Christof Koch | Bernardo Kastrup: neuroscience & ultimate reality

Recorded Nov 2024, we discussed how IIT could shed light on phenomena like dissociation, the boundaries between individual consciousnesses, and even free will, and how it relates to the concept of "mind at large." The conversation also touched on the idea of universal consciousness, the nature of the universe, questions about the big bang, reincarnation and memory, and the potential for consciousness to persist after death.

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Christof Koch was the president and chief scientist of the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle where he remains as a Meritorious Investigator. He is known for his interdisciplinary approach, combining insights from neuroscience, physics, and philosophy to tackle the complex problem of consciousness. His work has been published in over 350 scientific papers, significantly shaped modern understanding of the neural correlates of consciousness and visual perception.

In collaboration with Francis Crick, Cristof initiated the modern search for the neuronal correlates of consciousness, a systematic experimental program to identify the minimal bio-physical mechanisms jointly sufficient for any one specific conscious percept. In collaboration with Giulio Tononi, he co-developed the Integrated Information Theory of consciousness.

0:00 Intros
0:08 Bernardo’s appreciation of Christof’s work:
how neuroscience is critical to understanding mind
12:40 Christo’s appreciation of Bernardo’s work:
the mechanisms of the boundaries of consciousness
17:00 the metaphysics of Integrated Information Theory (IIT)
21:00 IIT might be most direct modelling of true states of nature
24:50 IIT and Free Will
26:40 how IIT models the noumenon and AI consciousness
30:00 the cerebellum doesn’t contribute to consciousness
32:50 IIT and meta-consciousness
34:50 dreams are not meta-conscious
38:40 IIT and scale and speed of the system (galaxies and atoms)
42:30 IIT and defining the boundary of a system
45:00 IIT, dissociation and the origin of life
50:20 consciousness in the sun and mind meld
55:30 Internal family systems therapy & the daimon
58:30 clarifying definition of free will
1:08:00 why IIT assumes consciousness
1:11:30 what is information in IIT (it’s not shannon information - its meaning, aristotelan ‘in form’)
1:15:30 what is integration? (it means its not reducible. You can’t break it into parts without losing something)
1:20:30 mind at large integrated? (no, because of speed of light and expansion)
1:23:00 why is integration in space but not time? how do parts of the system know which system they are part of
1:37:10 how IIT accounts for mind at large - the dance of dissociation and reintegration: actively enforced dissociation and non-actively dissociation. Mind at large is fragmented, and markov blankets are considered
1:43:30 Mind at large is not conscious in the way we are
1:50:00 everything is conscious vs everything is consciousness
1:51:50 IIT disagrees with computational functionalism; that consciousness is just a function and any mechanism that can do that function must be conscious. IIT starts with consciousness instead of with function.
1:56:00 Christof’s psychedelic experience and change in perspective
2:01:40 the similarity between the universe and the brain
2:08:25 is death re-association? the parallels between chemistry and emotion
2:13:30 is mind at large expanding like the universe? (questioning the big bang)
2:17:50 do psychedelics increase or decrease connectivity
2:22:30 neural correlates of consciousness or meta-consciousness (implications of blindsight)
2:28:50 IIT and the block universe
2:38:30 Life and meaning can be mapped by Markov blankets, cancer, enlightenment, reincarnation
2:48:00 becoming another - thought experiment

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