is interesting is that if next week you call me
Speaker 1: and you remind me of this session we're having, I
Speaker 1: could perfectly well remember not only parts of this conversation,
Speaker 1: but part of what I just told you about that
Speaker 1: particular review that happens to be on my desk. So
Speaker 1: things have a way of being integrated by the time
Speaker 1: at which they're occurring, but also by the happenstance of
Speaker 1: being here at the right moment, And so things that
Speaker 1: are not linked will be linked. Because at that time,
Speaker 1: in this case, the time in which I am talking
Speaker 1: to you, my eyes also fell on that page that
Speaker 1: was here on my desk actually just died anyway, So
Speaker 1: that's what I had in mind, and it has proven
Speaker 1: helpful to explain problems of memory as well as making
Speaker 1: normal memory, because we know that when you can damage
Speaker 1: one part of this system, you don't lose memory across
Speaker 1: the board. You lose certain specific memories and memories of
Speaker 1: certain kinds, for example that may be more related to
Speaker 1: the visual system than another. Anyway, very complicated answer for
Speaker 1: a very complicated subject. Yeah, it's very complicated paper, you know.
Speaker 1: But the reason why I bring this up is because
Speaker 1: I think it's extraordinary. It was a theoretical paper and
Speaker 1: it seems to have really modern day work, which is
Speaker 1: really focused on systems level and brain networks, has really
Speaker 1: borne out a lot of those ideas, if not all
Speaker 1: of those ideas. So I think it's kudos to you,
Speaker 1: kudos to you, Thank you very much. There's a sentence
Speaker 1: in that paper that I wanted a link to your
Speaker 1: more modern work, and let me just read this. You
Speaker 1: rate meaning is reached by time locked multi regional retroactivation
Speaker 1: of widespread fragment records say that ten times really quickly.
Speaker 1: Only the latter records can become contents of consciousness. I
Speaker 1: found that a very fascinating two sentences for a number
Speaker 1: of reasons. One, there does seem to be something unique
Speaker 1: about humans. Areniquely developed about humans in terms of our
Speaker 1: meaning making facilities, And I'd love to kind of get
Speaker 1: into what is the neural machinery and psychological process that
Speaker 1: allow us to do that, and why turtles can't do
Speaker 1: that for instance. Second of all that second sentence, only
Speaker 1: the latter records can become contents of consciousness. I wonder
Speaker 1: if you can pack that a little bit, because you
Speaker 1: go through a lot in your new book on the
Speaker 1: distinction the crucial distinction between mind and consciousness. And so
Speaker 1: I'm linking the distinction of mind and consciousness, which you
Speaker 1: make so clearly now with that very complicated sentence that
Speaker 1: I just read from your nineteen eight nine paper. I
Speaker 1: hope you're okay with that linkage I made. I think
Speaker 1: it makes sense in my head. I think it makes
Speaker 1: it makes perfect sense. Let's actually start with the things
Speaker 1: that pertain to the new book, because that may help
Speaker 1: unpack the older sentence and what I'm trying to do.
Speaker 1: The distinction between mind and consciousness is critical for a
Speaker 1: variety of first buying large people confuse the two. And
Speaker 1: you know, it says if creatures that are minded, be
Speaker 1: necessarily conscious, and the two things will go together and
Speaker 1: could be interchangeable, And that's not the case. The same way. Actually,
Speaker 1: in our conversation yesterday by email, you mentioned something about
Speaker 1: your interests in covert processing in things that are not
Speaker 1: in fact in the mind, that I have to do
Speaker 1: with it with an intelligence that is capable that is
Speaker 1: not minded. And these are all different parts of this
Speaker 1: great big thing that we call or conscious minds, and
Speaker 1: that include a lot about conscious process. So if you
Speaker 1: take simple creatures, I wouldn't start with turtles, but I
Speaker 1: would certain something even simple like bacteria or a variety
Speaker 1: of creatures with only a few cells and a humiliated cells.
Speaker 1: Those creatures have no nervous system to begin with, and
Speaker 1: yet they are intelligent and capable within the niche of
Speaker 1: universe in which they operate, and they can perfectly well
Speaker 1: detect certain the presence or absence of something, which is
Speaker 1: really the form of perception quote unquote, not a perception
Speaker 1: like we have with detailed imaging exactly. Yeah, detecting and
Speaker 1: sensing a good words for that, except that very often
Speaker 1: they connote other things in the mind of people and
Speaker 1: they can add to the confusion. But anyway, they can
Speaker 1: detect sense stuff, and they can with the machinery that
Speaker 1: they have, respond in a certain way that is consonant
Speaker 1: with what they detect. Now, that is an intelligence thing
Speaker 1: to do. There's no question that it is adaptive and intelligent,
Speaker 1: and it is protecting them because they may detect something
Speaker 1: that they need, such as for example, food the food particle,
Speaker 1: or they may detect something that is potentially harmful, and
Speaker 1: that's good because it's going to protect their body and
Speaker 1: to allow them to live as long as their machine
Speaker 1: is meant for it to live genetically speaking. Now, so
Speaker 1: that is intelligent, but not minded and not conscious. Now,
Speaker 1: when you turn to what we do at the other end,
Speaker 1: and what many other creatures do in between, we have
Speaker 1: not only the capacity to detect sense stuff, but then
Speaker 1: we also have the capacity to represent what we detect
Speaker 1: it and also represent ourselves as victims of the detection,
Speaker 1: and we have the capacity to know that all of
Speaker 1: that relates to our unique argets. So these three tiers
Speaker 1: are very very important to separate, and unfortunately, in the
Speaker 1: minds of most people, this is one great big salad.
Speaker 1: And what I'm trying to do if you ask me
Speaker 1: what is the most important thing that I think I'm
Speaker 1: doing right now? In addition to explaining stuff that I'm
Speaker 1: passionate about, such as how you get to have a feeling,
Speaker 1: who is actually insisting on the separation? So you have
Speaker 1: a mind when you are capable of representing something that
Speaker 1: you detected. And fortunately for us, we have the capacity
Speaker 1: to represent tons of things depending on the different sensory
Speaker 1: channels we have help things outside of our bodies and
Speaker 1: inside of our Then we have an intelligence provided we
Speaker 1: are capable of responding to things that are in our
Speaker 1: environment but not necessarily representing it. And then we are
Speaker 1: conscious when we connect the thing that we are mindful
Speaker 1: of with our own organism. The beauty of consciousness is that,
Speaker 1: for example, I'm looking at you, I know that it's
Speaker 1: need looking at you. Why do I know that? Well,
Speaker 1: that's exactly the problem of consciousness. The image that you
Speaker 1: are helping generate in my brain is activating a variety
Speaker 1: of systems that are in my brain and body, and
Speaker 1: that connects the tool indelibly and in such a way
Speaker 1: that I have no doubt that it's me talking to you, Scott.
Speaker 1: There's no question. That is what consciousness is about. It's
Speaker 1: about creating the not disputable fact that I am doing
Speaker 1: my perceptions and you are doing your perceptions, and the
Speaker 1: two channels of operation, and then the two kinds of
Speaker 1: operation are over the same type, but they are occurring
Speaker 1: in different organisms. Yeah, for sure. This is a really
Speaker 1: unique aspect of your theory of consciousness, which not everyone
Speaker 1: in the field has this definition of consciousness. You know,
Speaker 1: there's a panpsychism is really hot right now, right the
Speaker 1: pan psychic people. Can I say that the pan psychic people,
Speaker 1: they wouldn't say it. You have to have that criteria
Speaker 1: of the organism being able to identify it with itself
Speaker 1: in order for it to be conscious. And this makes
Speaker 1: your work very unique and very influential. That you really
Speaker 1: are arguing that there's a very important distinction. A lot
Speaker 1: of people in the field do not make this distinction.
Speaker 1: You know, we should make that clear. Yeah, yeah, absolutely, yeah,
Speaker 1: And I think that if you don't make those distinctions,
Speaker 1: I think you actually end up in the place that
Speaker 1: led to pan psychism. I think there is a very
Speaker 1: good reason why pan psycheism myth the moment is popular,
Speaker 1: and there is an escape people that have come up
Speaker 1: against the wall of consciousness and then talk about such
Speaker 1: things as the heart problem of the impossible problem, I
Speaker 1: really abstracted in their view of what can be and
Speaker 1: as a result, as anything goes. But the psyche is
Speaker 1: helpful because well, you know, maybe the reason why you
Speaker 1: can't explain it easily is because it's everywhere and something
Speaker 1: that's not inside us. It's really something that we capture
Speaker 1: from what's around us, which I find first no evidence
Speaker 1: for and second no way of testing, no way of
Speaker 1: doing an experiment that would cope with that. It's like
Speaker 1: strength theory. It's like strength theory and physics. But I
Speaker 1: think it. I can understand that I have sympathy for
Speaker 1: people that feel cornered and not capable of explaining it.
Speaker 1: But I am sympathy is one thing, and I'm not
Speaker 1: in that camp. And there's one thing that we add
Speaker 1: because that you know, we really through your question where
Speaker 1: we sort of got to the top of the problem
Speaker 1: very quickly. But one thing that is extremely important for
Speaker 1: me is this Most of the things, probably everything that
Speaker 1: you read about consciousness or for that matter, about mind,
Speaker 1: always talks about the brain alone. You know, people said,
Speaker 1: we need to find out how the brain creates consciousness.
Speaker 1: Excuse me, why just the brain? Why this insistent insistence
Speaker 1: on the fact that the nervous system and the nervous
Speaker 1: system alone is the creator of these things. I dispute that.
Speaker 1: I don't think it is. But you don't need to
Speaker 1: go to the surround spirits to find it. It's in
Speaker 1: your own body. The logical march here is from creatures
Speaker 1: that are alives, have bodies but don't have nervous systems,
Speaker 1: to creatures that, eventually our life have bodies and have
Speaker 1: nervous systems. And minds and consciousness are ultimate the product
Speaker 1: of a particular relationship between the living organisms body and
Speaker 1: the nervous system in that body. It's not that the
Speaker 1: nervous system is plucked in putting this inside our bodies
Speaker 1: and flee inside our skull and charged with creating minds
Speaker 1: and creating consciousness. Not at all. I mean, of course,
Speaker 1: you cannot have mindset consciousness without a nervous system. The
Speaker 1: nervous system is there as a partner in the process
Speaker 1: that can lead to better life regulation. The nervous system
Speaker 1: is a servant of homeostasies the same way that the
Speaker 1: body in general is a possessor of hondo static operations
Speaker 1: that will allow that organism, that living thing, to continue
Speaker 1: for an allotted amount of time. Well, it sounds like
Speaker 1: there are implications there for those who argue we might
Speaker 1: be able to upload our brain someday and continue our consciousness.
Speaker 1: It sounds like you're saying, Ah, that's not going to
Speaker 1: be possible. You know, conscious is not only in the brain,
Speaker 1: right exactly, So consciousness by when you analyze what it
Speaker 1: really means to be conscious, when you come back to
Speaker 1: the thought that I advanced for you, which is that
Speaker 1: it's about knowing that I am here in my body,
Speaker 1: in this life, and that the things that I have
Speaker 1: in my mind, the representations I have, do not belong
Speaker 1: somewhere else, do not belong in another organ their might.
Speaker 1: How do I know that their mind? Well, they know
Speaker 1: that their mind, because my nervous system is in constant
Speaker 1: interaction with the organism in which it is located and
Speaker 1: without which it could not live. It's not for people
Speaker 1: who are not as cognitive scientists. They're maybe listening to
Speaker 1: somewhere verization. There are a lot of technical terms are
Speaker 1: throwing around, But one implication I see from one of
Speaker 1: this as well, with the upholding of the brain, is
Speaker 1: that we may be able to uphold and replicate a mind,
Speaker 1: but not consciousness. Well, I mean, maybe might not even
Speaker 1: be able to do the mind, But it seems like
Speaker 1: at the very best, maybe what we can do is
Speaker 1: just replicate Scott Berryer Kaufman's mind, but I'm never going
Speaker 1: to be able to identify it with the force. Could
Speaker 1: be sitting in a that of zero ones. You got it,
Speaker 1: and you've got it right, And that's exactly it. And
Speaker 1: that's of course we don't need to go there. But
Speaker 1: that's exactly one of the problems a artificial intelligence right
Speaker 1: now is that you can with our current capabilities, we
Speaker 1: can have something like the contents of your mind in
Speaker 1: an artificial normal, living creature. If you're going to make
Speaker 1: it conscious, that's another story. And for that it's almost
Speaker 1: an absurdity to think it could be conscious if it's
Speaker 1: not living, because the entire thing is, the entire notion
Speaker 1: of consciousness is right now, you can have similacra of consciousness.
Speaker 1: I have no problem with that. In fact, we have
Speaker 1: a paper that you probably you may know about. The
Speaker 1: paper is in Nature Machine Intelligence on how you make
Speaker 1: this linkage between between a robot and a real body
Speaker 1: with minds and conscious capabilities, and it is a it's
Speaker 1: an interesting thing to discuss. That is very interesting, and
Speaker 1: we are shooting towards the top. I understand, I totally get.
Speaker 1: We haven't gone through all the steps yet, and of
Speaker 1: what is feeling what? I have a million other questions
Speaker 1: that we were supposed to talk about along the way
Speaker 1: before we get here. But this is really interesting. So
Speaker 1: while we're here for a second, the idea of can
Speaker 1: we ever make feeling machines? Since since we're kind of
Speaker 1: talking about that right now, I would like to link
Speaker 1: that to the idea of why is feeling so essential
Speaker 1: to consciousness in your model? And how do you even
Speaker 1: define feeling? And then and then why not let's have fun,
Speaker 1: let's link that to or not we'll be able to
Speaker 1: create feeling machines as an implication of that. Okay, very good.
Speaker 1: Just a little teaching point for people that are sort
Speaker 1: of cut in a little of these terms like feeling
Speaker 1: and emotion. Very often, when people think feeling or hear
Speaker 1: the word feeling, they immediately portray an emotion, and of
Speaker 1: course that's the beginning of disaster because the two things
Speaker 1: are in fact associated one of the time, but are
Speaker 1: plenty of the time they're not. So we could start
Speaker 1: by saying this, what came first feelings or emotions, and
Speaker 1: in all likelihood feelings did, because feelings are in fact
Speaker 1: mental expressions of certain states of the organism to begin with,
Speaker 1: and to begin with that to add with, because when
Speaker 1: you have an emotional feeling, you are also dealing with
Speaker 1: a state of your organisms. But let's start with feelings
Speaker 1: the way they likely begin in the history of life,
Speaker 1: and the feelings that must have been the first were
Speaker 1: what I call homeostatic feelings, and they occurred in creatures
Speaker 1: with nervous systems. That's very important to realize. And by
Speaker 1: the way, on once you remember the strong link that
Speaker 1: I have between feelings and consciousness, you again to have
Speaker 1: this link between feeling and consciousness and nervous systems. You know,
Speaker 1: it doesn't make any sense to talk about it if
Speaker 1: they're non nervous systems. There don't need any feelings if
Speaker 1: you're nervous systems anyway, So what feeling, there's an aesthetic
Speaker 1: feelings first to give in an organism that is multicaluble
Speaker 1: and has nervous systems, is a sense actually a mental
Speaker 1: representation of something important that is happening in that body,
Speaker 1: such as, for example, being hungry or being thirsty, or
Speaker 1: having pain or feeling damn good. Those are the fundamental
Speaker 1: I mean static feelings. Desire is too, but if you
Speaker 1: don't need to go there to earning, the monitor design
Speaker 1: its Valentine's Day today. Well, hold on, hold on, we're
Speaker 1: talking today Valentine's Day, folks, even though we're going to
Speaker 1: release this later, just so people know. Okay, So what
Speaker 1: is hunger telling you? You and only you. It's telling
Speaker 1: you that there's a good time to have sources of
Speaker 1: energy brought into your body, and that's unlacking. And if
Speaker 1: you're thirsty, it's telling you something. And by the way,
Speaker 1: totally conscious right there, and then that's great consciousness first emergence.
Speaker 1: It's telling you, in no uncertain terms, this is lacking.
Speaker 1: You need this. Of course, it's not telling you in
Speaker 1: so many words. It doesn't use words. It does use
Speaker 1: the language of feeling with its spontaneous, natural occurring consciousness.
Speaker 1: And that's why I like to say that feelings were
Speaker 1: the inaugural events of consciousness. One fine day, after lots
Speaker 1: of variations on the theme of organism regulation, this magic
Speaker 1: potion occurred within living organisms with nervous systems, and that
Speaker 1: was feeling. And it is so successful. It is so
Speaker 1: good at telling you immediately drink, eat, requil from an attack,
Speaker 1: do something because you're having pain and it's probably going
Speaker 1: to kill you, do something to prevent it or avoid it,
Speaker 1: or go to the doctor. All of those things were
Speaker 1: extremely informational. They were giving you there and then useful
Speaker 1: information to maintain your life. There's no way you could
Speaker 1: have proceeded life in a comic to organism with multicided
Speaker 1: nervous system if you did not have that information. In
Speaker 1: other words, you went rapidly from five hundred million years ago.
Speaker 1: You went rapidly from having organisms that are less than
Speaker 1: were lucky they would die to organisms that even if
Speaker 1: they were not lucky, they had enough information to do
Speaker 1: something useful about that life and to reduce the risk
Speaker 1: of depth. And that's this makes perfect sense from an
Speaker 1: evolutionary perspective and that's where I think consciousness began at
Speaker 1: the level of feeling. Now, because you wanted me to
Speaker 1: say things about feeling for your listeners, then I will
Speaker 1: also say that the confusion with emotion is a problem
Speaker 1: because what developed in living creatures as emotions, which don't
Speaker 1: develop with humans developed before and of course are theatricals.
Speaker 1: There are certain kinds of expression that you can have
Speaker 1: in the body and in the face once you have
Speaker 1: a face that is manipulable with different muscle groups. It's
Speaker 1: certain kinds of expressions that register something that is happening
Speaker 1: to you, something that is in the environment, some reaction
Speaker 1: that you have to others. Examples feeling an emotion of
Speaker 1: fear when you are recoiling from something that potentially may
Speaker 1: attack and which is accompanied by a feeling of fear.
Speaker 1: So this is where things get extremely complicated and people
Speaker 1: really need to think a little bit, because then it's
Speaker 1: clear as daylight. When you are having the emotion of fear,
Speaker 1: your eyes bulge, you pull back and and blow and behold,
Speaker 1: your body changed. And because your body changed, those changes
Speaker 1: are what produced the feeling of fear. But the emotion
Speaker 1: itself is a set of actions by the way the
Speaker 1: word emotion etemologically it is perfect. It's about the Latin
Speaker 1: a motey. It's to move to the outside. You have
Speaker 1: its an actor studio. You know, you're just doing things.
Speaker 1: And by the way, if you have anger, do the
Speaker 1: same thing. You know, it's it's a different sort of theatricals,
Speaker 1: but it's again represented in your in your body. And
Speaker 1: if you are terribly if you want to seduce somebody,
Speaker 1: you also do the corresponding theatricals. Then they also are
Speaker 1: felt because they are represented internally with your nervous system,
Speaker 1: and they can end up being your feeling, which is
Speaker 1: subject Emotions by themselves are not subjective. Emotions by themselves
Speaker 1: are directed to the outside. Yeah, so there's something I'm
Speaker 1: trying to understand about in terms of the chicken and
Speaker 1: egg thing here and the way you described it, it
Speaker 1: was like emotions come first and then it influences your feelings.
Speaker 1: But you had said prior that the course of human evolution,
Speaker 1: feelings probably came first, exactly. So that's where you need
Speaker 1: to distinguish between the hoboesthetic and the emotional in the
Speaker 1: proper set. So the things that came first were the
Speaker 1: agiostatic feelings, and probably the creatures that had homostatic feelings,
Speaker 1: if I would have to guess, and I wouldn't bet
Speaker 1: anything on it, but if I would have to guess,
Speaker 1: they did not have emotions. They had feelings because they
Speaker 1: were they were having representations, mental representations of the state
Speaker 1: of the body, their bodies, and that was the critical
Speaker 1: issue here. That's why this has a logic, which is
Speaker 1: the logic of life and the logic of survival that
Speaker 1: came first because it was so important for that organism.
Speaker 1: When you start having emotions, it's at a point in
Speaker 1: which you have already some complex interactions with other beings,
Speaker 1: and those other beings can cross you and you get angry,
Speaker 1: or they can do something, or the environment can do
Speaker 1: something that threatens you and you get fear and so forth.
Speaker 1: So it's a different stage, and it's actually more It
Speaker 1: reflects a greater complexity of the organism, although in the
Speaker 1: end they don't need to be more complex as phenomena,
Speaker 1: but they're they're reflecting something else. But all of this
Speaker 1: can end up felt, and felt simply means that you
Speaker 1: automatically know it's in you, it's in your organism, and
Speaker 1: that also means that you are automatically conscious. The two
Speaker 1: things have to go. I hear what you're saying. I'm
Speaker 1: just trying to think this through my own personal life,
Speaker 1: because my gosh, you're right. We are such social humans,
Speaker 1: you know, the humans are such social beings, I should say.
Speaker 1: And there is a performative aspect to emotions, which I'm
Speaker 1: now thinking in my head, like, am I ever when
Speaker 1: I'm just having like an imagination of things, do I
Speaker 1: ever recoil in fear in the same way physically on
Speaker 1: the outside. I would look like if I was with
Speaker 1: another person and we were both recounting the experience. I'm
Speaker 1: trying to do the experiment in my head to verify
Speaker 1: what you're saying scientifically, and it's yeah, you're right. I
Speaker 1: never really thought about that really. Yeah. So we may
Speaker 1: have feelings when we're lost in our own thoughts and
Speaker 1: when we're in touch with our own organism, so to speak.
Speaker 1: But there is something about emotions that is it seems
Speaker 1: like deeply social and yeah, it's fascinating. You're right, Oh,
Speaker 1: I think it's absolutely social. For example, as you are
Speaker 1: communicating with me, your face has been you make it
Speaker 1: now several times by for example, a smile. You smiled
Speaker 1: when you were wondering if what I was saying is
Speaker 1: probably right, then you smile in consonants. But that is
Speaker 1: I don't think it's theatricals in the sense that it
Speaker 1: was totally deligrated by you. It's probably part of your
Speaker 1: repertoire emotional phenomenon when you communicate with others, because you
Speaker 1: have been doing it all your life. If you have
Speaker 1: adjusted yourself to doing the same. Web Strene all sorts
Speaker 1: of things that would be of that kind, or for example,
Speaker 1: the way your face is on a couple of times
Speaker 1: already manifested doubt in relation to what I was saying, Oh,
Speaker 1: or being puzzled but puzzled in a way that was
Speaker 1: probably not positive, which is perfectly fine. But you will
Speaker 1: register or what you're doing right now with your you
Speaker 1: know the fact, and I said it's perfectly fine. You
Speaker 1: reacted with laughter and quite behind exactly. But but that
Speaker 1: is it's all. It's part of the social interaction. You're
Speaker 1: you're doing it along with me in this social interaction.
Speaker 1: And this has very little to do with being hungry
Speaker 1: or being thirsty or being in pain. You know, those
Speaker 1: are different things. Those are spontaneously occurring in relation to
Speaker 1: what your nervous system is getting in an interaction with
Speaker 1: its own body, or I'd like to say the opposite,
Speaker 1: it's the organism's own nervous system, because that's the way,
Speaker 1: that's the way it is, and it is. It's it's
Speaker 1: completely different. But by the way, one thing, so that
Speaker 1: in case we end up because this is so interesting
Speaker 1: and we're doing in so many directions, so that I
Speaker 1: don't forget there's something fundamentally different about the perception of
Speaker 1: our body biour necal system and the perception of the
Speaker 1: outside world. So for example, right now I'm perceiving you,
Speaker 1: and I can look out and perceive the you know,
Speaker 1: the cinemonical amounts. There's no way that the I can
Speaker 1: go interactively with the cinemonic amountains over with you, that's
Speaker 1: the level of the perceptual object. But with my body
Speaker 1: that happens. So if my body sends a signal from
Speaker 1: one particular point, say, for example, I actually I'm having
Speaker 1: pain in an act. Sorry to say, you're not aion anyway,
Speaker 1: And that's because I was moving books yesterday and the
Speaker 1: day before, and one of the times I carried too
Speaker 1: many books in one go and I twisted and I
Speaker 1: have a pain. But it's interesting is that there are
Speaker 1: signals that are coming from the muscles that the muscle
Speaker 1: fibers that have been disrupted and from it torn, and
Speaker 1: they are going into the spinal cording in this case
Speaker 1: the brainstem, and then the central nervous system all the
Speaker 1: way up to the context, although in many cases don't
Speaker 1: need to, Okay. What it's interesting is that the signals
Speaker 1: come in and literally ascend in the nervous system. But
Speaker 1: the nervous system has the possible needed to respond to
Speaker 1: the origin of the perception. So we have a cross
Speaker 1: stock between our body, it's non neural components, and the
Speaker 1: nervous system. The non neural components of the body talk
Speaker 1: to the nervous system, the nervous system talks back. One
Speaker 1: thing that it does that you experience constantly has to
Speaker 1: do with pain, or has to do it itch. For example,
Speaker 1: if you have an itch in your skin, skin is dry, itchy, Well,
Speaker 1: it's itchy for a bit. You can scratch it a
Speaker 1: bit and you'll go, but then we'll come back. But
Speaker 1: then after a while, even if you don't do anything
Speaker 1: about it, it will go. And it will go because
Speaker 1: the samplever system is sending signals back to that place,
Speaker 1: doing at the local level chemical corrections of the environment
Speaker 1: so that the thing gets adjusted. So it's never the
Speaker 1: case that you have a body here and a nervous
Speaker 1: system here, Like I have my brain here and you
Speaker 1: on the screen. There's no way that screen and you
Speaker 1: are going to do anything to my nervous system directly,
Speaker 1: whereas in the case of interception that happens all the time.
Speaker 1: So there's another fundamental way, which by the way, has
Speaker 1: been completely neglected by anybody that is doing theory on consciousness.
Speaker 1: With extremely rare exceptions, there's no way that you can
Speaker 1: understand this phenomenon without technology and interception. That is, the
Speaker 1: perception of the interior quote unquote is different in its design,
Speaker 1: in its operation, from the perception of the outside work.
Speaker 1: Is that two things that are computly different. Now, of course,
Speaker 1: in our in our high functioning minds and brains, it
Speaker 1: all works together very well. Yes, they are different, and
Speaker 1: that's those those differences that give you an entry into
Speaker 1: problems like consciousness and that you can explore and exploit
Speaker 1: to your advantage. For sure. I mean, if you're if
Speaker 1: you're a psychopath, you know, you can. Absolutely there's a
Speaker 1: real huge distinction between feelings and emotions, and if you're
Speaker 1: an actor, there's a huge distinction. But it seems like
Speaker 1: in most people's everyday lives there there's a great feedback
Speaker 1: between the two that makes it more genuine, so to speak.
Speaker 1: In my view, there seems to be something different between
Speaker 1: the way I'm responding to you socially today, an actor
Speaker 1: would respond to you because I am feeling things that
Speaker 1: are correlated at a p less than point zero five
Speaker 1: level with the expression on my face, So it's not
Speaker 1: completely random, do you know what I mean? Absolutely, I
Speaker 1: totally agree with you. Yeah. Yeah. And the connection to
Speaker 1: acting is only useful to bring home the point that
Speaker 1: certain things can be fabricated as a level of actions
Speaker 1: because they have to begin with actions. And of course,
Speaker 1: what we call a great actor is someone that can
Speaker 1: do those expressions so well that it looks spontaneous and
Speaker 1: real as opposed to being fabricated by technique. Oh you
Speaker 1: know what, I would even go one step further and say,
Speaker 1: probably the best actors are those that have a really
Speaker 1: good congruence between a fabricated emotion and then the genuine
Speaker 1: experience that I totally agree, and I think and that
Speaker 1: actually speaks to the distinctions. For example, actor studio actors
Speaker 1: and non actor studio actors have that kind of different
Speaker 1: they're good. It's such a talent, it's so amazing. I mean,
Speaker 1: I obviously can you learn that, But I do think
Speaker 1: that there's a certain talent component in there as well.
Speaker 1: And that's a fascinating question is what is that talent component?
Speaker 1: And it makes you good to that. I love thinking
Speaker 1: about the aberrations or the outliers to lots of this
Speaker 1: kind of stuff. You know, we started thinking about things
Speaker 1: like schizophrenia, you know, and the way that those that
Speaker 1: mind is the different connection altered brain network connections in
Speaker 1: people's schizophrenia. Would you say that when they're having a
Speaker 1: psychotic episode that they're not let's say they're having a
Speaker 1: just associative episode where they're not identifying their contents of
Speaker 1: their mind with themselves. Would you argue that in those states,
Speaker 1: schizophrenic patients are not conscious? Are your definition? Oh no,
Speaker 1: no, no no, no, I'm never never argue that. No. I
Speaker 1: think they are conscious because there is a there's something
Speaker 1: Scott said, something I want to tell you, because you're
Speaker 1: interested in this and also to your listeners. There's something
Speaker 1: very beautiful about feelings, whatever they are, there is the continuity.
Speaker 1: Amnesthetic feelings have a continuity. That's something that while against
Speaker 1: somebody said, oh, so you talk about the amnosthetic feelings,
Speaker 1: and you say that aniosthetic feelings are the reason why
Speaker 1: you are conscious, and that you require them to be
Speaker 1: conscious spontaneously. Then but since I'm not hungry all the time,
Speaker 1: and I'm not harmy all the time, and I'm not
Speaker 1: thirsty all the time, and then what happens that when
Speaker 1: I become unconscious between my hunger and thirst episodes, And
Speaker 1: I said, no, you're constantly feeling. You have this continuous
Speaker 1: feeling of being alive. I've called it several times, a
Speaker 1: feeling of existence, the feeling of being alive. If you
Speaker 1: meditate a little bit, if you just be quiet, you
Speaker 1: realize that there's something hammy in you which is being alive. Which,
Speaker 1: by the way, if you would not be alive, you
Speaker 1: would not notice it. Do you know that for sure?
Speaker 1: Are you sure? Do we know that for sure? No?
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't. I don't know that for sure.
Speaker 1: I suspect strongly. Anyway, So this feeling of continuity is
Speaker 1: extremely important. So when you I have to tell you
Speaker 1: that I've not I've thought about feelings in psychiatric conditions.
Speaker 1: I've on purpose sort of avoided thinking about feelings in schizophrenia,
Speaker 1: but I've thought about them in depression, for example. And
Speaker 1: I think there's always a continuity, a feeling of existence
Speaker 1: and humming along because you are in this interaction between
Speaker 1: the nervous system and the body, so it's inevitable. So
Speaker 1: you could say that the other feelings, the feelings of hunger,
Speaker 1: of thirst and so forth, are sort of if you
Speaker 1: plot it as a running graph, are things that come
Speaker 1: the crest on top of that hamming up and down
Speaker 1: feeling is constantly there on your monitor. That is the
Speaker 1: feeling of life, the feeling of existence. But as I
Speaker 1: understand your theory, feeling is a necessary but not sufficient
Speaker 1: condition for consciousness. In order for consciouness to occur, there
Speaker 1: needs to be this real coordinated operation of being, feeling
Speaker 1: and knowing, And it does seem like incern schizophraic patients,
Speaker 1: the knowing part is not there. So that's why I
Speaker 1: ask you the very point of question. According to your definition,
Speaker 1: it seems like you would say that they're not conscious
Speaker 1: even though they're feeling. No, But I think that the
Speaker 1: way in which you're taking that combination being feeling and
Speaker 1: knowing is not as literal as that. So, of course,
Speaker 1: I mean, what are the conditions You have to have
Speaker 1: a living organism. You have to have an organism that
Speaker 1: has a nervous system. You have the possibility of interactions
Speaker 1: of the nervous system and the rest of the body,
Speaker 1: and then you have the sort of bubbling up sense,
Speaker 1: which is a feeling that there is life ticking in there.
Speaker 1: The knowing. It's a very interesting question. Do you need
Speaker 1: to be in addition to it being there spontaneously? No
Speaker 1: question is asked, do we need to have a reflection
Speaker 1: on I don't think so, And I think that what
Speaker 1: is failing in schizophrenia is that the level of a
Speaker 1: reflection on what is happening in that organism. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: the spontaneous feeling of existence is still there. It doesn't
Speaker 1: go away, but it's quite interesting. Yeah, I'm not letting
Speaker 1: this go. I'm not letting this go because it is
Speaker 1: very interesting. It brings raises a lot of interesting questions,
Speaker 1: associative episodes. I'm going to I'm going to think very
Speaker 1: carefully about your question because of and I would send
Speaker 1: you an answer. Thank you. I really truly appreciate that
Speaker 1: this is this is what a good scholarly conversation is about.
Speaker 1: So we're modeling that right now. So wonderful, beautiful, Let's
Speaker 1: talk about creativity a little bit. You know, it's a
Speaker 1: topic we both love, and the neuroscience of creativity. I
Speaker 1: know you're very interested in complex emotions, things like the
Speaker 1: bitter sweet. You know, my friend Susan Kane just wrote
Speaker 1: a whole book about this emotion, bitter sweet. But I
Speaker 1: know that you're really interested in mixed valence emotions and
Speaker 1: I'm absolutely namored with that as well. What's the role
Speaker 1: of these kinds of mixed emotions in helping us have
Speaker 1: more complex cognal process like creativity and meaning making? Fair question? Yeah,
Speaker 1: everything is fair, the it goes in the mix. You know,
Speaker 1: creativity is such an extraordinary and extraordinary field to look at.
Speaker 1: I think that depending on you see it all depends
Speaker 1: on what you're working on. If you're if you're writing
Speaker 1: literary sentences, or if you're making if you're making a
Speaker 1: painting or a sculpture, A very different different levels of operation,
Speaker 1: different complexities, and they all take that, they all exploit
Speaker 1: this amazing high level of consciousness that we have gotten to, which,
Speaker 1: by the way, is one of the reasons why people
Speaker 1: are so confused about consciousness and why it is so
Speaker 1: difficult to bring them down to the simple fact that
Speaker 1: feelings us contaneous events in consciousness, because most of what
Speaker 1: people have been thinking and reading about creativity, about sorry
Speaker 1: about consciousness, has pulled them up and has taken them
Speaker 1: to not only high level consciousness, but to the consequences
Speaker 1: of higher level of consciousness in the form of the
Speaker 1: creative objects that are around us. So nobody ever started
Speaker 1: looking at consciousness from the bottom up. People start looking
Speaker 1: at consciousness in the extended consciousness that we have when
Speaker 1: we have this sort of literary sense of the universe
Speaker 1: together with the science that is a company and creativity
Speaker 1: is so central to this. But again it sort of
Speaker 1: pushes you up where you have consequences of being conscious,
Speaker 1: but where the real operations are no longer in the
Speaker 1: domain of consciousness, but rather in the domain of knowledge
Speaker 1: and creativity, in the domain of manipulation of knowledge. Now,
Speaker 1: of course, you couldn't manipulate that knowledge if you were
Speaker 1: not conscious to begin with, if you had not been
Speaker 1: so richly conscious that you gave to every little bit
Speaker 1: of knowledge that you have in your brain right now,
Speaker 1: you gave it the gift of consciousness, which really means
Speaker 1: you gave it the possibility of connecting with your life.
Speaker 1: That's it. You're conscious, even if you're thinking you have
Speaker 1: just been listening to a particular passage of moths, are
Speaker 1: or Bach. Those are so incredibly complex in the way
Speaker 1: they were written or in the way they're being performed
Speaker 1: by a supersonoist, and that is only available to you
Speaker 1: if you can bring that that threat into your body
Speaker 1: and if you can connect it to the state of
Speaker 1: your body. At that point, that's great consciousness occurs. But
Speaker 1: of course we have spent most of our lives thinking
Speaker 1: about it from the top at the level of extended consciousness,
Speaker 1: which is not even a good name. I told you
Speaker 1: I coined it, so it's not fair, but I don't
Speaker 1: like to use extending it's extended mind consciousness. Well, I
Speaker 1: completely agree with what you just said, and it links
Speaker 1: to my own work on reduced de latent inhibition and
Speaker 1: creativity and creative achievement. Work I did in my dissertation
Speaker 1: where creative people tend to have this reduced threshold for
Speaker 1: that pregating mechanism for kind of allowing in some of
Speaker 1: that more sensory information and not tagging things as irrelevant.
Speaker 1: There's also work that obviously like people like Jordan Peterson
Speaker 1: and Shelley Carson as well. So I think that's more
Speaker 1: of a bottom up approach along the lines of what
Speaker 1: you're talking about, right, yeah, yeah, absolutely, yeah, yeah, good,
Speaker 1: very good. Yes, I got it very good from the
Speaker 1: famous Antonio Demasia. Yeah. You know. In another area of
Speaker 1: creativity that really am fascinated with, which I nerd out
Speaker 1: a lot with our mutual friend and colleague Mary Helen
Speaker 1: Imerdino Yang, is the default mode network. And I'm worry.
Speaker 1: I want to hear your thoughts about the default I
Speaker 1: just saw your emotion there on your face there when
Speaker 1: I said default mo network. What are your thoughts on that?
Speaker 1: And it's linkage to creativity. It's too early in the
Speaker 1: morning for default network. I love that. I'm still out
Speaker 1: to sleep. You don't want to go there. Well, it
Speaker 1: does seem like the default mode network, which is a
Speaker 1: network of brain areas in the medial surface of the
Speaker 1: prefrontal cortex primarily that seems to support a lot of
Speaker 1: different forms of social cognition, imagination, mental time, travel, into
Speaker 1: the future, and as Mary hand Helen Imerdoyan has talked
Speaker 1: about it's connection to meaning making and how that could
Speaker 1: potentially be connected to creativity. Do you, personally in your
Speaker 1: own work, do you do you see that as a
Speaker 1: central hub of creativity of the neuroscience of creativity. Assume
Speaker 1: you see it as a very important component of any
Speaker 1: important contributor. I don't know if I would call it
Speaker 1: the central hub, but something and important. Oh yeah, absolutely, absolutely,
Speaker 1: you should talk about it. You know about it, I
Speaker 1: know about it. Well. The thing that fascinates me about
Speaker 1: the defaultile network, and in relation to our conversation today,
Speaker 1: is that you can kind of to be poetic about
Speaker 1: it when you're jamming in the space of your default network,
Speaker 1: when you're improvising, when you're just in touch with the
Speaker 1: stream of your mind, not necessarily consciousness, but the mind, right,
Speaker 1: the stream of mind or we William James, you know
Speaker 1: called it. You called it the stream of consciously, he
Speaker 1: called it. You should have called at the stream of mind.
Speaker 1: I just realized, I just realized that, but it seems
Speaker 1: like when we're jamming in the stream of our mind,
Speaker 1: great amazing creative things come out, you know, when you're
Speaker 1: doing jazz and provisation, when you're trying to again the
Speaker 1: state where you're doing poetry. So it does seem like
Speaker 1: consciousness is not conscious can even get the way sometimes
Speaker 1: of creative generation. It's could that that that's a perfectly
Speaker 1: perfectly reasonable thought. Yeah, absolutely, yeah, maybe maybe you it
Speaker 1: might not be bad at certain points to sort of
Speaker 1: separate yourself from that hook, that from from the fangs
Speaker 1: of consciousness. Yeah, yeah, yeah, maybe maybe maybe that's exactly
Speaker 1: you know, flights of poetic fancy are exactly moments in
Speaker 1: which you makes that link more tenuous about that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And obviously we can't stay in that state all the
Speaker 1: time twenty four to seven. Oh no, no no, it wouldn't
Speaker 1: be good for it wouldn't be See that that's another
Speaker 1: interesting call of it, because that it would move you
Speaker 1: away from the the really life saving consequences of being conscious,
Speaker 1: which basically have to do with the house management. You know,
Speaker 1: conscious is basically it's all about keeping keeping the thing
Speaker 1: going as well as possible. And there there's the flights
Speaker 1: of fancy that's in another in another sphere, another sphere.
Speaker 1: Can I have a question. I know I will have
Speaker 1: to go very very soon, So can I ask you
Speaker 1: a question? Of course? Of course. So I'm really interested
Speaker 1: in pend cycles. I think it's interesting, but I don't.
Speaker 1: I'm very skeptical. Yeah you don't. You don't buy it.
Speaker 1: I'm skeptical of it. I haven't not bought it yet.
Speaker 1: I haven't either. I'm still thinking about whether I should
Speaker 1: buy it. But yeah, yeah, I'm skeptical. But some of
Speaker 1: my closest friends, you know, like Anka Harris in her
Speaker 1: own right, she wrote a book and consciousness. She loves it.
Speaker 1: She loves it. Philip Golf, Philip Golf loves it. He'll
Speaker 1: tell he was on my podcast. He was extolling the
Speaker 1: merits of it. You know, I know, I know, I know,
Speaker 1: I know, I know. I know that people that are
Speaker 1: very much like as people that can think that there's
Speaker 1: there's nothing wrong with it other than being wrong. There's
Speaker 1: nothing wrong with there's wrong if you fall for it forever. Well,
Speaker 1: I will say, uh, sort of ending here today, I
Speaker 1: really do see your the logic of what you've outlined
Speaker 1: and why consciousness seems to require the coordinated effort of
Speaker 1: these three called them systems in a way, these three
Speaker 1: elements of the body that interacting with each other in
Speaker 1: very unique ways. But this element that the nervous system
Speaker 1: is an important part of it does have deepifications. We
Speaker 1: never answered the machine question, so maybe we should end
Speaker 1: on that one because we had that threads. That's a
Speaker 1: thread that's still open. Can we ever have filling machines?
Speaker 1: And you have argued in your book a new generation
Speaker 1: of filling machines can probably become efficacious assistance to really
Speaker 1: feeling humans as hybrids of natural and artificial creatures, no
Speaker 1: less important. This new generation of machines would constitute a
Speaker 1: unique laboratory for the investigation of human behavior and mind
Speaker 1: in a variety of actual realistic settings. So that's exciting
Speaker 1: coming down the pipeline. And when we can start to
Speaker 1: meld fast computer processors with the nervous system so we
Speaker 1: can get the coordinated effort of the elements you talk
Speaker 1: about in a way that has like a super duper
Speaker 1: hyped up processing capability, that could be produce some interesting
Speaker 1: forms of consciousness. Right, and you would have to have
Speaker 1: some kind of body aspect to it and knows you
Speaker 1: will need to mimic certain properties of a living organism
Speaker 1: in order to get to it with any hope of success.
Speaker 1: And right now we don't have that, but I think
Speaker 1: it's perfectly possible. Yeah, it's possible. And Todio, oh my man,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for this chat today. It really
Speaker 1: was delightful to talk to you. We should keep up
Speaker 1: the nerdy conversation. Very good anytime. I enjoyed talking to
Speaker 1: you so much with your book. Okay, all right, take
Speaker 1: care you too. Thanks for listening to this episode of
Speaker 1: the Psychology Podcast. If you'd like to react in some
Speaker 1: way to something you heard, I encourage you to join
Speaker 1: in the discussion at thusycology podcast dot com. We're on
Speaker 1: our YouTube page thus Pschology Podcast. We also put up
Speaker 1: some videos of some episodes on our YouTube page as well,
Speaker 1: so you'll want to check that out. Thanks for being
Speaker 1: such a great supporter of the show, and tune in
Speaker 1: next time for more on the mind, brain, behavior, and creativity.