Oh, Welcome to Within Reason. My name is Alex O'Connor and my guest today is Dr.

Annul Seth who is a professor of now can I get this right

computational and cognitive neuroscience here at the University of Sussex

yeah it's the other way around the other way around

it's basically the same thing thank you so much for being here. It's a pleasure.

Also the author of Being You, a new science of consciousness. Why do we need a new science of consciousness?

I think there's really a new approach to the science of consciousness and one of the things about

consciousness is that for a long time it was considered relatively illegitimate and

disreputable in the mind and brain sciences.

Now that's all changed in the last 30 years or so.

And there's many different approaches to consciousness now that are really flourishing within

neuroscience, within psychology,

within cognitive science, and it's a very exciting time because there's lots of

new evidence, but there's also lots of different positions,

different theories, and my own view is one particular. different age-old question. I'm going to have to begin by asking some of the boring questions

including what is consciousness. Not that that's a boring question but it must be

boring for someone like you. It's always a tricky question I mean I've been

asked it so many times and I always

stumble a little bit answering it because it's one of those things that intuitively

we all know what it is it's what we lose when we fall into a dreamless sleep or lose even more profoundly if we go under general

anesthesia which is an amazing non-experience to have general anesthesia and it's what comes back

when we come around again or wake up in the morning.

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