WEBVTT - Attention Schema Theory: Consciousness and God 0:00:03.279 --> 0:00:06.160 Welcome to stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff 0:00:06.160 --> 0:00:13.800 Works dot com. Hey, you're welcome to stuff to blow 0:00:13.840 --> 0:00:15.840 your mind. And my name is Robert Lamb, and on 0:00:16.040 --> 0:00:19.400 Julie Douglas and in each of us. We can't help 0:00:19.480 --> 0:00:23.880 but but ring with that, uh, that that existential statement. 0:00:24.480 --> 0:00:28.240 I think therefore I am. We're all bound up in 0:00:28.280 --> 0:00:32.640 this just endless whirlwind of thinking, and we're thinking about 0:00:32.640 --> 0:00:35.840 our own thoughts. We're thinking about our own consciousness. We're 0:00:35.880 --> 0:00:38.240 thinking about the world around as we're thinking about the past, 0:00:38.320 --> 0:00:42.120 the future. We're thinking about the the the possible reality 0:00:42.120 --> 0:00:45.760 of things outside of our observable universe. We're thinking about aliens, 0:00:45.760 --> 0:00:49.000 we're thinking about God. Uh, this is this is kind 0:00:49.000 --> 0:00:53.080 of the state of the human mind as a whole. Yeah, 0:00:53.159 --> 0:00:56.240 it's this whole big sushi roll of existence that we 0:00:56.360 --> 0:01:01.000 try to get our minds around, and um, it becomes 0:01:01.080 --> 0:01:04.080 very meta, right. We do a lot of thinking about thinking. 0:01:04.640 --> 0:01:08.000 Essentially is what consciousness boils down to. And it's problematic. 0:01:08.000 --> 0:01:10.240 We call it the hard problem because we've never really 0:01:10.280 --> 0:01:13.240 found the center of consciousness. We're not really sure how 0:01:13.280 --> 0:01:15.560 it relates to our existence. We're not really sure how 0:01:15.560 --> 0:01:19.480 it relates to this idea of a creator, something that 0:01:19.560 --> 0:01:23.600 created the world. Um, did we just come out of nothingness? 0:01:23.680 --> 0:01:27.600 And in fact, American cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker said, quote, 0:01:27.600 --> 0:01:32.080 the idea of consciousness is ludicrous. If it is not monstrous, 0:01:32.280 --> 0:01:35.240 it means to know that one is food for worms. 0:01:35.760 --> 0:01:38.800 This is the terror to have emerged from nothing, to 0:01:38.920 --> 0:01:42.240 have a name, consciousness of self, deep inner feelings and 0:01:42.319 --> 0:01:47.039 excruciating inner yearning for life and self expression, and with 0:01:47.120 --> 0:01:50.200 all this yet to die. Well, you know, on one hand, 0:01:50.240 --> 0:01:52.440 you could say that that's a deeply troubling thing too 0:01:53.000 --> 0:01:55.920 to take into your world view. But you accept that, 0:01:55.960 --> 0:01:59.120 then maybe it opens up your life for for other pursuits. 0:01:59.200 --> 0:02:00.800 You can be like, all right, well, now I realize 0:02:00.840 --> 0:02:04.040 that I'm just I'm just feast for the worms, that 0:02:04.040 --> 0:02:06.960 that that my whole existence is just circling a black hole. 0:02:07.480 --> 0:02:09.080 But I don't have to worry about that anymore. I 0:02:09.080 --> 0:02:12.880 can spend some time gardening, indeed, and I can hopefully 0:02:13.040 --> 0:02:16.360 create this state of flow and just being the moment, 0:02:16.360 --> 0:02:20.000 which we'll talk about in another podcast episode. But today 0:02:20.040 --> 0:02:23.480 we're gonna talk about this hard problem and this idea. 0:02:24.320 --> 0:02:26.560 This I'm not going to call this simple idea because 0:02:26.560 --> 0:02:31.040 it's not, but a more straightforward idea called attention schema 0:02:31.120 --> 0:02:35.160 theory that might put this more in a context that 0:02:35.200 --> 0:02:38.480 we can understand more palatable. I should say yes, now, 0:02:38.520 --> 0:02:41.120 I definitely want to preface here and say, on one hand, okay, 0:02:41.120 --> 0:02:43.680 we're gonna talk about human consciousness here. We talked about 0:02:43.720 --> 0:02:46.520 human consciousness before devoted in an entire episode, do it. 0:02:46.880 --> 0:02:48.959 This is an area that we're going to continue to 0:02:49.000 --> 0:02:54.079 see advances in in neuroscience and and even in philosophy, 0:02:54.560 --> 0:02:56.960 but it's gonna be a while before we can and 0:02:57.000 --> 0:02:59.560 maybe we'll maybe we'll never even have a really concrete 0:02:59.600 --> 0:03:03.799 idea of consciousness that both makes sense on paper and 0:03:03.960 --> 0:03:08.240 feels right uh to our our first person experience of it. 0:03:08.760 --> 0:03:10.400 So it's still a feel that you see a lot 0:03:10.440 --> 0:03:12.920 of progress in. On the other hand, we're gonna talk 0:03:12.919 --> 0:03:14.800 a little bit about God in the later part of 0:03:14.840 --> 0:03:17.680 this episode, and God, of course, is something that we 0:03:17.760 --> 0:03:21.880 will never be able to prove scientifically. It the concept 0:03:21.960 --> 0:03:25.400 of God and gods and deities is is something that 0:03:25.520 --> 0:03:30.200 is is ultimately unknowable to science. So the theory that 0:03:30.200 --> 0:03:32.320 we're going to discuss in this episode, attention scheme of 0:03:32.360 --> 0:03:35.720 theory is not. We're not saying, hey, here is a 0:03:35.800 --> 0:03:39.440 theory that definitely explains all of these things, that satisfies 0:03:39.480 --> 0:03:45.360 all these mysteries. Even the theories creator Michael Graziano, a neuroscience, 0:03:45.400 --> 0:03:48.800 novelist and composer, Professor of neuroscience at Princeton University. Uh, 0:03:48.880 --> 0:03:51.440 even he'll tell you this is not a satisfying theory. 0:03:51.800 --> 0:03:55.640 So what I would like to encourage everyone to do is, 0:03:55.920 --> 0:03:58.360 you know, we're all coming into this topic with certain 0:03:58.840 --> 0:04:02.320 constraints in our world view. Is to to not just 0:04:02.400 --> 0:04:04.720 completely throw your worldview aside, but lower the gate a 0:04:04.720 --> 0:04:09.240 little bit and open yourself up to alternate perspectives on 0:04:09.280 --> 0:04:12.960 what human consciousness is and alternate takes on how to 0:04:13.160 --> 0:04:17.760 view the idea of a god or God's including a 0:04:18.080 --> 0:04:20.880 giant Harry orangatane puppet, which we'll get to you in 0:04:20.880 --> 0:04:25.760 a d that Graziano actually works into his bits here. Um. 0:04:25.760 --> 0:04:29.239 But Garciana says, we have been asking the wrong question. 0:04:29.320 --> 0:04:34.360 We've been asking how do neurons produce a magic internal experience? 0:04:34.480 --> 0:04:38.400 And he's basically saying this he can't answer this unanswerable, 0:04:39.000 --> 0:04:42.400 But he says we can ask how and for what 0:04:42.640 --> 0:04:49.200 survival advantage. Does a brain attribute subjective experience aka consciousness 0:04:49.240 --> 0:04:54.080 to itself? And he says this is scientifically approachable and 0:04:54.120 --> 0:04:58.880 that his attention schema theory supplies outlines of answers for it. 0:05:00.040 --> 0:05:02.960 And this is where the orangutang comes in. Yes, so 0:05:02.960 --> 0:05:05.880 he picks up an orangutank puppet and uh and he 0:05:05.960 --> 0:05:09.599 starts talking about consciousness and about the the idea that 0:05:09.680 --> 0:05:14.119 this orangutang punchet but puppet is conscious. Now, on one level, 0:05:14.160 --> 0:05:16.400 we all know that a puppeteer takes the stage and 0:05:16.440 --> 0:05:19.040 they entertain us with a puppet show. That puppet is 0:05:19.120 --> 0:05:23.600 not really conscious. It is not a conscious being. If 0:05:23.600 --> 0:05:27.040 you had to choose, you know which individual gets a 0:05:27.120 --> 0:05:30.200 brick thrown at them, a human child or an orangutang puppet. 0:05:30.480 --> 0:05:32.839 You choose the orangutang puppet every time and just hope 0:05:32.880 --> 0:05:35.640 that there's not a child's hand in it. But you 0:05:35.720 --> 0:05:38.520 still wins when that puppet gets heyh yeah, we can't help, 0:05:38.520 --> 0:05:40.599 but do it? I mean you, you know we've mentioned 0:05:40.640 --> 0:05:43.040 many times before you draw a face on something, and 0:05:43.080 --> 0:05:44.800 then you you draw a face on a stick and 0:05:44.800 --> 0:05:46.480 then you break the stick. We're gonna feel a little 0:05:46.520 --> 0:05:49.720 something we we we can't help but personify the world 0:05:49.760 --> 0:05:53.200 around us, and by personify it, we end up engaging 0:05:53.240 --> 0:05:55.800 it with with some level and dowing it with some 0:05:55.960 --> 0:05:58.880 level of consciousness. Yeah. What I love about this is 0:05:58.920 --> 0:06:02.080 that he will start out his talks with Kevin the Orangutang, 0:06:02.440 --> 0:06:05.400 and he does his bit, his ventriloquist bit, which you know, guys, 0:06:05.480 --> 0:06:08.120 we love, right if you've been following along and you've 0:06:08.120 --> 0:06:11.520 seen our episode on ventriloquism, And he says to the audience, 0:06:11.560 --> 0:06:13.800 I'll be explaining my theory about how the brain, a 0:06:13.880 --> 0:06:18.559 biological machine, generates consciousness. Kevin the Orangutang starts heckling me. Yeah, 0:06:18.640 --> 0:06:20.920 well I don't have a brain, but I'm still conscious. 0:06:20.960 --> 0:06:23.719 What does that due to your theory? And he says 0:06:23.800 --> 0:06:28.400 that Kevin is the perfect introduction because intellectually nobody is fooled. 0:06:28.839 --> 0:06:30.720 As you say, right, like, we know this. If we're 0:06:30.720 --> 0:06:33.080 going to have to choose between a kid or a puppet, 0:06:33.160 --> 0:06:35.520 throw something at and he says, we all know there's 0:06:35.600 --> 0:06:38.920 nothing inside, but everyone in the audience experiences an illusion 0:06:38.920 --> 0:06:44.200 of sentience emanating from his hairy head. And he he 0:06:44.279 --> 0:06:46.719 kind of takes us as a jumping off point to 0:06:46.880 --> 0:06:51.440 talk about attention schema theory. Yeah, and uh, and we'll 0:06:51.560 --> 0:06:54.679 we'll continue to unpack that in this this podcast. But it's, uh, 0:06:54.800 --> 0:06:57.520 it's one of these issues where that the theory forces 0:06:57.560 --> 0:07:00.359 you to rethink what consciousness is. And this is not 0:07:00.640 --> 0:07:02.320 going to be one of those crazy theories where it's, 0:07:02.400 --> 0:07:04.320 you know, where it's stating that, oh, well, that the 0:07:04.400 --> 0:07:06.640 universe only exists because you have your eyes open. If 0:07:06.680 --> 0:07:10.000 you close your eyes, nothing exists, or anything like that. 0:07:10.080 --> 0:07:13.360 It's not not that kind of a truthy theory. But 0:07:13.440 --> 0:07:18.760 it just forces us to reevaluate what consciousness is from 0:07:18.760 --> 0:07:21.400 our first person perspective as well as the sort of 0:07:21.600 --> 0:07:27.920 third person consciousness that we attribute to humans, puppets, characters 0:07:27.920 --> 0:07:32.960 in novels, video game avatars, you name it. That's right, 0:07:33.000 --> 0:07:35.960 And so he kind of goes into the past here 0:07:36.000 --> 0:07:40.400 to say, let's look at the evolutionary model of consciousness. 0:07:40.480 --> 0:07:45.800 How might it have arisen in animals and what does 0:07:45.840 --> 0:07:47.720 that mean for us? What does it mean about the 0:07:47.800 --> 0:07:50.880 qualities of consciousness? And he does say that at some 0:07:50.960 --> 0:07:54.360 point animal nervous systems acquired the ability to boost the 0:07:54.400 --> 0:07:58.680 most urgent incoming signals. He said, too much information comes 0:07:58.720 --> 0:08:01.480 in from the outside world, says it all equally, and 0:08:02.080 --> 0:08:05.240 it is useful to select the most silient data for 0:08:05.360 --> 0:08:08.360 deeper processing over time, though it came under a more 0:08:08.520 --> 0:08:11.360 sophisticated kind of control what we now call attention right, 0:08:11.400 --> 0:08:14.080 And we all have experienced this before. You shut out 0:08:14.080 --> 0:08:16.880 the outside world in order to focus your attention. Right. 0:08:16.920 --> 0:08:19.000 The example I always turned to is you're at a party. 0:08:19.000 --> 0:08:20.920 There are a lot of a lot of different conversations 0:08:20.960 --> 0:08:23.960 going on, uh and and you know, the people next 0:08:24.000 --> 0:08:25.840 to you're talking about football. The people over here they're 0:08:25.840 --> 0:08:28.160 talking about theater. These people are talking about somebody you 0:08:28.160 --> 0:08:30.200 don't know, name Ron. But you're trying to have a 0:08:30.240 --> 0:08:34.680 conversation with any about Um installing a concrete pond in 0:08:34.679 --> 0:08:38.319 her backyard. So your brain is somehow able to shut 0:08:38.320 --> 0:08:42.040 out these these non essential conversations while still being aware 0:08:42.040 --> 0:08:45.000 of them, and focus in on the central conversation about 0:08:45.040 --> 0:08:49.440 Amy and her concrete pond. Is the pond filled with concrete? Um, 0:08:49.559 --> 0:08:52.720 yes it is. It's it's really not gonna work, but 0:08:52.800 --> 0:08:55.280 she has these really high minded ideas about how fish 0:08:55.280 --> 0:08:59.360 are going to live in it. Okay. Um. So the 0:08:59.400 --> 0:09:02.720 thing here is that he says mammals and birds both 0:09:02.760 --> 0:09:06.640 have it. This this awareness is attention, and he says 0:09:06.640 --> 0:09:09.800 they diverge from a common ancestor about three fifty million 0:09:09.880 --> 0:09:13.840 years ago, so attention is probably at least that old. 0:09:13.880 --> 0:09:18.640 And attention leads to awareness, and awareness leads to consciousness. Yeah, 0:09:18.679 --> 0:09:22.439 it's basically this idea of consciousness, thinking of it as 0:09:22.520 --> 0:09:26.600 a focus of attention, a control of attention and and 0:09:26.600 --> 0:09:29.520 and that's key to our experience of this thing that 0:09:29.559 --> 0:09:32.719 we call consciousness. Our brains the process all of the 0:09:32.840 --> 0:09:35.400 sense data as well as our knowledge of our self 0:09:35.520 --> 0:09:38.400 in the world. And uh, and the self that we're 0:09:38.440 --> 0:09:41.480 aware of ultimately is like a game piece on a 0:09:41.559 --> 0:09:46.600 table um. Again, it's his consciousness as information. You've got 0:09:46.600 --> 0:09:49.520 to sort of shut out these, uh, these these more 0:09:49.600 --> 0:09:51.959 magical ideas that we layer on top of it, about 0:09:51.960 --> 0:09:54.120 like a soul, about some sort of energy that that 0:09:54.400 --> 0:09:57.480 rives within us, or some sort of angelic hand it's 0:09:57.520 --> 0:10:02.440 reaching in to occupy our brain. This is a biological 0:10:02.480 --> 0:10:05.760 brain that's dealing with a lot of sense data coming in, 0:10:06.040 --> 0:10:08.280 having to screen out some of it. And uh, and 0:10:08.280 --> 0:10:12.000 and it's about our control of attention over this data. Yeah. 0:10:12.040 --> 0:10:14.720 And I was just thinking about our podcast episode It's 0:10:14.720 --> 0:10:17.240 a Trap, and we were talking about this spider that 0:10:17.320 --> 0:10:21.720 creates a essentially like a sculpture of itself, yes, as 0:10:21.760 --> 0:10:25.000 a decoy, And in that moment, you know that the 0:10:25.080 --> 0:10:27.960 spider has an awareness of itself because it just created 0:10:27.960 --> 0:10:32.640 I albeit a larger version of itself for another uh insect, 0:10:32.640 --> 0:10:36.520 a predator, and it is considering both itself and the 0:10:36.559 --> 0:10:40.000 other thing. So we know that this has been in existence, 0:10:40.120 --> 0:10:44.559 this consciousness. And um, we've talked about Steven Pinker's claim 0:10:44.640 --> 0:10:48.760 before that something like music is just auditory cheesecake. Right, 0:10:48.800 --> 0:10:51.320 He has this idea that music is a byproduct of language. 0:10:51.760 --> 0:10:54.760 So you could start to look as consciousness as just 0:10:55.000 --> 0:11:02.239 cognitive cheesecake, okay, the byproduct of awareness. And evolutionary biologists 0:11:02.280 --> 0:11:06.160 David Barash, writing for a magazine seems to think that 0:11:06.200 --> 0:11:08.560 this is the idea. He says, maybe it's just a 0:11:08.640 --> 0:11:13.040 non adaptive byproduct of having bigger brains, or rather brains 0:11:13.040 --> 0:11:16.320 bigger than it's strictly necessary for bossing our bodies around. 0:11:16.360 --> 0:11:19.319 And he goes on to say, sure, a single molecule 0:11:19.360 --> 0:11:22.920 of water is water, but it isn't wet, and neither 0:11:22.960 --> 0:11:25.800 are two molecules of water, or a thousand or maybe 0:11:25.800 --> 0:11:27.960 even a million, he says, but with enough of them 0:11:28.000 --> 0:11:33.319 we get wetness. And not because wetness is adaptively favored 0:11:33.920 --> 0:11:38.160 over dryness, but because it's an unavoidable physical consequence of 0:11:38.200 --> 0:11:42.400 piling up enough H two O molecules together. And so 0:11:42.600 --> 0:11:46.480 he says, could consciousness be similar to that, and you 0:11:46.720 --> 0:11:50.880 could accumulate enough neurons because maybe they permit their possessor 0:11:50.960 --> 0:11:55.280 to integrate numerous sensory inputs and generate complex variable behavior. 0:11:55.840 --> 0:11:58.120 So hey, there you go. You just wire all this 0:11:58.160 --> 0:12:01.560 stuff up and eventually you get conscious is yeah, I 0:12:01.640 --> 0:12:04.200 love this idea of consciousness is ultimately this thing that 0:12:04.240 --> 0:12:07.880 builds up because of this this loop of of of 0:12:08.000 --> 0:12:10.680 data in the brain. Um. I keep thinking of it 0:12:10.720 --> 0:12:13.360 in terms of a rear view mirror in a car. Now, 0:12:13.360 --> 0:12:17.400 this is an overly simplified explanation of what's going on here. 0:12:17.440 --> 0:12:20.280 But you have a rear view mirror in an automobile, 0:12:20.400 --> 0:12:22.480 and it's all about being able to look in that 0:12:22.480 --> 0:12:25.400 mirror and see what's behind the car. Rather simple, but 0:12:25.600 --> 0:12:28.280 we increasingly use that for other things. We we look 0:12:28.280 --> 0:12:30.640 in the mirror to see what our hair looks like, 0:12:30.720 --> 0:12:32.720 to see what our cosmetics look like, to look into 0:12:32.720 --> 0:12:35.720 the back seat to see what the child is doing, etcetera. 0:12:35.840 --> 0:12:40.040 And so in this the use of the mirror changes 0:12:40.040 --> 0:12:42.160 the way that we see ourselves. It changes the way 0:12:42.160 --> 0:12:44.480 that we see our environment and becomes this this sort 0:12:44.520 --> 0:12:49.760 of thing unto itself. Yeah, especially if you consider that 0:12:49.760 --> 0:12:54.600 that mirror, that perception can be easily um manipulated. And 0:12:54.760 --> 0:12:56.240 what I mean to say is that we've talked about 0:12:56.240 --> 0:13:00.280 appropriate reception before and how our body scheme and our 0:13:00.320 --> 0:13:03.640 attention schema are inherently linked our idea, our map of 0:13:03.679 --> 0:13:07.640 ourselves out there right uh, spatial awareness of our body 0:13:07.679 --> 0:13:12.000 and how it's represented. That can be completely um shifted 0:13:12.760 --> 0:13:16.400 if there's something like say a brain lesion. In other words, 0:13:16.480 --> 0:13:19.239 you have all these computations in your brain, but appropriate 0:13:19.280 --> 0:13:23.120 reception or some other element that informs that is skewed. Well, 0:13:23.160 --> 0:13:25.600 the computations are skewed. Yeah, indeed, I mean think back 0:13:25.600 --> 0:13:28.920 to our episodes on appropriate exception and on the shadow self. 0:13:29.440 --> 0:13:31.880 Both of those dealt with these ideas. Well. What happens 0:13:32.120 --> 0:13:35.360 when your brain the settings are changed just a little bit, 0:13:35.720 --> 0:13:38.240 and those settings affect the way that you make sense 0:13:38.240 --> 0:13:41.319 of yourself in time and space and embody um. And 0:13:41.320 --> 0:13:43.600 and that's that's one of the key things in play 0:13:43.600 --> 0:13:47.600 here with attention schema theory is that it's the idea 0:13:47.840 --> 0:13:52.200 that that that our idea of consciousness and our conscious 0:13:52.200 --> 0:13:56.240 awareness of self is really something that is uh that 0:13:56.360 --> 0:14:01.040 we attribute to ourselves. It is ultimately an avatar um. Now, 0:14:01.720 --> 0:14:05.000 Garzono goes into this theory in detail in his book 0:14:05.040 --> 0:14:07.200 Consciousness in the Social Brain, and he also has an 0:14:07.200 --> 0:14:09.680 excellent piece in in the magazine that I'll link to 0:14:09.840 --> 0:14:12.120 on the landing page for this stuff for this particular 0:14:12.160 --> 0:14:15.560 podcast episode. But he says, the heart of the theory, remember, 0:14:15.840 --> 0:14:18.920 is that awareness is a model of attention. Like the 0:14:18.960 --> 0:14:21.680 general's model of his army laid out on a map. 0:14:21.920 --> 0:14:24.560 The real army isn't made of plastic, of course, it 0:14:24.680 --> 0:14:28.240 isn't quite so small and has rather more moving parts. 0:14:28.640 --> 0:14:31.520 In these respects, the model is totally unrealistic, and yet 0:14:31.640 --> 0:14:35.960 without such simplifications it would be impractical to use, impractical 0:14:36.000 --> 0:14:39.480 to use the army. So therefore, the idea is that 0:14:39.520 --> 0:14:44.240 our conscious self is this uh this ultimately an unrealistic 0:14:44.320 --> 0:14:46.360 model of who and what we are, but it is necessary. 0:14:46.680 --> 0:14:50.640 But it's but but but over time it has become Um. 0:14:51.240 --> 0:14:53.400 I mean, it is the way that we experience the world, 0:14:53.520 --> 0:14:54.840 and it is the way that we are conscious of 0:14:54.840 --> 0:14:56.680 the world. You end up again and that loop, and 0:14:56.720 --> 0:14:58.760 it makes it so difficult for us to to even 0:14:59.280 --> 0:15:02.800 analyze what our consciousness is from the inside. Yeah. I mean, 0:15:02.920 --> 0:15:06.080 this idea that the brain is essentially constructing a model 0:15:06.120 --> 0:15:10.160 to monitor the fact that it's paying attention to something 0:15:11.320 --> 0:15:14.440 totally makes sense. And it is also kind of amazing because, 0:15:14.440 --> 0:15:18.640 as he says, all the sudden awareness is emerging from 0:15:18.680 --> 0:15:23.080 this cartoon sketch that the brain has made of itself 0:15:23.120 --> 0:15:26.400 and others. Yeah. So in a way, it's like thinking, 0:15:26.400 --> 0:15:29.760 all right, here's Julian Robert sort of here are these 0:15:29.800 --> 0:15:34.400 two bodies, these two organisms, and each of those organisms 0:15:34.480 --> 0:15:38.400 minds is an idea of Robert and an idea of Julie. 0:15:38.520 --> 0:15:42.000 This this conscious self that they attribute to this body, 0:15:42.280 --> 0:15:45.440 and then likewise we're each attributing a conscious self to 0:15:45.480 --> 0:15:47.840 the other. Yeah, and you are even saying this that 0:15:47.920 --> 0:15:51.160 the person in the mirror is a projection of this consciousness. 0:15:51.400 --> 0:15:54.680 The makeup that someone might put on is informing that 0:15:54.760 --> 0:15:58.720 sort of toy Soldier of our consciousness that our generals 0:15:58.720 --> 0:16:01.520 of our minds are creating. Right. So even something like that, 0:16:01.560 --> 0:16:03.920 you don't think of makeup as being part of your consciousness, 0:16:03.960 --> 0:16:06.800 but hey is representing it, right you the idea you 0:16:06.840 --> 0:16:09.400 have of yourself out in the world. Indeed, an example 0:16:09.440 --> 0:16:12.280 that Graziano brings up that that plays into this sort 0:16:12.320 --> 0:16:16.240 of unrealistic model that works in terms of understanding the 0:16:16.240 --> 0:16:20.880 world is that of essentially heat vision. Uh. This this 0:16:20.960 --> 0:16:22.640 kind of blew my mind a little bit because it's 0:16:22.680 --> 0:16:25.280 something I never really thought about, but but makes perfect 0:16:25.320 --> 0:16:27.080 sense now that now that it's laying out. And this 0:16:27.160 --> 0:16:31.720 is the idea that a startling number of people in 0:16:31.760 --> 0:16:34.920 the world, um think, and I want to say think 0:16:34.920 --> 0:16:37.360 this might in many cases just be a sort of 0:16:37.400 --> 0:16:40.960 a subconscious level of understanding something. But they think that 0:16:41.080 --> 0:16:45.280 they see things with their eyes because rays come out 0:16:45.280 --> 0:16:48.320 of their eyes. Now, I want to stay that you know, 0:16:48.480 --> 0:16:52.720 you me, most of our listeners probably know enough about 0:16:52.920 --> 0:16:55.560 the human body to know that eyes work because light 0:16:55.880 --> 0:17:00.000 enters the eyes. We know that scientifically that that's what's happened. 0:17:00.520 --> 0:17:03.840 Nothing is emitted from the eyes, and yet it is 0:17:03.840 --> 0:17:06.720 Graziano points out, there is a actually a study from 0:17:06.720 --> 0:17:08.640 the University of Ohio and two thousand two that found 0:17:08.640 --> 0:17:12.440 it about half of American college students also thought that 0:17:12.480 --> 0:17:14.800 we see because rays come out of our eyes. It's 0:17:14.840 --> 0:17:18.480 something that that does not mesh with our scientific understanding 0:17:18.480 --> 0:17:21.760 of how our bodies work, about how physics work. But 0:17:21.760 --> 0:17:25.000 but but it it makes sense in terms of how 0:17:25.080 --> 0:17:29.040 we experience the world. We think about psight emanating from 0:17:29.200 --> 0:17:31.960 the eyes, and we see this more avertly in say, 0:17:32.040 --> 0:17:35.840 cartoon characters and our comic book characters. What happens when 0:17:35.880 --> 0:17:40.320 that cartoon coyote creature is howling an attractive woman, his 0:17:40.359 --> 0:17:45.040 eyeball stick out and he goes ioga um, light is 0:17:45.080 --> 0:17:48.200 shining out of low Pan's eyes and big troubling little China. Uh. 0:17:48.440 --> 0:17:54.600 These are all fantastic exaggerations of this sort of uh 0:17:54.840 --> 0:17:57.440 magical way that we think about our interaction with the world. 0:17:57.480 --> 0:17:59.800 We think about people's eyes burning into us when they're 0:18:00.000 --> 0:18:02.480 airing at us, like get your eyes off of me, clee, 0:18:02.480 --> 0:18:05.240 your eyes that their eyes aren't actually touching you. There's 0:18:05.280 --> 0:18:07.639 nothing emitted from their eyes. They are merely drinking in 0:18:08.280 --> 0:18:12.080 the light with those organs. Okay, So Graciana says that 0:18:12.200 --> 0:18:17.480 whenever this this um idea of our awareness of others 0:18:17.680 --> 0:18:20.119 and thinking about others and trying to guess at what 0:18:20.160 --> 0:18:24.000 they're they're doing or thinking. Whenever this arose, it clearly 0:18:24.000 --> 0:18:26.760 plays a major role in the social capability of modern humans. 0:18:26.960 --> 0:18:32.159 We paint the world with perceived consciousness. Family friends, pets, spirits, gods, 0:18:32.240 --> 0:18:36.679 and ventriloquist puppets all appeared before us suffused with sentience. 0:18:37.119 --> 0:18:39.600 It makes me think of these television shows where someone 0:18:39.640 --> 0:18:41.480 will bring a black light into a hotel room and 0:18:41.480 --> 0:18:43.280 they'll turn it on and then show you all the 0:18:43.320 --> 0:18:47.280 grotesque stains that are covering everything. Attention schema theory is 0:18:47.359 --> 0:18:51.040 kind of like that black light and saying, look at 0:18:51.280 --> 0:18:53.840 at at at all the things in there, the hotel room, 0:18:53.840 --> 0:18:56.480 of your life, of your universe that you have managed 0:18:56.520 --> 0:19:00.080 to get your sticky consciousness over. Not only is it 0:19:00.200 --> 0:19:03.720 is it coding yourself. It's coding. It's coding animals, it's 0:19:03.760 --> 0:19:07.359 coding other people. It's coding, uh, you know, perfectly inanimate 0:19:07.400 --> 0:19:13.000 things that we temporarily attribute conscious consciousness to your consciousness 0:19:13.200 --> 0:19:17.000 fluids flowing everywhere. It's just absolutely everywhere. But we just 0:19:17.040 --> 0:19:19.040 don't we just don't think about it that the fact 0:19:19.119 --> 0:19:22.359 that that this stuff that is inside us, that that 0:19:22.359 --> 0:19:25.240 we attribute to ourselves is also just taked all over 0:19:25.280 --> 0:19:27.800 the rest of our world. A concrete example of this 0:19:28.080 --> 0:19:31.960 is again calling back to our episode appropriate reception and 0:19:32.119 --> 0:19:34.800 pro pre receptive drift, and this is when we were 0:19:34.840 --> 0:19:39.000 talking about experiments in which a fake arm was placed 0:19:39.080 --> 0:19:41.879 next to someone's real arm and then, uh, you know, 0:19:41.960 --> 0:19:44.040 it was stroked and treated as if it was the 0:19:44.080 --> 0:19:47.159 person's own arm, and uh, they begin to react to 0:19:47.240 --> 0:19:50.199 that fake arm as if it were their own. And 0:19:50.240 --> 0:19:53.320 so you could take all sorts of vital signs, their heartbeat, 0:19:53.359 --> 0:19:55.600 you could take the regalvonic skin response, you know, how 0:19:55.640 --> 0:19:58.800 much sweat they produce, and measure all of that if 0:19:58.840 --> 0:20:01.720 someone were to take an life and threatened their fake arms. 0:20:01.760 --> 0:20:04.840 So again, here's this appropriate acceptive drift, this idea that 0:20:04.880 --> 0:20:09.959 we're drifting into other or others consciousness, even if it's 0:20:10.000 --> 0:20:12.760 a fake arm. Yeah, and so we just find ourselves 0:20:12.760 --> 0:20:15.679 going through our daily life where we're, um, we're we 0:20:15.720 --> 0:20:18.760 stub our toe on some sort of horrendous piece of furniture, 0:20:18.960 --> 0:20:21.719 and at least for for a split second there, we 0:20:21.720 --> 0:20:25.199 we attribute consciousness to that, to that that footstool or 0:20:25.200 --> 0:20:27.639 whatever it was, and and see it as an enemy. 0:20:28.280 --> 0:20:30.840 We you know, we get really into a sports team 0:20:30.840 --> 0:20:32.600 and we start attaching our ego to it. And then 0:20:32.680 --> 0:20:36.080 since we're a spying consciousness to this uh, to this 0:20:36.280 --> 0:20:38.840 unit of individuals, and we don't even see the individuals anymore. 0:20:38.840 --> 0:20:41.040 We just see this thing and it is somehow become 0:20:41.160 --> 0:20:44.679 a conscious entity. But if you slow things down, and 0:20:44.680 --> 0:20:47.159 if at that very moment you ask yourself it's just 0:20:47.240 --> 0:20:51.200 a type a consciousness or a type be consciousness, you 0:20:51.320 --> 0:20:53.159 might be able to see things more clearly. And we're 0:20:53.160 --> 0:20:54.800 gonna take a quick break. When we get back, we'll 0:20:54.840 --> 0:21:05.399 explore that. All right, we're back. Now, we've been talking 0:21:05.400 --> 0:21:08.800 about consciousness. We've been talking about the consciousness that we 0:21:09.080 --> 0:21:12.920 experience inside ourselves and the consciousness that we attribute to others. 0:21:13.000 --> 0:21:16.560 And to make sense of all this, UH, Graziano identifies 0:21:16.680 --> 0:21:20.480 two types of consciousness. All right, And this is essentially 0:21:20.480 --> 0:21:24.400 revolves around again this idea of a first person consciousness 0:21:24.600 --> 0:21:26.760 and a third person consciousness. First of all, you have 0:21:26.760 --> 0:21:31.680 consciousness type A. A brain beholds consciousness in itself. Now, 0:21:31.720 --> 0:21:33.919 this is pretty easy for us to fathom because this 0:21:34.000 --> 0:21:36.760 is I think. Therefore, I am you are conscious of 0:21:36.760 --> 0:21:39.640 yourself and your thoughts and your existence in the universe 0:21:39.800 --> 0:21:42.960 right now. But then you have consciousness Type B. A 0:21:43.119 --> 0:21:47.120 brain beholds consciousness in others. And this is uh, this 0:21:47.160 --> 0:21:50.240 is equally every day for everybody. We attribute consciousness to 0:21:50.240 --> 0:21:52.320 our fellow humans, but we also go ahead and attribute 0:21:52.320 --> 0:21:55.679 it to other organisms, to puppets, to avatars, to plants, 0:21:55.680 --> 0:21:59.480 to symbols, to inanimate objects. Uh, and uh, we'll discuss. 0:21:59.520 --> 0:22:01.359 In the case of God, we attribute it to the 0:22:01.400 --> 0:22:05.960 cosmos itself. Now, at first glance, these would seem to 0:22:06.000 --> 0:22:10.360 be just two distinct concepts. Right, There's this thing I'm feeling, 0:22:10.960 --> 0:22:13.159 and I'm assuming other people feel it too, In the 0:22:13.200 --> 0:22:15.679 same sense that I could say I really like the 0:22:15.800 --> 0:22:19.480 local sports team, I assume everybody should like the local 0:22:19.520 --> 0:22:22.879 sports team. That level of attribution. But where it gets 0:22:22.880 --> 0:22:27.040 really interesting here is that in attention scheme of theory. 0:22:27.240 --> 0:22:30.560 The argument is that both types of consciouness, both type 0:22:30.600 --> 0:22:36.719 A and type B, are essentially cases of attribution. Yeah. Um, 0:22:36.840 --> 0:22:40.000 so consider a bird, right, okay, considering one right now? 0:22:40.080 --> 0:22:43.359 All right, how do you have it in your head? Bluebird, yellow, 0:22:44.000 --> 0:22:48.639 yellow bird, canary? Okay, We've got our canary here, and 0:22:49.200 --> 0:22:55.439 let's say our bird has awareness of others, say a predator. Okay, 0:22:55.640 --> 0:23:00.000