The Royal Institution
What is the relationship between consciousness, memory, and identity? Can there be more than one consciousness governed by a single brain? Anil Seth answers questions from the audience following his Discourse.
Watch the full talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRel1JKOEbI
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Anil provides an insight into the state-of-the-art research in the new science of consciousness. Distinguishing between conscious level, conscious content and conscious self, he describes how new experiments are shedding light on the underlying neural mechanisms in normal life as well as in neurological and psychiatric conditions.
Anil Seth is Professor of Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience at the University of Sussex, where he is also Co-Director of the Sackler Centre for Consciousness Science. He is Editor-in-Chief of Neuroscience of Consciousness and is on the steering group and advisory board of the Human Mind Project.
He has written popular science books, including 30 Second Brain, and contributes to a variety of media including the New Scientist, The Guardian, and the BBC.
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More of this please.
To answer the question at 5:47: Yes and there have been experiments. See http://www.ee.columbia.edu/ln/dvmm/publications/10/BCI_bookchapter.pdf for details. Even though this is not about the visual cortex specifically, but it is about the conscious experience. I imagine a similar pattern could be found in the visual cortex or even the very basic processing in the eyes, analogous to the so called "muscle memory". The top-down "conscious" systems tells the visual cortex what to subconsciously search for (like it tells our muscles to do various things we do not need to think about) and the visual cortex then fires accordingly. I have a hypothesis of the mechanism behind this which includes the principles of artificial neural networks. Also, I believe that our consciousness is just a byproduct of our higher cognitive functions which has shown to be evolutionary beneficial. Still it remains just a spandrel and our perception of self is just an illusion, as is our feeling of agency. However we live in a world where there was a strong selection for certain behavior which created a positive feedback loop for certain memes to spread. We have many memeplexes today which offer useful but also not useful views on the universe and ourselves in it. Our biggest asset in the form of intelligence and self awareness is also our biggest weakness because we are inherently meatbags full of cognitive distortions. But without them we would be just machines. We would be exactly what we try to achieve by building a general artificial intelligence. Without biases, it would be crippled in making decisions. OK, how many topics did I mention here? Does actually anyone follow? I should add a disclaimer: This post contains opinions which are written very hastily and I wish I could explain why I think the stuff I wrote here, but it would take me too much time and who cares anyway…
The story about the individual named HM was very interesting. This man always lived in the present, with a part of his brain removed. An u-tube video showed a man with half of his brain removed due to an accident, yet lived a normal life.
I also saw another u-tube video about merging of the two hemispheres of an American who could remember everything he read with ease. And a woman who could remember what she did on a given date.
The part I like most is autistic person who display higher level of intelligence and a memory to say the day of the week, when given a particular date.
you should always listen to philosophers questions but not their answers, quote of the month
The question about the different conciousnesses is very interesting. There is strong evidence that there is some kind of verbal conciousness that is disconnected from other conciousnesses to some extend and may even vary from language to language.
Ask Timothy Leary about this…he is still in the cloud…lol
Playtime for our neurons?
If a part of the brain responsible for a type of memory is removed, such as the mentioned episodic narrative memory, can a strategy not be developed where memories are encoded in some other way that through abnormal development becomes more suitable for the task? For example suddenly no longer being able to visualise could result in more internal dialogue, memorised text descriptions of physical spaces, etc… to compensate.
If a dream character seems to have a different personality, different memories and a different physical perspective whiten the dream space than you, does that make them a temporary but separate conscious entity?
Newborn babies have to learn even that different senses are different 😮 And so presumably develop a lot of generic stuff about analysing sense data that will work for any sense before and along with that which is sense specific.
Its not magic just because you don't understand it. There is no downside to being mechanical. Consciousness is nothing special. Its just compounded learned and stored perceptions. i.e. the brain becomes a mirror of its environment over time, including the past environment. I think what is an illusion is not consciousness but our perception that that it is something special. Sophistication usually consist of a set of very simple systems. A painting is sophisticated yet each brush stroke is not. I believe consciousness is like the disappearing red dot in the rotating field. Consciousness is kept going by the continuous bombardment of endo/exo genic stimuli setting into motion your mirrored self in your mirrored world leading ultimately to the actuation of your physical body.
Our human "sophisticated" brain is as a result of the way it interfaces with the external world. we have fingers therefore the brain needs to operate them i.e. the brain changes according to our shape. This leads to other accidental uses e.g making tools. Cooperation leads to empathy and more sophisticated predictive functions, and before you know it you have a Homo with a big brain. But still a an unsophisticated mechanical thing who merely is adapted to its environment..like a house fly….just a very sophisticated and complex one.
yes my inglish is bad sorry.
If you recognize Dolores Cannon as a respected scientist in the area of hypnotherapy, then you should read her books. After a couple of books you'll see that THIS GUY is completely full of shit. He is a repeater with no ambition to explore other, more applicable methods to solidify his theories! He is stuck in a stagnant science that dares not to investigate the methaphysical area. To me, it is not science when an area is completely neglected!
"Always listen to the philosopher's question, but never to their answers." That's brilliant, ha! As a aspiring philosopher, I find it very funny indeed 😉
I'm having hard times understanding how there would not be "the hard problem". It's kind of obvious from the first principles of science that any kind of machine "should" be just a zombie. But then we have this experience. This film we call reality could just as well keep going on without anybody actually watching it like this.
And it's kind of unsatisfactory to know what's necessary for this experience. Even though obviously very important.
That's like the question of "why is there something instead of absolutely nothing".
the ability for the brain to analyze its consciousness effectively is now a non starter. philosophers have been pondering this for 2500 years or more without progress. first map the brain and then figure out the conscious aspect.
To reword his dismissive final sentence (in the way he butchers Descartes): "you should never listen to anyone's answers who doesn't understand the question".
See, he's sidestepping the question about "I predict myself, therefore I am". The guy asking the question is suggesting that, if Anil is right, then a sufficiently complex machine that could predict what to expect from its inputs would be conscious in a sense similar to human consciousness. Anil then admits he "doesn't know" if such a machine would be conscious – but then we can plainly see: his reworking of Descartes' famous phrase has no legs. He is using the phrase in a rhetorical, pseudo-clever way which has no philosophical value. He completely misunderstands the philosophical angle, and then, as expected, is flippant about philosophers (probably to cover his lack of understanding about what they're saying, which is terribly ironic).
His answer to that question is so nebulous as to be meaningless. He suggests that if machines had a "physiology" which created a more "fundamental imperative to stay alive" that they (would?/might?) be conscious – but that begs too many questions to be taken seriously. Why does something need an imperative to stay alive to be conscious? What is different about animal "physiology" that makes them special with regard to any processing system? Are plants conscious, since they satisfy his nebulous conditions?
So very sad. What isn't asked often of these idiots is "What motivates your interest in "consciousness"? When I ask these people this question, and I keep asking until they actually answer, I always get the same answer, they report abuse and or trauma in their childhood. This trauma has caused them to obsess on methods to free themselves from the burden of these painful memories. From that desperation to escape their own past, they come to many absurd ideas about the world and their own brains, ideas that are manipulated and contorted into any abstraction of reality that will provide for a path to a means of editing their own brains such that these memories either do not exist or are sufficiently insulated from the rest of their brains that they might as well not exist. Of course an actual understanding of causal reality would immediately negate such fantasies as delusional. For this reason, the advocates of these dualism philosophies work very hard to divide the world into the physical where science applies, and the non-physical where science has no sway. The oddity is this new trend wherein people try so very hard to borrow from the authority science has earned by NOT DIVIDING THE WORLD INTO CAUSAL AND NON-CAUSAL to prop up their very non-scientific need for a non-cuasal cause. Sad.
Tom Campbell was needed on this stage
I still think there is a hard problem of consciousness.
Could an example of the visual cortex experiencing things we're not consciously aware be something like photographic memory? You're not consciously scanning a scene over and over to memorize it, but the information is still being stored and processed nonetheless.
Perhaps some out-of-body experiences could be a form of projected photographic memory with a little prediction sprinkled in (predicting what the backs of things look like). Combine what you've seen of that specific OR, the doctors, etc. with what you've seen of general ORs in TV, movies, etc., slap your face on that TV patient, and whammo: out-of-body experience.
Are there any industrial sort of machines (robotic arms for example) that do have predictive modeling and self-optimizing capabilities? Optimizing movements for time and energy efficiency, compensating for hydraulic or electrical fluctuations (a fluid leak for example) by reducing range of movement, sensing part grip and placement pressures, etc. And doing this on their own rather than simply sending data to a human engineer to fix things for them. That could be a rudimentary sense of bodily self gleaned for lots and lots of sensor data.
To me it seems that for the time being our goal is to put a mark on the gradient of consciousness for our own political goals, which is fine for the time being. Once we are satisfied with that definition I think is when the real work begins. The real question of why our universe exists I don't think will ever be answered or we will never be satisfied by the answer.
Those patients that lost the ability to remember in a certain way (that he is referring too in the beginning) … that's all anecdotal. No hard evidence there; I hate it when scientist bring up cases of patients like this to proof their statement, but when it comes to patients that proof strongly our consciousness is seperate from our body, then they get denied or dismissed as not reliabel. It's really what fits their story. I'm sick of it.
There are many, a very strong example is Pam Reynolds. Practically undeniable. Skeptics have been trying desperately to debunk this case, but their arguments against, make no sense.
His argument (or side-stepping) about AI don't make (commen) sense in my opinion.
The ending is savage! It puts a smile on my face. 😀
Many respected scientific researchers have concluded that consciousness is “non-local”. That means consciousness exists separate from the physical body/brain, and survives physical death. This research model says the brain is a complex transducer/receiver/sender of information. This is similar to a TV or radio receiving external signals. Do your own objective and open minded research. Then draw your own conclusions.
Study these web sites:
https://www.nderf.org
http://www.oberf.org
The brain is a learning machine, it takes in information and processes it. The brain also adapts to the information that it gains, just similar to a DNA correcting itself.
Could consciousness be remote access? Could the brain simply be a receiver and transmitter?
If you can’t convince them, then confuse them!