Episode description

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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