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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff

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Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.

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Speaker 1: My name is Robert lamp and I'm Joe McCormick. And

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Speaker 1: today we're going to be having a conversation about consciousness,

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Speaker 1: probably one of the thorniest, most controversial, and most difficult

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Speaker 1: subjects in all of scientific investigation. But we want to

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Speaker 1: start in a in a thoroughly unscientific way by just

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Speaker 1: trying to manipulate your experience a little bit. We'll see

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Speaker 1: if we can get any traction or you game Robert

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Speaker 1: It okay, So if you are able, if you're not

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Speaker 1: operating a vehicle or juggling hatchets or something like that

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Speaker 1: at the moment, please try this weird little meditation exercise

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Speaker 1: with us. I want you to focus on an object

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Speaker 1: in front of you. Can be any object. It should

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Speaker 1: be something that stays in place that you can continually

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Speaker 1: return your gaze. You. Yeah, so look at look at

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Speaker 1: a detail on the wall. Don't look at your own reflection.

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Speaker 1: Maybe don't look outside the window and passing cars. Your

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Speaker 1: own reflection is just too interesting, right, and it's gonna

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Speaker 1: move and then you're gonna fall over it's just too beautiful. No, okay,

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Speaker 1: so yeah, pick an object, focus on it, look at

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Speaker 1: it and think for a little bit. Just contemplate the

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Speaker 1: physical processes involved in sight. You don't have to know

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Speaker 1: all the science. Just think about the light passing from

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Speaker 1: that object to your eyes, reflecting off that object coming

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Speaker 1: into your eyes, being filtered through the lenses of your eyes,

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Speaker 1: coming onto the retina, this layer of light sensitive cells

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Speaker 1: being turned into information electrical impulses that are transported into

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Speaker 1: the brain via europtic nerve. And look at your object

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Speaker 1: and think about the light passing through all the stages

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Speaker 1: it goes through to get to your mind to form

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Speaker 1: the image that you're seeing right now, not just the

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Speaker 1: object itself, but your perception of it. Here's the question,

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Speaker 1: where does it feel like this process ends physically? Where

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Speaker 1: does it feel like this process ends scientifically? You might

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Speaker 1: know something about the visual processing center of your brain,

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Speaker 1: but don't worry about that. Where does it just subjectively

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Speaker 1: feel like the image is going or where does it

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Speaker 1: feel like you are seeing it? Where's the part of

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Speaker 1: your mind that recognizes what you're looking at, or even

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Speaker 1: just the part of your your body To go beyond that, Sure, now,

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Speaker 1: for me, i'd say default, if I'm not trying anything weird,

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Speaker 1: I guess it feels sort of like it's located somewhere

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Speaker 1: near the front of my skull, sort of hovering behind

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Speaker 1: my face. But I often wonder if it only feels

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Speaker 1: that way because I've sort of been taught to think

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Speaker 1: of my brain and specifically my prefrontal cortex as the

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Speaker 1: seat of higher thought. And if you feel something similar

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Speaker 1: or really no matter where you feel like this seeing

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Speaker 1: is taking place, try a weird experiment see if you

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Speaker 1: can move it. I sometimes find that if I relax

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Speaker 1: and focus my attention, I can, Though this sounds weird,

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Speaker 1: subjectively move the center of seeing back in my head

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Speaker 1: where I tricked my mind into feeling like I'm really

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Speaker 1: seeing it somewhere further back in my skull, pushing that

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Speaker 1: perceptive mind space further and further back, maybe just going

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Speaker 1: outside the skull. Can you imagine feeling that like you

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Speaker 1: are seeing in a place outside of your own head. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: but I've experienced this sort of thing before. Yeah, I

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Speaker 1: mean you can. You can also in addition to moving this, uh,

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Speaker 1: this sort of imagined spot of consciousness, besides moving it

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Speaker 1: around in the skull, and outside of the skull, there's

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Speaker 1: also the ability to move it down your spot mine,

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Speaker 1: into your heart, into your belly, uh, and then again

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Speaker 1: moving it outside of the body. Yeah. And now, of course,

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Speaker 1: seeing isn't the only mental activity that we have conscious

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Speaker 1: awareness of, so you could try similar experiments with perceptive

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Speaker 1: activities other than just the imagination of the mind's eye.

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Speaker 1: You could try to move the part of you that

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Speaker 1: perceives sounds, or you could try to move your internal monologue.

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Speaker 1: So we're talking about meditative states here, really, and it's

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Speaker 1: important to note that there are multiple forms of meditation

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Speaker 1: and tailing varying methods of closed eye, open eye, visually

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Speaker 1: aided meditation, audibly aided meditation, walking meditation, yoga meditation, etcetera.

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Speaker 1: And in terms of imagining, we're gonna get into some

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Speaker 1: of the different views that have existed throughout time about

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Speaker 1: different places in the body that consciousness is centered. But

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Speaker 1: also it's worth noting that out of body states factor

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Speaker 1: into a number of different faiths and supernatural world views.

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Speaker 1: There's actually an interesting version of this in scientology that's

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Speaker 1: called the exteriorization. Oh boy, So the idea here is

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Speaker 1: that uh, and this is This is right off of

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Speaker 1: what is scientology dot org the state of the theting

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Speaker 1: being outside of his body, with or without full perception,

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Speaker 1: but still able to control and handle the body. When

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Speaker 1: a person goes exterior, he achieves a a certainty that

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Speaker 1: he is himself and not in his body. And to

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Speaker 1: explain that er scientology of theting is essentially the concept

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Speaker 1: of a soul not to be confused with a body, theting,

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Speaker 1: which is like a disembodied theting that's lodging in your

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Speaker 1: body and it's causing physical and mental problems and you

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Speaker 1: have to exercise it via auditing. Yeah, this sort of

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Speaker 1: interrogation process, right, Yeah, which we touched on in our

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Speaker 1: episode on religious technology if you want to go back

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Speaker 1: and listen to that. But that the idea here is

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Speaker 1: like this is just one example of a of a

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Speaker 1: a supernatural mode of viewing the world or or religious

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Speaker 1: state of mind that in evolves a system of of

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Speaker 1: imagining the seat of consciousness exiting the body. Yeah. Now,

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Speaker 1: even if you have some success with this experiment, if

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Speaker 1: you can do it, if you can move the place

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Speaker 1: where you're thinking outside your head, we are certainly not

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Speaker 1: trying to suggest or at least I'm not. I think

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Speaker 1: you'll be on the same page here, Robert. We're not

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Speaker 1: trying to suggest that anything is actually moving, or the

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Speaker 1: thought takes place outside the body, or the existence of

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Speaker 1: an immaterial soul or anything like that. I think it's

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Speaker 1: pretty clear that information processing is performed by the nervous system,

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Speaker 1: primarily the brain, and your brain isn't leaving your head.

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Speaker 1: So whatever the organ is in the body that's generating

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Speaker 1: the experience of consciousness does seem to be stuck in

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Speaker 1: your skull. But today we wanted to explore this odd

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Speaker 1: feature of human consciousness that it sometimes feels like it

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Speaker 1: has the subjective experience of a place of a sort

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Speaker 1: of self and an identity, even though it's this immaterial concept.

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Speaker 1: It's an experience we know created by a material brain.

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Speaker 1: But but why is it that you might be able

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Speaker 1: to feel like you can move your seat of thought

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Speaker 1: around two different locations. Um, And if you had, like

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Speaker 1: if you were living in ancient times and all you

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Speaker 1: had to go on was your own subjective reflection, where

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Speaker 1: would you believe your mind was? Yeah, because I believe

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Speaker 1: we we take it for granted with our with our

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Speaker 1: modern scientific understanding of the human nervous system and then

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Speaker 1: the brain. Like most of the time, I don't even

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Speaker 1: really think about where I'm thinking from, though I do

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Speaker 1: find myself at times falling into the idea that I'm

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Speaker 1: if I'm feeling like particular love or warmth, uh, that

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Speaker 1: this is somehow emanating from my heart, not in a

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Speaker 1: rational sense, but in kind of a literary romantic sense.

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Speaker 1: You know, this is a kind of crazy thing to suggest,

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Speaker 1: but I've sometimes wondered if the idea of the heart

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Speaker 1: as the seat of emotion and emotional warmthing connection is

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Speaker 1: something that is derivative from the cultural institution of hugging,

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Speaker 1: in that when you embrace someone, you bring them into

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Speaker 1: your torso like your chest area, and you you close

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Speaker 1: the distance between chests, essentially creating this sense that you're

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Speaker 1: bringing hearts together. I've I've wondered if it's actually backwards

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Speaker 1: like that, that, like the hugging leads to the belief

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Speaker 1: that the heart is the seat of emotional connection, and maybe,

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Speaker 1: knowing what we know about the brain, that's where we

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Speaker 1: get these scenes in movies where like two very manly

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Speaker 1: individuals were like one will grab the other by the

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Speaker 1: head and they'll kind of like do this slight head

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Speaker 1: butt in all their foreheads to each other. You know,

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Speaker 1: they're like having this this manly bond of minds. Oh,

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Speaker 1: it's not just it's not just men. Forehead hugging is

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Speaker 1: like a kind of cool thing. I remember there's a

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Speaker 1: scene in Mad Max Fury Road and there where like

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Speaker 1: Furiosa and and Max sort of put their heads together

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Speaker 1: for a minute. It's sweet. Okay, Well, what we'll think

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Speaker 1: about that is we proceed here. So in terms of

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Speaker 1: thinking about like how ancient people thought about the seat

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Speaker 1: of consciousness, we we have to begin with the ancient Egyptians.

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Speaker 1: And I just to clarify, we're not going to do

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Speaker 1: an exhaustive study of of ancient cultures and how they

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Speaker 1: thought about the mind. But but we're gonna go through

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Speaker 1: a few just quick examples. Well, the ancient Egyptians are

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Speaker 1: a good one to feature because they had lots of

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Speaker 1: thoughts on the mind. Oh yes, and the and ultimately

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Speaker 1: the soul. For for them, the human soul wasn't so

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Speaker 1: much a single entity but a composite. So you had

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Speaker 1: you had to bob the human headed bird combined with

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Speaker 1: cod a life force coup the spiritual intelligence, seek them

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Speaker 1: the power cohibit to the shadow and Wren, which was

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Speaker 1: your name. Uh and isn't many of you might know

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Speaker 1: or remember from our episode on the Egyptian Mummy. While

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Speaker 1: other organs were removed and placed in canopic jars for

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Speaker 1: use in the afterlife, the brain was removed and discarded.

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Speaker 1: Only the heart was left in the body, as this

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Speaker 1: was the seat of the mind. Uh. And in this

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Speaker 1: they were cardiocentrics. The heart is the center that and

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Speaker 1: and they also believe that the heart would be eventually

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Speaker 1: be weighed on a scale against the head dress of

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Speaker 1: mock the goddess of truth. Yeah. I love this, this

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Speaker 1: story about the afterlife where you're a part of your soul,

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Speaker 1: one of these aspects. Uh, this sort of like heart

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Speaker 1: mind thing gets weighed on the scale against I think

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Speaker 1: it's like an image of a feather usually or something.

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Speaker 1: And if you're you're too heavy, if you're too heavy

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Speaker 1: with sin or with burdens whatever. The conception they had

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Speaker 1: was that weighed down this part of your soul, you

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Speaker 1: get eaten by this hybrid monster that's part hippopotamus and

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Speaker 1: part crocodile. Isn't that great? I love it? Yeah? Yeah.

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Speaker 1: Egyptian cosmology is just fabulous. Now let's turn to another ancient,

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Speaker 1: UH civilization that that did a lot of thinking, not

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Speaker 1: just about the state of the mind, but just in general.

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Speaker 1: And that would be, of course, the the ancient Greeks.

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Speaker 1: The Greeks thought a great deal about the seat of

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Speaker 1: consciousness between the sixth century BC and the second century CE.

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Speaker 1: And we could essentially spend an entire hour discussing the

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Speaker 1: various models proposed by the great minds in those eight centuries. Uh.

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Speaker 1: But just to boil it down, I'm gonna refer to

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Speaker 1: a two thousand seven paper Soul, Mind, Brain, Greek Philosophy

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Speaker 1: and the Birth of Neuroscience, by authors Crivolto and Rebody,

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Speaker 1: and they boiled down Greek perceptions of the brain to

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Speaker 1: the following. So under our Camion and the fifth century

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Speaker 1: b C, there's this idea that that the brain is

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Speaker 1: the seat of sensation and understanding. And then under Hippocrates

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Speaker 1: around four b C, the mind is the interpreter of things.

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Speaker 1: The brain is the interpreter of things, the messenger of

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Speaker 1: understanding um. And then under Plato three forty seven b C.

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Speaker 1: The brain is the seat of the rational soul. Under Aristotle,

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Speaker 1: three four through two B c E. The brain is

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Speaker 1: the cooling agent of body heat. Okay, under Herophilus through

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Speaker 1: two A d b c it commands the center of

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Speaker 1: the body. And under Galen about nine to two uh

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Speaker 1: fifteen c E it's uh the seat of hegemonicon. And

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Speaker 1: this is the this is the idea that that So

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Speaker 1: the brain is the hedgemonicon, the ruling principle of the body,

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Speaker 1: the regent or hedgemonica. I know it needs to That's

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Speaker 1: that's the band name right there for sure. So we're

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Speaker 1: talking Galen or Galen of Pergammon again sixteen his lifespan.

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Speaker 1: Central to his interpretation of the human nervous system is

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Speaker 1: this idea of the hegemonicon. Now, the term itself was Stoic,

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Speaker 1: but Galen firmly believed in the brain central role, which

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Speaker 1: was in sharp contrast to the stoics largely cardiocentric views.

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Speaker 1: So the Stoic philosophers would be more like the Egyptians

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Speaker 1: that saw the heart has played some role in empowering

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Speaker 1: the mind and thought, yeah, they believe that the heart

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Speaker 1: that's where you found the human soul, the intellect, uh,

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Speaker 1: and in the the numa around the heart, and in

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Speaker 1: this the micro world reflects the macro world. So they believe,

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Speaker 1: you know, here's here's the heart as the sun of

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Speaker 1: human life. And thus it was regarded as as the

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Speaker 1: seat of the logos, the universal intelligence. And they offered

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Speaker 1: various bits of rhetorical argument and support this, as well

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Speaker 1: as the argument that the voice clearly rises from the

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Speaker 1: heart via the throat. Oh that's kind of interesting. Yeah, so,

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Speaker 1: but Galen was not having it. You know, with lots

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Speaker 1: of ideas like that, I'm always like they're funny in retrospect,

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Speaker 1: but it must have seemed incre doubly clever at the time.

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Speaker 1: So yeah, obviously you think with something down in your

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Speaker 1: chest instead of in your brain. Otherwise, why would speech

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Speaker 1: come from down there If it's coming from the part

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Speaker 1: of you that's thinking, it has a It would be

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Speaker 1: very circuitous for information to be going from the head

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Speaker 1: down there and then coming out of speech. Yeah, understanding

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Speaker 1: what they knew and did not know at the time,

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Speaker 1: it has a certain truthiness to it. Right. So again

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Speaker 1: Galen was was not having any of this, and uh,

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Speaker 1: and he may have engaged in the first experiment to

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Speaker 1: to to produce evidence that the brain controls behavior and thought.

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Speaker 1: So he offered up a rigorous and objective anatomical demonstrations,

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Speaker 1: such as such as noting the disappearance of voice in

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Speaker 1: a pig after an incision of the inferior laryngeal nerves.

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Speaker 1: And he also stressed that the heart produced neither sensation

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Speaker 1: nor modification of consciousness when touched. So he was he

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Speaker 1: was all about, let's get down though I would think

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Speaker 1: it would produce some kind of effect when touched. But

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Speaker 1: but the take home here is that Galen will listen

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Speaker 1: to these ideas, and he said, well, let's put them

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Speaker 1: to the test. Let's actually conduct experiments and uh and

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Speaker 1: and see if if there's any truth to this idea

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Speaker 1: that the heart is uh is the seat of consciousness.

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Speaker 1: And he concluded that it was not. Now one thing

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Speaker 1: that we could look at and separate. Here is is

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Speaker 1: back to the classical hard problem of consciousness, the one

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Speaker 1: you're going to encounter every time, which is that, like

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Speaker 1: if you're doing experiments on animals or something like that,

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Speaker 1: you can never get inside the animal and really know

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Speaker 1: whether you're affecting its consciousness or not. You can just

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Speaker 1: look at its behavior. Um, you can even really say

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Speaker 1: that ultimately you'd have the same problem with other human beings,

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Speaker 1: except human beings can at least tell you they can

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Speaker 1: claim to experience consciousness or not. Um But yeah, so

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Speaker 1: we are dealing with these sort of related but different concepts.

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Speaker 1: On one hand, there is activity of the nervous system,

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Speaker 1: as in the central command of the body that produces behavior,

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Speaker 1: and then the other thing is the subjective experience of being.

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Speaker 1: We assume those things are linked because when you know,

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Speaker 1: we can think about our behavior and that experience is subjective.

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Speaker 1: But but yeah, you could imagine that maybe animals are

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Speaker 1: behaving as automata. They have behavior and even apparently some

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Speaker 1: kind of information processing thought, but it doesn't feel like

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Speaker 1: anything to be them. So I guess those are concepts

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Speaker 1: to to sort of keep separate in the mind. But

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Speaker 1: throughout the history of investigating the seat of consciousness, we're

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Speaker 1: always going back into blurring them, aren't we. You sort

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Speaker 1: of can't help but do it. Yeah, And now I

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Speaker 1: like that you mentioned the objective and the subjective here,

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Speaker 1: because to get back to this idea that most of

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Speaker 1: us don't have any problem thinking about, the brain is

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Speaker 1: the seat of the mind. In this the subjective and

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Speaker 1: the objective tend to line up for most people, Like

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Speaker 1: I haven't seen a cardiocentric argument made by even the

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Speaker 1: most like the the most out there fundamentalist adherent to

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Speaker 1: a faith. You know, I can't think of an example

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Speaker 1: off hand where someone's saying, look, dinosaurs are fake. The

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Speaker 1: world is three years old, and you think with your heart. Man, Like,

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Speaker 1: nobody's making that argument. So we're kind of lucky too,

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Speaker 1: if you will to to to largely live in a

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Speaker 1: world where the subjective and the objective line up. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: And I mean, to another extent, I kind of wonder, um,

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Speaker 1: how to put this, Like I sort of wonder how

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Speaker 1: you could think your mind was powered by your heart. Now,

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Speaker 1: I know that's just my chauvinism as a as a

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Speaker 1: you know, brain centric thinker, knowing what I know and

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Speaker 1: having the cultural beliefs that I do. But I also

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Speaker 1: have thoughts like, um, a strong blow to the head

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Speaker 1: does seem to temporarily impair your consciousness to some extent,

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Speaker 1: Like you lose lucidity, you're sort of harshly removed from

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Speaker 1: the world and you're thinking. Even your subjective experience of

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Speaker 1: thinking seems to kind of slow down and grind its

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Speaker 1: gears a little bit. This doesn't really seem to happen

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Speaker 1: when somebody hits you in the body, or at least

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Speaker 1: not to the same extent. Or I don't know, maybe

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Speaker 1: you wouldn't agree, but just that kind of thing alone

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Speaker 1: would seem to suggest that people should get the idea

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Speaker 1: the thinking and the subjective experience of being has something

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Speaker 1: to do with what's in the skull. Well, certainly a

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Speaker 1: sort of a heart. Well, we'll stop you. Well, that's

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Speaker 1: certainly true. Yeah, And and in pro wrestling you have

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Speaker 1: the heart punch, which for a while and many territories

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Speaker 1: was banned because you would you would you'd like you

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Speaker 1: take the individual's arm and like folded behind them, thus

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Speaker 1: exposing that the ribbed area, and then there would be

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Speaker 1: like a very calculated punch to the heart and you

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Speaker 1: would just go out like a light. So maybe, uh,

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Speaker 1: you know, I wouldn't put cardiocyentracism, uh you know, you know,

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Speaker 1: out of the framework of professional wrestle, and in case

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Speaker 1: if it seems like it could work in the context, Well,

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Speaker 1: but I mean, do you do you generally agree or

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Speaker 1: not that, like the something does feel very natural about

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Speaker 1: thinking about thinking being in the head. Yeah, I largely

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Speaker 1: agree because I can. It's it's hard to imagine a

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Speaker 1: situation where you have have you know, not only intellectuals,

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Speaker 1: but like working people and soldiers engaging in activities that

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Speaker 1: would result in a in in cranial injuries that they

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Speaker 1: wouldn't you know, be privy to this connection, right, But

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Speaker 1: then again, I guess maybe in defense of the idea,

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Speaker 1: maybe you could think about it more like it's just

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Speaker 1: an injury to things like the eyes and stuff like that.

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Speaker 1: You know, if we were primarily visually oriented in the world,

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Speaker 1: if you if you hit the part of my body

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Speaker 1: that has the eyes on it, maybe you could explain

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Speaker 1: a loss of lucidity through that somehow. Now, this this

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Speaker 1: leads to our next example. We're gonna We're gonna roll

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Speaker 1: through here, uh, a spiritual supernatural idea, and that is

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Speaker 1: of the seven chakras. Now, this is something I feel

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Speaker 1: a little embarrassed that I think I should know about.

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Speaker 1: I've always heard of chakras, but I really know almost

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Speaker 1: nothing about them. So give me the the beginner's crash course, Robert.

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Speaker 1: What what's the deal with the chakras? I know there

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Speaker 1: are multiple chakras in the body, Yeah. Then this is

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Speaker 1: another one of those topics that if we wanted to,

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Speaker 1: we could explore just had nauseam. Uh. It shows up

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Speaker 1: in Hinduism, Johnism, Buddhism, and of course your your local

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Speaker 1: neighborhood yoga studio and uh or your local neighborhood tool

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Speaker 1: album cover. Yeah. Yeah, the work of Alex Great It

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Speaker 1: features into a lot of New Age belief systems as well.

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Speaker 1: And uh. And this is something I've always I've always

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Speaker 1: been fascinated by the metaphysics of chakras. They're various artistic

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Speaker 1: representations and uh. And when I adjust to the my

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Speaker 1: own perceptive lenses to the worldview and of these these models,

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Speaker 1: I can certainly say that I believe in them and

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Speaker 1: find the model useful for meditation in yoga, like when

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Speaker 1: you put on the spiritual glasses. This makes good sense

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Speaker 1: to Yeah, when I check and do a yoga class,

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Speaker 1: I can engage in this this model of thinking. So

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Speaker 1: chakras or wheels in Sanskrit, are concepts of the subtle

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Speaker 1: spiritual body. The idea that you have energy points position

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Speaker 1: down the body, from the top of your skull to

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Speaker 1: the base of your spine roots roots chakra to crown chakra,

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Speaker 1: so it would go root, sacred naval heart, your third eye,

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Speaker 1: and then the crown. Whoa, Now, so these all go

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Speaker 1: up sort of the center of your body, right, Like

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Speaker 1: there's a line going up your spine from in the middle,

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Speaker 1: from sort of from your butt to your forehead. Yes,

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Speaker 1: and and I've seen it argue that that animals with

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Speaker 1: tails would have more chakras, but maybe that's one of

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Speaker 1: their more you know, their chill. That's when we turn

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Speaker 1: to our pets for a little slices in My pet

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Speaker 1: is not chill. Oh yeah, well not always okay, but

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Speaker 1: sometimes at least he lives in the moment, right, that's true.

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Speaker 1: That's the great thing about pets is they are very

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Speaker 1: much in the moment. They don't care about past or future.

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Speaker 1: That they don't have too much trouble with losing the self. Well, uh,

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Speaker 1: with each chakra, each one is tied to different organs,

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Speaker 1: different aspects of personality and human behavior. There's a whole

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Speaker 1: system built up around this. Uh. The numbers vary, but

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Speaker 1: but seven is pretty much the norm. And it's a reverent,

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Speaker 1: rather different take than the two previous views. The idea

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Speaker 1: that it's been that consciousness and everything that we are

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Speaker 1: is based on neither the heart of the mind, because

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Speaker 1: the energy of being flows through these points, and it

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Speaker 1: can be focused in certain chakras. So, for instance, there's

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Speaker 1: an exercise for opening a particular chakra, concentrating it, even

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Speaker 1: breathing into or through one's third eye. And this is

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Speaker 1: an interesting experience because in which I've I've engaged in

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Speaker 1: because naturally you know that you're not actually breathing through

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Speaker 1: a non existent aperture in your skull. But if you

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Speaker 1: close your eyes and you focus on the concept, you

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Speaker 1: can you can kind of feel it. You can imagine

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Speaker 1: yourself as this ball of energy moving up and down

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Speaker 1: your body. You can imagine and even feel your center

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Speaker 1: of being pooled into different parts of your anatomy. I mean,

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Speaker 1: part of me wants to ask, like, why is it

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Speaker 1: that we can do that? But that sort of goes

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Speaker 1: back to the question we started with at the beginning,

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Speaker 1: to the extent that some people can move the location

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Speaker 1: of their consciousness around and in this at least subjective sense,

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Speaker 1: they can make it feel like they're thinking from outside

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Speaker 1: their body. Why can they do that? But why why

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Speaker 1: is that a feature of the human mind? Well, I

406
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Speaker 1: think a lot of it comes back to this whole

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Speaker 1: the whole mind body connection there and this this tendency

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Speaker 1: especially you know, you could say we have a definite

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Speaker 1: advantage in modern civilizations of of knowing intrinsically that we

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Speaker 1: think with our mind, but we also fall into that

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Speaker 1: you mean think with the brain. Yes, yes, that we

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Speaker 1: think with a we think with the mind, it's positioned

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Speaker 1: in the brain within and ultimately that we think with

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Speaker 1: the brain. But uh, in doing this we often fall

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Speaker 1: into this model of the right are on a horse,

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Speaker 1: where the rider is the brain and the horses the

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Speaker 1: rest of the body, when really there we're connected. Really

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Speaker 1: were a centaur. So the you know, study after study

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Speaker 1: continues to you know, to to point out, oh, your

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Speaker 1: your your digestion has a has a role to play in, uh,

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Speaker 1: in what you're thinking and how you think and how

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Speaker 1: your mind works. This is something I wanted to get

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Speaker 1: into later in the episode. Maybe I'll save part of it,

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Speaker 1: but yeah, there is this idea of embodied cognition, which

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Speaker 1: is one subset of the discipline of extended cognition. And

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Speaker 1: this is just sort of ways of thinking about all

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Speaker 1: the different ways that the human mind is really based

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Speaker 1: in more than just the brain. Not not to say

429
00:24:39,960 --> 00:24:43,399
Speaker 1: that the brain is not the primary organ doing the

430
00:24:43,400 --> 00:24:47,560
Speaker 1: information processing, but that parts of information processing and body

431
00:24:47,600 --> 00:24:51,879
Speaker 1: processes that inform information processing are offloaded to other things.

432
00:24:51,920 --> 00:24:56,119
Speaker 1: For example, counting on your fingers, you are literally using

433
00:24:56,200 --> 00:25:00,000
Speaker 1: your hand for part of the information processing right there.

434
00:25:00,480 --> 00:25:02,400
Speaker 1: And is no matter how much we think of ourselves

435
00:25:02,440 --> 00:25:05,080
Speaker 1: as a brain, we are not just a brain. We

436
00:25:05,119 --> 00:25:07,760
Speaker 1: are a body. Like like who are you? You are

437
00:25:08,000 --> 00:25:11,879
Speaker 1: your body. So I think that's one reason that the

438
00:25:12,000 --> 00:25:15,919
Speaker 1: chakra model is is interesting and and why we can

439
00:25:15,960 --> 00:25:18,840
Speaker 1: pour ourselves into it so easily. But I also like

440
00:25:18,880 --> 00:25:21,080
Speaker 1: how this model lines up with the experience of of

441
00:25:21,200 --> 00:25:24,520
Speaker 1: multiple cells and the ebb and flow of identity and emotion.

442
00:25:24,560 --> 00:25:26,800
Speaker 1: The idea that you know the person you are first

443
00:25:26,800 --> 00:25:29,120
Speaker 1: thing in the morning is not necessarily the exact same

444
00:25:29,560 --> 00:25:32,280
Speaker 1: version of you right before you go to bed, the

445
00:25:32,320 --> 00:25:34,640
Speaker 1: person that there's the person yesterday that you are yesterday

446
00:25:34,720 --> 00:25:36,560
Speaker 1: versus the person you are today. And I'm not I'm

447
00:25:36,560 --> 00:25:39,199
Speaker 1: not using this as like a real hippie dippy model

448
00:25:39,280 --> 00:25:42,320
Speaker 1: of of your multiple people. Man, and you've been multiple

449
00:25:42,320 --> 00:25:45,920
Speaker 1: people throughout your lives. No, it's just the exact manifestation

450
00:25:45,960 --> 00:25:48,400
Speaker 1: of who you are is gonna vary. Sometimes you're gonna

451
00:25:48,440 --> 00:25:51,400
Speaker 1: be angry, Sometimes you're gonna be sad. Sometimes you're gonna

452
00:25:51,400 --> 00:25:54,160
Speaker 1: be a more Um, you're gonna more me be more

453
00:25:54,200 --> 00:25:57,080
Speaker 1: mentally engaged. Other times you're gonna be more heartfelt. Yeah,

454
00:25:57,080 --> 00:25:59,080
Speaker 1: I don't think that's hippie dippy. I mean I think

455
00:25:59,880 --> 00:26:02,840
Speaker 1: we've got two things in conflict, which is that, Um,

456
00:26:02,960 --> 00:26:06,120
Speaker 1: On one hand, we feel a strong sense of the

457
00:26:06,400 --> 00:26:09,520
Speaker 1: unity of our experience. We feel like I am the

458
00:26:09,560 --> 00:26:14,200
Speaker 1: same person I was yesterday. Like, um, here's one example.

459
00:26:14,280 --> 00:26:17,159
Speaker 1: If I told you, like, okay, uh, tonight, when you

460
00:26:17,200 --> 00:26:21,119
Speaker 1: go to bed, your conscious experience will forever cease. Essentially

461
00:26:21,160 --> 00:26:24,600
Speaker 1: you will die and your experience, but tomorrow morning your

462
00:26:24,600 --> 00:26:27,440
Speaker 1: body will wake up and continue doing that thing, and somebody,

463
00:26:27,600 --> 00:26:30,760
Speaker 1: some other consciousness will inhabit your brain. That maybe the

464
00:26:31,000 --> 00:26:36,760
Speaker 1: that consciousness is identical to yours except yours just ends. Well,

465
00:26:36,760 --> 00:26:39,439
Speaker 1: people don't like that idea. I mean, that would not

466
00:26:39,480 --> 00:26:42,680
Speaker 1: be very enticing to most people. But then again, how

467
00:26:42,680 --> 00:26:46,520
Speaker 1: can you prove that's not already what happens? Yeah, we

468
00:26:46,560 --> 00:26:49,520
Speaker 1: have this like there there is no way in which

469
00:26:49,560 --> 00:26:52,639
Speaker 1: you could know that you don't in fact die every

470
00:26:52,720 --> 00:26:54,840
Speaker 1: night when you go to sleep and wake up with

471
00:26:54,920 --> 00:26:58,439
Speaker 1: a new consciousness full of the old consciousness is memories.

472
00:26:58,840 --> 00:27:02,720
Speaker 1: And that's sort of the the bizarre fleeting nature of consciousness.

473
00:27:03,040 --> 00:27:08,120
Speaker 1: It's experienced as an endless succession of moments, and yet

474
00:27:08,280 --> 00:27:12,320
Speaker 1: we have this strong sense that it's unified throughout our lives. Yeah.

475
00:27:12,320 --> 00:27:14,919
Speaker 1: I mean, that's the kind of the trap of belief

476
00:27:14,960 --> 00:27:18,840
Speaker 1: in a soul, or or even even outside of thinking

477
00:27:18,880 --> 00:27:21,159
Speaker 1: like specifically of a soul, just the thinking of a

478
00:27:21,240 --> 00:27:23,840
Speaker 1: mind state that it's this thing that could be taken off,

479
00:27:23,880 --> 00:27:27,439
Speaker 1: put on a shelf, restored, saved, backed up, put in

480
00:27:27,480 --> 00:27:31,440
Speaker 1: a new body, etcetera. Uh, and instead it's this. Uh,

481
00:27:31,480 --> 00:27:35,280
Speaker 1: it's the string. It's this, it's the it's a timeline. Yeah. Uh.

482
00:27:35,720 --> 00:27:38,360
Speaker 1: Just as a weird little side note, I also think

483
00:27:38,440 --> 00:27:41,680
Speaker 1: that thinking like that, though it sounds kind of weird

484
00:27:41,720 --> 00:27:44,399
Speaker 1: to people, this idea that you know, every every moment,

485
00:27:44,480 --> 00:27:48,399
Speaker 1: your consciousness sort of dies and becomes something new, constantly

486
00:27:48,480 --> 00:27:51,280
Speaker 1: rising from the ashes every time it goes down a

487
00:27:51,280 --> 00:27:54,320
Speaker 1: new train of thought. That could sound kind of weird

488
00:27:54,359 --> 00:27:56,320
Speaker 1: and depressing, but I think you could also think about

489
00:27:56,320 --> 00:27:57,959
Speaker 1: it the other way. That can be a kind of

490
00:27:58,880 --> 00:28:03,000
Speaker 1: exciting liberal rating thought that I think maybe could even

491
00:28:03,040 --> 00:28:05,160
Speaker 1: help people, you know, people who have fear of death

492
00:28:05,200 --> 00:28:08,399
Speaker 1: and stuff like that. Just try try try getting around

493
00:28:08,400 --> 00:28:10,959
Speaker 1: that by thinking about your whole experience is a series

494
00:28:11,000 --> 00:28:14,760
Speaker 1: of moments that perish every second. Yeah, that's not something

495
00:28:14,760 --> 00:28:17,040
Speaker 1: you're gonna have to do. It's some future schmuck version

496
00:28:17,080 --> 00:28:19,439
Speaker 1: of you that's gonna have to do that. So you know,

497
00:28:19,560 --> 00:28:23,399
Speaker 1: chill out right. Likewise, quit quit worrying about you know,

498
00:28:23,480 --> 00:28:27,520
Speaker 1: some transgression you made, uh, you know, several years ago,

499
00:28:27,640 --> 00:28:29,840
Speaker 1: because that that version of us gone. This is a

500
00:28:29,840 --> 00:28:33,600
Speaker 1: different to you, moment to moment. It's all open for interpretation,

501
00:28:33,600 --> 00:28:37,040
Speaker 1: That's what I'm saying. It was the heat of the moment.

502
00:28:38,080 --> 00:28:40,080
Speaker 1: All right, We should probably take a break at this point,

503
00:28:40,400 --> 00:28:43,120
Speaker 1: and then when we come back, we will we will,

504
00:28:43,200 --> 00:28:47,080
Speaker 1: we will leave the realm of ancient Egyptians and chakras

505
00:28:47,240 --> 00:28:55,720
Speaker 1: and uh and cardiocentric stoics, and we'll get into some neuroscience. Okay, alright,

506
00:28:57,000 --> 00:28:59,720
Speaker 1: So note that there are two different things you could

507
00:28:59,720 --> 00:29:01,840
Speaker 1: really be talking about when you talk about the location

508
00:29:01,880 --> 00:29:04,640
Speaker 1: of consciousness. Right. One is what we were doing in

509
00:29:04,640 --> 00:29:08,760
Speaker 1: that experiment at the beginning, the subjective sensation of the

510
00:29:08,840 --> 00:29:12,560
Speaker 1: location of consciousness. Some people might be able to do uh,

511
00:29:12,840 --> 00:29:15,520
Speaker 1: some kind of meditative exercise. They could be very skilled

512
00:29:15,560 --> 00:29:21,000
Speaker 1: meditator and place their subjective experience of consciousness in somebody

513
00:29:21,000 --> 00:29:25,160
Speaker 1: else's head. I could think that I'm thinking from Robert's brain.

514
00:29:26,120 --> 00:29:30,480
Speaker 1: That would not mean that Robert's brain is what's generating

515
00:29:30,520 --> 00:29:35,320
Speaker 1: that sensation, obviously, So the location that really and objectively

516
00:29:35,440 --> 00:29:38,959
Speaker 1: physically generates consciousness is a different question that where than

517
00:29:39,040 --> 00:29:43,280
Speaker 1: where it feels like you're thinking from um And as

518
00:29:43,640 --> 00:29:46,440
Speaker 1: as always with our discussions of human consciousness, we've gotta

519
00:29:46,480 --> 00:29:49,680
Speaker 1: stress again there's no final answer regarding what's true. We

520
00:29:49,920 --> 00:29:53,000
Speaker 1: you know, we don't know that. There's no final insight

521
00:29:53,120 --> 00:29:55,920
Speaker 1: as to the objective nature of it, certainly not yet,

522
00:29:56,000 --> 00:29:58,120
Speaker 1: and there there may never be. We don't really know.

523
00:29:58,880 --> 00:30:02,000
Speaker 1: But humans have have been banging on this nutshell for

524
00:30:02,040 --> 00:30:04,080
Speaker 1: a long time trying to crack it, and there have

525
00:30:04,200 --> 00:30:08,400
Speaker 1: been some interesting discoveries. Right. Oh, yeah, So the human

526
00:30:08,400 --> 00:30:13,160
Speaker 1: brain contains about a hundred billion neurons, and neuroscientists have

527
00:30:13,240 --> 00:30:17,280
Speaker 1: a general understanding of how that network of neurons computes information.

528
00:30:17,720 --> 00:30:21,720
Speaker 1: But how and where does this computation computation transform into

529
00:30:21,760 --> 00:30:25,959
Speaker 1: awareness into sentience, into the human condition. Uh, and this

530
00:30:26,040 --> 00:30:28,880
Speaker 1: is the so called hard problem of consciousness. Right. One

531
00:30:28,880 --> 00:30:31,400
Speaker 1: way of putting this might be you could easily explain

532
00:30:31,880 --> 00:30:36,920
Speaker 1: how organisms with our behaviors would you know, would evolve,

533
00:30:37,280 --> 00:30:39,960
Speaker 1: But why does it feel like something to be one

534
00:30:39,960 --> 00:30:43,840
Speaker 1: of those organisms? Why aren't they just automata with with

535
00:30:44,160 --> 00:30:49,320
Speaker 1: unfeeling intelligence, performing these behaviors in the universe where there's

536
00:30:49,360 --> 00:30:53,080
Speaker 1: nothing like to be anything. So for starters, let's take

537
00:30:53,080 --> 00:30:55,320
Speaker 1: a moment and refer back to to Galen and we'll

538
00:30:55,320 --> 00:30:56,960
Speaker 1: go ahead and raise his hand in victory over the

539
00:30:57,040 --> 00:31:01,320
Speaker 1: cardiocentric stoics. Yes, yes, yes, the brain is the seat

540
00:31:01,320 --> 00:31:05,760
Speaker 1: of cognition, or rather, it's certainly the seating section for

541
00:31:05,840 --> 00:31:08,920
Speaker 1: the concert. Right. We've already discussed a couple of the

542
00:31:08,960 --> 00:31:11,840
Speaker 1: interesting qualifiers on that, but I think we can say

543
00:31:11,840 --> 00:31:14,400
Speaker 1: without blushing too much, that the brain is where information

544
00:31:14,440 --> 00:31:17,600
Speaker 1: processing primarily happens. Right, But if this is the seating

545
00:31:17,640 --> 00:31:21,840
Speaker 1: section in the stadium, what are the exact seats? What

546
00:31:21,960 --> 00:31:25,560
Speaker 1: does what does consciousness look like? From? Where does it arise?

547
00:31:25,960 --> 00:31:31,000
Speaker 1: Neurologically speaking? Well, obviously something that we haven't dealt with

548
00:31:31,120 --> 00:31:33,720
Speaker 1: much in this episode except to sort of ignore it.

549
00:31:33,800 --> 00:31:36,920
Speaker 1: Maybe we will just continue this tradition is that for

550
00:31:36,960 --> 00:31:40,080
Speaker 1: a lot of human history people have had some version

551
00:31:40,160 --> 00:31:43,120
Speaker 1: of what's known as dual is um Cartesian dualism, the

552
00:31:43,200 --> 00:31:46,200
Speaker 1: idea that the mind is the thing separate from the body,

553
00:31:46,520 --> 00:31:49,800
Speaker 1: maybe a thing that controls the body, that it is

554
00:31:49,840 --> 00:31:54,480
Speaker 1: in some sense immaterial, as it has no physical embodiment whatsoever,

555
00:31:55,240 --> 00:31:57,920
Speaker 1: or or sometimes I think in the ancient world it

556
00:31:57,960 --> 00:32:00,960
Speaker 1: was thought of not necessarily as immat he real, but

557
00:32:01,040 --> 00:32:04,080
Speaker 1: it's certainly not as a solid object you could you know,

558
00:32:04,240 --> 00:32:07,200
Speaker 1: extract with a scalpel or something. It was maybe more

559
00:32:07,240 --> 00:32:10,720
Speaker 1: like a numa or a breath, some kind of gaseous thing.

560
00:32:11,080 --> 00:32:13,080
Speaker 1: So this concept that we we talked about earlier, the

561
00:32:13,120 --> 00:32:15,840
Speaker 1: scientology concept of a thetan, like that would be a

562
00:32:15,880 --> 00:32:20,200
Speaker 1: duelist concept, right, because it is a thing outside of yourself. Yeah,

563
00:32:20,240 --> 00:32:22,280
Speaker 1: I guess so. Though I wonder in that case is

564
00:32:22,320 --> 00:32:27,000
Speaker 1: it is the theting considered material or immaterial. I don't

565
00:32:27,040 --> 00:32:29,800
Speaker 1: actually know the answer there. I think, based on what

566
00:32:29,840 --> 00:32:31,480
Speaker 1: I was looking at earlier, I think it would be

567
00:32:31,480 --> 00:32:34,720
Speaker 1: considered immaterial because I think there's a I think el

568
00:32:34,760 --> 00:32:38,640
Speaker 1: Ron Hubbard had some some writings where he's talking about

569
00:32:38,640 --> 00:32:41,640
Speaker 1: it about it, you know, not having mass etcetera. But

570
00:32:41,680 --> 00:32:46,320
Speaker 1: I am no expert on scientology on the details the

571
00:32:46,320 --> 00:32:49,040
Speaker 1: theology of scientology. Now, obviously a lot of people are

572
00:32:49,040 --> 00:32:51,840
Speaker 1: still very committed to dual is um today for various

573
00:32:51,880 --> 00:32:54,360
Speaker 1: you know, faith reasons and things like that, and and

574
00:32:54,440 --> 00:32:57,720
Speaker 1: that's cool, but I'm not aware of any good scientific

575
00:32:57,760 --> 00:33:00,280
Speaker 1: evidence that has been produced in favor of dual is um.

576
00:33:00,320 --> 00:33:03,200
Speaker 1: It seems like pretty much everything goes the opposite way.

577
00:33:03,280 --> 00:33:06,000
Speaker 1: So I don't think we should really consider that their

578
00:33:06,080 --> 00:33:09,760
Speaker 1: scientific grounding for the idea that thinking happens outside the

579
00:33:09,800 --> 00:33:13,160
Speaker 1: brain in some other place and we're forced to try

580
00:33:13,200 --> 00:33:15,760
Speaker 1: and figure out the connection the differences between how brain

581
00:33:15,800 --> 00:33:19,160
Speaker 1: activity seems to work and how we actually experience consciousness.

582
00:33:19,240 --> 00:33:22,320
Speaker 1: Right now, for my own part, I i've I've tended

583
00:33:22,320 --> 00:33:27,320
Speaker 1: to favor the the epi phemonologist viewpoint of Thomas Huxley.

584
00:33:27,360 --> 00:33:30,040
Speaker 1: So he was a duelist and believing in that the

585
00:33:30,320 --> 00:33:32,560
Speaker 1: mind and the brain are not identical, but he also

586
00:33:32,600 --> 00:33:35,760
Speaker 1: believed that the mind was an unnecessary byproduct of the

587
00:33:35,840 --> 00:33:38,640
Speaker 1: of the brain, a sort of cognitive shadow, and I

588
00:33:38,640 --> 00:33:41,280
Speaker 1: tend to like that that view of it. Now, some

589
00:33:41,320 --> 00:33:44,360
Speaker 1: people react to epiphenomenalism with real rank or Some people

590
00:33:44,360 --> 00:33:47,640
Speaker 1: are deeply offended by the idea that the mind doesn't

591
00:33:47,640 --> 00:33:51,640
Speaker 1: actually do anything, that it's just an unnecessary byproduct of

592
00:33:51,680 --> 00:33:55,080
Speaker 1: the brain. Yeah, or an accident, a happy accident, or

593
00:33:55,080 --> 00:33:57,360
Speaker 1: a sad accident, depending on what your mood happens to be.

594
00:33:58,680 --> 00:34:00,400
Speaker 1: I think you could also look at that is a

595
00:34:00,480 --> 00:34:03,280
Speaker 1: very beautiful thing to believe. That's the kind I mean,

596
00:34:03,320 --> 00:34:05,400
Speaker 1: that's the way I tend to interpret, Like wow, Like

597
00:34:05,480 --> 00:34:08,640
Speaker 1: this shadow puppet on the wall is amazing. It's not that,

598
00:34:08,840 --> 00:34:11,600
Speaker 1: you know the fact that it's it's accidental, it's it's

599
00:34:11,640 --> 00:34:14,799
Speaker 1: caused by this just machinery moving to to make this,

600
00:34:15,000 --> 00:34:17,880
Speaker 1: uh this ape body do its thing. Uh. You know,

601
00:34:17,920 --> 00:34:20,040
Speaker 1: I don't think that that takes away from the miracle

602
00:34:20,719 --> 00:34:23,400
Speaker 1: of it all at all. Of course, the opposite of

603
00:34:23,440 --> 00:34:25,880
Speaker 1: that view would be the idea that in some sense

604
00:34:25,920 --> 00:34:28,000
Speaker 1: it would be hard to understand exactly what this is.

605
00:34:28,000 --> 00:34:30,840
Speaker 1: But that doesn't mean it's wrong that in some sense

606
00:34:30,840 --> 00:34:34,880
Speaker 1: consciousness is adaptive, that that consciousness plays some kind of

607
00:34:35,000 --> 00:34:37,360
Speaker 1: role in the survival of the organism. It happens for

608
00:34:37,400 --> 00:34:41,440
Speaker 1: a reason. But in general, we we struggle to comprehend

609
00:34:41,480 --> 00:34:45,640
Speaker 1: this the psycho physical nexus between our immaterial consciousness or

610
00:34:45,719 --> 00:34:48,479
Speaker 1: mind and the physical lump of brain in our head.

611
00:34:49,440 --> 00:34:52,800
Speaker 1: And to be clear, consciousness does not make its nest

612
00:34:52,880 --> 00:34:55,879
Speaker 1: in any one portion of the brain. Well some people

613
00:34:56,000 --> 00:34:58,640
Speaker 1: might argue with that, but I think you're right. Okay,

614
00:34:58,640 --> 00:35:00,200
Speaker 1: Well more on that argument in just a set can.

615
00:35:00,320 --> 00:35:02,960
Speaker 1: But okay, this idea that there's no center of the brain,

616
00:35:03,040 --> 00:35:07,360
Speaker 1: no brain of the brain where everything is aggregated. Uh,

617
00:35:07,680 --> 00:35:10,160
Speaker 1: this mirrors what we know about memory, right, we have

618
00:35:10,280 --> 00:35:12,759
Speaker 1: we we don't just have memory like this this one

619
00:35:12,800 --> 00:35:15,600
Speaker 1: little uh you know, zip drive in our head. We

620
00:35:15,680 --> 00:35:18,840
Speaker 1: have multiple systems, multiple regions of the brain. Uh. The

621
00:35:18,880 --> 00:35:21,480
Speaker 1: brain can suffer damage in one area, in an entire

622
00:35:21,800 --> 00:35:25,240
Speaker 1: system of memory can go offline. But the brain lives

623
00:35:25,280 --> 00:35:29,719
Speaker 1: on by by the You live on by virtue of

624
00:35:29,760 --> 00:35:32,400
Speaker 1: other routes of memory. I kind of like the way

625
00:35:32,840 --> 00:35:35,080
Speaker 1: I think one episode in the past, I can't remember

626
00:35:35,080 --> 00:35:37,560
Speaker 1: which one it was, we talked about the metaphor of

627
00:35:37,600 --> 00:35:40,440
Speaker 1: the brain as almost like an office full of workers,

628
00:35:41,040 --> 00:35:43,880
Speaker 1: where there are some people who maybe stopped showing up

629
00:35:43,880 --> 00:35:47,440
Speaker 1: to work, and other office workers may be able to

630
00:35:47,640 --> 00:35:49,919
Speaker 1: fill in for them, sort of pitch in and cover

631
00:35:50,000 --> 00:35:53,480
Speaker 1: the bases. Now, some people may be more crucial than others.

632
00:35:53,520 --> 00:35:56,640
Speaker 1: Like if your operations manager who keeps the power on

633
00:35:56,840 --> 00:35:59,840
Speaker 1: doesn't show up, Uh, then you might be in real trouble.

634
00:36:00,160 --> 00:36:02,080
Speaker 1: Other people might not show up and you can you

635
00:36:02,120 --> 00:36:05,600
Speaker 1: can find ways to get around it. Yeah, Jim's not here,

636
00:36:05,680 --> 00:36:08,640
Speaker 1: who's gonna make the coffee? Well, maybe Jane can do it.

637
00:36:08,800 --> 00:36:10,799
Speaker 1: The coffee might not be as good, but there will

638
00:36:10,840 --> 00:36:14,360
Speaker 1: still be a caffeinated beverage. Now, a lot of what

639
00:36:14,440 --> 00:36:17,120
Speaker 1: we understand is as consciousness seems to boil down to

640
00:36:17,160 --> 00:36:20,200
Speaker 1: awareness and integration of information. Yeah, this is often a

641
00:36:20,239 --> 00:36:26,840
Speaker 1: model that's put forward. It's it's this idea of um. Yeah,

642
00:36:26,920 --> 00:36:29,439
Speaker 1: I'm trying to define awareness. But that's a really hard

643
00:36:29,480 --> 00:36:32,920
Speaker 1: to do, isn't it. Yeah, Because again we're getting to

644
00:36:33,000 --> 00:36:36,680
Speaker 1: this this situation where we're trying to explain away the

645
00:36:36,719 --> 00:36:39,719
Speaker 1: magic of the of the human experience and uh and

646
00:36:39,920 --> 00:36:46,359
Speaker 1: take it apart into functional um aspects of itself. So,

647
00:36:46,760 --> 00:36:49,640
Speaker 1: for instance, research into the effects of anesthesia and the

648
00:36:49,680 --> 00:36:53,680
Speaker 1: brain suggests that integration of information across the brain this

649
00:36:53,760 --> 00:36:56,200
Speaker 1: might be our best gauge of consciousness. And some argue

650
00:36:56,239 --> 00:36:59,839
Speaker 1: that this might be consciousness that what we experience again

651
00:37:00,080 --> 00:37:03,080
Speaker 1: the shadow cast by this integration. So in other words,

652
00:37:03,200 --> 00:37:06,760
Speaker 1: that if this is happening, consciousness wouldn't necessarily be rooted

653
00:37:06,760 --> 00:37:09,480
Speaker 1: in one particular place in the brain. If we're still

654
00:37:09,520 --> 00:37:12,640
Speaker 1: talking about the location of consciousness, but it's more like

655
00:37:12,680 --> 00:37:16,600
Speaker 1: a phenomenon arising when the brain is talking to itself

656
00:37:16,680 --> 00:37:20,480
Speaker 1: across many different regions. Yes, yeah, well that does sort

657
00:37:20,520 --> 00:37:21,960
Speaker 1: of tie into something I do want to get to

658
00:37:22,040 --> 00:37:28,439
Speaker 1: in a second about a proposed localization. Now, one one

659
00:37:28,800 --> 00:37:31,640
Speaker 1: interpretation of this that I really like this comes down

660
00:37:31,640 --> 00:37:37,640
Speaker 1: to a book by a neuroscientist Michael Graziano title Consciousness

661
00:37:37,640 --> 00:37:40,799
Speaker 1: in the Social Brain, and he breaks it down more

662
00:37:40,880 --> 00:37:42,840
Speaker 1: or less to this. This is a This is the

663
00:37:43,000 --> 00:37:46,920
Speaker 1: the elevator version of this. This is the crash course version.

664
00:37:47,280 --> 00:37:49,120
Speaker 1: You take me up to the thirteenth floor. All right,

665
00:37:49,200 --> 00:37:53,200
Speaker 1: up here we go. Animal nervous systems evolved to process

666
00:37:53,280 --> 00:37:57,240
Speaker 1: incoming data more efficients efficiently, but a lot of data

667
00:37:57,320 --> 00:37:59,920
Speaker 1: streams in so the brain has to sort it all

668
00:38:00,040 --> 00:38:03,480
Speaker 1: out and apply deeper processing to what really matters. So

669
00:38:03,640 --> 00:38:06,160
Speaker 1: this is, yeah, we all know this experience because there's

670
00:38:06,160 --> 00:38:08,319
Speaker 1: a ton of stuff in your field of vision right

671
00:38:08,360 --> 00:38:12,640
Speaker 1: now that you absolutely are not noticing you see way

672
00:38:12,680 --> 00:38:15,920
Speaker 1: more than you really see. Yeah. For another great example,

673
00:38:15,960 --> 00:38:18,040
Speaker 1: as of your are at a party and you can

674
00:38:18,040 --> 00:38:21,759
Speaker 1: focus in on either the conversation you're having, or you

675
00:38:21,800 --> 00:38:25,280
Speaker 1: can sort of loose depart from the conversation you're locked

676
00:38:25,280 --> 00:38:30,200
Speaker 1: into and and fully engage and listen to another conversation

677
00:38:30,239 --> 00:38:32,759
Speaker 1: that's more interesting. Yeah, you can keep going like yeah,

678
00:38:32,880 --> 00:38:36,160
Speaker 1: uh huh, Well, really, what you're doing is evesdropping exactly so.

679
00:38:36,480 --> 00:38:38,520
Speaker 1: But we see some more things in insects. We see

680
00:38:38,560 --> 00:38:41,000
Speaker 1: it in our ability again to see yet not see,

681
00:38:41,040 --> 00:38:43,719
Speaker 1: to hear yet not here, the less important bits of

682
00:38:43,719 --> 00:38:48,520
Speaker 1: sense data in our surrounding. And so this focus, the attention,

683
00:38:48,680 --> 00:38:52,080
Speaker 1: or the control of attention, Graziana argues, is key to

684
00:38:52,160 --> 00:38:55,880
Speaker 1: our experience of consciousness. Our brains process all of this

685
00:38:55,960 --> 00:38:58,480
Speaker 1: sense data, as well as our knowledge of self in

686
00:38:58,520 --> 00:39:01,879
Speaker 1: the world. The self we're aware of is like a

687
00:39:01,920 --> 00:39:05,160
Speaker 1: game piece on a table. Consciousness then it's just information.

688
00:39:06,400 --> 00:39:08,880
Speaker 1: That's his argument anyway. I mean, that's a really interesting

689
00:39:08,880 --> 00:39:10,480
Speaker 1: way to put it. But as with a lot of

690
00:39:10,480 --> 00:39:14,799
Speaker 1: these explanations of consciousness, it's hard to feel it. I'm

691
00:39:14,840 --> 00:39:17,439
Speaker 1: not suggesting that's an argument against it. I don't think

692
00:39:17,440 --> 00:39:20,279
Speaker 1: it is but a lot of times when people try

693
00:39:20,320 --> 00:39:24,520
Speaker 1: to say, here's how you explain how consciousness is generated

694
00:39:24,520 --> 00:39:28,839
Speaker 1: by the brain, however coherent the explanation might be, it's

695
00:39:28,880 --> 00:39:31,359
Speaker 1: hard to make it feel like, oh, yeah, that feels right,

696
00:39:31,440 --> 00:39:35,719
Speaker 1: that's what my consciousness is. Um um, I mean, how

697
00:39:35,719 --> 00:39:38,279
Speaker 1: does it happen? Like? Where does it come from? You

698
00:39:38,360 --> 00:39:41,920
Speaker 1: might be able to explain it as attention, But yet again,

699
00:39:41,960 --> 00:39:46,480
Speaker 1: why is this not some kind of automated, non subjective experience. Yeah,

700
00:39:46,480 --> 00:39:50,359
Speaker 1: anytime we actually try to see ourselves in these uh,

701
00:39:50,400 --> 00:39:54,800
Speaker 1: these explanations of consciousness, that they almost always fall flat. Yeah.

702
00:39:54,840 --> 00:39:56,840
Speaker 1: So I mentioned a minute ago that there actually have

703
00:39:56,960 --> 00:40:00,200
Speaker 1: been multiple attempts to locate the seat of consciousness in

704
00:40:00,200 --> 00:40:04,400
Speaker 1: in one brain subsystem or brain region, uh you know,

705
00:40:04,480 --> 00:40:07,000
Speaker 1: the place where you'd see the certain brain activity light

706
00:40:07,080 --> 00:40:09,479
Speaker 1: up on the f M R I or whatever. And

707
00:40:09,800 --> 00:40:11,920
Speaker 1: one example is that, I don't know if you remember this,

708
00:40:11,960 --> 00:40:14,880
Speaker 1: there was a lot of hubbub back in about a

709
00:40:14,920 --> 00:40:17,640
Speaker 1: brain region known as the clostrum I guess the clos

710
00:40:17,760 --> 00:40:20,520
Speaker 1: drow because there are two of them, and how research,

711
00:40:21,040 --> 00:40:23,560
Speaker 1: which was new at the time, might implicate it as

712
00:40:23,640 --> 00:40:28,439
Speaker 1: the single region responsible for generating the experience of consciousness.

713
00:40:28,760 --> 00:40:33,160
Speaker 1: I believe Francis Crick, who worked on you know, the

714
00:40:33,280 --> 00:40:37,280
Speaker 1: d n A it was involved in investigating the idea

715
00:40:37,320 --> 00:40:39,840
Speaker 1: that the clostrum played a major role or was the

716
00:40:39,840 --> 00:40:43,640
Speaker 1: seat of consciousness. So the clostroom is a small little

717
00:40:43,680 --> 00:40:47,520
Speaker 1: sheet of neurons underneath the neo cortex, the all important

718
00:40:47,600 --> 00:40:51,920
Speaker 1: neo cortex, and it's very thin. It's completely surrounded by

719
00:40:51,960 --> 00:40:55,160
Speaker 1: what's known as white matter, this connective tissue that's said

720
00:40:55,160 --> 00:40:59,160
Speaker 1: to sort of wire different brain regions together. And there

721
00:40:59,200 --> 00:41:00,759
Speaker 1: are two of them in your brain. As I said,

722
00:41:00,760 --> 00:41:04,440
Speaker 1: these closter their their positions sort of anterior center location

723
00:41:04,719 --> 00:41:08,000
Speaker 1: around around where the temples are on your head. And

724
00:41:08,040 --> 00:41:11,719
Speaker 1: the classroom has been referred to as this quote neuronal

725
00:41:11,880 --> 00:41:16,160
Speaker 1: super hub as a sort of central exchange where information

726
00:41:16,239 --> 00:41:20,160
Speaker 1: from all other all over the brain travels to and from.

727
00:41:20,239 --> 00:41:22,680
Speaker 1: So it's got information coming in and out from all

728
00:41:22,760 --> 00:41:26,040
Speaker 1: over the place, and that makes it kind of interesting.

729
00:41:26,080 --> 00:41:28,480
Speaker 1: If we're going with the hypothesis you talked about earlier,

730
00:41:28,520 --> 00:41:33,040
Speaker 1: that uh that the experience of consciousness is the integration

731
00:41:33,480 --> 00:41:37,640
Speaker 1: of the activity of multiple brain regions, right, that's putting

732
00:41:37,640 --> 00:41:41,480
Speaker 1: all this information together. Then there have been some really

733
00:41:41,520 --> 00:41:45,719
Speaker 1: interesting case studies certainly not definitive, but things that make

734
00:41:45,800 --> 00:41:49,279
Speaker 1: people in consciousness studies prick up their ears. One of them,

735
00:41:49,320 --> 00:41:53,120
Speaker 1: for example, is this case of a woman who repeatedly

736
00:41:53,360 --> 00:41:57,400
Speaker 1: lost conscious experience or reported doing so, when this region

737
00:41:57,440 --> 00:42:00,640
Speaker 1: of her brain was electrically stimulated. But it was not

738
00:42:00,760 --> 00:42:04,160
Speaker 1: the same kind of losing consciousness where usually when we

739
00:42:04,200 --> 00:42:07,600
Speaker 1: say lose consciousness, it means like go to sleep, you know,

740
00:42:07,719 --> 00:42:09,920
Speaker 1: or something like that, you sort of close your eyes

741
00:42:09,960 --> 00:42:12,520
Speaker 1: and you lose all you stop acting, you just kind

742
00:42:12,520 --> 00:42:15,680
Speaker 1: of fall over, and all that really continues is like

743
00:42:15,760 --> 00:42:19,880
Speaker 1: breathing and heartbeat and digestion and stuff. This lady was

744
00:42:19,920 --> 00:42:23,480
Speaker 1: not like that. She could, according to UH to the

745
00:42:23,520 --> 00:42:28,799
Speaker 1: reports about this, she could continue very basic behaviors for

746
00:42:28,960 --> 00:42:32,440
Speaker 1: a few seconds after the point where she claimed her

747
00:42:32,480 --> 00:42:36,440
Speaker 1: conscious experience stopped. So if she was like doing simple

748
00:42:36,560 --> 00:42:40,600
Speaker 1: movements or repeating a word, just very simple things like that,

749
00:42:40,640 --> 00:42:44,759
Speaker 1: they could do this stimulation. Her memory of being conscious

750
00:42:45,040 --> 00:42:48,520
Speaker 1: goes away, and yet her body continues doing the thing

751
00:42:48,640 --> 00:42:51,040
Speaker 1: for a brief period of time. Wow, And so I'm

752
00:42:51,040 --> 00:42:53,759
Speaker 1: assuming they're doing this with electromagnetic stimulation or some other

753
00:42:53,880 --> 00:42:58,280
Speaker 1: similar I think it was. I think it was electrode stimulation. Um,

754
00:42:58,320 --> 00:43:00,360
Speaker 1: this is this is scary if you start thinking about

755
00:43:00,360 --> 00:43:03,440
Speaker 1: the possible implications of this in the same way that

756
00:43:03,480 --> 00:43:05,560
Speaker 1: they're you know, the the the alleged god helmet. What

757
00:43:05,600 --> 00:43:08,640
Speaker 1: if you had the zombie helmet where you just do

758
00:43:08,680 --> 00:43:10,879
Speaker 1: you put it on and then your consciousness is out

759
00:43:10,920 --> 00:43:14,680
Speaker 1: and you're just just go about about like, you know,

760
00:43:14,719 --> 00:43:17,719
Speaker 1: cleaning an apartment, right, you act without awareness? Of course,

761
00:43:17,760 --> 00:43:22,279
Speaker 1: would you really mind that? You might mind? You might

762
00:43:22,320 --> 00:43:27,640
Speaker 1: mind missing that time later? Um? Yeah, So I don't

763
00:43:27,680 --> 00:43:29,879
Speaker 1: know what to make about that. I I'm a little

764
00:43:29,920 --> 00:43:33,160
Speaker 1: skeptical about the idea that you'd ever be able to

765
00:43:33,360 --> 00:43:37,960
Speaker 1: pin consciousness on one particular part of the brain. But

766
00:43:38,000 --> 00:43:41,040
Speaker 1: then again, I'm I'm not a neuroscientist. I mean, there

767
00:43:41,120 --> 00:43:45,400
Speaker 1: might be something to that. I'm also sympathetic to the

768
00:43:45,440 --> 00:43:50,080
Speaker 1: ideas that that consciousness is not one unitary thing, but

769
00:43:50,400 --> 00:43:55,120
Speaker 1: is in fact as symboled out of different experiential components.

770
00:43:55,640 --> 00:43:58,720
Speaker 1: This is also a controversial idea. It's but by no means,

771
00:43:58,800 --> 00:44:00,799
Speaker 1: you know, widely accepted a lot of people don't like

772
00:44:00,880 --> 00:44:03,480
Speaker 1: that idea at all. But I think this might be

773
00:44:03,480 --> 00:44:05,960
Speaker 1: a good place to to come back to. This idea

774
00:44:06,040 --> 00:44:08,759
Speaker 1: of extended cognition. You know that we mentioned earlier with

775
00:44:08,800 --> 00:44:13,480
Speaker 1: the idea of of embodied cognition. So if you do

776
00:44:13,640 --> 00:44:16,719
Speaker 1: something extremely simple like write down a note on a

777
00:44:16,760 --> 00:44:20,480
Speaker 1: piece of paper to help you remember something, say you

778
00:44:20,520 --> 00:44:24,279
Speaker 1: write down, you know, uh need need to buy five

779
00:44:24,719 --> 00:44:29,839
Speaker 1: golf balls at target. Yeah, in what sense is that

780
00:44:30,000 --> 00:44:33,880
Speaker 1: piece of paper and pencil not a part of your cognition,

781
00:44:34,640 --> 00:44:38,000
Speaker 1: not a part of your information processing. It's only in

782
00:44:38,040 --> 00:44:40,640
Speaker 1: the sense that you would make a perhaps arbitrary rule

783
00:44:40,760 --> 00:44:44,080
Speaker 1: that says only stuff that happens inside the brain counts

784
00:44:44,080 --> 00:44:47,759
Speaker 1: as cognition. But there are tons of external tools and

785
00:44:47,760 --> 00:44:51,640
Speaker 1: phenomena that aid in our cognition, from calculators to hand

786
00:44:51,680 --> 00:44:55,440
Speaker 1: gestures and even other people. You can use other people's

787
00:44:55,480 --> 00:44:59,560
Speaker 1: cognition to supplement your own, and that would be sort

788
00:44:59,600 --> 00:45:02,880
Speaker 1: of like computer adding on an extra processing core. In

789
00:45:02,880 --> 00:45:05,960
Speaker 1: what sense is that not part of the information processing?

790
00:45:06,040 --> 00:45:09,960
Speaker 1: And that's happening. And this is the main idea behind

791
00:45:10,000 --> 00:45:13,400
Speaker 1: the concept of extended cognition. The brain is obviously the

792
00:45:13,400 --> 00:45:17,600
Speaker 1: primary organ used in thinking, but thinking includes the activity

793
00:45:17,600 --> 00:45:20,960
Speaker 1: if tons of external things hands, pen and paper, computers,

794
00:45:21,000 --> 00:45:24,680
Speaker 1: other people. And with that in mind, I don't want

795
00:45:24,680 --> 00:45:27,480
Speaker 1: to take a take this in a spooky direction. But

796
00:45:27,600 --> 00:45:31,280
Speaker 1: could we not begin to see how extended cognition could

797
00:45:31,320 --> 00:45:35,840
Speaker 1: imply a sort of willingness for the brain to engage

798
00:45:35,880 --> 00:45:40,560
Speaker 1: in extended consciousness. If the subjective experience of the world

799
00:45:40,719 --> 00:45:46,160
Speaker 1: is generated by information processing, and information processing involves external

800
00:45:46,200 --> 00:45:49,799
Speaker 1: activity hands, pen and paper, other people, could part of

801
00:45:49,840 --> 00:45:54,440
Speaker 1: the experience of consciousness be thought of as generated by

802
00:45:54,480 --> 00:45:58,080
Speaker 1: something external to the brain. I do want to be

803
00:45:58,120 --> 00:46:01,480
Speaker 1: clear here again, not not proposing anything supernatural or ghostly

804
00:46:01,600 --> 00:46:04,919
Speaker 1: about that, just trying to introduce some more weirdness into

805
00:46:05,000 --> 00:46:08,279
Speaker 1: this idea about where the mind resides. Yeah, because if

806
00:46:08,320 --> 00:46:11,359
Speaker 1: you're doing a math on your fingers, then is there

807
00:46:11,520 --> 00:46:13,480
Speaker 1: is there is their mind all over your fingers. It's

808
00:46:13,520 --> 00:46:16,000
Speaker 1: got cognition over your your hands. I don't know that

809
00:46:16,000 --> 00:46:18,719
Speaker 1: that might be a nonsensical idea, but I do think

810
00:46:18,719 --> 00:46:21,920
Speaker 1: it's at least worth contemplating, at least maybe long enough

811
00:46:21,960 --> 00:46:26,800
Speaker 1: to dismiss I'm not sure. All Right, we should probably

812
00:46:26,800 --> 00:46:28,759
Speaker 1: take one more break at this point, but when we

813
00:46:28,800 --> 00:46:31,080
Speaker 1: come back, we'll discuss this topic a little bit more,

814
00:46:31,120 --> 00:46:33,640
Speaker 1: and we'll even get into a little bit of Daniel Dinnett.

815
00:46:37,520 --> 00:46:41,520
Speaker 1: All right, we're back. Okay, one last thing I wanted

816
00:46:41,560 --> 00:46:45,480
Speaker 1: to talk about in this episode, Uh, about asking the

817
00:46:45,560 --> 00:46:49,800
Speaker 1: question where is my mind? And it's a short story

818
00:46:50,000 --> 00:46:54,200
Speaker 1: by the philosopher Daniel Dennett. Daniel Dennett's philosopher we've talked

819
00:46:54,200 --> 00:46:56,120
Speaker 1: about on the show before. I always think he's a

820
00:46:56,120 --> 00:46:59,799
Speaker 1: really interesting dude. Uh. He's written a lot about philosophy

821
00:46:59,800 --> 00:47:01,840
Speaker 1: of mind. He's trying to He wrote a book in

822
00:47:01,840 --> 00:47:05,200
Speaker 1: the nineties called Consciousness Explained, where he tried to outline

823
00:47:05,239 --> 00:47:08,760
Speaker 1: a theory about how consciousness was generated from the ground

824
00:47:08,800 --> 00:47:12,719
Speaker 1: up by these different cognitive processes sort of having additive

825
00:47:12,760 --> 00:47:16,640
Speaker 1: properties adding up to consciousness, and how things could He

826
00:47:16,680 --> 00:47:19,880
Speaker 1: had the idea that consciousness is not either just an

827
00:47:19,920 --> 00:47:22,799
Speaker 1: either or like it's there it's not. He has this

828
00:47:22,920 --> 00:47:25,600
Speaker 1: idea that things can be sort of conscious, there can

829
00:47:25,640 --> 00:47:29,520
Speaker 1: be varying degrees of consciousness and uh, and that we

830
00:47:29,680 --> 00:47:35,239
Speaker 1: represent some level of consciousness that is common to human animals. Yeah,

831
00:47:35,239 --> 00:47:38,960
Speaker 1: because certainly when you start looking at at other animal specimens,

832
00:47:39,000 --> 00:47:44,000
Speaker 1: you look at say dolphins, um various primates, or another

833
00:47:44,040 --> 00:47:47,799
Speaker 1: example is is octopi, you start you have to ask yourself, well,

834
00:47:48,719 --> 00:47:51,600
Speaker 1: to what extent do we dare take the human model

835
00:47:51,640 --> 00:47:54,920
Speaker 1: of cognition and say, all right, octopus, do this make

836
00:47:55,000 --> 00:47:59,240
Speaker 1: this shape with your with with your brain. Uh, that's

837
00:47:59,280 --> 00:48:02,560
Speaker 1: that's that's the ridiculous. But then even if we get

838
00:48:02,560 --> 00:48:05,640
Speaker 1: the octopus to do it, it's it's still hard to

839
00:48:05,680 --> 00:48:08,600
Speaker 1: know what's going on inside the octopus's experience. I mean,

840
00:48:08,760 --> 00:48:11,600
Speaker 1: I probably assumed that other animals are having some sort

841
00:48:11,600 --> 00:48:13,600
Speaker 1: of experience. You can never really know for sure. It

842
00:48:13,600 --> 00:48:16,800
Speaker 1: would just seem by analogy that they are to some extent, probably,

843
00:48:17,680 --> 00:48:19,839
Speaker 1: but yeah, it's hard to know. But anyway, I want

844
00:48:19,840 --> 00:48:22,640
Speaker 1: to get into this. So Daniel denn it's this philosopher,

845
00:48:23,080 --> 00:48:25,800
Speaker 1: but years ago he wrote a sci fi short story

846
00:48:25,800 --> 00:48:28,480
Speaker 1: and this was to get into some of his weird

847
00:48:28,560 --> 00:48:31,239
Speaker 1: ideas about the mind. So Dennett's main character in this

848
00:48:31,320 --> 00:48:34,840
Speaker 1: story is a fictionalized version of himself who is delivering

849
00:48:34,840 --> 00:48:37,760
Speaker 1: a lecture to an auditorium full of students and colleagues.

850
00:48:38,360 --> 00:48:42,040
Speaker 1: Here's the setup. He says, several years ago he was

851
00:48:42,120 --> 00:48:45,480
Speaker 1: recruited by the government to undergo a dangerous mission. And

852
00:48:45,560 --> 00:48:47,839
Speaker 1: what it was was that the Department of Defense had

853
00:48:47,880 --> 00:48:51,319
Speaker 1: developed a new type of weapon, which was an underground

854
00:48:51,520 --> 00:48:55,480
Speaker 1: tunneling nuclear warhead. It sounds like a great centerpiece for

855
00:48:55,520 --> 00:49:01,319
Speaker 1: a nineties movie, right, like the has Nicolas Cage in it. Maybe, yeah,

856
00:49:01,400 --> 00:49:04,759
Speaker 1: Nicolas Cage, I think. I think it's it's like the

857
00:49:04,760 --> 00:49:07,040
Speaker 1: sequel to con Air. They get him to come in

858
00:49:07,080 --> 00:49:11,880
Speaker 1: there an con drill um and it's known as the

859
00:49:11,920 --> 00:49:18,440
Speaker 1: Supersonic Tunneling Underground Device or STUD exactly. So. It was

860
00:49:18,520 --> 00:49:20,960
Speaker 1: designed to tunnel through the core of the Earth and

861
00:49:21,040 --> 00:49:24,759
Speaker 1: be capable of delivering a nuclear payload to weapons installations

862
00:49:24,760 --> 00:49:27,200
Speaker 1: on the other side of the globe. But it became

863
00:49:27,320 --> 00:49:31,520
Speaker 1: stuck about a mile beneath Tulsa, Oklahoma. Oh. So, the

864
00:49:31,560 --> 00:49:35,760
Speaker 1: government wants dinn It to go disarm the device, and unfortunately,

865
00:49:35,800 --> 00:49:38,880
Speaker 1: the device is known to emit, a type of radiation

866
00:49:39,360 --> 00:49:43,080
Speaker 1: that is considered harmless to the body but fatal to

867
00:49:43,239 --> 00:49:48,359
Speaker 1: brain cells. But the government has a solution. They want

868
00:49:48,360 --> 00:49:52,480
Speaker 1: to remove Dinnett's brain from his body and store it

869
00:49:52,520 --> 00:49:55,280
Speaker 1: in a jar full of liquid in a lab in Houston,

870
00:49:55,800 --> 00:49:59,919
Speaker 1: allowing it to control his body remotely via a radio link.

871
00:50:00,320 --> 00:50:02,360
Speaker 1: This is great now, so you think, wait a minute,

872
00:50:02,400 --> 00:50:05,759
Speaker 1: that's crazy. Not really, they explained, because the body is

873
00:50:05,840 --> 00:50:08,880
Speaker 1: already connected to the brain through a series of nerves.

874
00:50:08,920 --> 00:50:11,000
Speaker 1: For all practical purposes, you can think of these as

875
00:50:11,120 --> 00:50:14,520
Speaker 1: wires of varying lengths. So what if you just imagine

876
00:50:14,560 --> 00:50:17,680
Speaker 1: making the wires a little bit longer, and a little

877
00:50:17,680 --> 00:50:20,759
Speaker 1: bit longer, and a little bit longer still, and then

878
00:50:20,760 --> 00:50:25,800
Speaker 1: eventually just skipping the wires altogether and substituting wireless radio

879
00:50:25,880 --> 00:50:29,319
Speaker 1: waves that can do the same types of energy and

880
00:50:29,360 --> 00:50:33,719
Speaker 1: information transmission that the nerves do, just like the communication

881
00:50:33,760 --> 00:50:37,520
Speaker 1: between your computer and your WiFi router. See this, This

882
00:50:37,840 --> 00:50:42,840
Speaker 1: blows another hole in the RoboCop to scenario where you

883
00:50:42,920 --> 00:50:48,440
Speaker 1: had Tom Noonan's brain put into this this robotic war machine,

884
00:50:48,719 --> 00:50:52,600
Speaker 1: and then RoboCop is able to defeat RoboCop too by

885
00:50:52,640 --> 00:50:55,160
Speaker 1: reaching and pulling his brain out of the machine and

886
00:50:55,239 --> 00:50:57,959
Speaker 1: crashing it on the smashing it on the ground. Why

887
00:50:57,960 --> 00:51:00,000
Speaker 1: did Why did it? Because his brain was just connected

888
00:51:00,040 --> 00:51:02,080
Speaker 1: by via wires to the rest of the robot. It

889
00:51:02,080 --> 00:51:06,280
Speaker 1: could have been an a vault somewhere protected. Why So anyway,

890
00:51:06,320 --> 00:51:09,360
Speaker 1: Dennett says, well, yes, I'm very curious about the mind

891
00:51:09,400 --> 00:51:11,520
Speaker 1: and the brain, so I will undergo the procedure. So

892
00:51:11,640 --> 00:51:15,240
Speaker 1: he wakes up from surgery and everything feels basically normal,

893
00:51:15,360 --> 00:51:18,880
Speaker 1: as if nothing has changed, except he has some antenna's

894
00:51:18,920 --> 00:51:21,440
Speaker 1: poking out of his head, but otherwise he feels like

895
00:51:21,600 --> 00:51:24,800
Speaker 1: he is him. But then he goes to view his brain.

896
00:51:25,680 --> 00:51:27,880
Speaker 1: There it is, He sees it sitting in a vat

897
00:51:28,000 --> 00:51:31,240
Speaker 1: full of He describes what looks like root beer. Um,

898
00:51:31,760 --> 00:51:34,399
Speaker 1: and or wait does he say ginger ale or root beer?

899
00:51:34,440 --> 00:51:37,440
Speaker 1: I can't remember. It's sitting in something that looks like

900
00:51:37,480 --> 00:51:43,040
Speaker 1: a delicious sugar yeah, okay um, And it's attached to

901
00:51:43,080 --> 00:51:46,239
Speaker 1: a bunch of electrodes in antenna's. But then he is

902
00:51:46,280 --> 00:51:50,200
Speaker 1: struck with a really odd thought. Why does he think, here,

903
00:51:50,239 --> 00:51:53,880
Speaker 1: I am looking at my own brain instead of there's

904
00:51:53,920 --> 00:51:58,560
Speaker 1: my body looking at me. After all, the brain is

905
00:51:58,600 --> 00:52:02,000
Speaker 1: the thing doing the thinking. He's looking at the thing

906
00:52:02,120 --> 00:52:05,120
Speaker 1: that is thinking right now. It's the organ responsible for

907
00:52:05,160 --> 00:52:07,879
Speaker 1: generating the idea of the self, maintaining it through every

908
00:52:07,960 --> 00:52:11,680
Speaker 1: environmental variation. And yet he cannot shake the idea that

909
00:52:11,840 --> 00:52:15,480
Speaker 1: he is still, in some sense in his body. Uh.

910
00:52:15,520 --> 00:52:17,480
Speaker 1: And in the sense he is because he's looking out

911
00:52:17,480 --> 00:52:20,400
Speaker 1: through eyes that are attached to his body. But to

912
00:52:20,440 --> 00:52:24,200
Speaker 1: answer the question where am I? He subjectively feels that

913
00:52:24,280 --> 00:52:27,040
Speaker 1: he is in his head, but consciously knows that he

914
00:52:27,160 --> 00:52:30,000
Speaker 1: is in the jar. Now for somebody who doesn't usually

915
00:52:30,000 --> 00:52:31,879
Speaker 1: write science fiction. I think this is a really good

916
00:52:31,880 --> 00:52:34,080
Speaker 1: setup for a story. Yeah, I'm digging it. I can

917
00:52:34,160 --> 00:52:38,799
Speaker 1: I can imaginate at least as an Outer Limits episode. Now,

918
00:52:38,920 --> 00:52:40,719
Speaker 1: can you only imagine how it would end if it

919
00:52:40,760 --> 00:52:44,400
Speaker 1: were a Twilight Zone episode? Okay, So he's trying to

920
00:52:44,440 --> 00:52:47,080
Speaker 1: sort out his feelings, and Dinnett decides to rename the

921
00:52:47,120 --> 00:52:50,920
Speaker 1: two objects. So he names his body Hamlet and he

922
00:52:51,040 --> 00:52:55,840
Speaker 1: names his brain Yorick. Good choices. If Dinnett is not

923
00:52:55,960 --> 00:53:00,600
Speaker 1: strictly in Hamlet Hamlet, and he's not strictly in Yorick,

924
00:53:01,080 --> 00:53:04,400
Speaker 1: where is he? Where? Where is the self that he's

925
00:53:04,440 --> 00:53:08,320
Speaker 1: thinking from? Uh? And maybe maybe he's wherever his point

926
00:53:08,320 --> 00:53:10,560
Speaker 1: of view is. He goes through a bunch of different

927
00:53:10,640 --> 00:53:14,120
Speaker 1: options here, but then he also discovers there's a switch

928
00:53:14,200 --> 00:53:17,080
Speaker 1: he can flip to turn off the antennas on his

929
00:53:17,160 --> 00:53:19,840
Speaker 1: brain and sever the connection between his brain and body.

930
00:53:20,239 --> 00:53:23,280
Speaker 1: Flipping the switch causes him to become groggy and collapse,

931
00:53:23,360 --> 00:53:25,160
Speaker 1: and somebody else has got to flip it back on

932
00:53:25,320 --> 00:53:28,680
Speaker 1: for him. And now eventually he's got to go face

933
00:53:28,719 --> 00:53:32,160
Speaker 1: down the underground nuke, so controlling his body via a

934
00:53:32,280 --> 00:53:35,359
Speaker 1: radio link just like before, then it goes down into

935
00:53:35,400 --> 00:53:39,160
Speaker 1: the tunnel to disarm the stud but unfortunately, while down there,

936
00:53:39,560 --> 00:53:42,640
Speaker 1: one by one his radio links begin to fail, So

937
00:53:42,719 --> 00:53:45,680
Speaker 1: first he loses his hearing, then he loses control of

938
00:53:45,719 --> 00:53:49,320
Speaker 1: his speech, then of various motor functions, eventually goes blind

939
00:53:49,320 --> 00:53:53,160
Speaker 1: and loses all connection to his body. At this moment,

940
00:53:53,280 --> 00:53:57,080
Speaker 1: he realizes something very weird has happened. Um his body

941
00:53:57,080 --> 00:53:59,719
Speaker 1: has collapsed in the tunnel with nothing to control it,

942
00:54:00,080 --> 00:54:04,800
Speaker 1: and he has become a disembodied mind nobody, only a brain.

943
00:54:05,480 --> 00:54:08,400
Speaker 1: And the odd thing is that whereas before his intuition

944
00:54:08,480 --> 00:54:10,560
Speaker 1: told them, he told him he was in his body,

945
00:54:11,120 --> 00:54:14,000
Speaker 1: even though he knew otherwise, now he asked the question

946
00:54:14,200 --> 00:54:17,200
Speaker 1: where am I, and his intuition tells him that he's

947
00:54:17,200 --> 00:54:19,719
Speaker 1: in a jar in a lab in Houston. It's only

948
00:54:19,760 --> 00:54:23,680
Speaker 1: by like subtraction of the rest of what's available that

949
00:54:23,719 --> 00:54:28,120
Speaker 1: he starts to put himself in the brain. Uh. And

950
00:54:28,440 --> 00:54:31,520
Speaker 1: this makes me wonder just as a side we we

951
00:54:31,520 --> 00:54:34,440
Speaker 1: would usually assume that some version of this is possible,

952
00:54:34,440 --> 00:54:37,440
Speaker 1: but should we, like, could you really think at all

953
00:54:37,480 --> 00:54:40,600
Speaker 1: if your mind was confined to a total void, and

954
00:54:40,640 --> 00:54:44,040
Speaker 1: you had no input or output or any kind any

955
00:54:44,080 --> 00:54:47,840
Speaker 1: kind of anything whatsoever between your brain and the outside world.

956
00:54:48,000 --> 00:54:51,640
Speaker 1: I wonder if that would actually preclude thinking somehow. Well,

957
00:54:51,640 --> 00:54:53,520
Speaker 1: you know, Lovecraft actually got into this little bit and

958
00:54:54,080 --> 00:54:56,719
Speaker 1: he hit a short story titled The Whisper and Darkness,

959
00:54:57,360 --> 00:55:02,440
Speaker 1: and there's a plot concerning the ego. These alien fungal

960
00:55:02,520 --> 00:55:05,719
Speaker 1: creatures from another world, and they have a habit of

961
00:55:06,080 --> 00:55:09,400
Speaker 1: removing a human's brain, putting them into a mego brain

962
00:55:09,520 --> 00:55:12,359
Speaker 1: canister so they can be uh, you know, stored away

963
00:55:12,400 --> 00:55:15,680
Speaker 1: or shipped elsewhere, and you just go mad inside the canister. Well,

964
00:55:15,719 --> 00:55:18,280
Speaker 1: this is something I think that's legitimate to worry about.

965
00:55:18,280 --> 00:55:21,480
Speaker 1: When people talk about this sci fi trans human kind

966
00:55:21,520 --> 00:55:24,799
Speaker 1: of idea of downloading your brain into a computer, Uh,

967
00:55:25,320 --> 00:55:27,920
Speaker 1: a lot of people think this is really gonna happen someday.

968
00:55:28,000 --> 00:55:32,520
Speaker 1: I remain highly skeptical about it. Um, but okay, let's

969
00:55:32,520 --> 00:55:34,719
Speaker 1: say it is possible. I'm not sure that would be

970
00:55:34,760 --> 00:55:36,880
Speaker 1: a good thing to do, because I mean, there you

971
00:55:37,000 --> 00:55:41,680
Speaker 1: run the risk of putting your consciousness into a scenario

972
00:55:41,760 --> 00:55:47,200
Speaker 1: where you would be uh possibly psychologically tortured by you know,

973
00:55:47,360 --> 00:55:51,000
Speaker 1: lack of some kind of crucial input or output, and

974
00:55:51,400 --> 00:55:54,400
Speaker 1: also at the same time unable to even kill yourself

975
00:55:54,400 --> 00:55:56,160
Speaker 1: and escape it. Yeah, I mean you could have like

976
00:55:56,200 --> 00:55:59,120
Speaker 1: a virtual sense of your body. But eventually you're gonna

977
00:55:59,120 --> 00:56:01,120
Speaker 1: have to hire mcjag or to kidnap the MeV o

978
00:56:01,280 --> 00:56:04,200
Speaker 1: este as from the past so he can occupy his brain.

979
00:56:04,360 --> 00:56:08,760
Speaker 1: Is this the plot of Free Jack? I have Anthony

980
00:56:08,800 --> 00:56:14,080
Speaker 1: Hopkins in it. Yeah, he plays the brain in question. Okay,

981
00:56:14,160 --> 00:56:16,200
Speaker 1: so back to the story. We're getting close to the

982
00:56:16,280 --> 00:56:20,359
Speaker 1: end now. So he's been in this brain. Now he's

983
00:56:20,400 --> 00:56:22,760
Speaker 1: just a brain, and he goes into a dreamless sleep.

984
00:56:23,760 --> 00:56:26,400
Speaker 1: He wakes up about a year later, and upon awaking

985
00:56:26,400 --> 00:56:29,239
Speaker 1: in a hospital, he again finds himself having the sensation

986
00:56:29,320 --> 00:56:32,400
Speaker 1: of being located in a physical body, but it's not

987
00:56:32,520 --> 00:56:36,120
Speaker 1: his original one. He has the sense that his personality

988
00:56:36,160 --> 00:56:38,520
Speaker 1: has been maintained. You know that he's the same person.

989
00:56:38,560 --> 00:56:41,040
Speaker 1: This thing we're talking about earlier, the unity, the unity

990
00:56:41,120 --> 00:56:45,440
Speaker 1: of conscious experience over time. But he's in this new body,

991
00:56:45,680 --> 00:56:50,960
Speaker 1: supplied to him by the government from previous circumstances unknown. Uh,

992
00:56:51,040 --> 00:56:53,279
Speaker 1: of course. And yet, of course the organ doing the

993
00:56:53,320 --> 00:56:56,680
Speaker 1: thinking is still in the jar in Houston, connected to

994
00:56:56,680 --> 00:57:00,000
Speaker 1: his body via new radio links just like the old one. Uh.

995
00:57:00,040 --> 00:57:02,160
Speaker 1: And in keeping with his Hamlet theme, he names his

996
00:57:02,239 --> 00:57:04,840
Speaker 1: new body Forton bra all right, now refresh me. I

997
00:57:04,840 --> 00:57:07,439
Speaker 1: certainly remember that, of course Hamlets, the main character Yorick

998
00:57:07,560 --> 00:57:10,000
Speaker 1: is the skull that how does Forton brought factor in?

999
00:57:10,520 --> 00:57:12,759
Speaker 1: Forton Bra is the character who comes in at the

1000
00:57:12,920 --> 00:57:15,640
Speaker 1: end of Hamlet, and uh and just sort of survey.

1001
00:57:15,719 --> 00:57:19,000
Speaker 1: He's the conquering invader who comes into the castle at

1002
00:57:19,000 --> 00:57:21,800
Speaker 1: the end and sees the devastation and a sort of

1003
00:57:21,840 --> 00:57:25,040
Speaker 1: comments on it all. Oh, yes, yes, gotcha. So if

1004
00:57:25,440 --> 00:57:28,480
Speaker 1: Dennett's original body, the first body he had Hamlet, is

1005
00:57:28,560 --> 00:57:31,400
Speaker 1: dead in the tunnel in under a huge grave marker

1006
00:57:31,440 --> 00:57:35,600
Speaker 1: reading stud why why does he still feel that he

1007
00:57:35,720 --> 00:57:38,240
Speaker 1: is alive but with a new body, rather than feeling

1008
00:57:38,240 --> 00:57:40,840
Speaker 1: that he died and now some other person is being

1009
00:57:40,880 --> 00:57:44,840
Speaker 1: controlled by his brain? Uh? That that seems to root

1010
00:57:44,960 --> 00:57:48,240
Speaker 1: the idea of the location of the self in the brain.

1011
00:57:49,000 --> 00:57:51,439
Speaker 1: But then Dinnett, in his new body Forton bra goes

1012
00:57:51,480 --> 00:57:54,400
Speaker 1: to view his brain again. Once more, he tries to

1013
00:57:54,480 --> 00:57:57,240
Speaker 1: flip the switch to sever the connection between his brain

1014
00:57:57,320 --> 00:58:00,560
Speaker 1: and his body, and this time nothing happened. He doesn't

1015
00:58:00,560 --> 00:58:04,640
Speaker 1: become groggy and collapse. Here he discovers he has unwittingly

1016
00:58:04,760 --> 00:58:08,160
Speaker 1: been the subject of a secret side project scientists in

1017
00:58:08,200 --> 00:58:11,240
Speaker 1: the lab have made a computer copy of his brain

1018
00:58:11,800 --> 00:58:15,160
Speaker 1: named Hubert. Now, who knows if such a thing as

1019
00:58:15,200 --> 00:58:17,520
Speaker 1: possible to do in reality, But let's go along with

1020
00:58:17,560 --> 00:58:20,680
Speaker 1: it for just a second. Running on a computer attached

1021
00:58:20,680 --> 00:58:23,640
Speaker 1: to radio transmitter, is a piece of software that is

1022
00:58:23,680 --> 00:58:27,640
Speaker 1: a perfect duplicate of his brain, exactly replicating all the

1023
00:58:27,640 --> 00:58:31,600
Speaker 1: function and retaining all the memories. And the scientists have

1024
00:58:31,680 --> 00:58:34,640
Speaker 1: been been experimenting with it to see how closely it

1025
00:58:34,680 --> 00:58:37,240
Speaker 1: mirrors the actions of his real brain, and so far

1026
00:58:37,280 --> 00:58:41,880
Speaker 1: its behavior has been a d identical. Furthermore, he discovers

1027
00:58:41,920 --> 00:58:45,240
Speaker 1: that the reason he did not experience any problems upon

1028
00:58:45,280 --> 00:58:48,480
Speaker 1: severing the connection between Yorick and Forton Brough is that,

1029
00:58:48,520 --> 00:58:51,600
Speaker 1: in fact, Forton Braugh is not being controlled by Yorick

1030
00:58:51,760 --> 00:58:56,360
Speaker 1: the organic brain, but by Hubert, the computer copy. Both

1031
00:58:56,480 --> 00:59:00,240
Speaker 1: Yorick and Hubert are simultaneously fed the same input from

1032
00:59:00,280 --> 00:59:03,000
Speaker 1: the body, and they both react to it the same way,

1033
00:59:03,200 --> 00:59:05,680
Speaker 1: So it does not seem to matter which one of

1034
00:59:05,720 --> 00:59:09,560
Speaker 1: them controls the body. Forton bra Now where is den

1035
00:59:09,560 --> 00:59:13,760
Speaker 1: it Um? And so there's some more wonderfully fun things

1036
00:59:13,800 --> 00:59:15,439
Speaker 1: that happened at the end of the story. I don't

1037
00:59:15,440 --> 00:59:17,680
Speaker 1: want to spoil the very ending of it for you.

1038
00:59:17,720 --> 00:59:20,680
Speaker 1: But that's sort of like the meat of of the

1039
00:59:20,760 --> 00:59:24,840
Speaker 1: philosophical questions posed. But as interesting as it is, it

1040
00:59:24,920 --> 00:59:28,600
Speaker 1: makes me wonder like, can you ever really learn anything

1041
00:59:28,680 --> 00:59:32,160
Speaker 1: about the nature of consciousness purely through these kinds of

1042
00:59:32,160 --> 00:59:36,800
Speaker 1: thought experiments? You know, can can um can just coming

1043
00:59:36,880 --> 00:59:40,800
Speaker 1: up with scenarios and and sort of ratiocination in the

1044
00:59:40,920 --> 00:59:45,040
Speaker 1: chair get you to a place of understanding the nature

1045
00:59:45,080 --> 00:59:49,600
Speaker 1: of consciousness that say, you wouldn't have arrived at just

1046
00:59:49,640 --> 00:59:52,920
Speaker 1: by having the experience of being conscious. Yeah, it's an

1047
00:59:52,960 --> 00:59:56,120
Speaker 1: interesting argument because on one hand, like looking at your

1048
00:59:56,120 --> 00:59:58,520
Speaker 1: own consciousness, like your own CONSCIOUSNSS kind of like this

1049
00:59:58,600 --> 01:00:02,919
Speaker 1: weird ledge we've built out over a canyon, and it

1050
01:00:03,000 --> 01:00:05,400
Speaker 1: makes sense that maybe to perceive it, we've kind of

1051
01:00:05,440 --> 01:00:08,800
Speaker 1: got to build a new, uh, a new artificial ledge

1052
01:00:08,840 --> 01:00:10,200
Speaker 1: over the edge of the canyon, so that we can

1053
01:00:10,240 --> 01:00:14,000
Speaker 1: actually have the perspective to look back on the previous perspective.

1054
01:00:14,360 --> 01:00:17,120
Speaker 1: If that makes any sense. Yeah, I guess what I'm

1055
01:00:17,120 --> 01:00:19,120
Speaker 1: trying to say is if we kind of have a

1056
01:00:19,200 --> 01:00:23,840
Speaker 1: blinder up uh. In fact, our future guest are Scott Baker.

1057
01:00:24,360 --> 01:00:26,680
Speaker 1: I've talked a lot about this blind brain theory, about

1058
01:00:26,680 --> 01:00:30,320
Speaker 1: the brain not being able to perceive itself. It's just

1059
01:00:30,440 --> 01:00:33,880
Speaker 1: it has not evolved with the tools to study consciousness.

1060
01:00:33,920 --> 01:00:36,560
Speaker 1: That just is not relevant to survival. So we have

1061
01:00:36,640 --> 01:00:39,680
Speaker 1: to have a work around there. We have to sort

1062
01:00:39,680 --> 01:00:43,320
Speaker 1: of build new thought structures to try and perceive what

1063
01:00:43,480 --> 01:00:47,280
Speaker 1: we are. Yeah, but I mean, who knows if these

1064
01:00:47,280 --> 01:00:50,200
Speaker 1: thought structures really provide any insights. I mean, I I

1065
01:00:50,280 --> 01:00:53,280
Speaker 1: find this story really interesting, and a lot of this

1066
01:00:53,320 --> 01:00:55,960
Speaker 1: is the kind of thing, A lot of this thought

1067
01:00:56,000 --> 01:00:58,240
Speaker 1: about consciousness. I mean, you know, a lot of times

1068
01:00:58,240 --> 01:01:01,720
Speaker 1: they're not doing scientific experience ements. Who knows of scientific

1069
01:01:01,760 --> 01:01:05,160
Speaker 1: experiments could give us any useful information about consciousness either,

1070
01:01:05,240 --> 01:01:09,680
Speaker 1: or maybe even that doesn't work. Um. But yeah, it's

1071
01:01:09,720 --> 01:01:13,960
Speaker 1: this big, wonderful, juicy problem, and you're always tempted to

1072
01:01:14,000 --> 01:01:15,840
Speaker 1: come back to it and think you can have some

1073
01:01:15,960 --> 01:01:19,920
Speaker 1: new insight about it. But in the end, every time

1074
01:01:19,920 --> 01:01:22,640
Speaker 1: I have one of these conversations, I'm left wondering, like,

1075
01:01:22,800 --> 01:01:25,160
Speaker 1: was any new ground covered or we did we just

1076
01:01:25,280 --> 01:01:28,880
Speaker 1: kind of run in circles with this question that's so

1077
01:01:29,160 --> 01:01:32,640
Speaker 1: enticing but maybe never solvable. I don't know. Well, one

1078
01:01:32,640 --> 01:01:34,680
Speaker 1: of the great things about this, this story, which is

1079
01:01:34,720 --> 01:01:37,560
Speaker 1: essentially a thought experiment is one of those thought experiments

1080
01:01:37,640 --> 01:01:40,480
Speaker 1: that the cause that that if if you if you

1081
01:01:40,520 --> 01:01:42,280
Speaker 1: pay close enough attention and you read it and you

1082
01:01:42,320 --> 01:01:44,720
Speaker 1: think about it, you may reach that point where something

1083
01:01:44,800 --> 01:01:48,439
Speaker 1: kind of clicks and you you're suddenly viewing your own

1084
01:01:48,480 --> 01:01:51,400
Speaker 1: reality in a way that either you haven't before, are

1085
01:01:51,440 --> 01:01:53,200
Speaker 1: certainly in a way that you do not view it

1086
01:01:53,240 --> 01:01:56,880
Speaker 1: on a regular basis. It's not your default view of

1087
01:01:56,960 --> 01:02:00,960
Speaker 1: your subjective reality yea. And and that those movements can

1088
01:02:00,960 --> 01:02:03,240
Speaker 1: be magical where it takes you out. You're kind of

1089
01:02:03,240 --> 01:02:05,840
Speaker 1: taken out of the mud of who you are and

1090
01:02:05,880 --> 01:02:09,720
Speaker 1: you're able to to glimpse it almost like a imagine

1091
01:02:09,760 --> 01:02:12,960
Speaker 1: two dimensional being pulled out into a three dimensional world

1092
01:02:13,440 --> 01:02:16,200
Speaker 1: and and trying to just get a glimpse of everything

1093
01:02:16,240 --> 01:02:18,439
Speaker 1: before sinking back into place and to take it back

1094
01:02:18,480 --> 01:02:20,480
Speaker 1: to where we started at the beginning. This is what

1095
01:02:20,560 --> 01:02:22,640
Speaker 1: a lot of meditative practicees. I mean, there are a

1096
01:02:22,680 --> 01:02:24,840
Speaker 1: lot of different ways to meditate, but one of the

1097
01:02:24,920 --> 01:02:27,880
Speaker 1: things people do when they meditate is to try to

1098
01:02:27,960 --> 01:02:31,640
Speaker 1: get out of themselves, to see themselves to and to

1099
01:02:31,640 --> 01:02:33,080
Speaker 1: to get out of you know, to shut down the

1100
01:02:33,080 --> 01:02:36,600
Speaker 1: default mode network too, to get out of this constant

1101
01:02:37,280 --> 01:02:42,720
Speaker 1: past versus present way of living and just be be present,

1102
01:02:42,800 --> 01:02:45,640
Speaker 1: to just set there and stare at an electrical outlet

1103
01:02:46,200 --> 01:02:48,440
Speaker 1: and and not even think about the electrical outlet, to

1104
01:02:48,520 --> 01:02:52,560
Speaker 1: just be this moment of perception. And another thing that's

1105
01:02:52,600 --> 01:02:55,480
Speaker 1: interesting to think about the location of consciousness is the

1106
01:02:55,560 --> 01:03:01,240
Speaker 1: idea of losing consciousness while being conscious, if this makes

1107
01:03:01,280 --> 01:03:04,320
Speaker 1: any sense, not not like going under general anesthesia or something,

1108
01:03:04,800 --> 01:03:07,560
Speaker 1: but uh, one way of thinking about it is that

1109
01:03:07,640 --> 01:03:11,760
Speaker 1: we're constantly losing consciousness whenever we become absorbed in something.

1110
01:03:12,440 --> 01:03:14,680
Speaker 1: You know, like when you're absorbed in watching a movie

1111
01:03:14,840 --> 01:03:17,720
Speaker 1: and you're you've you've hit that point where you stopped

1112
01:03:17,840 --> 01:03:22,880
Speaker 1: thinking about yourself, sitting there reflecting on things, and you're

1113
01:03:23,040 --> 01:03:26,280
Speaker 1: just in the story. You could look at that as

1114
01:03:26,320 --> 01:03:29,680
Speaker 1: a sort of loss of consciousness. You stop being, you

1115
01:03:29,720 --> 01:03:34,240
Speaker 1: stop being aware of the self, and you you're just experience,

1116
01:03:34,400 --> 01:03:37,560
Speaker 1: just pure experience. And the same thing happens in like

1117
01:03:37,600 --> 01:03:40,200
Speaker 1: some kind of creative projects, you know, you can be

1118
01:03:40,320 --> 01:03:43,840
Speaker 1: like writing or or painting or something. Yeah. Yeah, that's

1119
01:03:43,840 --> 01:03:45,919
Speaker 1: a lot of what the flow state often seems to be.

1120
01:03:46,360 --> 01:03:50,640
Speaker 1: Is it's like that physical location of consciousness disappears. You

1121
01:03:50,720 --> 01:03:53,160
Speaker 1: no longer have a sense that you're thinking is taking

1122
01:03:53,200 --> 01:03:57,240
Speaker 1: place somewhere. You just are what you're thinking about. Yeah,

1123
01:03:57,240 --> 01:03:59,640
Speaker 1: And and there are different versions of it too, because

1124
01:04:00,120 --> 01:04:03,480
Speaker 1: like I'll experience this kind of flow state loss of consciousness,

1125
01:04:03,480 --> 01:04:06,080
Speaker 1: if you will, while maybe reading something really good or

1126
01:04:06,320 --> 01:04:08,680
Speaker 1: or hit or writing something and I'm really into the writing.

1127
01:04:08,680 --> 01:04:12,000
Speaker 1: But I'll also experience it when I'm painting a miniature sometimes.

1128
01:04:12,000 --> 01:04:14,920
Speaker 1: So it's so my consciouence has kind of becomes the

1129
01:04:14,960 --> 01:04:18,280
Speaker 1: tip of a paint brush, which which is is rather

1130
01:04:18,360 --> 01:04:22,840
Speaker 1: different than it becoming this, uh, this fictional framework. Um.

1131
01:04:22,920 --> 01:04:25,240
Speaker 1: And then also in like say a yoga class or

1132
01:04:25,320 --> 01:04:28,600
Speaker 1: even outside of a ya like a purely um you know,

1133
01:04:28,640 --> 01:04:32,440
Speaker 1: a purely secular, purely physical activity of say running on

1134
01:04:32,480 --> 01:04:36,240
Speaker 1: a treadmill or what have you. Um, this too can

1135
01:04:36,280 --> 01:04:38,800
Speaker 1: be a situation where you just become the act. You

1136
01:04:38,960 --> 01:04:42,120
Speaker 1: just become the physical thing that you're doing, and everything

1137
01:04:42,160 --> 01:04:47,160
Speaker 1: else can, at least for a little bit, melt away. Well, folks,

1138
01:04:47,160 --> 01:04:49,320
Speaker 1: I don't think we had any answers for you about

1139
01:04:49,320 --> 01:04:52,200
Speaker 1: the nature of consciousness. Somehow, that's always the case whenever

1140
01:04:52,240 --> 01:04:55,400
Speaker 1: we come back to the subject. But but I nevertheless

1141
01:04:55,400 --> 01:04:58,600
Speaker 1: I always feel called back to it anyway. That's it

1142
01:04:58,680 --> 01:05:01,160
Speaker 1: for this episode, but as always, you can head on

1143
01:05:01,200 --> 01:05:03,959
Speaker 1: over to our mothership, Stuff to Blow Your Mind dot com.

1144
01:05:04,000 --> 01:05:07,560
Speaker 1: That's where you'll find all the podcast episodes. You'll find videos,

1145
01:05:08,200 --> 01:05:11,320
Speaker 1: blog posts, and links out to our various social media

1146
01:05:11,360 --> 01:05:16,560
Speaker 1: accounts such as Twitter, Instagram, Tumbler, Facebook, and Hey on Facebook.

1147
01:05:16,600 --> 01:05:20,160
Speaker 1: We have a Facebook group now called the Discussion Module.

1148
01:05:20,240 --> 01:05:23,360
Speaker 1: You can join that group and engage in longer form

1149
01:05:23,480 --> 01:05:28,040
Speaker 1: discussions regarding episodes that we've covered, future episodes, or just

1150
01:05:28,240 --> 01:05:31,560
Speaker 1: interesting scientific topics. And as always, if you want to

1151
01:05:31,560 --> 01:05:33,720
Speaker 1: get in touch with us directly shoot us an email

1152
01:05:33,760 --> 01:05:46,560
Speaker 1: at Blow the Mind and how Stuff Works dot com

1153
01:05:46,560 --> 01:05:49,000
Speaker 1: for more on this and thousands of other topics. Does

1154
01:05:49,040 --> 01:06:06,240
Speaker 1: it how stuff Works dot com? They past the first

1155
01:06:06,400 --> 01:06:07,520
Speaker 1: part prop