Sam Parnia – What is Consciousness?

48 thoughts on “Sam Parnia – What is Consciousness?”

1. I love the way Sam has articulately explained the relationship between mind and brain.

   There seems to be some sort of tension between science and religion that is demonstrated by this debate. In a way, science wins if it is proved that it’s the brain that produces consciousness. On the other hand, if it is proven that consciousness is not the product of brain, religion wins.

2. probably the best snippet regarding consciousness on closer to truth that i have seen so far

3. Perhaps the mind cages consciousness, to be used here on Earth in a 3D faxhion, suitable for this existance. Upon death, the cage is opened…slowly, and you flow out.

4. michael cera has aged very badly

5. A reupload ?

6. I am a meat popsicle

7. Thinking is not consciousness ? Reflection is not being ? Awareness is not consciousness ? What is the bond of life ?

8. I don’t agree with Sam at all. What makes me me and Sam Sam are our different attributes, opinions, fear, desires, etc.. Consciousness is common to both of us and exactly the same in everyone.

   However, he makes a great point about the fact that brain and consciousness which while they usually appear to be intimately connected are not necessarily so. In fact, I think that the brain might be intimately connected with the differences which make us different rather than the one thing which makes us all the same.

9. If you try to understand consciousness with the mind or intellect you will never succeed because these were made by consciousness and cannot

10. Hmm… the TV analogy does not really help his argument. If the TV stops functioning, no information is conveyed. Regardless of where the information comes from, the TV is the only means of presenting it. If the brain genuinely stops functioning, there is no apparent way for consciousness to be manifested. This has always been the issue with dualism. My guess would be that there is residual brain function not necessarily detected by our instruments, or perhaps information can be stored temporarily in sensory organs themselves when the brain flatlines.

11. Science writer Mike McRae has noted "While Parnia's work contributes valuable data to understanding NDE as a cultural phenomenon, his speculations do indeed sit on the brink of pseudoscience."
    Sam Parnia From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

12. Great convo but I almost found it distracting where the are. What IS that place?

13. Science predicts. If you know nothing about someone who has survived cardiac arrest except whether or not he/she had NDE, you can make an educated guess about survival within 30 days – confidence: p<0.0001 (van Lommel, 2001).

14. Trying to answer what consciousness is from the same level of consciousness where it is asked is just foolishness. Same like trying to solve a problem from the same level of consciousness where it was created. This is only intellectual ego talk. It is very dangerous also looking at the speed corporations are promoting to implant microchips in the brain without having a clue what consciousness really is.

15. While (millions across the world) under anesthesia for surgery, why no reports of continued consciousness?

    It seems relatively easy to do a MASSIVE clinical trial. Put a MILLION people under an anesthesia, and let’s see who can report being cognizant of everything that was occurring.

    I was under anesthesia once for a knee surgery, all I remember was waking up with a sexy nurse stimulating herself by rubbing my chest…well the actual chronological order was that occurring about 30 seconds later.

    And by the way, that TV analogy was totally pseudo science at best.

16. Did consciousness evolve?

17. 6:16 "Wouldn't that be occurring all the time?" I think it occurs in surprising ways. I knew a woman who had a dream in which a deceased relative appeared to her. That relative said, "Your husband has cancer. You have to get him to the doctor tomorrow!" The bewildered woman did take her husband to the doctor the following day and he did have cancer. (He survived for at least two more years). Our minds seem to behave in ways that we can't possibly anticipate.

18. I admire Sam but he's cornered here with some valid questions. I read Parnia's book and am convinced it is still a physical brain process. The problem is, Sam has no way of knowing exactly the temporal events recalled by the subjects vis a vis their cardiac arrest and subsequent brain death. It can only be anecdotal at best, although intriguing. There is a lot of research on DMT and potentially other unknown neurotransmitters that may create this illusion.

19. This guy is good 😊

20. I had an Oobe once A most incredible experience and the only way i can explain it is It was super awareness super real more so than ordinary life

21. Interesting 👍👍👍

22. Wouldnt it be like the residual effects of the brain lingering until consciousness is extinguished ???

23. I think consciousness is an awareness of things

24. 💯

25. Sam is great, moving camera work, not so much.

26. Or it could me that YOU are NOT your body and there is in fact an immaterial aspect to, at least, human life. What could be an eternal soul. But if one has an a priori commitment to what amounts to materialistic naturalism, then you've ruled out such a conclusion before you start investigating. Which could be an assumption that leads you away from Truth, rather than closer to it. Just a thought…

27. consciousness is impermanent

28. Very interesting video.

29. NDEs are fascinating, but they're pretty weak evidence of an afterlife.

30. He used the term "flatlined" as a definition of death. Maybe what happens is only that most of the billions of neurons are inacitive, but that the few neurons creating consciousness are still active. They are very few and only need little blod supply to function.
    According to my theory for consciousness (as presented at the conference in Copenhagen: "Toward a Science of Consciousness") it concists of a positive feedback loop producing this very special feeling of Qualia.

31. Exploring the ontological defaults that precondition the state of existence itself holds a if not the key(s) to determining the origin of consciousness. I believe that subjectivity itself is a fundamental dimension mutually dependent on being, matter and time; forming the cardinal points of whatever everything must inevitably be. If anything must be itself to be, it makes sense that nothing must literally be nothing and something must be something. Being always-already defaults to somethingness (material) because that mutually aligns with the existential necessity of positively assuming a state: even the void would need to be positively embodied as such but has no reason to counter its self-sameness. As such, nothing can to nothing to prevent something being something. The subjectivity of objective materiality I think might be a necessary effect of time's function – the medium through which a temporal continuum may proceed – as time is required by any mode of existence to be maintained.

32. But why do need a BRAIN 🧠 in the first place? If awareness can occurs outside the 🧠 then why this intricate connections!

33. The one real trouble I have with Dr Parnia is where he says essentially the moment the heart stops the patient is "dead" and the brain has shut down. In the same conversation he will say, "Death is not a moment but a process". Seems an inherent contradiction there that allows for brain function that is not presented through expression or speech to gradually fade. My father had two cardiac arrests one night and survived. He had no NDE and only remembered waking up. But, some weeks later he had these euphoric experiences where he though every person in the world spoke to his at once and told him he would recover from his illness.

34. Just try an E-meter ( Scientology tool for measuring thought activity ) I have tried it and are baffled how little activity they can read to ask me:”what Was that thought?”… ( it Works like this: the person asks me a question, then I try to find the answer… if I have a hard time finding the answer in my memory, the person looks closely on the device, and as soon as he Gets a spike in activity, he asks:”what Was that thought?”.. then I try going back in my train of thought, and he sees a spike again; “that one!… what Was that… I search again… and I find the “hotspot” in my memory and starts to answer, but before I get to say anything, he says again:”yes! There…, that one… and I know in that moment he actually helped me find a memory that Was really hard to find….)
    Note: I am no longer active and are searching my own answers to my own questions… trying to get closer to truth like you😅

35. great chat, less camera movement !

36. Interesting video. Personally I like the idea that the brain channels consciousness. It’s like the wind in the trees. We may study the movement of the leaves, but that tells us nothing about the wind itself.

37. Colours we see, Dark matter and Dark energy will get added to the Higgs boson family in standard model. Consciousness should come in the center of new standard model of particle physics which scientists are yet to discover.

38. think of a worm avoiding a flame, that's consciousness, now multiply by millions, and that's us, really it's just a math problem.

39. If your sensory organs are shut down how would you perceive anything. How would a nonphysical entity receive data from the physical world? Seeing is the act of perceiving photons, hearing is vibration in the air. What are the means of perception then?

40. Consciousness becomes easy to understand when you realize that Consciousness is the Origin of everything. It is there in the Source, and in its rediscovery in the evolution.

41. I wish science would consider more generally the analogy of the TV set, which, in light of things like the observer effect and other strange properties, strikes me as far closer to the answer than a bunch of electrochemical misfires.

42. You will never be able to measure consciousness because consciousness is all things. How can everything measure itself? Scientist always confuse consciousness, the nothing that is all things and awareness of consciousness which is the perception of this human experience.

43. Swami Sarvapriyananda has a lot of talks about consciousness and Sam Parnias research is supporting the vedantic point of view, that consciousness is fundamental, not produced by brain.

44. Producer or Conveyer?

45. "People are saying" evidence, once again. And when asked about methodology simply restate the question, right? Very science-y.

46. maybe the flatlined brain is sometimes able to record sense-data and if subsequently restarted can sometimes interpret and recall that data.

47. If you don't have the manual, it is all guesswork. The name thing is the world is still shity.

48. that's why not living beings can also having consciousness and even some NDE people can recall everything that happened during their 'death'..

    and to stay live the SOS is stand for 'save our soul' not 'safe our spirit'..🙂

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