309 | Christof Koch on Consciousness and Integrated Information

Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas

Sean Carroll | Wondery

Society & Culture, Physics, Philosophy, Science, Ideas, Society

4.8 • 4.4K Ratings

🗓️ 24 March 2025

⏱️ 81 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Consciousness is easier to possess than to define. One thing we can do is to look into the brain and see what lights up when conscious awareness is taking place. A complete understanding of this would be known as the "neural correlates of consciousness." Once we have that, we could hopefully make progress on developing a theoretical picture of what consciousness is and why it happens. Today's guest, Christof Koch, is a leader in the search for neural correlates and an advocate of a particular approach to consciousness, Integrated Information Theory.

Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2025/03/24/309-christof-koch-on-consciousness-and-integrated-information/

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Christof Koch was awarded a Ph.D. from the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics. He is currently a Meritorious Investigator at the Allen Institute for Brain Science, where he was formerly president and chief scientist, and Chief Scientist at the Tiny Blue Dot Foundation. He is the author of several books, most recently Then I Am Myself the World - What Consciousness Is and How to Expand It.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	With the new Lloyd's app, you can do it all.
0:02.8	You can freeze your card if you misplace it.
0:05.4	Whilst you search behind the sofa.
0:07.4	Blame the dog.
0:08.2	Run upstairs. Run downstairs.
0:10.0	Empty your bag.
0:10.8	Look behind the sofa again.
0:12.4	Only to realise it's in your back pocket.
0:14.3	Curse quietly under your breath and unfreeze your card.
0:16.8	Shove everything back in your bag.
0:18.0	Take a deep breath.
0:19.6	Smile and run for the boss.
0:22.2	Freeze and unfreeze your card at the touch of a button.
0:25.3	The power to do it all on the new Lloyd's app.
0:28.0	Download now.
0:29.0	Please and seize it play.
0:30.4	Hello everyone.
0:31.1	Welcome to the Mindscape podcast.
0:32.4	I'm your host, Sean Carroll.
0:33.9	Despite multiple episodes here on Mindscape devoted to the topic, we have still not figured
0:39.9	exactly out what consciousness is or how it works. We've had philosophers on, talking about
0:45.8	what it means to have an experience, we've had neuroscientists talking about what happens
	...

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