Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to the Psychology Podcast. Today's episode is
Speaker 1: part of the best of series, where we highlight some
Speaker 1: of the most exciting and enthralling and enlightening episodes from
Speaker 1: the archives of the Psychology Podcast.
Speaker 2: Enjoy.
Speaker 3: That is what consciousness is about. It's about creating the
Speaker 3: not disputable fact that I am doing my perceptions and
Speaker 3: you are doing your perceptions, and the two channels of operation,
Speaker 3: and then the two kinds of operation are of the
Speaker 3: same type that they are occurring in different organss.
Speaker 1: Hello and welcome to the Psychology Podcast. Today we welcome
Speaker 1: doctor Antonio Dimasio. Doctor Demasio is an internationally recognized neuroscientist
Speaker 1: whose extensive research has shaped the understanding of neural systems
Speaker 1: and consciousness well over one hundred journal articles and book chapters.
Speaker 1: He has earned many prestigious awards throughout his career. Currently,
Speaker 1: he 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 Descartesera, Looking First,
Speaker 1: Minozza Self comes to Mind, the Strange Order of Things
Speaker 1: and Feeling and Knowing have been published in translation and
Speaker 1: are taught in universities throughout the world. In this stimulating episode,
Speaker 1: I talked to Antonio Demasio about consciousness. People often think
Speaker 1: that the mind and consciousness are the same thing, but
Speaker 1: doctor Demasio disputes this notion. He argues that it's the
Speaker 1: complex relationship of both our brains and bodies that makes
Speaker 1: sentient thought possible. Homeostatic feelings like hunger and pain developed
Speaker 1: before emotions, and along with it came consciousness. We also
Speaker 1: 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 I'm dear friends with Mary Helen and Maardino yang oh.
Speaker 2: Z very highly of view and it's just yeah, nice to.
Speaker 3: Find means she's having a beautiful career. She was. She
Speaker 3: was I think the first person we appointed to the
Speaker 3: Brand Creativity Institute. Now seventeen years ago.
Speaker 1: Wow, time really does fly. Wow, that's how long ago
Speaker 1: you guys started that. I remember when you started the institute.
Speaker 3: And yeah, that's exactly.
Speaker 2: It very exciting.
Speaker 1: Well, today I definitely want to discuss our mutual interest
Speaker 1: in the neuroscience of creativity, but I wanted to start
Speaker 1: off today's episode going back all the way back to
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty nine. One of my favorite papers of yours
Speaker 1: in the journal Cognition called time locked multi regional retroactivation.
Speaker 1: Now we're going to have to explain and unpack what
Speaker 1: in the world that means to our general audience of listeners.
Speaker 1: But the reason why I wanted to double click on
Speaker 1: that because I think that was a really seminal paper.
Speaker 1: I hope you agree of modern day brain network systems
Speaker 1: research on consciousness see that as a really seminal sort
Speaker 1: of early ideas. So could you kind of unpack a
Speaker 1: little bit what that paper showed.
Speaker 3: So we were interested in the idea that as as
Speaker 3: you manipulate knowledge, perceptions of every kind, different considerations that
Speaker 3: we make on what we're perceiving, what we are thinking
Speaker 3: about based on those perceptions on all of that needs
Speaker 3: to be stored in some way, and the storage, in
Speaker 3: all likelihood proceeds by the by creating arrangements of memories
Speaker 3: of traces of all of those events near the places
Speaker 3: in the brain where they are formed to begin with.
Speaker 3: So we have a number of portals into our brain
Speaker 3: that large we come out of the dominant perceptual systems,
Speaker 3: particularly of course the visual and the auditory, which clearly
Speaker 3: dominate in most individuals, and then all the other senses
Speaker 3: that we know of. And what is interesting is that
Speaker 3: those the channeling of information from the sensory probes that
Speaker 3: are located in the periphery of our body and also
Speaker 3: the periphery of our nervous system and the central part
Speaker 3: of the nervous system, they all land in different parts
Speaker 3: of the brain, which is of course predictable, because we
Speaker 3: have a channel that goes, for example, from our eyes
Speaker 3: to a particular region of the cortex, which happens to
Speaker 3: be visual context, and then the place where the things
Speaker 3: that you're hearing right now, that I'm hearing of my
Speaker 3: own voice, they land in another place. And then out
Speaker 3: of those hubs where information is being sent to you
Speaker 3: have the possibility of creating a sort of encircling where
Speaker 3: you have not only the immediate processing of what is
Speaker 3: being channel at the moment. In this case, for example,
Speaker 3: I'm looking at your face and your bookcase behind you,
Speaker 3: you're listening to my voice and probably looking at whatever
Speaker 3: I have behind me, and so there's that early sensory processing.
Speaker 3: But then all around there are structures that can actually
Speaker 3: take a part the information that is coming in and
Speaker 3: provide storage for that information, sometimes in a piecemeal form,
Speaker 3: sometimes a holistic form. So you have the possibility of
Speaker 3: creating memories for what is being processed right now, and then,
Speaker 3: depending on how important those things are for your life,
Speaker 3: they may stay on as permanent memories and be transformed
Speaker 3: or they may be just disposed of in the course
Speaker 3: of in the course of life. And then what is
Speaker 3: interesting too is that most of the time our perceptions
Speaker 3: are not occurring in one modality only. So for example,
Speaker 3: right now there is a visual perception that we're both
Speaker 3: having an auditory perception, but also lo and behold, we
Speaker 3: have the perception quote unquote of what is happening in
Speaker 3: our own body. For example, if all of a sudden
Speaker 3: you would be you could be feeling hungry or thirsty,
Speaker 3: or you could have pain somewhere, that would be perceived
Speaker 3: as well, except that that would be arranged in a
Speaker 3: different kind of system. There's a cortical component to it too,
Speaker 3: as well, but by and large it doesn't happen in
Speaker 3: the cortext that the most important part. They happen in
Speaker 3: the brain stem. They happen in the spinal cord. So
Speaker 3: you can have all of this fabrication of traces of
Speaker 3: things that are happening to you, inside your body and
Speaker 3: around you. They go to specific points in the nervous system,
Speaker 3: not in one. It's very interesting as a parenthesis that
Speaker 3: very often people that don't know anything about the brain
Speaker 3: or about the mind studied in detail, can perfectly well
Speaker 3: believe that all of this is going into one great
Speaker 3: big tank, one great big sink, and it's all put together.
Speaker 3: But it isn't. It's all separated at birth. It's all
Speaker 3: separated and goes into different points, and those different points
Speaker 3: where it occurs, they all already are sign of a
Speaker 3: convergence of signals, and then from there they can go
Speaker 3: to another set of stations where further integration of the
Speaker 3: signals is done, and by again the process of convergence
Speaker 3: of signaling a little bit of a pyramid going into
Speaker 3: a point, and then eventually you can have combinations of
Speaker 3: those different pyramids, of those different cooking points and create
Speaker 3: something that is much larger that that's the great picture
Speaker 3: that I had for the convergence from multiple regions. And
Speaker 3: then what is interesting is that eventually you can have
Speaker 3: a combination of facts. For example, right now i'm talking
Speaker 3: to you, I have my perception review. I know that
Speaker 3: i'm talking to you of this particular process, which is
Speaker 3: really the process of learning and categorization and memory making.
Speaker 3: But I also know that I just talked to my
Speaker 3: assistant and we talked about a couple of specific things
Speaker 3: that I need to get done as soon as I'm
Speaker 3: done talking to you. And I'm also looking at a
Speaker 3: page from Corina said. That's the Italian newspaper where there
Speaker 3: is a review of my new book. And it's very good,
Speaker 3: how it says, it's a lovely title, Body and Feeling
Speaker 3: the romance of Damasio.
Speaker 2: I love it. I love it better than that.
Speaker 3: It's done by action, by a major measure Italian biologist. Anyway,
Speaker 3: So all of this stuff is being integrated. And what's
Speaker 3: interesting is that if next week you call me and
Speaker 3: you remind me of this session we're having, I could
Speaker 3: perfectly well remember not only parts of this conversation, but
Speaker 3: part of what I just told you about that particular
Speaker 3: review that happens to be on my desk. So things
Speaker 3: have a way of being integrated by the time at
Speaker 3: which they're occurring, but also by the happenstance of being
Speaker 3: here at the right moment, and so things that are
Speaker 3: not linked will be linked because at that time, in
Speaker 3: this case, the time and which I am talking to you,
Speaker 3: my eyes also fell on that page that was here
Speaker 3: on my desk actually just died anyway, So that's what
Speaker 3: I had in mind, and it has proven helpful to
Speaker 3: explain problems of memory as well as making normal memory,
Speaker 3: because we know that when you can damage one part
Speaker 3: of this system, you don't lose memory across the board.
Speaker 3: You lose certain specific memories and memories of certain kinds,
Speaker 3: for example, that may be more related to the visual
Speaker 3: system than to another. Anyway, very complicated answer for a
Speaker 3: very complicated subject.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's very complicated paper, you know. But the reason
Speaker 1: why I bring this up is because I think it's extraordinary.
Speaker 1: It was a theoretical paper and it seems to have
Speaker 1: really a modern day work which is really focused on
Speaker 1: systems level and brain networks. Is really borne out a
Speaker 1: lot of those ideas, if not all of those ideas.
Speaker 1: So I think it's kudos to you, kudos to you,
Speaker 1: thank you very much. There's a sentence in that paper
Speaker 1: that I wanted a link to your more modern work,
Speaker 1: and let.
Speaker 2: Me just read this.
Speaker 1: You rate meaning is reached by time locked multi regional
Speaker 1: retroactivation 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. Areniquly 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 neuro machinery and psychological process that
Speaker 1: allow us to do that, and why turtles can't.
Speaker 2: Do that for instance.
Speaker 1: Second of all that second sentence, only the latter records
Speaker 1: can become contents of consciousness. I wonder if you can
Speaker 1: unpack that a little bit, because you go through a
Speaker 1: lot in your new book on the distinction the crucial
Speaker 1: distinction between mind and consciousness.
Speaker 2: And so I'm linking the distinction of.
Speaker 1: Mind and consciousness, which you make so clearly now with
Speaker 1: that very complicated sentence that I just read from your
Speaker 1: nineteen to eighty nine paper. I hope you're you're okay
Speaker 1: with that linkage I made. I think it makes sense
Speaker 1: in my head.
Speaker 3: I think it makes it makes pressure sense. And your
Speaker 3: let's actually start with the the new things that pertain
Speaker 3: to the new book, because that may help unpack the
Speaker 3: older sentence and what I'm trying to do. The distinction
Speaker 3: between mind and consciousness is critical for a variety of
Speaker 3: first buying large people confuse the two. And you know
Speaker 3: it says if creatures that are minded, be necessarily conscious,
Speaker 3: and the two things will go together and could be interchangeable,
Speaker 3: and that's not the case. The same way. Actually, in
Speaker 3: our conversation yesterday by email, you mentioned something about your
Speaker 3: interests in covert processing in things that are not in
Speaker 3: fact in the mind, that I have to do with
Speaker 3: it with an intelligence that is capable that is not minded.
Speaker 3: And these are all different of this great big thing
Speaker 3: that we call our conscious minds, and that include a
Speaker 3: lot of our conscious process. So if you take simple creatures,
Speaker 3: I wouldn't start with turtles, but I would something even
Speaker 3: simple like bacteria or a variety of creatures with only
Speaker 3: a few cells and a humiliated cells. Those creatures have
Speaker 3: no nervous system to begin with, and yet they are
Speaker 3: intelligent and capable within the niche of universe in which
Speaker 3: they operate, and they can perfectly well detect certain the
Speaker 3: presence or absence of something, which is really a form
Speaker 3: of perception quote unquote, not a perception like we have
Speaker 3: with detailed imaging exactly. Detecting and sensing are good words
Speaker 3: for that, except that very often they connote other things
Speaker 3: in the mind of people, and they can add to
Speaker 3: the confusion. But anyway, they can detect sense stuff, and
Speaker 3: they can with the machinery that they have, respond in
Speaker 3: a certain way that is consonant with what they detected. Now,
Speaker 3: that is an intelligence thing to do. There's no question
Speaker 3: that it is adaptive and intelligent, and it is protecting
Speaker 3: them because they may detect something that they need, such
Speaker 3: as for example, food the food particle, or they may
Speaker 3: detect something that is potentially harmful, and that's good because
Speaker 3: it's going to protect their body and to allow them
Speaker 3: to live as long as their machinery is meant for
Speaker 3: it to live genetically speaking. Now, so that is intelligent,
Speaker 3: but not minded and not conscious. Now, when you turn
Speaker 3: to what we do at the other end, and what
Speaker 3: many other creatures do in between. We have not only
Speaker 3: the capacity to detect sense stuff, but then we also
Speaker 3: have the capacity to represent what we detect it and
Speaker 3: also represent ourselves as victims of the detection. And we
Speaker 3: have the capacity to know that all of that relates
Speaker 3: to our unique bargains. So these three tiers are very
Speaker 3: very important to separate, and unfortunately, in the minds of
Speaker 3: most people, this is one great big salad. And what
Speaker 3: I'm trying to do if you ask me what is
Speaker 3: the most important thing that I think I'm doing right now?
Speaker 3: In addition to explaining stuff that I'm passionate about, such
Speaker 3: as how you get to have a feeling, is actually
Speaker 3: insisting on the separation. So you have a mind when
Speaker 3: you are capable of representing something that you detected, and
Speaker 3: fortunately for us, we have the capacity to represent tons
Speaker 3: of things depending on the different sensory channel we have
Speaker 3: help things outside of our bodies and inside of our lives.
Speaker 3: Then we have an intelligence provided we are capable of
Speaker 3: responding to things that are in our environment but not
Speaker 3: necessarily representing it. And then we are conscious when we
Speaker 3: connect the thing that we are mindful of with our
Speaker 3: own organ is. The beauty of consciousness is that when
Speaker 3: you have when you have, for example, I'm looking at you,
Speaker 3: I know that it's need looking at you. Why do
Speaker 3: I know that? Well, that's exactly the problem of consciousness.
Speaker 3: The image that you are helping generate in my brain
Speaker 3: is activating a variety of systems that are in my
Speaker 3: brain and body, and that connects the tool indolently and
Speaker 3: in such a way that I have no doubt that
Speaker 3: it's me talking to you, Scott. There's no question. That
Speaker 3: is what consciousness is about. It's about creating the not
Speaker 3: disputable fact that I am doing my perceptions and you
Speaker 3: are doing your perceptions, and the two channels of operation,
Speaker 3: and then the two kinds of operation are over the
Speaker 3: same type, but they are occurring in different organisms.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1: And this is a really unique aspect of your theory
Speaker 1: of consciousness, which not everyone in the field has this
Speaker 1: definition of consciousness. You know, there's a panpsychism is really
Speaker 1: hot right now right the pan psychic people. Can I
Speaker 1: say that, the pan psychic people, they wouldn't say it.
Speaker 1: You have to have that criteria of the organism being
Speaker 1: able to identify it with itself in order for it
Speaker 1: to be conscious. And this makes your work very unique
Speaker 1: and very influential, that you really are arguing that there's
Speaker 1: a very important distinction.
Speaker 2: A lot of people in the field do not make this distinction.
Speaker 2: You know, we should make that clear.
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely, yeah, And I think that if you don't
Speaker 3: make those distinctions, I think you actually end up in
Speaker 3: the place that led to pan psychism. I think there
Speaker 3: is a very good reason why pan psycheism myth the
Speaker 3: moment is popular, and there is an escape people that
Speaker 3: have come up against the wall of consciousness and then
Speaker 3: talk about such things as the heart problem of the
Speaker 3: impossible problem, I really abstract in their view of what
Speaker 3: can be, and as a result, almost anything goes. But
Speaker 3: pen psyche is helpful because, well, you know, maybe the
Speaker 3: reason why you can't explain it easily is because it's
Speaker 3: everywhere and something that's not inside us, really something that
Speaker 3: we capture from what's around us, which I find first
Speaker 3: no evidence for and second no way of testing, no
Speaker 3: way of doing an experiment that would cope with that.
Speaker 1: It's like strength theory.
Speaker 2: It's like strength theory and physics.
Speaker 3: But I think it I can understand that I have
Speaker 3: sympathy for people that feel cornered and not and not
Speaker 3: capable of explaining it. But I am simpathy is one
Speaker 3: thing and I'm not in that camp. And there's one
Speaker 3: thing let me add because that you know, we really
Speaker 3: through your question where we sort of got to the
Speaker 3: top of the problem very quickly. But one thing that
Speaker 3: is extremely important for me is this. Most of the things,
Speaker 3: probably everything that you read about consciousness, all of that
Speaker 3: matter about mind, always talks about the brain alone. You know,
Speaker 3: people said, we need to find out how the brain
Speaker 3: creates consciousness. Excuse me, why just the brain? Why this
Speaker 3: insistent insistence on the fact that the nervous system and
Speaker 3: the nervous system alone is the creator of these things.
Speaker 3: I dispute that I don't think it is. But you
Speaker 3: don't need to go to the surround spirits to find it.
Speaker 3: It's in your own body. The logical march here is
Speaker 3: from creatures that are alives, have bodies, don't have nervous systems,
Speaker 3: to creatures that eventually our life have bodies and have
Speaker 3: nervous systems. And minds and consciousness are ultimately the product
Speaker 3: of a particular relationship between the living organisms body and
Speaker 3: the nervous system in that body. It's not that the
Speaker 3: nervous system is plucked and putting this inside our bodies
Speaker 3: and clear inside our skull and charged with creating minds
Speaker 3: and creating consciousness. Not at all. I mean, of course,
Speaker 3: you cannot have minds and consciousness without a nervous system.
Speaker 3: But the nervous system is there as a partner in
Speaker 3: the process that can lead to better life regulation. The
Speaker 3: nervous system is a servant of homeostasies the same way
Speaker 3: that the body in general is a possessor of homeostatic
Speaker 3: operations that will allow that organism, that the living thing,
Speaker 3: to continue for a lot of amount of time.
Speaker 1: Well, it sounds like there are implications there for those
Speaker 1: who argue we might be able to upload our brain
Speaker 1: someday and continue our consciousness. It sounds like you're saying, no,
Speaker 1: that's not going to be possible, because the brain is
Speaker 1: not only conscious.
Speaker 2: Conscious is not only in the brain, right.
Speaker 3: Exactly, So, the consciousness by when you analyze what it
Speaker 3: really means to be conscious, when you come back to
Speaker 3: the thought that I advanced for you, which is that
Speaker 3: it's about knowing that I am here in my body
Speaker 3: in this life and that the things that I have
Speaker 3: in my mind, the representations I have, do not belong
Speaker 3: somewhere else, do not belong in another or their might.
Speaker 3: How do I know that their mind? Well, they know
Speaker 3: that their mind because my nervous system is in constant
Speaker 3: interaction the organism in which it is located and without
Speaker 3: which it could not live.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I totally get it, and I want to.
Speaker 1: I just want to just for people who are not
Speaker 1: as cognitive scientists, they're maybe listening to some of our conversation.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of technical terms are throwing around, But
Speaker 1: one implication I see from one of this as well,
Speaker 1: with the upholding of the brain, is that we may
Speaker 1: be able to uphold and replicate a mind, but not consciousness. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, maybe might not even be able to do
Speaker 1: the mind. But it seems like at the very best,
Speaker 1: maybe what we can do is just replicate Scott Berry
Speaker 1: Kaufman's mind, but I'm never going to be able to
Speaker 1: identify it with the forces. Could be sitting in a
Speaker 1: that of zero ones.
Speaker 3: You got it, and you've got it right, And that's
Speaker 3: exactly it. And that's of course we don't need to
Speaker 3: go there, but that's exactly One of the problems about
Speaker 3: official intelligence right now is that you can with our
Speaker 3: current capabilities, we can have something like the contents of
Speaker 3: your mind in an artificial normally creature. If you're going
Speaker 3: to make it conscious, that's another story. And for that,
Speaker 3: you know, it's almost an absurdity to think it could
Speaker 3: be conscious if it's not living, because the entire thing
Speaker 3: of the entire notion of consciousness is right now, you
Speaker 3: can have a simile lacra of consciousness. I have no
Speaker 3: problem with that. In fact, we have a paper that
Speaker 3: probably you may know about. The paper is in Nature
Speaker 3: Machine Intelligence on whether on how you make this linkage
Speaker 3: between between a robot and a real body with minds
Speaker 3: and conscious capabilities, and it is a it's an interesting
Speaker 3: thing to discuss.
Speaker 1: That is very interesting, and we are shooting towards the top.
Speaker 1: I understand. I totally get we haven't gone through all
Speaker 1: the steps yet, and of what is feeling?
Speaker 2: I have a million other.
Speaker 1: Questions that we're 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?
Speaker 2: And then and then why not let's have fun. Let's
Speaker 2: link that to.
Speaker 1: Whether or not we'll be able to create feeling machines
Speaker 1: as an implication of that.
Speaker 3: Okay, very good. Well, so, just a little teaching point
Speaker 3: for people that are sort of cutting a little of
Speaker 3: these terms like feeling and emotion. Very often, when people
Speaker 3: think feeling or hear the words feeling, they immediately portray
Speaker 3: an emotion, and of course that's the beginning of disaster
Speaker 3: because the two things are in fact associated one all
Speaker 3: the time, but plenty plenty of the time they're not.
Speaker 3: So we could start by saying this, what came first,
Speaker 3: feelings or emotions, And in all likelihood feelings did, because
Speaker 3: feelings are in fact mental expressions of certain states of
Speaker 3: the organism to begin with, and to begin with that
Speaker 3: to add with, because when you have an emotional feeling,
Speaker 3: you are also dealing with a state of your organisms.
Speaker 3: But let's start with feelings the way they likely began
Speaker 3: in the history of life, and the feelings that must
Speaker 3: have been. The first were what I call homeostatic feelings,
Speaker 3: and they occurred in creatures with nervous systems. That's very
Speaker 3: important to realize. And by the way, on once you
Speaker 3: remember the strong link that I have between feelings and consciousness,
Speaker 3: you again to have this link between feeling and consciousness
Speaker 3: and nervous systems, you know, it doesn't make any sense
Speaker 3: to talk about it. If they're no nervous systems, they
Speaker 3: don't need any feelings if you systems anyway, So what feeling.
Speaker 3: There's anesthetic feelings first to give in an organism that
Speaker 3: is multi sealuble and has the systems, is a sense
Speaker 3: actually a mental representation of something important that is happening
Speaker 3: in that body, such as, for example, being hungry or
Speaker 3: being thirsty, or having pain or feeling damn good. Those
Speaker 3: are the fundamental aesthetic feelings. Desire is too, but if
Speaker 3: we don't need to go there to earning them, monitor
Speaker 3: the desire.
Speaker 1: It's 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.
Speaker 3: Okay, So, what what is Hider telling you? You and
Speaker 3: only you? It's telling you that there's a good time
Speaker 3: to have energy brought into your body, and that's unlacking.
Speaker 3: And if you're thirsty, it's telling you something. And by
Speaker 3: the way, totally conscious right there. And then that's great
Speaker 3: consciousness first emergence. It's telling you in no uncertain terms,
Speaker 3: this is lacking. You need this, And of course it's
Speaker 3: not telling you in so many words. Doesn't use words.
Speaker 3: It does use the language of feeling with its spontaneous, natural,
Speaker 3: occurring consciousness. And that's why I like to say that
Speaker 3: feelings were the inaugural events of consciousness one fine day,
Speaker 3: after lots of variations on the theme of organism regulation,
Speaker 3: this magic motion occurred within living organisms with nervous systems,
Speaker 3: and that was feeling, and it is so successful. It
Speaker 3: is so good telling you immediately drink, eat, recoil from
Speaker 3: an attack, do something because you're having pain and it's
Speaker 3: probably going to kill you, do something to prevent it
Speaker 3: or avoid it, or go to the doctor. All of
Speaker 3: those things were extremely informational. They were giving you therein
Speaker 3: then useful information to maintain your life. There's no way
Speaker 3: you could have proceeded life in a complicated organism with
Speaker 3: multice nervous system if you did not have that information.
Speaker 3: In other words, you went rapidly from five hundred million
Speaker 3: years ago. You went rapidly from having organisms that, unless
Speaker 3: they were lucky, they would die to organisms that even
Speaker 3: if they were not like lucky, they had enough information
Speaker 3: to do something useful about that life and to read
Speaker 3: use the risk of death. And this makes perfect sense
Speaker 3: from an evolutionary perspective, and that's where I think consciousness
Speaker 3: began at the level of feeling. Now, because you wanted
Speaker 3: me to say things about feeling for your listeners, then
Speaker 3: I will also say that the confusion with emotion is
Speaker 3: a problem because what developed in living creatures as emotions,
Speaker 3: which don't develop with humans developed before and of course
Speaker 3: are theatricals. There are certain kinds of expression that you
Speaker 3: can have in the body and in the face once
Speaker 3: you have a face that is manipulable with different muscle groups.
Speaker 3: It's certain kinds of expressions that register something that is
Speaker 3: happening to you, something that is in the environment, some
Speaker 3: reaction that you have to others. Examples feeling an emotion
Speaker 3: of fear when you are recoiling from something that potentially
Speaker 3: may attack and which is accompanied by a feeling of fear.
Speaker 3: So this is where things get extremely complicated and people
Speaker 3: really need to think a little bit, because then it's
Speaker 3: clear as daylight. When you are having the emotion fear,
Speaker 3: your eyes bulge, you pull back and blow and behold,
Speaker 3: your body changed. And because your body changed, those changes
Speaker 3: are what produced the feeling of fear. But the emotion
Speaker 3: itself is a set of actions. By the way, the
Speaker 3: word emotion etemologically it's perfect. It's about the Latin air modery.
Speaker 3: It's to move to the outside. You have its an
Speaker 3: actor studio. You know, you're just doing things. And by
Speaker 3: the way, if you have anger, the same thing. You know,
Speaker 3: it's a different sort of theatricals. But it's again represented
Speaker 3: in your body. And if you are terribly if you
Speaker 3: want to seduce somebody, you also do the corresponding theatricals.
Speaker 3: Then they also are felt because they are represented internally
Speaker 3: with your nervous system, and they can end up being
Speaker 3: a feeling, which is subjective. Emotions by themselves are not subjective.
Speaker 3: Emotions by themselves are directed to the outside.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so that's something I'm trying to understand about. In
Speaker 1: terms of the chicken and egg thing, here and the
Speaker 1: way you described it, it was like emotions come first
Speaker 1: and then it influences your feelings. But you had said
Speaker 1: prior that through the course of human evolution, feelings probably
Speaker 1: came first, exactly.
Speaker 3: So that's where you need to distinguish between the horty
Speaker 3: aesthetic and the emotional in a proper set. So the
Speaker 3: things that came first were the homeostatic feelings, and probably
Speaker 3: the creatures that had homostatic feelings, if I would have
Speaker 3: to guess, and I wouldn't bet anything on it, but
Speaker 3: if I would have to guess, they did not have emotions.
Speaker 3: They had feelings because they were having representations, mental representations
Speaker 3: of the state of the body, their bodies, and that
Speaker 3: was the critical issue here. That's why this has a logic,
Speaker 3: which is the logic of life and the logic of
Speaker 3: survival that came first because it was so important for
Speaker 3: that organism. When you start having emotions, it's at a
Speaker 3: point in which you have already some complex interactions with
Speaker 3: other beings, and those other beings can cross you and
Speaker 3: you get angry, or they can do something, or the
Speaker 3: environment can do something that threatened zoo and you get
Speaker 3: fear and so forth. So it's a different stage, and
Speaker 3: it's actually more It reflects a greater complexity of the organism,
Speaker 3: although in the end they don't need to be more
Speaker 3: complex as phenomena, but they're reflecting something else. But all
Speaker 3: of this can end up felt, and felt simply means
Speaker 3: that you automatically know it's in you, it's in your organism,
Speaker 3: and that also means that you are automatically conscious. The
Speaker 3: two things have to go together.
Speaker 1: I hear what you're saying. I'm just trying to think
Speaker 1: this through my own personal life, because my gosh, you're right.
Speaker 1: We are such social humans, you know, the humans are
Speaker 1: such social beings, I should say, And there is a
Speaker 1: performative aspect to emotions, which I'm now thinking in my head, like,
Speaker 1: am I ever when I'm just having like an imagination
Speaker 1: of things? Do I ever recoil in fear in the
Speaker 1: same way physically on the outside, I would look like
Speaker 1: if I was with another person and we were both
Speaker 1: recounting the experience. I'm trying to do the experiment in
Speaker 1: my head to verify what you're saying scientifically, and it's yeah,
Speaker 1: you're you're right. I never really thought about that really, Yeah,
Speaker 1: so we may have feelings when we're lost in our
Speaker 1: own thoughts and when we're in touch with our.
Speaker 2: 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.
Speaker 3: You're right, Oh, I think it's absolutely social. And I
Speaker 3: think that you know, it's part of for example, you,
Speaker 3: as you are communicating with me, your face has been
Speaker 3: animated now several times by for example, a smile. True,
Speaker 3: you smile when you were wondering what I was saying,
Speaker 3: is probably right, and you smile in consonants. But that
Speaker 3: is I don't think it's theatricals in the sense that
Speaker 3: it was totally delibrated by you. It's probably part of
Speaker 3: your repertoire emotional of emotional phenomenon when you communicate with others,
Speaker 3: because you have been doing it all your life, if
Speaker 3: you have adjusted yourself to the same spe all sorts
Speaker 3: of things that would be of that kind, or for example,
Speaker 3: the way your face is on a couple of times
Speaker 3: already manifested doubt in relation to what I was saying. Oh,
Speaker 3: being puzzled, but puzzled in a way that was probably
Speaker 3: not positive, which is perfectly fine, But you will register
Speaker 3: or what you're doing right now, you know which you are.
Speaker 3: You know the fact that I said, it's perfectly fine,
Speaker 3: you reacted with laughter and quite behind exactly. But but
Speaker 3: but that is it's all. It's part of the interaction.
Speaker 3: You're doing it along with me in this social interaction.
Speaker 3: And this has very little to do with being hungry
Speaker 3: or being thirsty or being in pain. You know, those
Speaker 3: are different things. Those are spontaneously occurring in relation to
Speaker 3: what your nervous system is getting in an interaction with
Speaker 3: its own body, or I like to say the opposite,
Speaker 3: it's the organism's own nervous system, because that's the way
Speaker 3: that that's the way it is, and it is it's
Speaker 3: completely different. But by the way, one thing so that
Speaker 3: in case we end up because this is so interesting
Speaker 3: and we're doing in so many directions, so that I
Speaker 3: don't forget there's something fundamentally different about the perception of
Speaker 3: our body by our nervous system and the perception of
Speaker 3: the outside world. So for example, right now I'm perceiving you,
Speaker 3: and I can look out and perceive the you know,
Speaker 3: the cinemonic amounts. There's no way that the I can
Speaker 3: go interactively with the cineamonic amount montas only with you,
Speaker 3: that's the level of the perceptual object. But with my
Speaker 3: body that happens. So if my body sends a signal
Speaker 3: from one particular point, say, for example, I'm actually I'm
Speaker 3: having pain in an act. Sorry to say, you're not
Speaker 3: opinion anyway, And that's because I was moving books yesterday
Speaker 3: and the day before and one of the times I
Speaker 3: carried too many books in one go and I twisted
Speaker 3: muscles and I have a pain. But it's interesting is
Speaker 3: that there's there's signals that are coming from the muscles,
Speaker 3: that the muscle fibers that have been disrupted and fromly torn,
Speaker 3: and they are going into the spinal cording in this
Speaker 3: case the brainstead and then the central nervous system un
Speaker 3: all the way up to the to the context, although
Speaker 3: in many cases don't need to, Okay, well, it's interesting
Speaker 3: is that the signals come in and literally ascend in
Speaker 3: the nervous system. But the nervous system as the possible
Speaker 3: needed to respond to the origin of the perception. So
Speaker 3: we have a cross stock between our body, it's non
Speaker 3: neural components and the nervous system. The non neural components
Speaker 3: of the body talk to the nervous system. The nervous
Speaker 3: system talks back one thing that it does that you
Speaker 3: experience constantly, as to do with pain or as to
Speaker 3: do with itch. For example, if you have an itch
Speaker 3: in your skin, skin is dry, itchy, Well, it's itchy
Speaker 3: for a bit. You can scratch it a bit and
Speaker 3: we'll go. But then we'll come back. But then after
Speaker 3: a while, even if you don't do anything about it,
Speaker 3: it will go, and it will go because the simple
Speaker 3: never system is sending signals back to that place, doing
Speaker 3: at the local level chemical corrections of the environment so
Speaker 3: that the thing gets suggested. So it's never the case
Speaker 3: that you have a body here and a nervous system here,
Speaker 3: like I have my brain here and you on the screen.
Speaker 3: There's no way that screen and you are going to
Speaker 3: do anything to my nervous system directly, whereas in the
Speaker 3: case of interception that happens all the time. So that's
Speaker 3: another fundamental way, which by the way, has been completely
Speaker 3: neglected by anybody that is doing theory on consciousness. With
Speaker 3: extremely rare exceptions, there's no way that you can understand
Speaker 3: this phenomenon without achnowledgy interception. That is the perception of
Speaker 3: the interior quote unquote is different in its design, in
Speaker 3: its operation, from the perception of the outside work. Is
Speaker 3: that two things that are computed different. Now, of course,
Speaker 3: in our in our high functioning minds and brains, it
Speaker 3: all works together very well. Yes, they are different, and
Speaker 3: that's those those differences that give you an entry into
Speaker 3: problems like consciousness and that you can explore and exploit
Speaker 3: to your advantage for sure.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you're a psychopath, you know you can.
Speaker 1: Absolutely there's a real huge distinction between feelings and emotions,
Speaker 1: and if you're an actor, there's a huge distinction. But
Speaker 1: it seems like in most people's everyday lives there's a
Speaker 1: great feedback between the two that makes it more genuine,
Speaker 1: so to speak. In my view, there seems to be
Speaker 1: something different between the way I'm responding to you socially today,
Speaker 1: an actor would respond to you because I am feeling
Speaker 1: things that are correlated at a p less than point
Speaker 1: zero five level with the expression on my face. So
Speaker 1: it's not completely random, you know what.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, I totally agree with you. Yeah, And the connection
Speaker 3: to acting is only useful to give to bring home
Speaker 3: the point that certain things can be fabricated as a
Speaker 3: level of actions, because they have to begin with actions.
Speaker 3: And of course, what we call a great actor is
Speaker 3: someone that can do those expressions so well that it
Speaker 3: looks spontaneously real as opposed to being fabricated by technique.
Speaker 1: You know what, I would even go one step further
Speaker 1: and say, probably the best actors are those that have
Speaker 1: a really good congruence between a fabricated emotion and then
Speaker 1: the genuine experience that.
Speaker 3: I totally agreat and I think and that actually speaks
Speaker 3: to the distinctions for example, actor studio actors and non
Speaker 3: extra studio actors have that kind of difference.
Speaker 2: They're good.
Speaker 1: It's such a talent, it's so amazing. I mean, I
Speaker 1: obviously can you learn that, but I do think there's
Speaker 1: a certain talent component in there as well. And that's
Speaker 1: a fascinating question, is what is that talent component?
Speaker 2: You know, it makes you good to that.
Speaker 1: I love thinking about the aberrations or the outliers to
Speaker 1: lots of this.
Speaker 2: Kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: You know, we started thinking about things like schizophrenia, you know,
Speaker 1: and the way that those that mind is the different
Speaker 1: connection altered brain network connections.
Speaker 2: In people's schizophrenia.
Speaker 1: Would you say that when they're having a psychotic episode
Speaker 1: that they're not Let's say they're having a disassociative episode
Speaker 1: where they're not identifying their contents of their mind with themselves.
Speaker 1: Would you argue that in those states, schizophrenic patients are
Speaker 1: not conscious?
Speaker 2: Are your definition?
Speaker 3: Oh no, no, no, no, I never never argue that. No.
Speaker 3: I think they are conscious because there is a there's
Speaker 3: something Scott's said, something that I want to tell you
Speaker 3: because you're interested in this and also to your listeners.
Speaker 3: There's something very beautiful about feelings, whatever they are. There
Speaker 3: is the continuity. Amnisthetic feelings have a continuity. That's something
Speaker 3: that you know. While against somebody said, oh, so you
Speaker 3: talk about the amnisthetic feelings and you say that anisthetic
Speaker 3: feelings are the reason why you are conscious, and that
Speaker 3: you require them to be conscious spontaneously. And so but
Speaker 3: since I'm not hungry all the time, and I'm not
Speaker 3: harmy all the time, and I'm not at first the
Speaker 3: all the time, and then what happens that when I
Speaker 3: become unconscious between my hunger and thirst episodes, and I said, no,
Speaker 3: you're you're you're constantly feeling. You have this continuous feeling
Speaker 3: of being alive. I've called it several times, a feeling
Speaker 3: of existence, the feeling of being alive. It's if you
Speaker 3: if you meditate a little bit, but if you just
Speaker 3: be quiet, you real you realize that there's something hummy
Speaker 3: in you, which is being alive, and which, by the way,
Speaker 3: if you would not be alive, which you would not
Speaker 3: notice it. Do you know that for sure?
Speaker 2: Are you sure?
Speaker 1: Do we know that for sure?
Speaker 3: No? I don't don't.
Speaker 2: I don't matter.
Speaker 3: I don't know that for sure. I suspect strongly anyway.
Speaker 3: So this feeling of continuity is extremely important. So when
Speaker 3: when you I have to tell you that I've not
Speaker 3: I've thought about feelings in psychiatric conditions on purpose sort
Speaker 3: of avoided thinking about feelings in schizophrenia that I've thought
Speaker 3: about them in diversion, for example. And I think there's
Speaker 3: always a continuity, a feeling of existence. It's there, and
Speaker 3: it's humming along because you are in this interaction between
Speaker 3: the nervous system and the and the body. So it's inevitable.
Speaker 3: So you could say that the other feelings, the feelings
Speaker 3: of anger, of thirst, and so forth, a sort of
Speaker 3: if you plot it as a running graph, are things
Speaker 3: that come the crest on top of that hamming up
Speaker 3: and down. Feeling is constantly there on your monitor as
Speaker 3: the feeling of life, the feeling of existence.
Speaker 1: But as I understand your theory, feeling is a necessary
Speaker 1: but not sufficient condition for consciousness. In order for conscious
Speaker 1: to occur, there needs to be this real coordinated operation
Speaker 1: of being, feeling and knowing, And it does seem like
Speaker 1: concerned schizophract patients, the knowing part is not there. So
Speaker 1: that's why I ask you the very point of question.
Speaker 1: According to your definition, it seems like you would say
Speaker 1: that they're not conscious even though they're feeling.
Speaker 3: No. But I think that the way in which you're
Speaker 3: taking that combination being feeling and knowing is not as
Speaker 3: literal as that. So, of course, what are the conditions
Speaker 3: you have to have a living organism. You have to
Speaker 3: have an organism that has a nervous system. You have
Speaker 3: the possibility of interactions of the nervous system and the
Speaker 3: rest of the body, and then you have the sort
Speaker 3: of bubbling bubbling up a sense, which is a feeling
Speaker 3: that there is life sticking in there. The knowing very
Speaker 3: interesting question do you need to be in addition to
Speaker 3: it being there spontaneously. No question is asked, do we
Speaker 3: need to have a reflection on I don't think so.
Speaker 3: And I think that what is failing in schizophrenia is
Speaker 3: that's the level of a reflection on what is happening
Speaker 3: in that organism?
Speaker 2: Is that be a ten?
Speaker 3: Yeah, So the question the spontaneous feeling of existence is
Speaker 3: still there. It doesn't go away, but it's quite interesting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm not letting go.
Speaker 1: I'm not letting this go because it is very interesting.
Speaker 1: It brings raises a lot of interesting questions I asked
Speaker 1: associative episodes.
Speaker 3: I'm going to I'm going to think very carefully about
Speaker 3: your question of schizophrenia, and I will send you an answer.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 1: I really truly appreciate that this is this is what
Speaker 1: a good scholarly conversation is about. So we're model that
Speaker 1: right now. So wonderful, beautiful. Let's talk about creativity a
Speaker 1: little bit. You know, it's a topic we both love,
Speaker 1: uh and the neuroscience of creativity. I know you're very
Speaker 1: interested in complex emotions, things like the bitter sweet. You know,
Speaker 1: my friend Susan Kane just wrote a whole book about
Speaker 1: this emotion bitter sweet. But I know that you're really
Speaker 1: interested in mixed valence emotions, and I'm I'm absolutely namored
Speaker 1: with that as well. What's the role of these kinds
Speaker 1: of mixed emotions and in helping us have more complex
Speaker 1: cognitive prostis like creativity and meaning making.
Speaker 3: M Yeah, everything's fair, the it goes in the mix.
Speaker 3: You know, creativity is such an extraordinary shield to look at.
Speaker 3: I think that depending on you see, it all depends
Speaker 3: on what you're working on, if you're if you're writing
Speaker 3: literary sentences, or if you're making, uh, if you're reading
Speaker 3: a painting or a sculpture. They're very different, different levels
Speaker 3: of operation, different complexities, and they all take they all
Speaker 3: exploit this amazing high level of consciousness that we have
Speaker 3: gotten to, which, by the way, is one of the
Speaker 3: reasons why people are so confused about consciousness and why
Speaker 3: it is so difficult to bring them down to the
Speaker 3: simple fact that feelings us containeous events in consciousness, because
Speaker 3: most of what people have been thinking and reading about creativity,
Speaker 3: about sorry about consciousness, has pulled them up and has
Speaker 3: taken them to not only high level consciousness, but to
Speaker 3: the consequences of high level consciousness in the form of
Speaker 3: the creative objects that are around us. So nobody ever
Speaker 3: started looking at consciousness from the bottom up. People start
Speaker 3: looking at consciousness in the extended consciousness that we have
Speaker 3: when we have this sort of literary sense of the
Speaker 3: universe together with the science that is a company and
Speaker 3: creativity is so central to this. But again it sort
Speaker 3: of pushes you up where you have consequences of being conscious,
Speaker 3: but where the real operations are no longer in the
Speaker 3: domain of consciousness, but rather in the domain of knowledge
Speaker 3: and creativity, in the domain of manipulation of knowledge. Now,
Speaker 3: of course, you couldn't manipulate that knowledge if you were
Speaker 3: not conscious to begin with, if you had not been
Speaker 3: so richly conscious that you gave two every little bit
Speaker 3: of knowledge that you have in your brain right now,
Speaker 3: you gave it the gift of conscious consciousness, which really
Speaker 3: means you gave it the possibility of connecting with your life.
Speaker 3: That's it. You're conscious, even if you're thinking. You have
Speaker 3: just been listening to particular passage of Walls Are or Bach.
Speaker 3: Those are so incredibly complex in the way they were
Speaker 3: written or in the way they're being performed by a supersoloist,
Speaker 3: and that is only available to you if you can
Speaker 3: bring down that threat into your body and if you
Speaker 3: can connect it to the state of your body. At
Speaker 3: that point, that's when consciousness occurred. But of course we
Speaker 3: have spent most of our lives thinking about it from
Speaker 3: the top at the level of extended consciousness. This is
Speaker 3: not even a good name. I told you, I coined it.
Speaker 3: So's yeah, I don't like to use extended. It's extended
Speaker 3: mine really consciousness.
Speaker 1: Well, I coumptaely agree with what you just said, and
Speaker 1: it links to my own work on reduced de latent
Speaker 1: inhibition and creativity and creative achievement work I did in
Speaker 1: my dissertation where creative people tend to have this reduced
Speaker 1: threshold for that pregating mechanism for kind of allowing in
Speaker 1: some of that more sensory information and not tagging things
Speaker 1: as irrelevant. There's also work that obviously, like people like
Speaker 1: Jordan Peterson and Shelley Carson did as well. So I
Speaker 1: think that's more of a bottom up approach along the
Speaker 1: lines of what you're talking about.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, yeah, absolutely, yeah, very good.
Speaker 2: Very good.
Speaker 1: Yes, I got it very good from the famous Antonio Demasia. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, in another area of creativity that I really
Speaker 1: am fascinated with, which I nerd out a lot with
Speaker 1: our mutual friend and colleague, Mary helen Imity Yang is
Speaker 1: the default mode network, And I'm wondering, I want to
Speaker 1: hear your thoughts about the default I just saw your
Speaker 1: emotion there on your face there when I said default
Speaker 1: mode network. What are your thoughts on that? And it's
Speaker 1: linkage to creativity?
Speaker 3: It's too earthy in the wanting for default network.
Speaker 2: I love that.
Speaker 3: I'm still out asleep.
Speaker 2: You don't want to go there?
Speaker 1: Well, it does seem like the default mode network, which
Speaker 1: is a network of brain areas in the medial surface
Speaker 1: of the prefrontal cortex primarily that seems to support a
Speaker 1: lot of different forms of social cognition, imagination, mental time
Speaker 1: travel into the future, and as Mary hand Helen imerdo
Speaker 1: Yang has talked about it's connection to meaning making and
Speaker 1: how that could potentially be connected to creativity. Do you,
Speaker 1: personally in your own work, do you do you see
Speaker 1: that as a central hub of creativity of the neuroscience
Speaker 1: of creativity.
Speaker 3: Assume you see it as a very important component, an
Speaker 3: important contributory. I don't know if I would call it
Speaker 3: the central hobbit, but something and important. Oh yeah, absolutely, absolutely,
Speaker 3: you should talk about it. You know about it.
Speaker 2: I know about it. Well.
Speaker 1: The thing that fascinates me about the defaultal network, and
Speaker 1: in relation to our conversation today, is that you can
Speaker 1: kind of to be poetic about it when you're jamming
Speaker 1: in the space of your default network, when you're improvising,
Speaker 1: when you're just in touch with the stream of your mind,
Speaker 1: not necessarily consciousness, but the mind, right, the stream of mind.
Speaker 2: Or we William James, you know, called it. You called
Speaker 2: it the stream of conscious he called it. You should
Speaker 2: have called it the stream of mind.
Speaker 3: I just realized.
Speaker 2: I just realized that.
Speaker 1: But it seems like when we're jamming in the stream
Speaker 1: of our mind, great amazing creative things to come out,
Speaker 1: you know, when you're doing jazz and provisation, when you're
Speaker 1: trying to again the state where you're doing poetry. So
Speaker 1: it does seem like consciousness is not conscious can even
Speaker 1: get in the way sometimes of creative generation.
Speaker 3: It could. That's that's that's a perfectly perfectly reasonable thought. Yeah, absolutely, yeah, maybe.
Speaker 2: Maybe you.
Speaker 3: It might not be bad at certain points to sort
Speaker 3: of separate yourself from that hook, that from from the
Speaker 3: fangs of consciousness. Yeah, yeah, yeah, maybe maybe maybe that's
Speaker 3: exactly you know, flights of poetic fancy are exactly moments
Speaker 3: in which you make that link more tenuous about that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And obviously we can't stay in that state all
Speaker 1: the time twenty four to seven.
Speaker 2: Oh no, no, it wouldn't be good for it.
Speaker 3: No, it wouldn't be See that's another interesting call of it,
Speaker 3: because that it would move you away from the The
Speaker 3: really life saving consequences of being conscious basically have to
Speaker 3: do with the house management, you know, consciousness basically it's
Speaker 3: all about keeping keeping the thing going as well as possible.
Speaker 3: And then there's the flights of fancy that's in another.
Speaker 2: In another sphere, another sphere.
Speaker 3: Can I have a question where we have to go
Speaker 3: very very soon? So can I ask you a question?
Speaker 2: Of course?
Speaker 3: Of course? So are you really interested in ben Psychis?
Speaker 1: I think it's interesting, but I don't. I'm very skeptical.
Speaker 3: Yeah you don't. You don't buy it.
Speaker 2: I'm skeptical of it, but I haven't not bought it yet.
Speaker 2: I haven't bought it yet either. I'm still thinking about
Speaker 2: whether I should buy it. But yeah, yeah, I'm skeptical.
Speaker 2: But some of my closest friends, you know, like Anka
Speaker 2: Harris in her own right, she wrote a book and consciousness.
Speaker 2: She loves it. She loves it.
Speaker 1: Philip Golf, Philip Golf loves it. He'll tell he was
Speaker 1: on my podcast. He was extolling the merits of it.
Speaker 3: You know, I know, I know, I know, I know,
Speaker 3: I know. I know that people that are very much
Speaker 3: like as people that can think that there's there's nothing
Speaker 3: wrong with it other than being wrong. There's nothing wrong
Speaker 3: with there's wrong if you fall for it forever.
Speaker 1: Well, I will say, uh, sort of ending here today,
Speaker 1: I really do see your the logic of what you've
Speaker 1: outlined and why consciousness seems to require the coordinated effort
Speaker 1: of these three called them systems in a way, these
Speaker 1: three elements of the body that interacting with each other
Speaker 1: in very unique ways. And but this this element that
Speaker 1: the nervous system is an important part of it does
Speaker 1: have deep loications. We never answered the machine question, So
Speaker 1: maybe we should end on that one because we had
Speaker 1: that threads. That's a thread that's still open. Can we
Speaker 1: ever have filling machines? And you have argued in your
Speaker 1: book a new generation of filling machines can probably become
Speaker 1: efficacious assistance to really feeling humans as hybrids of natural
Speaker 1: and artificial creatures. No less important. This new generation of
Speaker 1: machines would constitute a unique laboratory for the investigation of
Speaker 1: human behavior and mind in a variety of actual, realistic settings.
Speaker 1: So that's exciting coming down the pipeline. And when we
Speaker 1: can start to meld fast computer processors with the nervous
Speaker 1: system so we can get the coordinated effort of the
Speaker 1: elements you talk about in a way that has like
Speaker 1: a super duper hyped up processing capability, that could be.
Speaker 2: Party some interesting forms of consciousness, right.
Speaker 3: And you would have to have some kind of body
Speaker 3: aspect to it and others. You will need to mimic
Speaker 3: certain properties of a living organism in order to get
Speaker 3: to it with any hope of success. Y and right
Speaker 3: now we don't have that, but I think it's pertually possible. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it's possible.
Speaker 1: And Tonia, oh my man, thank you so much for
Speaker 1: this chat today. It really was delightful to talk to you.
Speaker 1: We should keep up the nerdy conversation.
Speaker 3: Very good anytime. I enjoyed talking to you.
Speaker 2: So much with your book. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 1: To this episode of The Psychology Podcast. If you'd like
Speaker 1: to react in some way to something you heard, I
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Speaker 1: the mind, brain, behavior, and creativity.