WEBVTT - The Consciousness Problem 0:00:00.160 --> 0:00:07.200 Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to 0:00:07.400 --> 0:00:14.560 Forward Thinking. Hey there, and welcome to Forward Thinking, the 0:00:14.720 --> 0:00:17.639 podcast that looks at the future and says, Hello, is 0:00:17.640 --> 0:00:20.919 there anybody in there? I'm Jonathan Strickland, I'm Lauren Bob, 0:00:21.120 --> 0:00:24.799 and I'm Joe McCormick. Hey everybody. Yeah, Joe, I have 0:00:24.800 --> 0:00:31.200 a question for you, ask away, Are you conscious? Barely? Yeah? Yeah, 0:00:31.240 --> 0:00:33.800 I was gonna make a similar statement, but I will 0:00:33.840 --> 0:00:36.639 say that I am confident that I'm conscious. I'm not 0:00:36.760 --> 0:00:39.640 confident that that's my preferable state of being right at 0:00:39.640 --> 0:00:45.040 this very moment. Well, I'm not conscious. Um, so you're 0:00:45.080 --> 0:00:49.159 just I just wanted the You're just speaking unconsciously? You 0:00:49.200 --> 0:00:54.120 are you are channeling some sort of unconscious mind. No, no, no, 0:00:54.200 --> 0:00:58.560 I'm what philosophers, some philosophers might refer to as a 0:00:58.760 --> 0:01:03.000 p zombie. I display all of the outward appearance of 0:01:03.040 --> 0:01:06.000 being a conscious entity, but I have no inner experience. 0:01:06.160 --> 0:01:10.480 I have no quality of They might say, ah, got you. Well, 0:01:10.520 --> 0:01:14.640 the whole purpose of this, uh, this charming intro where 0:01:14.680 --> 0:01:18.400 we discover that our friend and compatriot Joe is in 0:01:18.480 --> 0:01:22.000 fact not what he seems to be. He only that's 0:01:22.040 --> 0:01:24.160 all he is. I guess it is really so. I 0:01:24.160 --> 0:01:26.600 guess it's the opposite that he's exactly what he seems 0:01:26.680 --> 0:01:29.479 to be and no more than that. Uh, we wanted 0:01:29.480 --> 0:01:32.560 to talk about consciousness, and as it turns out, I mean, 0:01:32.600 --> 0:01:35.720 this is a subject that has been a matter of 0:01:35.800 --> 0:01:40.840 discussion in philosophical circles for centuries. I mean, this is 0:01:40.880 --> 0:01:44.200 one of those things like, yeah, exactly what there's there 0:01:44.240 --> 0:01:49.840 there's evidence of preliterate cultures having at least some concept 0:01:50.280 --> 0:01:54.080 of things that tie into consciousness. And there's gonna be 0:01:54.120 --> 0:01:57.800 a lot of vague discussion in this episode, mainly because 0:01:57.880 --> 0:02:02.240 consciousness is it's tricky to even define it, right, Yeah, 0:02:02.400 --> 0:02:06.600 there's sort of a question here. Is consciousness a matter 0:02:06.680 --> 0:02:09.440 of philosophy something we just sort of reason and talk 0:02:09.520 --> 0:02:12.240 about in the abstract, or is it a question that 0:02:12.440 --> 0:02:15.960 is susceptible to science? Can you scientifically? Is there a 0:02:15.960 --> 0:02:19.680 mechanism that is consciousness? Is there is there something that 0:02:19.720 --> 0:02:22.480 we can point to in the brain and say this 0:02:22.600 --> 0:02:25.440 is where consciousness comes from and this is what it means. 0:02:25.840 --> 0:02:27.720 So for the longest time, this was sort of the 0:02:27.720 --> 0:02:30.440 realm of the philosophers. There were really weren't a whole 0:02:30.480 --> 0:02:34.200 lot of scientific inroads to consciousness. Yeah. I mean it's 0:02:34.240 --> 0:02:37.960 one of those things where John Locke, the seventeenth century philosopher, 0:02:38.280 --> 0:02:41.320 was talking about how consciousness had to be essential for 0:02:41.480 --> 0:02:44.760 thought and for personal identity. This isn't, by the way 0:02:44.960 --> 0:02:48.480 of you, that many philosophers, but not all philosophers share. 0:02:49.040 --> 0:02:52.560 We're gonna be talking a lot about philosophers early in 0:02:52.600 --> 0:02:57.440 this episode and just kind of the different perspectives when 0:02:57.480 --> 0:03:01.079 it comes to consciousness. Well, yeah, I think the philosophical 0:03:01.120 --> 0:03:04.639 perspectives are a good way to begin this discussion because 0:03:04.680 --> 0:03:08.200 we're going to talk about some new scientific discoveries, yeah, 0:03:08.240 --> 0:03:11.840 that are related to consciousness. So there's this idea you 0:03:11.880 --> 0:03:15.320 may have heard of. It's called the hard problem of consciousness. 0:03:15.680 --> 0:03:18.040 Are you familiar with this? It's usually what I think 0:03:18.080 --> 0:03:20.680 when I'm trying desperately to go to sleep and insomnia 0:03:20.720 --> 0:03:23.520 has taken hold. Right, that's the hard problem. Yeah, that's 0:03:23.560 --> 0:03:26.079 basically right. No, that's not it at all. So okay, Well, 0:03:26.080 --> 0:03:29.880 I have a fundamental misunderstanding. Joe Pray, do elaborate and 0:03:30.040 --> 0:03:33.720 enlighten me. Okay, So for a while now, some philosophers 0:03:33.720 --> 0:03:37.520 have divided questions about consciousness into basically two categories. You 0:03:37.560 --> 0:03:41.520 have the hard problem and then you have the easy problems. 0:03:41.600 --> 0:03:46.360 Problems plural with easy. So the Australian philosopher David Chalmers, 0:03:46.520 --> 0:03:48.760 he's written a lot about this, and in the nineteen 0:03:49.480 --> 0:03:52.760 paper called Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness he 0:03:52.960 --> 0:03:56.240 defined the easy problems as the ones that pretty much 0:03:56.280 --> 0:04:01.000 everybody can admit can potentially be solved by science. So 0:04:01.040 --> 0:04:05.640 the easy problems include things like locating the mechanisms behind 0:04:05.800 --> 0:04:11.480 individual cognitive functions, for example, the ability to discriminate, categorize, 0:04:11.480 --> 0:04:15.000 and react to environmental stimuli. These are his words. Now, uh, 0:04:15.080 --> 0:04:19.960 the integration of information behind a cognitive system, the reportability 0:04:20.040 --> 0:04:23.640 of mental states, the ability of a system to access 0:04:23.720 --> 0:04:28.200 its own internal states, the focus of attention, the deliberate 0:04:28.200 --> 0:04:31.839 control of behavior, the difference between wakefulness and sleep. Those 0:04:31.839 --> 0:04:36.480 are just some examples he listed. So the idea is, okay, 0:04:36.560 --> 0:04:39.160 I think pretty much everybody's on board. We can find 0:04:39.320 --> 0:04:42.440 the things that are happening in the brain that cause 0:04:42.560 --> 0:04:46.080 each of those, the regions of the brain responsible, and 0:04:46.120 --> 0:04:52.679 the actual processes that manifest. Yeah, these might be now 0:04:52.839 --> 0:04:55.640 he called them easy sort of in context. These might 0:04:55.720 --> 0:04:59.120 in practice be very very hard to solve, easy in 0:04:59.160 --> 0:05:03.839 the sense that it is probably possible rather than something 0:05:03.880 --> 0:05:07.520 that is probably impossible. So as difficult as these might be, 0:05:07.600 --> 0:05:10.520 to suss out what is his hard problem yea. So 0:05:10.800 --> 0:05:16.320 Chalmers defines the hard problem as quote the problem of experience, 0:05:16.400 --> 0:05:18.720 and he goes on to say, when we think and perceive, 0:05:18.880 --> 0:05:22.440 there is a whir of information processing, but there is 0:05:22.480 --> 0:05:26.200 also a subjective aspect, as Nagel has put it in 0:05:26.240 --> 0:05:29.719 he's referring to the philosopher Thomas Nagel, there is quote 0:05:29.880 --> 0:05:33.400 something it is like to be a conscious organism. This 0:05:33.520 --> 0:05:38.159 subjective aspect is experience. So he he also later on 0:05:38.200 --> 0:05:40.360 in the paper sort of tries to say, maybe it's 0:05:40.360 --> 0:05:44.000 easier to just use the term experience rather than consciousness, 0:05:44.120 --> 0:05:47.040 because that's really what the hard problem of consciousness is 0:05:47.080 --> 0:05:51.720 all about. What generates this thing we know as experience. 0:05:52.000 --> 0:05:55.520 You are having an experience right now, Lauren, and you 0:05:55.560 --> 0:05:58.360 are having one, Jonathan, but I am not having one 0:05:58.480 --> 0:06:02.839 because I'm a p zombie uh or or Rock probably 0:06:02.920 --> 0:06:05.920 is not having one as far as we know. What 0:06:06.040 --> 0:06:08.640 causes this. Now, there's this group of people who are 0:06:08.640 --> 0:06:13.640 often referred to maybe disparagingly. Maybe not as the new mysterians, 0:06:13.920 --> 0:06:17.440 they're the philosophers who have basically concluded that the second problem, 0:06:17.520 --> 0:06:21.440 the hard problem of consciousness or experience, will never be 0:06:21.480 --> 0:06:24.839 solved by humans. In other words, while we may learn 0:06:24.880 --> 0:06:27.400 more and more about the brain and the individual functions 0:06:27.400 --> 0:06:29.680 of the brain, we're just never really going to be 0:06:29.720 --> 0:06:33.720 able to understand the origins of this, uh, this complex 0:06:33.920 --> 0:06:38.320 final product of brain called experience. So there are a 0:06:38.360 --> 0:06:41.000 lot of different ways you could arrive at this conclusion. 0:06:41.920 --> 0:06:43.800 There might be some people who could see like a 0:06:43.839 --> 0:06:47.400 technical problem with the inquiry or the questions, say you're 0:06:47.440 --> 0:06:50.840 not framing it right. Or they might define consciousness in 0:06:50.880 --> 0:06:54.080 such a way that makes the search for a mechanism impossible. 0:06:54.680 --> 0:06:58.080 Or you could have duellists who that means somebody who 0:06:58.080 --> 0:07:01.560 thinks that the mind and the brain are actually separate substances. 0:07:01.640 --> 0:07:04.240 There's like a soul or an over spirit, some kind 0:07:04.279 --> 0:07:08.440 of other spiritual thing that controls consciousness and it's just 0:07:08.520 --> 0:07:11.160 not found in the brain. Or you might have people 0:07:11.160 --> 0:07:13.960 who accept the problem and the framing of the question 0:07:14.120 --> 0:07:16.720 and they agree that there might be a physical basis 0:07:16.760 --> 0:07:19.440 for the mind, but they just simply don't think that 0:07:19.520 --> 0:07:23.360 human minds are capable of solving the task. So, for 0:07:23.400 --> 0:07:26.040 an example of the final one, I found a quote 0:07:26.040 --> 0:07:29.280 by the British philosopher Colin McGinn in a two thousand 0:07:29.320 --> 0:07:32.400 twelve piece for The New Statesman called all Machine and 0:07:32.480 --> 0:07:39.560 No Ghost question mark um. So he says, paleo anthropologist 0:07:39.600 --> 0:07:42.240 have taught us that the human brain gradually evolved from 0:07:42.280 --> 0:07:47.520 ancestral brains, particularly in concert with practical toolmaking, centering on 0:07:47.560 --> 0:07:50.800 the anatomy of the human hand. This history shaped and 0:07:50.840 --> 0:07:54.360 constrained to the form of intelligence now housed in our skulls, 0:07:54.520 --> 0:07:57.680 as the lifestyle of other species form their set of 0:07:57.760 --> 0:08:02.560 cognitive skills. Chance is there that an intelligence geared to 0:08:02.640 --> 0:08:08.000 making stone tools and grounded in the contingent particularities of 0:08:08.000 --> 0:08:11.160 the human hand can aspire to uncover all the mysteries 0:08:11.160 --> 0:08:15.160 of the universe. Can omniscient spring from an opposable thumb? 0:08:15.640 --> 0:08:18.880 It seems unlikely, So why presume that the mysteries of 0:08:18.920 --> 0:08:22.800 consciousness will be revealed to a thumb shaped brain like ours? 0:08:23.280 --> 0:08:27.400 The quote mysterianism unquote I advocate, is really nothing more 0:08:27.440 --> 0:08:32.120 than the acknowledgement that human intelligence is a local, contingent temporal, 0:08:32.320 --> 0:08:36.880 practical and expendable feature of life on Earth, and incremental 0:08:37.000 --> 0:08:40.640 adaptation based on earlier forms of intelligence that no one 0:08:40.679 --> 0:08:47.079 would regard as fairly omniscient. Um I would argue that 0:08:47.160 --> 0:08:49.480 just his ability to frame it in such a way 0:08:49.720 --> 0:08:53.440 kind of dismisses his own argument at some extent, because 0:08:53.480 --> 0:08:56.640 what sort of how would you how would you say 0:08:56.679 --> 0:08:59.720 that if you take his premise that that you know, 0:09:00.080 --> 0:09:02.640 all of our achievement is and I know he's making 0:09:02.640 --> 0:09:05.960 a point, he's oversimplifying, but if you take this premise 0:09:06.040 --> 0:09:07.880 that a lot of our achievements are all due to 0:09:08.240 --> 0:09:12.199 this whole opposable thumb approach, you would never have reached 0:09:12.240 --> 0:09:14.560 a point where you could even frame an argument in 0:09:14.640 --> 0:09:18.840 that sense. It's I think it helps disprove itself. I 0:09:19.000 --> 0:09:22.200 get it. It's sort of an agnosticism of of we 0:09:22.240 --> 0:09:25.480 don't know and we can't know. I find that I 0:09:25.520 --> 0:09:28.800 find that personally a little pessimistic. I mean, I think 0:09:28.800 --> 0:09:32.040 of some of the achievements that have we have already 0:09:32.160 --> 0:09:36.280 as a species scene I mean not even recent ones, 0:09:36.320 --> 0:09:39.040 I'm talking throughout all of human history. That to me 0:09:39.240 --> 0:09:45.520 suggest that you should never really underestimate human ability and achievement. Yeah, 0:09:45.600 --> 0:09:48.560 I don't want to dismiss this point of view out 0:09:48.559 --> 0:09:50.760 of hand. At the point of view express McGain in 0:09:50.800 --> 0:09:53.280 the quote, I read like, I think there's some intelligence 0:09:53.320 --> 0:09:56.520 behind it, that there is some interesting thinking. But in 0:09:56.600 --> 0:09:58.679 the end I can't really go along with Yeah, I 0:09:59.520 --> 0:10:02.520 apprec sheet what he's saying, and and let's go ahead 0:10:02.559 --> 0:10:05.520 and say this. I am absolutely certain that he is 0:10:05.559 --> 0:10:07.680 far more intelligent than I am. I do not I 0:10:07.720 --> 0:10:11.320 do not mean to suggest otherwise, I just do do 0:10:11.360 --> 0:10:15.240 not agree with that particular philosophy. Well as as science 0:10:15.280 --> 0:10:18.560 minded people, or rather to science minded people and some 0:10:18.640 --> 0:10:23.760 kind of weird automaton um, we we have to believe that, 0:10:23.960 --> 0:10:26.120 I mean, you know, we like to believe generally that 0:10:26.200 --> 0:10:29.000 science is going to come up with answers. Yeah, the 0:10:29.040 --> 0:10:32.400 mysteries of the universe. So I guess that forces us 0:10:32.400 --> 0:10:36.720 to ask the question, has science found anything interesting that 0:10:37.000 --> 0:10:41.440 might bear on this question? So? Is there anything we 0:10:41.480 --> 0:10:44.960 can come back that the mysteriens with right now? Well, 0:10:45.160 --> 0:10:48.080 before we get into that, let's first just address the 0:10:48.120 --> 0:10:51.800 fact that this has been a difficult problem for science, 0:10:51.840 --> 0:10:54.720 not just for philosophy, because the human brain, as we 0:10:54.760 --> 0:10:58.360 have discussed in previous episodes of forward thinking is a 0:10:58.400 --> 0:11:04.199 complex little critter and too kind of Devil's advocate for yes, 0:11:04.240 --> 0:11:07.319 I've verb that now and all the time. Please please 0:11:07.559 --> 0:11:11.480 that advocate devilishly Lauren for the point of view that 0:11:11.559 --> 0:11:13.880 we can't figure this kind of thing out. We certainly 0:11:14.200 --> 0:11:16.960 haven't yet, Like we've got a few leads and there's 0:11:16.960 --> 0:11:18.800 one in specific that we're going to be talking about. 0:11:19.320 --> 0:11:22.080 But but there's so much, so much about the brain 0:11:22.080 --> 0:11:24.400 that we don't know. Yeah. I described it in the 0:11:24.480 --> 0:11:28.400 episode as if we have a general map that's missing 0:11:28.760 --> 0:11:31.880 tons of detail. So we have we know the general 0:11:31.920 --> 0:11:35.080 parameters of the human brain, we know some of the regions. 0:11:35.080 --> 0:11:36.800 We know what some of the regions do, or at 0:11:36.880 --> 0:11:40.480 least we have very strong evidence supporting what those regions 0:11:40.480 --> 0:11:43.680 of the brain do. But when you start getting beyond that, 0:11:43.840 --> 0:11:46.640 it gets really murky, really fast. And it's not like 0:11:46.720 --> 0:11:50.679 one of the GPS units is down or something like that. 0:11:50.760 --> 0:11:53.800 It's more like there be dragons exactly. This is this 0:11:53.880 --> 0:11:58.840 is the earliest days when cartographers were making observations of 0:11:58.960 --> 0:12:02.360 landscapes and doing their best to represent that so that 0:12:02.480 --> 0:12:06.960 future generations won't run their their ships upon the breakers. Right, 0:12:07.000 --> 0:12:09.920 They're not they That's the whole kind of place we're 0:12:09.960 --> 0:12:14.280 in neurologically speaking, as far as brain science goes. That's 0:12:14.320 --> 0:12:17.640 not to say that we don't have top scientists working 0:12:17.640 --> 0:12:21.720 on right now. We do, but it is one of 0:12:21.720 --> 0:12:25.160 those things where we can't just easily say this is 0:12:25.200 --> 0:12:28.480 exactly how this particular brain function works. I mean, in 0:12:28.520 --> 0:12:32.120 our discussion about memory, we talked about how we've made 0:12:32.160 --> 0:12:37.280 a lot of of progress towards understanding memory, but that's 0:12:37.280 --> 0:12:40.760 just progress toward it. We don't have a full working 0:12:41.000 --> 0:12:45.240 like documents saying this is how we encode and uh 0:12:45.240 --> 0:12:48.440 and decode memory, how we recall memory, how we re 0:12:48.720 --> 0:12:51.920 encoded so that we can recall it again later, and 0:12:52.280 --> 0:12:54.560 exactly what the mechanism is. If we had that and 0:12:54.559 --> 0:12:57.320 we knew exactly how it worked, we could probably even 0:12:57.360 --> 0:13:01.239 work on ways to improve memory so that it's actually reliable. 0:13:02.559 --> 0:13:05.360 But but you know, we we can't, So we have 0:13:05.480 --> 0:13:09.040 to first be completely honest about that that the brain 0:13:09.160 --> 0:13:13.600 is still very much at large a thing of mystery 0:13:13.640 --> 0:13:15.800 to us. One of the other things I think we 0:13:15.840 --> 0:13:20.320 should acknowledge is the limitations that some are practical, some 0:13:20.440 --> 0:13:24.360 might be ethical on what we can do with the brain. 0:13:24.440 --> 0:13:26.559 I mean, so you can do f M R. I. 0:13:26.760 --> 0:13:29.080 You can put somebody in a scanner and look at 0:13:29.080 --> 0:13:32.160 which parts of the brain are getting blood flow and 0:13:32.400 --> 0:13:35.880 lighting up with activity. You can do experiments like that, 0:13:35.960 --> 0:13:39.480 But those kinds of experiments only show you so much, right, 0:13:39.760 --> 0:13:42.760 And to get really into the nitty and or a 0:13:42.800 --> 0:13:46.480 gritty of the brain, one often has to pop the top, 0:13:47.000 --> 0:13:49.800 as in, remove part of the skull and put some 0:13:49.920 --> 0:13:54.120 probes on in there and chemical sensors. Yeah, yeah, you 0:13:54.160 --> 0:13:57.400 gotta you gotta, you gotta zapps themselves essentially, is what 0:13:57.440 --> 0:14:00.800 we're talking about. And here's the issue here. Um, it's 0:14:00.840 --> 0:14:04.240 hard to get people to volunteer to be part of 0:14:04.280 --> 0:14:07.360 such an experiment. Yeah, that's not a nice thing to 0:14:07.400 --> 0:14:10.000 do to somebody unless they've agreed to it. Yeah, so 0:14:10.120 --> 0:14:12.360 you're right, So if you're not, if they haven't agreed 0:14:12.400 --> 0:14:17.480 to it, and and be right, that's not really my 0:14:17.600 --> 0:14:19.920 idea of a fun Tuesday, right, If I'm if I'm 0:14:19.920 --> 0:14:22.400 going like I think about, I take the train to 0:14:22.560 --> 0:14:24.680 and from work, right, And every time I take the train, 0:14:24.760 --> 0:14:29.680 there's always some advertisements somewhere for some sort of medical study, 0:14:30.120 --> 0:14:34.280 and they're targeting students mainly who are able to have 0:14:34.360 --> 0:14:37.240 the time and the willingness to put themselves through some 0:14:37.320 --> 0:14:40.400 sort of study, and they get a small compensation for 0:14:40.520 --> 0:14:43.600 doing so. I cannot imagine a compensation great enough for 0:14:43.680 --> 0:14:46.280 your average students to say, yeah, I don't mind if 0:14:46.280 --> 0:14:48.720 you shave my head, cut open my skull and start 0:14:48.760 --> 0:14:52.760 a probe and mess around. So it's really hard to 0:14:52.840 --> 0:14:58.960 do fundamental research on living brains in an ethical and 0:14:59.120 --> 0:15:02.520 responsible way. So that's one of the big reasons why 0:15:02.680 --> 0:15:09.400 are our our knowledge is so limited. It's that practically speaking, 0:15:09.680 --> 0:15:14.960 it's hard to do. So that being said, we can 0:15:15.000 --> 0:15:17.840 we can definitely talk about some efforts that science has 0:15:17.880 --> 0:15:22.520 made in order to really understand consciousness, and one of 0:15:22.560 --> 0:15:28.520 them totally blows my mind. Are Yeah, our our buddy 0:15:28.760 --> 0:15:32.000 tech Mark, Max tech Mark of m I T. By buddy, 0:15:32.040 --> 0:15:33.960 I mean someone that has no idea who we are, 0:15:33.960 --> 0:15:36.520 and we have never met. But Max tech Mark of 0:15:36.640 --> 0:15:39.760 m I T has proposed that we think of consciousness 0:15:40.520 --> 0:15:43.880 as a new state of matter. So we've got you know, 0:15:44.400 --> 0:15:49.760 we've got solid liquid gas plasma consciousness. Yeah. So he 0:15:49.760 --> 0:15:53.880 he has proposed a let's let's call it a hypothetical 0:15:54.400 --> 0:15:57.560 form of of matter called he Yeah, he calls it 0:15:57.600 --> 0:16:01.600 a hypothesis. He's not saying there really is. But it's 0:16:01.600 --> 0:16:07.240 called perceptonium, which, like an obtanium and transformium, is largely 0:16:07.520 --> 0:16:11.880 an imaginary substance. But the reason why he proposes it 0:16:11.920 --> 0:16:15.760 is so that scientists can start to think about consciousness 0:16:16.280 --> 0:16:20.280 as if it is a physical substance in order to 0:16:21.000 --> 0:16:25.720 start applying various scientific and mathematical principles to the various 0:16:25.720 --> 0:16:29.720 elements of consciousness. It's really all about, Yeah, it's sort 0:16:29.720 --> 0:16:33.560 of the same way that dark energy, dark matter, or 0:16:34.040 --> 0:16:37.480 the Higgs boson until we discovered it, not not us personally. 0:16:37.560 --> 0:16:39.800 I mean, we were busy that day, I didn't know, 0:16:39.880 --> 0:16:44.920 but scientists discovered it. So it's really a placeholder. But 0:16:45.000 --> 0:16:48.200 it's meant to be something that allows scientists to kind 0:16:48.200 --> 0:16:51.880 of conceive of consciousness in a way that makes it 0:16:52.000 --> 0:16:56.040 more uh more solid in a way, an idea where 0:16:56.040 --> 0:17:01.400 they can actually start forming various scientists think theories about 0:17:01.400 --> 0:17:03.720 it and testing them. I think what he sort of 0:17:03.760 --> 0:17:06.280 said he wanted was to create a framework where we 0:17:06.320 --> 0:17:11.520 could do mathematics with respect to thinking. Yeah, the idea 0:17:11.600 --> 0:17:15.480 of exploring how the physical laws of the universe themselves 0:17:15.520 --> 0:17:20.640 could give rise to consciousness and also ultimately allow us 0:17:20.640 --> 0:17:24.040 to better understand how it is we perceive the world 0:17:24.040 --> 0:17:26.959 the way we do and why we do. And by 0:17:27.000 --> 0:17:29.479 the way, if you guys listening at home ever here 0:17:29.480 --> 0:17:32.640 any rumbling. We're doing this apparently in the middle of 0:17:32.680 --> 0:17:37.359 an amazing thunderstorm that I don't I don't suggest that 0:17:37.359 --> 0:17:41.280 such thunderstorm is conscious by the way, I well, I okay, 0:17:41.320 --> 0:17:44.200 we can agree to discree. Yeah, if you're a panpsychist, 0:17:44.280 --> 0:17:47.480 you might think that that that cloud has some rudimentary 0:17:47.520 --> 0:17:50.920 form of consciousness at any rate. Um, okay. So we've 0:17:50.960 --> 0:17:54.359 been talking about consciousness as with the potential that it 0:17:54.480 --> 0:17:59.120 is a physical bit of matter. Perhaps, so if it's 0:17:59.119 --> 0:18:03.840 a physical thing, and if perhaps it operates vaguely like computers, 0:18:04.320 --> 0:18:07.760 does it have an on off switch. That's a interesting 0:18:07.840 --> 0:18:10.520 question that you asked, and I'm glad you did, because 0:18:10.560 --> 0:18:17.800 the answer appears to be maybe. I'm definitely hedging my 0:18:17.840 --> 0:18:20.720 bets on this one, because, as you'll see when we 0:18:20.760 --> 0:18:22.880 talk about this case, there are a lot of things 0:18:22.960 --> 0:18:26.560 you have to take into consideration, which means that making 0:18:26.600 --> 0:18:31.359 any kind of yes or no statement would be uh premature. 0:18:32.920 --> 0:18:34.879 As a preface, Yeah, We're about to tell you a 0:18:34.920 --> 0:18:38.280 story that is very interesting, but we don't know for 0:18:38.400 --> 0:18:40.960 sure if it means what we think it means, but 0:18:41.200 --> 0:18:46.640 it's certainly exciting. So here here's the story. Once upon 0:18:46.640 --> 0:18:50.680 a time, there was a team of doctors who were 0:18:50.760 --> 0:18:54.040 working at George Washington University, and they were working with 0:18:54.080 --> 0:18:59.879 a patient who suffered from epilepsy. Now, epilepsy is call 0:19:00.000 --> 0:19:04.359 caused by having abnormal activity in the brain. The neurons 0:19:04.480 --> 0:19:07.760 fire abnormally. Usually you can think of it as, uh, 0:19:07.840 --> 0:19:12.520 just an overload of of discharging neurons in a way, 0:19:13.359 --> 0:19:17.119 and it manifests itself in various types of symptoms. Not 0:19:17.240 --> 0:19:21.280 all of them are the dramatic seizures that we often 0:19:21.280 --> 0:19:23.919 think of as an epileptic fit. Some of them are 0:19:23.960 --> 0:19:28.560 things where someone just loses focus, but it often will 0:19:28.600 --> 0:19:33.400 be accompanied by a loss of consciousness. Now, these doctors 0:19:33.400 --> 0:19:37.840 weren't necessarily looking for anything that had to relate to consciousness. 0:19:38.119 --> 0:19:41.280 What they were looking for was what part of the 0:19:41.560 --> 0:19:45.960 this patient's brain was responsible for triggering these seizures. Yeah, 0:19:46.000 --> 0:19:47.880 they were doing a case study, so they were kind 0:19:47.880 --> 0:19:52.440 of basically poking around and stimulating different bits of her 0:19:52.440 --> 0:19:55.960 brain exactly in order to kind of see what happened. Yeah, 0:19:56.040 --> 0:19:58.399 it's kind of uh it makes me think of the 0:19:58.480 --> 0:20:02.760 scene and buckeru an Zai where they're performing brain surgery 0:20:02.880 --> 0:20:06.320 and Buck rubonds I says to one of his fellow surgeons, No, no, 0:20:06.480 --> 0:20:10.920 don't touch that. You never know what's connected to uh So, 0:20:11.080 --> 0:20:13.600 in this case, what they were doing was they were stimulating, 0:20:13.800 --> 0:20:16.159 like you said, different regions of the brain, and at 0:20:16.200 --> 0:20:18.520 one point they reach a part of the brain called 0:20:18.560 --> 0:20:23.840 the clostrum, and when they used the the electrodes to 0:20:24.080 --> 0:20:27.960 stimulate that part of the brain, the patient would stop 0:20:28.000 --> 0:20:30.879 whatever she was doing. She would gradually lose consciousness. It 0:20:30.920 --> 0:20:34.280 didn't sound like it was a instant thing. It sounded 0:20:34.280 --> 0:20:37.240 more like it was a process. So she would lose 0:20:37.280 --> 0:20:41.800 consciousness and then just sort of stare off into the distance, 0:20:41.840 --> 0:20:45.399 not at anything in particular, until they stopped stimulating that 0:20:45.440 --> 0:20:48.400 part of the brain, in which case she would recover 0:20:48.960 --> 0:20:52.040 but have no recollection of the moments that had passed 0:20:52.080 --> 0:20:54.639 while that part of our brain was being stimulated, almost 0:20:54.680 --> 0:20:56.880 as if it had just never happened. Yeah. So, if 0:20:56.920 --> 0:21:00.360 anyone's ever had one of those moments where know, you've 0:21:00.359 --> 0:21:02.680 blacked out for one reason or another. It could be 0:21:02.720 --> 0:21:05.320 a reaction to medication. It could be head trauma, it 0:21:05.359 --> 0:21:08.840 could be an epileptic seizure. Whatever. If it's one of 0:21:08.840 --> 0:21:13.280 those moments where you aren't now alert, you remember exactly 0:21:13.359 --> 0:21:16.240 what you were doing before you had that moment, but 0:21:16.359 --> 0:21:19.080 you have no recollection of what happened in between, and 0:21:19.119 --> 0:21:21.679 other people have to tell you, and you just have 0:21:21.800 --> 0:21:24.359 to go on what they said, that's what was going 0:21:24.400 --> 0:21:27.880 on scientifically in the lab at this moment. And again 0:21:27.920 --> 0:21:31.720 the doctors were not looking for this. They just happened 0:21:31.760 --> 0:21:34.760 to stumble upon it. And so it was at that 0:21:34.800 --> 0:21:39.280 point where they said, you know, it's possible that the clostroum, 0:21:39.280 --> 0:21:42.560 this thin membrane it's under the neo cortex in the brain, 0:21:43.040 --> 0:21:46.800 this thin membrane, it may be the key, the on 0:21:47.040 --> 0:21:50.760 off switch for consciousness. Not to say that it's ultimately 0:21:50.800 --> 0:21:54.840 responsible for what we call consciousness, but it might be 0:21:55.200 --> 0:21:59.320 one element that without it you can't have consciousness. It 0:21:59.320 --> 0:22:01.600 doesn't It might be like the lynch pen that ties 0:22:01.640 --> 0:22:04.240 everything together. Right, because there are a lot of different 0:22:04.240 --> 0:22:08.000 ways of explaining what consciousness exactly would be, or if 0:22:08.040 --> 0:22:10.800 it would have a location within the brain. But in 0:22:10.800 --> 0:22:13.040 an interesting way, of thinking about it is okay. So 0:22:13.400 --> 0:22:15.919 you have lots of different things going on in your 0:22:15.960 --> 0:22:19.760 brain at any given time. You're processing visual data, you're 0:22:19.800 --> 0:22:24.480 processing auditory data, you're accessing memories from the past, you 0:22:24.640 --> 0:22:29.679 are having motor control, you're speaking, and somehow all of 0:22:29.720 --> 0:22:33.520 these things come together in our brain to create this 0:22:33.600 --> 0:22:36.920 thing we think of as experience. But all of these 0:22:36.960 --> 0:22:40.679 things are separate. So what's combining them for us in 0:22:40.720 --> 0:22:44.119 this way? What's creating the thing that that that makes 0:22:44.160 --> 0:22:48.800 a continuous, conscious, single experience. It could be that there 0:22:48.920 --> 0:22:52.199 is one organ in the brain that takes everything and 0:22:52.240 --> 0:22:56.400 smashes it together and makes you an experience, and previous 0:22:56.440 --> 0:22:59.320 research has suggested that that thing might in fact be 0:22:59.560 --> 0:23:03.720 the class stroom. Uh. Back in two thousand four, Francis Krick, 0:23:03.800 --> 0:23:05.680 who's one of the guys who helped sess out the 0:23:05.680 --> 0:23:08.560 structure of DNA back in the nineteen fifties along with 0:23:08.640 --> 0:23:12.560 Christoph Koke, who is a prominent neuroscientist, noted that the 0:23:12.640 --> 0:23:17.440 classroom receives input from and projects output to almost all 0:23:17.440 --> 0:23:20.359 of the regions of the cortex, and they speculated that 0:23:20.400 --> 0:23:24.000 if you know, the philosophical concept of consciousness is indeed 0:23:24.160 --> 0:23:26.960 the sum of cooperative activity of the senses and the 0:23:26.960 --> 0:23:30.840 nervous system together that the classroom might be certainly worth 0:23:30.880 --> 0:23:34.760 further study. This was backed up in when another group 0:23:34.760 --> 0:23:38.159 of researchers published a paper hypothesizing that, I mean, well, 0:23:38.400 --> 0:23:41.600 basically that these guys were correct based on studies that 0:23:41.640 --> 0:23:44.040 they did of signals that were being relayed into and 0:23:44.080 --> 0:23:47.880 out of the classroom. They observed it receiving signals from 0:23:47.880 --> 0:23:51.679 from several areas of the brain and sending signals out 0:23:51.880 --> 0:23:56.679 specifically to the motor cortex, and so therefore thought that 0:23:56.800 --> 0:24:00.400 it might be controlling lots of interactive process is through 0:24:00.440 --> 0:24:04.119 the brain and voluntary behavior as well. Um, they were 0:24:04.119 --> 0:24:06.800 a little bit less philosophical about it than some of 0:24:06.840 --> 0:24:09.400 the other people we've been talking about. They kind of 0:24:09.440 --> 0:24:15.080 concluded that the classrooms control quote, may include the neural 0:24:15.320 --> 0:24:19.680 correlates of consciousness. But but that's still, I mean, for 0:24:19.840 --> 0:24:23.879 science duds, pretty pretty high philosophical. Y. Yeah, I think 0:24:23.960 --> 0:24:28.960 that's that's proper scientific rhetorical humility. Right, Yes. And so 0:24:29.600 --> 0:24:33.800 this this result here, you know, I hesitated. I can't 0:24:33.800 --> 0:24:35.960 really call it a study because again, that wasn't necessarily 0:24:36.000 --> 0:24:38.280