84. Christof Koch — The Feeling of Life Itself: Why Consciousness is Widespread but Can’t Be Computed

The Michael Shermer Show

Michael Shermer

Dialogue, Science, Reason, Michaelshermer, Natural Sciences, Skeptic

4.4 • 921 Ratings

🗓️ 24 September 2019

⏱️ 93 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this fascinating discussion of one of the hardest problems in all of science — the hard problem of consciousness, that is, explaining how the feeling or experience of something can arise from neural activity — one of the world’s leading neuroscientists Christof Koch argues that consciousness, more widespread than previously assumed, is the feeling of being alive, not a type of computation or a clever hack. Consciousness is experience. Consciousness is, as his book title states, The Feeling of Life Itself — the feeling of being alive. Shermer and Koch discuss:

the Neural Correlates of Consciousness (NCC)
where consciousness is located in the brain (or, more precisely, where it is not located)
what comas and vegetative states teach us about consciousness
what brain injuries and diseases teach us about consciousness
what hallucinogens teach us about consciousness
what split-brain surgeries teach us about the nature of the self and identity
Koch’s experience with psilocybin and what he learned about consciousness
Koch’s experience in a flotation tank and what he learned about consciousness
why computers as they are currently configured can never create consciousness
why mind-uploading cannot copy or continue consciousness
Integrated Information Theory of Consciousness
Global Workspace Theory of Consciousness
why consciousness is not an illusion, and
mysterian mysteries.

Christof Koch is President and Chief Scientist of the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle, following twenty-seven years as a Professor at the California Institute of Technology. He is the author of Consciousness: Confessions of a Romantic Reductionist (MIT Press), The Quest for Consciousness: A Neurobiological Approach, and other books.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	As you all know, we do this once a week on the Tuesdays that books are released.
0:05.2	This week's book and author is my longtime friend Christoph Kock, his new book is The Feeling of Life
0:11.2	itself, why consciousness is widespread but can't be computed.
0:17.0	So you can see where that's going.
0:18.6	I've known Christoph since the early 90s, so probably almost a quarter century now. He's one of the most interesting
0:24.2	people I've ever met. Super delightful guy, very smart, very witty, and has a
0:29.8	real lust for life and he's now left Caltech and has been at the Allen Brain Institute for,
0:35.0	I don't know, it must be at least a decade now.
0:38.0	And so we talk a little bit about that,
0:40.0	the research and work that they do there,
0:42.0	what are they doing when they're trying to find
0:44.0	the neural correlates of consciousness? We get into the hard problem of
0:47.4	consciousness and what that means. The integrated information theory of
0:51.8	consciousness versus the global workspace, theory of consciousness versus the global workspace
0:53.6	theory of consciousness and we talk about comas and vegetative states and you know
1:00.8	is there anybody there how how do we know,
1:04.0	and you define these things.
1:05.8	The nature of the self and identity,
1:08.3	if you have a split brain, there's really two minds.
1:11.3	So if you have two minds, is that two persons, two selves,
1:14.8	you know, what does that all mean?
1:15.6	So we explore some of that and pretty much cover
	...

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