Theories of Everything with Curt Jaimungal - The Complete Consciousness Iceberg | 2 Hours of Obscure Consciousness Theories Explained

Episode Date: February 20, 2025

Welcome to the complete Iceberg of Consciousness. As a listener of TOE you can get a special 20% off discount to The Economist and all it has to offer! Visit https://www.economist.com/toe Join My New Substack (Personal Writings): https://curtjaimungal.substack.com Listen on Spotify: https://tinyurl.com/SpotifyTOE Become a YouTube Member (Early Access Videos): https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdWIQh9DGG6uhJk8eyIFl1w/join --------------------- LAYER 1 01:31 – Introduction to Layer 1 01:38 – What Is Consciousness? 04:20 – The Mind-Body Problem 06:02 – Sleep, Dreams, and Altered States 08:53 – Free Will vs. Determinism 10:58 – The Self and Identity LAYER 2 12:56 – Introduction to Layer 2 13:02 – The Hard Problem of Consciousness 16:59 – Qualia and Phenomenal Consciousness 19:27 – Advaita Vedanta (Non-Dualism) 22:59 – John Vervaeke’s Relevance Realization 24:45 – Panpsychism and the Combination Problem 26:58 – Buddhist Consciousness (Yogācāra & Madhyamaka) 29:04 – Global Workspace Theory 31:59 – Carl Jung’s Explanation for Consciousness LAYER 3 36:03 – Introduction to Layer 3 36:47 – Heidegger’s Concept of Dasein 39:28 – Attention Schema Theory (Michael Graziano) 42:53 – EM-Field Topology & Boundary Problem (Andrés Gómez Emilsson) 46:49 – Joscha Bach’s Theory 53:41 – Donald Hoffman’s Theory 57:47 – Nir Lahav’s Relativistic Consciousness LAYER 4 01:05:46 – Introduction to Layer 4 01:06:25 – Douglas Hofstadter’s Strange Loops 01:11:50 – Penrose’s Quantum Consciousness 01:16:04 – Christopher Langan’s CTMU 01:20:31 – Johnjoe McFadden’s CEMI Field Theory 01:24:24 – David Chalmers’ Extended Mind Hypothesis 01:29:18 – Iain McGilchrist’s Relational Dual-Aspect Monism LAYER 5 01:33:04 – Introduction to Layer 5 01:34:35 – Bernardo Kastrup’s Analytic Idealism 01:38:54 – Karl Friston’s Enactive Approach / Free Energy Principle 01:42:12 – Alfred North Whitehead’s Pan-Experientialism 01:46:56 – Mark Solms’ Felt Uncertainty & Affective Theory 01:51:20 – Thomas Metzinger’s Minimal Phenomenal Selfhood --------------------- Support TOE on Patreon: https://patreon.com/curtjaimungal Twitter: https://twitter.com/TOEwithCurt Discord Invite: https://discord.com/invite/kBcnfNVwqs #science #consciousness Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

TD Direct Investing offers live support. So whether you're a newbie or a seasoned pro, you can make your investing steps count. And if you're like me and think a TFSA stands for Total Fund Savings Adventure, maybe reach out to TD Direct Investing. Welcome to the Consciousness Iceberg, a project where we'll explain consciousness from several distinct angles, including the latest theories from the academies such as Integrated Information Theory or Joschebok's theories or Panpsychism, but as well as other traditions like what the Vedic texts say or the different schools of Buddhism, and

we'll even explore altered states of consciousness. All of this will be done in a rigorous fashion, similar to the string theory iceberg, which you can check out and the link is in the description. For those who are unfamiliar, the iceberg format is one where you initially explore preparatory surface-level concepts, then progress ever more into the intricacies of a topic, which tend to be known only to a specialized few, until you eventually arrive at the obscure, dark frontiers of the deepest layers of the field of consciousness in this case. My name is Kurt Jaimungal, and I use my background in mathematical physics to analyze theories

of everything, but today we have a consciousness iceberg, which is heavily inspired by Robert Lawrence Kuhn's comprehensive behemoth article on consciousness, which I recommend you check out. The link is in the description. Robert Lawrence Kuhn, by the way, is the host of the series Closer to Truth and has a series specifically on consciousness in there, and that link is also in the description check them both out I can't recommend them highly enough now. Let's begin with the first layer an introduction to consciousness Layer one an introduction to consciousness. What is consciousness? Consciousness is the state of being aware and responsive to one's surroundings. It encompasses a range of mental phenomena including thoughts, including feelings, sensations,

perceptions, etc. Note that many conversations about consciousness get stuck as soon as someone asks, hey, what's the definition you're using? Now the reason is that even with what I just said or what anyone will say Consciousness is defined with words Circularly this is the case with anything that doesn't straightforwardly map to something physical Now there are physical theories of consciousness and we're going to explore pretty much every single one of them in the subsequent layers And we're also going to explore pretty much every single one of the non-physical theories as well.

But the issue is that you could always say, okay, well what do you mean by mental phenomenon? What do you mean by thoughts? What's the definition of feelings? What about sensations? What's the definition of a perception or a qualia? If you were to try to provide a definition, they'll be explicated with further words, and the clever person can just remark, hey, what do you mean by those words? If you were to try to provide a definition, they'll be explicated with further words, and the clever person can just remark, Hey, what do you mean by those words?

So, in order to make progress, we're just going to have to move beyond this and provide analogies. Most people think of consciousness broadly as either a spotlight or a stream. Now, the spotlight people will say that it illuminates, consciousness illuminates a small part of some vast landscape of mental activity, whereas the stream people will say consciousness is like a flowing stream of thoughts, feelings, and sensations. What's an uncontroversial statement is that consciousness is what allows you to experience the world, and most would say by the way that consciousness is not identical to those experiences.

Rather, it's what allows those experiences to be experienced. It's also tied to choice and thus to free will. Now the question naturally occurs, why the heck does consciousness matter? And the answer then immediately jumps out, well, it's the foundation of your being. It's what makes you who you are. But there are some challenges. The challenges are that defining consciousness is notoriously difficult, as we've mentioned. Number two, explaining consciousness. We don't have an understanding of how consciousness comes about from, say, the physical processes of the brain or if it indeed comes about in that fashion and

Number three measuring consciousness. It's proven quite challenging to measure consciousness objectively the mind body problem The mind body problem is an issue. I'm sure you've heard reference plenty The mind-body problem is an issue I'm sure you've heard referenced plenty. It's about various questions regarding how the mind, which seems immaterial, relates to the body, which appears material, or at least physical, as some say. Some people, like Chomsky, have called consciousness a ghost in the machine. More specifically, the mind is like a ghost that inhabits the machine of the body. I've actually spoken to Chomsky more than any other independent podcast 10 times and

you can see it here in the description as well as on screen, on the topics of philosophy and consciousness. Others think that there is no mind-body problem because both are aspects of the same reality. Either all is mind, or all is matter, or both mind and matter are examples of some third yet unexplicated type. The film The Matrix explores the possibility that our reality is some computer simulation, which is something that we discuss on this channel, and examples are here on screen in the description as well with David Chalmers and Scott Aaronson. The Matrix is directly about the mind-body problem.

How is it that your consciousness can be so different from what you perceive of as your body? Ghosts in movies also address this dualism. Dualism by the way just means two-ism. In this case it references the different aspects that we've heard here of both mind and body. Or some people call it spirit and matter. Or some other people call it consciousness and the concrete. With spirits and ghosts and films, what they're conveying is this concept that something disembodied is interacting with the physical world around it. This quote-unquote

interaction problem is exactly this. How, and I mean exactly how, does the mind and the body causally interact, given their ostensibly separate nature? Are they not as separate as we thought? There's also, by the way, the twin-union problem, which concerns how so-called joining a mind to a body gives rise to this mind-body union that we call a human being, aka you. Sleep Dreams and Altered States Sleep, dreams, and altered states of consciousness represent deviations from our usual waking state. These experiences involve shifts in brain

activity, alterations of perception, and differences in awareness. Sleeps and dreams, for instance, can be likened to journeys into some other realm of consciousness, while altered states can be seen as windows into some hidden depth of the mind. Concretely speaking, sleep is exigent for both physical and mental health, playing a role in memory consolidation and emotional processing. Dreams are often bizarre and nonsensical as you may well know, and many think that there's some expression of our subconscious mind or mechanism for strengthening memories. As for lucid dreaming, we'll speak about that in a

later layer of this consciousness iceberg, so subscribe to get notified. Altered states, such as those that are experienced, let's say, during meditation or some religious ceremonies, or under the influence of psychedelics, are said to inspire creativity and self-discovery. Now creativity has been demonstrated in the psychological literature, but self-discovery is a bit trickier as there's not a consensus on the definition of that word, and what you're discovering may not be yourself, but may be something that you perceive as yourself. These altered states may even enhance spiritual understanding. Some altered states like near-death experiences, by the way, put pressure on materialistic

views of consciousness by suggesting that our awareness may extend beyond the mere physical. Freud by the way saw dreams as wish fulfillment. That is to say, you have some hidden goals or some hidden wishes or instincts and you want to fulfill them in a playground that isn't tied to material reality. Again, if there is a material reality. So perhaps it's better stated as waking reality. Especially as these goals and instincts and wishes are given to you by a subconscious.

Now there are some problems here that are left outstanding. So why do dreams have such strange content? What is the relationship between the conscious and the subconscious mind? And lastly, are altered states merely illusions? Or do they provide access to genuine realities? Free Will vs. Determinism The debate over free will vs. determinism tends to center on whether our choices are

actually free chosen by us or predetermined by some prior event, slash events. For those who are unfamiliar, determinism is like being on a train where you have a set track and you can't deviate from it. Furthermore, you can only move forward. Whereas free will is akin to, let's say, a choose-your-own-adventure book, where you have the power to select between different potentials, making one of those potentials into some actuality. The reason this debate has been popular for thousands of years is that it has implications

for our responsibility, our morality, our consciousness, and even God. An example would be, if our choices are predetermined, well, can we ever be held morally responsible? If so, how? If not, why? Also, does consciousness grant us the power to make free choices? Is that the role of consciousness? What is the role of consciousness? Again, this whole free will versus determinism, as well as sleeps, dreams, lucid dreaming, altered states, mind-body, consciousness, etc. All of these will be talked to in greater

length in subsequent layers. This is just the introductory layer to this iceberg. Now several issues come about when discussing free will. For instance, explaining consciousness is one. If our choices aren't caused by prior events, then what causes them? Neuroscientific evidence suggests that our decisions are influenced by brain activity. Are they solely determined by them? Many physicists argue that the feeling of free will is a mere illusion, whereas many philosophers say that that's just one definition of free will.

There are other definitions, such as one that is compatible with determinism called Compatibilism. The Self and Identity The self is the sense of being a distinct individual with your own unique history, your personality, and your set of experiences. Identity is the continuity of the self across time. This is one of the ways that in Buddhism it's misrepresented by saying that the self is an illusion. Yes, Buddhist texts do emphasize that, but what they mean by illusion isn't that the

self is false or identity is false, but rather that identity and the self change and are not persistent across time. You can still have this continuity though, much like Heraclitus with the river. Even if it's a different river, you can still call it a river. The self is central to consciousness. It allows us to have a first-person perspective and experience ourselves, self-consciousness, as agents. Our sense of self is the basis of something called personhood, which enables moral responsibility and it also gives our lives meaning and purpose. Introspection as well as self-awareness are aspects that are discussed frequently when

people reference the concept of the self. Introspection means looking inward at your own thoughts, your own feelings, your own experiences while self-awareness is about being conscious of yourself as a distinct individual. However, some argue that the self is an illusion, just a construct of the brain. Some of these people will explore later, like Daniel Dennett, Josche Bock, Michael Graziano, as well as the religious canon of Buddhism and the Vedas. Something else that naturally creeps up is the question of personal identity over time. What makes you the same person even if at every instant your body and your mind changes?

What is it? What is that core nugget that keeps you you? And also what is the nature of self-knowledge? If there is this Kantian distinction where we can't ever truly know the world, the numina as he calls it, but rather we can only ever know phenomena, well then can you ever truly know yourself? How do we truly know who we are? Layer 2.

In Layer 2, which is this layer, we'll explore the hard problem of consciousness, qualia, non-dualism in Indian philosophy, and even John Verveckis and Carl Jung's ideas, all explained extremely simply. Now let's begin with the second layer of consciousness. The hard problem of consciousness. The hard problem of consciousness was introduced by David Chalmers in 1995. Since then, it's become a central thorn in the side of the philosophy of mind. It asks a simple but beguiling question. Why does subjective experience exist?

More specifically, why does it feel like something to be conscious when what we have is supposed to be dead matter at the fundament. This problem is distinct from the so-called easy problems of consciousness. These ostensibly easy ones involve explaining cognitive functions like attention and behavior control. They are considered easy because they can, in principle, be solved by standard methods in cognitive science. The hard problem, however, is purportedly entirely different. At its core, the hard problem highlights something called the explanatory gap. That is to say, the difficulty in explaining how or why physical processes in the brain

give rise to subjective experiences. While the mind-body problem that we spoke about in the previous layer of this iceberg is broader, link in the description to that by spoke about in the previous layer of this iceberg is broader, link in the description to that by the way, the hard problem focuses specifically on the subjective, experiential aspects of consciousness. So let's consider a philosophical zombie. A being that behaves exactly like a human, but lacks inner experience. The hard problem asks why we aren't such zombies? Why and how

does neural activity supposedly create the taste of chocolate or the experience of red? Now by the way there are several approaches that have been proposed to address the hard problem. Number one is Mysterianism which argues that human cognitive capacities are fundamentally unsuited to solve this problem. In some ways it's like throwing up your hand. Now number two is panpsychism, which suggests consciousness is a fundamental feature of the universe, present in some form in all matter. Number three is idealism, which we will explore later. And roughly speaking, it suggests that the foundational lithified rock of reality is

conscious experience itself, or consciousness itself. And number four, illusionism, which argues that the hard problem itself is an illusion. We'll explore each of these in subsequent layers. As you know, on theories of everything, we delve into some of the most reality spiraling concepts from theoretical physics and consciousness to AI and emerging technologies to stay informed in an ever evolving landscape I see The Economist as a wellspring of insightful analysis and in-depth reporting on the various topics we explore here

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So what the heck are qualia? Well they're the subjective qualitative aspects of our conscious experience. You know that there's the redness of red, the painfulness of pain, and the tastiness of say that pizza you had last night. Those are examples of the what it's like of consciousness. Now here's where it gets disorienting. Imagine you're looking at a sunset. So you're seeing these vibrant reds, these oranges and purples, they're painting the sky.

But what if, stay with me here, what if your red is my blue? So what if we're seeing the same wavelengths of light, but experiencing them completely differently? This is what philosophers call the inverted spectrum thought experiment. and it's a classic way to think about qualia. So hold on you may be thinking can't we just look at someone's brain and see what they're experiencing? Now this is where we run into that explanatory gap again. We can map every neuron firing when you see that sunset but that still doesn't tell us what it feels like for you to see

it. Now, not everyone's on board with this qualia business. Some people, like the late Daniel Dennett, see the podcast in the description, argue that qualia are just an illusion. He says that once we explain all of the functional aspects of perception and cognition, that there's nothing left to explain. So it's a tad like saying, once you know how a magic trick works, there's nothing left to explain. So it's a tad like saying once you know how a magic trick works there's no real magic left.

Indeed there never was. On the flip side others take qualia extremely seriously. There's even a view called qualia realism that says that these subjective experiences are fundamental features of reality. It's akin to saying that the universe is made of math, matter, and feelings. Some people like André Gómez-Emelson have this view, though they may not consider math or matter as part of their ontology, but something derivative, and in later layers we'll explore those types of theories in both podcast form and in iceberg form so subscribe to get notified.

For now, take a moment to pay attention to your subjective experience, the feeling of your breath, the sounds around you, the thoughts floating through your mind. That, my friends, is the mysterious world of qualia and phenomenal consciousness. Advaita Vedanta Advaita Vedanta is a school of Hindu philosophy that proposes a radical idea, non-dualism. Advaita literally means not to. But what does that mean? Well, it's suggesting that reality is fundamentally unified. There's no separation between individual self, Atman, and the ultimate reality, Brahman. Now you may be thinking like, hold up bro, I'm fairly certain I'm separate from the chair that

I'm sitting on, and in Advaita Vedanta, they would say that this perception of separation is an illusion, what they call Maya. Now this ties into what we've been discussing about consciousness and the nature of reality. Remember our chat about qualia and the what it's like to be aspect of consciousness. Advaita Vedanta takes this to the extreme. It's not just about what it's like to be you. It's about what it's like to be everything. Because at its deepest level, everything is one, at least according to this school. Now this idea of non-dualism at least according to this school. Now this idea of

non-dualism isn't unique to Indian philosophy, it echoes in Western thought as well. Spinoza, for instance, proposed a form of pantheism where God and nature were one in the same. And more recently, some interpretations of quantum mechanics have hinted at a deeper interconnected universe. See the Amanda Gefter podcast in the description about cubism. But Advaita Vedanta goes further. It suggests that our sense of self, the quote unquote you that you think you are, is itself an illusion. This might sound wild, but it's not too far from some modern neuroscientific views that see the self as a kind of useful fiction

created by the brain. Now you might be wondering, if everything is one, why does it seem so not one? This is where the concept of levels of reality come in. Advaita Vedanta proposes different levels of truth, from the absolute, where everything is indeed one, to the more conventional, where we experience separation. It suggests that our everyday experience, so that stream of thoughts, that set of feelings, the perceptions that we usually call consciousness, is just at the surface level, and beneath

that is a deeper, unified consciousness that we're just usually not aware of. In later layers, we'll explore how these ideas connect with other philosophical and scientific perspectives on consciousness. We'll look at how they might relate to theories like integrated information theory or even Donald Hoffman's interface theory of perception. John Vervecky' Relevance Realization. How do our minds figure out what's important in any given situation? Think about it.

Every second your brain is bombarded with a tsunami of information. Sights, sounds, smells, thoughts, memories. It may literally be chaos out there. Though somehow your consciousness manages to make sense of it all. That's relevance, realization, and action. How does this tie into that whole what it's like to be or first-person experience aspect that's central to consciousness studies? Well, Vervaiki is saying that the very essence of your subjective experience, your qualia, if you will, is

shaped by how your brain determines what's relevant. He proposes four ways of knowing. These are crucial for consciousness. Number one is propositional, so knowing that. Number two is procedural, so knowing how. Number three is perspectival knowing, so knowing what it's like. And the number four, participatory knowing, so knowing what it's like, and the number four participatory knowing,

knowing by being. Instead of getting stuck in what some call the Cartesian dualism trap, John is proposing something more dynamic, more process oriented. There are echoes of integrated information here, with its emphasis on how information is integrated in the brain, and there's a touch of liveness's monads as well, in the way that Verwecke sees consciousness as fundamentally active and perspectival. Topics we'll explore in detail later. But perhaps the most earth-shattering aspect of Verwecke's theory is how it deals with the self. Remember how we talked about in Invita Vedanta they suggest that the self is an illusion? Well, Verwecke doesn't quite go that far. Instead,

he says that our sense of self emerges from this ongoing process of relevance realization. It's not a fixed object, it's a dynamic and ever-changing process. In later layers, we'll delve deeper into how Vervecky's ideas connect with other theories of consciousness, from the neuroscientific to the mystical. But before we move on to the next topic, I'd like you to pay attention to how your mind decides what's relevant. I understand you may find my sultry voice is the most relevant thing in this moment currently and I don't blame you.

But the point is, are you choosing to pay attention? Or does this selection process happen prior to the process of noticing itself? Vervecki would say that relevance realization is pre-egoic, meaning it's prior to even the construction of you. Panpsychism and the Combination Problem Panpsychism proposes that consciousness is a fundamental feature of the universe, present in some form in all matter. It's not saying that your coffee mug, say, is sitting there contemplating its existence, but rather that the basic building blocks of reality have some rudimentary form of experience or subjectivity. This idea gained traction recently with philosophers like David Chalmers and

Galen Strassen arguing that it may offer a solution to the hard problem of consciousness we discussed earlier. The reasoning is as follows. If we can't explain how consciousness emerges from non-conscious matter then perhaps consciousness was there all along. But panpsychism faces its own challenges. Chief among them is the combination problem. If tiny bits of matter have tiny bits of consciousness, how do these combine to form the rich, unified conscious experience that we have?

So it's not just about adding more and more little consciousnesses together. That would be like saying you can understand a novel by looking at the individual letters. Some thinkers like Philip Goff, podcast with him in the description, have proposed versions of panpsychism that try to address this. Cosmopsychism, for instance, suggests that the universe as a whole is conscious and our individual consciousnesses are somehow derived from this cosmic mind. Now this sounds like a variation of what Bernardo Castro believes in his analytic idealism, which will be discussed in later layers, so subscribe to get notified, but Castro dislikes

panpsychism for some subtle reasons that again we'll get to next time. Interestingly, panpsychism resonates with some of the interpretations of quantum mechanics, such as the idea that consciousness plays a role in collapsing the wave function. It also echoes certain Eastern philosophical traditions, like the Vedantic concept of universal consciousness we touched on earlier. Critics argue that panpsychism merely pushes the explanatory burden back a step. Instead of explaining how consciousness emerges from some non-conscious matter, we now have to explain how it all combines and evolves into this complex form that we experience.

However, as neuroscientist Christophe Koch puts it, the only thing we know about consciousness is that it exists. Buddhist Consciousness. Yoga Kara and Madhyamaka Views. Yoga Kara, often translated as mind only or consciousness only, posits that what we perceive as external reality is actually a perception of consciousness. Now this doesn't mean that the physical world doesn't exist, but rather that our experience of it is shaped entirely by our minds. It's reminiscent of the idealist philosophers we touched on earlier, but with a Buddhist flavor.

Madhyamaka, on the other hand, emphasizes the concept of emptiness, or sannyata. This isn't nihilism. Instead, it suggests that all phenomena, including consciousness, lack inherent existence and are interdependent. It's somewhat like saying consciousness isn't a thing, but a process. Now, it's this process view that Buddhists derive their notion of the self is an illusion. It doesn't mean that the self doesn't exist, or that you're an illusion, that's a common Western misunderstanding.

Buddhists tend to believe that what's non-illusory must be non-changing. So since you're a process, we have to abandon the notion of a permanent, unchanging self. The Yogacara view of consciousness as fundamentally constructive echoes modern predictive processing theories. consciousness as fundamentally constructive echoes modern predictive processing theories, while the Madhyamaka's emphasis on interdependence resonates with inactive and embodied cognitive approaches. You can hear more about these two types of theories, the predictive processing type and the inactive embodied cognition type, by clicking in the description for a podcast with Karl

Friston. Interestingly, these Buddhist perspectives give a different take on the hard problem. Instead of trying to explain how subjective experience arises from objective matter, they question the distinction of subject and object itself. This approach sidesteps some of the conventional traps we often fall into when thinking about consciousness. In later layers, we'll explore how these Buddhist concepts relate to other theories of consciousness from panpsychism to integrated information theory. For now, consider this. If, as these Buddhist schools suggest, our usual sense of self and reality is fundamentally mistaken, what might a more accurate understanding look like? Global Workspace Theory Global Workspace Theory proposed by Bars in

1988 is about the cognitive architecture for understanding consciousness. This is different from explaining consciousness. It more presupposes consciousness and then attempts to understand its inner workings as they relate to the brain. It suggests that our brain has a quote-unquote global workspace where information is broadcast widely to many unconscious specialized processes. The theory uses a metaphor of a theater of consciousness. So now imagine a dimly lit theater where only the spotlight content is consciously perceived.

This stage represents working memory with the spotlight controlled by attention. The audience consists of unconscious, specialized processors, like those for language, emotions, or sensory experience. Global workspace theory proposes that consciousness emerges when information gains access to this global workspace and is broadcasted widely. This broadcasting allows for the integrated information across different brain regions leading to coherent behavior and subjective experience. This view aligns with some neuroscientific findings.

For instance, studies have shown that conscious perception is associated with long-range synchronization of brain activity, which could be the neural basis of the broadcast in global workspace theory. In this way, we focus here on the functional role of consciousness in cognition rather than the hard problem. It says, hey, here's what consciousness does, even if we fully can't explain what it's like to be something. As usual, critics argue that global workspace theory doesn't address the explanatory gap. How does this broadcasting of information create subjective experience?

However, proponents like Stanislas Dejan have developed a more detailed neurobiological model based on global workspace theory, providing testable predictions about conscious processes, such as the idea that conscious perception would be associated with a late burst of activation in a distributed network of brain regions. If consciousness is indeed a global workspace, then what determines what information gets access to this workspace and why do some contents of consciousness feel more vivid or even more real than others? Carl Jung's explanation for consciousness.

Carl Jung proposed a model of the psyche that includes both conscious and unconscious elements. According to Jung, the conscious mind is just the tip of the iceberg, pun intended. Beneath lies the personal unconscious, containing forgotten or repressed memories and experiences, and even deeper, the collective unconscious, a repository of universal inherited patterns of thoughts, experiences, even personalities that he called archetypes. Central to Jung's theory is the concept of individuation, the process of integrating unconscious contents into consciousness. Jung's idea resonates with some Eastern philosophies that we've touched on.

His concept of the collective unconscious, for instance, has parallels with the Vedantic idea of a universal consciousness. However, Jung's approach is distinctly Western and grounded in his clinical work and personal experiences. Also, the collective unconscious of Jung is less of a unified source of consciousness from which we all spring and is more akin to a reservoir that we have in common. So the difference is that in the Eastern case, you're seen as the ripple on the ocean with little distinction between the ripple and the ocean since they're both of the same medium, namely water in this case. Whereas for Jung, the collective unconscious

is more akin to a shared ancestral memory or inherited evolutionary wisdom that influences our psyche but Jung doesn't negate individual consciousness. So the collective unconscious is a common stockpile of archetypes and instinctual patterns that we all draw from but we still remain delineated individuals. For Jung, subjective experiences aren't seen as issues to be resolved like the hard problem suggests. Instead, Jung sees experience as being informative of elements of the psyche that require exploration and integration in the process of something called individuation. Now, individuation means

the process of becoming a whole differentiated person by integrating conscious and unconscious aspects of one's psyche. This is in contrast to the oneness of the other theories of consciousness. In Carl Jung's view, individuation literally aids in becoming more distinctive, rather than becoming more the same. In order to accomplish this, you would need to confront and integrate your shadow as part of your journey towards psychological wholeness. The shadow being the aspects of yourself you've repressed or denied. For instance, you may need to confront the part of you that's

deeply envious when others succeed or gain accolade. Or you may need to confront your urge to falsity. That is, your tendency to bend reality by telling even the tiniest white lie. Those are aspects that need to be acknowledged, understood, and then integrated into your conscious self rather than suppressed, denied, or even worse, unacknowledged. And this will allow you to become a more complete individual. Jungian analyst James Hollis suggests that consciousness, in Jung's view, is not just awareness, but the carrier of meaning. This shifts the focus from what consciousness is to what consciousness does.

That is to say, how consciousness creates and interprets meaning in your life. Hi everyone, hope you're enjoying today's episode. If you're hungry for deeper dives into physics, AI, consciousness, philosophy, along with my personal reflections, you'll find it all on my sub stack. Subscribers get first access to new episodes, new posts as well, behind the scenes insights, and the chance to be a part of a thriving community of like-minded pilgrimers. By joining, you'll directly be supporting my work and helping keep these conversations at the cutting edge. So click the link on screen here. Hit subscribe and let's keep pushing the boundaries of knowledge together. Thank you and enjoy the show.

Just so you know, if you're listening, it's C-U-R-T-J-A-I-M-U-N-G-A-L dot org, KurtJaimungal dot org. Welcome to the consciousness iceberg layer three, where this time we'll delve into the even deeper kaleidoscopic world of explaining every theory of consciousness in a straightforward manner connecting philosophical ideas to modern theories of cognitive science. Exploring Heidegger's notion of Dasein, what is the attention schema theory, what are the latest theories from thinkers such as Donald Hoffman and Joschka Bach. We also tackle the

boundary problem in consciousness as articulated by Andreas Gomez-Emelson, as well as addressing the relativistic view of consciousness by Nir Lehov. This is a radically new theory proposed in the 2020s. We'll see how all of these frameworks interact, compliment, and contradict one another. Let's begin. Heidegger's concept of Dasein The concept of Dasein is prevalent in Heidegger's philosophy, particularly in his seminal existential work, Being and Time. The term Dasein is often translated as being there or presence.

Essentially, it's human consciousness as a form of being that's aware of and questions its own existence. In the context of consciousness studies, Dasein is significant because it places an emphasis on consciousness having an active engagement with the world. Heidegger posits that our consciousness, or Dasein, is always thrown in the world. This means that we find ourselves in a context that we didn't choose, however, we still must navigate it. And this navigation involves both perceiving objects and understanding them as part of a meaningful whole

or a quote unquote world in Heideggerian terms. You can think of this as a fusion of reductionism and holism. Dasein is always already involved in a world of significance where things show up as relevant or irrelevant, useful or useless based on our intentions and concerns. This relates to John Vervaeke's relevance realization that we talked about in the previous layer. Many views on consciousness emphasize the passive observer aspect, such as some forms of mindfulness meditation where you watch your thoughts rather than become the author of your thoughts. Heidegger says this is a mistake.

Consciousness doesn't mirror a reality that exists. It's a co-creator, a negotiator of meaning. One aspect of Dasein is its temporal nature. Heidegger argues that Dasein is always ahead of itself, projecting into the future while being grounded in its past, what he calls being toward death. In this way, it's common to the predictive approaches of Karl Friston, which will come up in Layer 4. So subscribe to get notified. This temporal structure means that consciousness is inherently future-oriented. It's your orientation to the future that shapes your present.

This stands in contrast to the more present-oriented views, such as those of some meditative practices. Heidegger suggests that the notion that consciousness can be fully understood by breaking it down into its components or correlating it with neural processes is a foolish one. Instead, Dasein suggests that consciousness is an irreducible phenomenon, intertwined with our being in the world. This resonates with modern theories that emphasize the embodied and embedded nature of consciousness, such as inactivism and the extended mind hypothesis. While it rejects approaches that attempt to explain consciousness solely in terms of brain activity.

Attention Schema Theory Attention Schema Theory is a relatively recent theory in the study of consciousness, proposed by neuroscientist Michael Graziano. It offers a compelling explanation for how consciousness arises from the brain's mechanisms for attention. The core idea of AST is that the brain constructs models or schemas of various processes to determine and control them. For instance, to control the movement of the body, the brain creates a model of the body's position in space, known as a body schema. Similarly, Graziano proposes that the brain constructs an attention schema, a model of where attention is directed and what it's focusing on. According to AST, consciousness arises when the brain

creates a model of its own attention. This self modeling of attention is what gives us the experience of being aware. In other words, consciousness is the brain's method of representing to itself that it's attending to something. AST doesn't claim that attention itself is consciousness, but rather that the brain's internal model of attention is what we experience as consciousness. This theory suggests that consciousness isn't a fundamental property of the brain, rather it's a useful construct, a model, or representation, if you will. One that helps the brain manage complex tasks and social interactions.

One of the intriguing aspects or implications of AST is its potential to explain the quote unquote explanatory gap. That is, the question of why and how physical processes give rise to subjective experience. Graziano suggests that this gap may be a result of the brain's attention schema being inherently incomplete. The brain models attention as an intangible, ineffable process, leading us to experience it as something fundamentally mysterious, even though it's just a model constructed by the brain.

But Kurt, what does that even mean? Well AST aligns with some elements of predictive processing theories where the brain is seen as a prediction machine, constantly generating models of the world to guide behavior. In the case of consciousness, AST posits that the brain generates a model of itself paying attention, and this self-model is what we experience as being conscious. To better understand this concept, imagine it like the following. When you're watching a movie, you're aware of the characters and the plot. However, you're not necessarily aware of the projector that's casting the images on the screen. Your brain's attention schema is like the projector. It's responsible for creating the experience, but it remains obscured, it remains hidden from your conscious awareness. Another way to think of it is like a spotlight that

illuminates certain aspects of your experience while leaving others in the dark. So critics of AST argue that it doesn't fully account for the qualitative aspects of consciousness, what philosophers call qualia. However, proponents of AST suggest that it does offer a robust framework for integrating attention and awareness, which are the key components of conscious experience. EM field topology and the boundary problem. The boundary problem in consciousness research is an under-explored area closely related to the better-known binding

problem. Now while the binding problem deals with how disparate neuronal activities coalesce into a unified conscious experience, see Layer 2, the boundary problem asks why and how these experiences have distinct limits. Why does our sense of self and experience have clear edges? Now note that some like Rupert Spira argue that not only does consciousness not have so-called limits, but counter-intuitively, neither does our experience of consciousness have limits.

You can see this podcast with Rupert Spira here, but for today I want to talk about a theory created by Andreas Gomez-Emmelson. Electromagnetic field topology is an approach to tackling this delineation issue. This theory suggests that the topology of EM fields in the brain could create hard boundaries for conscious experiences. These boundaries are defined by the physical and topological properties of EM fields. This theory rests on the principle of topological segmentation, where different segments of the brain's electromagnetic field are enclosed within distinct topological boundaries. This segmentation could theoretically account for why our consciousness feels segmented into specific bounded experiences.

Now let's talk about some key features of EM field topology. So number one, you have a holistic enclosure. EM fields create these enclosures around areas of high neuronal activity, segmenting these from the rest of the brain activity. Number two, frame invariance. These boundaries are not static across different states of consciousness.

Instead, the very nature of various states of consciousness stems from how these boundaries dynamically shift, morph, and change. There are both global boundaries that segment out larger conscious experiences and local boundaries that affect immediate experiential content. This dynamic interaction allows for a multitude of pathways within our conscious landscape, similar to how altering the shape of a balloon creates different paths within it. Now number three, there's downward causality.

The segmented fields can influence neuronal activity within their boundaries, suggesting a two-way interaction between consciousness and brain activity. And lastly, number four, there's no need for strong emergence. EM field topology and its holistic top-down effects are all implied by the laws of physics, aligning more with the form of weak emergence. This perspective shifts from a classical atomistic view to one that appreciates continuous field dynamics and topological changes as natural phenomena. This approach addresses not only how consciousness is bounded, but simultaneously

enhances our understanding of how different conscious states, such as waking and various altered states, could be maintained or shifted through changes in the EM field topology. Now topology, by the way, in this sense, is a fancy term for quote-unquote mapping the connectivity. Or you can just think of it as what parts are connected to what. Testing this theory involves simulations and empirical research focusing on how EM fields maintain consistent Lorentz invariance despite topological deformations. This showcases that the EM fields are independent of observational frame of reference. Now solving the boundary problem could tell us why our experiences are framed the way they are,

potentially leading to new ways to manipulate or enhance consciousness through technological means. Josche Box Theory Josche Box Theory suggests that cortical structures result from reward driven learning based on signals from the motivational system and the result from reward-driven learning based on signals from the motivational system and the structure of the data being learned. A cortical structure, by the way, is just a dressed-up manner of referring to any part of the cerebral cortex, the outer layer of the brain. Now, at the heart of this theory is the conductor, the so-called conductor, which is a computational structure trained to regulate the activity of other cortical functionality.

This conductor directs attention and provides executive function by altering the activity and parameterization of other cortical structures. It integrates aspects of the processes it attends to into a protocol, which is then used for reflection and learning. But what are the elementary agents in this theory? Bach describes them as columns in the cerebral cortex. These columns self-organize into larger organizational units of brain areas through developmental reinforcement learning.

The activity of this cortical orchestra is highly distributed and paralyzed. It can't be experienced as a whole. The conductor, located in the prefrontal cortex, coordinates the performance. It's not a homunculus, instead it's a set of dynamic function approximators. While most cortical instruments regulate the dynamics and interactions of this organism with the environment, the conductor regulates the dynamics of the orchestra itself. Now you might be wondering, where does experience get integrated?

Bach states that the conductor is the only place where this happens. Information not integrated into the protocol can't become functionally relevant to the system's reflection, the production of its utterances, or the generation of its cohesive self-model. So, what happens without the conductor? Bach asserts that our brain can still perform most of its functions. We'd be sleepwalkers, capable of coordinated perceptual and motor action, yet lacking central coherence and reflection. Memories play a significant role, by the way, in box theory.

Memories can be generated by reactivating a cortical configuration via the links and parameters stored at the corresponding point in the protocol. Reflective access to the protocol is itself a process that can be stored in the protocol. By accessing this, a system may remember having had experiential access. So let's make this extremely simple. For phenomenal consciousness, Bach claims it's necessary and sufficient that a system can access the memory of having had an experience. What about the actuality of the experience itself? This is irrelevant. An example illustrating this relationship between the conductor, the protocol, and the conscious experience

can be visualized through a graph. So let's imagine a place with nodes and edges representing your brain's cortical regions. Each node possesses specific information such as visual data or auditory signals or emotional responses, etc. The conductor, which is the prefrontal cortex, selectively samples their outputs, compressing them into some compact serialized protocol. Firstly, note how much you're not aware of. Even right now, there's the air around you, there's perhaps your shoes or your socks, or if you're on the ground, maybe some dirt underneath your soles.

There's some background hum that you're ignoring. There's maybe the scent of wood, or there's maybe the scent of coffee, or of orange juice, or someone else coughing in the background. You're not consciously aware of all of this processing. The conductor samples these outputs, creating a compressed representation, which is just you sitting down listening to a podcast. When you recall this experience, you're not accessing the raw sensory data, but you're accessing instead this compressed protocol. Your subjective experience of remembering the podcast is the conductor reactivating

and slightly reinterpreting this protocol. The qualia of the pixels on the screen or the curiosity that you have isn't a stored property. Instead, it's an emergent interpretation as your brain reconstructs the memory. This, according to Bach, explains why our memory often feels less vivid than the original experience. We are working from a compressed protocol, not raw sensory data. Okay, but how does this have anything to do with the hard problem? Consider the classical philosophical zombie, that thought experiment that you've heard of, where we imagine a being physically identical to a human, however this being will lack conscious

experience. In Bach's framework, this concept becomes incoherent. Imagine two identical neural networks, one conscious and one a zombie. Both have the same conductor mechanism, sampling and compressing information into a protocol. Both can report on their experiences by accessing and interpreting this protocol. For Bach, the conscious system doesn't have some extra ineffable property. Its experience of consciousness is precisely its ability to access and report on its protocol. It's equivalent to that. So the zombie system, being identical to this,

would necessarily have the same ability. The seemingly hard problem of what it feels like to be conscious dissolves when we recognize that this feeling itself is a construct, a so-called story the brain tells itself, by interpreting its own protocol. There's no separate experience happening alongside the information processing. The experience is the processing. So what is phenomenal consciousness according to Bach? What is qualia according to Bach? What is qualia according to Bach? What are feelings?

What is blueness? To Bach, the phenomenal consciousness is understood as the most recent memory of what our prefrontal cortex attended to. Conscious experience isn't an experience of being in the world or an inner space. It's a memory. It's the recognition of a dream generated by more than 50 brain areas reflected in the protocol of a single region. By directing attention to its own protocol,

the conductor can store and recreate memories of its own experience being conscious. This perspective resolves much of the difficulty in specifying an AI implementation of consciousness. It's necessary and sufficient to realize a system that remembers having had experienced something and can report on that memory. Bach suggests that our conscious experience isn't a direct perception of some physical reality, no, instead it's a dream, a model constructed by our brain to represent and interact with the world around us.

Donald Hoffman's Theory Donald Hoffman, a cognitive scientist, argues that our visual perceptions, in general, aren't veridical representations of ultimate reality. Why? Because evolution selects for fitness to reproduce, and not for access to ontological truth. This is outlined in his Fitness Beats Truth paper linked in the description. Consider this. A caveman who sees a rabbit as tasty food is more likely to survive than

one who perceives it as a complex molecular structure. This of course presumes that the molecular structure is what's more real. Hoffman likens our perceptions to computer interfaces, such as a folder that's on your desktop. Now you see that folder and you think, is there actually a tiny folder inside your computer? No. Now, you see that folder and you think, is there actually a tiny folder inside your computer? No, it's just a useful simplification for complex binary code. Similarly, Hoffman argues that evolution shaped our perceptions as simplistic illusions to

help us navigate the world. Later in his career, Hoffman suggests that space-time itself isn't objective reality. It's just a part of our interface. To some physicists, this is quite obvious and straightforward because we don't have a method of reconciling general relativity with quantum mechanics and several of the attempts to do so posit structures where space-time emerges. Some other physicists, however, would say that space-time not being fundamental doesn't mean space-time is any more of an illusion than your car is an illusion because your car isn't fundamental.

So what is real according to Donald Hoffman and his collaborator Sheytan Prakash? Consciousness They propose conscious realism, which states that the objective world consists of conscious agents and their experiences. Instead of particles creating consciousness when they form brains, consciousness creates space-time and objects, including what we perceive as a brain. Now let's think, how does this compare to other theories? Let's break it down.

We have Joschabach's cortical conductor theory, which sees consciousness as a memory of what our prefrontal cortex attended to. Hoffman disagrees, saying consciousness is fundamental and so they diverge on the nature of reality itself. Bach still operates within a physicalist framework, while Hoffman, politely, throws physicalism down the garbage chute. Michael Graziano's attention schema theory views consciousness as the brain's model of its own attention. Now Hoffman would say that this gets it backward. For him, consciousness isn't created by the brain,

the brain is created by consciousness. So this is what Donald Hoffman means when he says that neurons don't exist until perceived. Bernardo Castrop's analytic idealism aligns more closely with Hoffman. They both see consciousness as fundamental. The key difference is that Castrup posits a universal consciousness that segments itself into individual minds, while Hoffman describes a network of interacting conscious agents. Heidegger's concept of Dasein emphasizes consciousness as active engagement with the world, and Hoffman would agree, however Hoffman would add that this world that we're engaging with is itself a construct of consciousness.

Heidegger asserts that Dasein, or human existence, you can think of it like that, and the world are inseparable and co-constitutive, with neither having ontological priority. This contradicts Hoffman's conscious realism which gives ontological priority. This contradicts Hoffman's conscious realism, which gives ontological priority to consciousness. André Gomes-Emelson's EM field topology theory tackles the boundary problem of consciousness. Hoffman's theory sidesteps this issue entirely by making consciousness fundamental. There's no need to explain how physical processes create bounded conscious experiences if those physical processes are themselves constructs of consciousness.

Okay, now you might be thinking, Kurt, what the heck about all the evidence that correlates mental states with brain activity? And Hoffman does have an answer. These correlations are fomented because consciousness creates brain activity. So yes, there's quite straightforwardly a correlation, it's just that the causation goes in the other direction. Near Lahav's relativistic consciousness. What if consciousness isn't an absolute property, but a relative one that depends on the observer's frame of reference. This idea is at the heart of Lehov's theory, which aims to bridge the explanatory gap between

functional and phenomenal consciousness. Lehov starts with two key assumptions. Consciousness has some kind of physical explanation or broad physicalism, and that the principle of relativity holds true even for consciousness. Okay, but what does this mean in practice? Nearest thinking like Einstein. You start with postulates and then you see their consequences. The consequences suggest the concept of cognitive frames of reference, that is perspectives determined by a cognitive systems dynamics.

Lahav then establishes an equivalence principle between a conscious human, Alice, let's say, and a purported zombie AI system, say Bob, with the same cognitive structure but supposedly lacking phenomenal consciousness in the latter case. If Alice and Bob obtain the same measurements and behavioral outputs, the relativity principle dictates that they must have the same measurements and behavioral outputs, the relativity principle dictates that they must have the same physical laws in force. This leads us to the unintuitive conclusion that Bob, despite being assumed to be a zombie, must also have phenomenal consciousness.

Okay, so let's say you're looking at a sunset. From your first-person perspective, you experience colors and emotions. A neuroscientist observing your brain would see certain patterns of neural firing. Are these two perspectives describing the same phenomenon? According to Lahav, yes, they're just different measurements from different cognitive frames of reference. These are different perspectives of the same underlying phenomenon, akin to how UNRWA radiation appears from one perspective, but not another. But wait, you ask.

Kurt, doesn't consciousness feel private and inaccessible to outside observers? Lahav explains this is due to the difference in measurements possible from first-person and third-person perspectives. From within a cognitive system, representations have causal power and are experienced as qualia. However, when you're from the outside, we can only measure physical substrates. Okay, so what about free will? Nir LaHav may say that it's relative, and that this unifies determinism and libertarian free will.

But let's think about what I just said. Phenomenal consciousness isn't truly private. It just requires the right frame of reference to measure directly. Thus, Lehov's approach aims to dissolve the hard problem by showing that the physical patterns or the neural representations and the phenomenal properties or the qualia are two sides of the same coin. They're different ways the same phenomenon appears based on the observer's cognitive perspective.

But, doesn't this just push the explanatory burden back a step? Instead of explaining how consciousness emerges from non-conscious matter, don't we now have to explain how it combines and evolves into complex life forms across different frames of reference? Lahav argues that his theory opens up new avenues for empirical research. Yes, so he proposes experiences to test predictions about the minimal conditions for consciousness and how these relate to sleep, to anesthesia or other altered states. Altered states, by the way, were explored in Layer 1, link in the description of this

consciousness iceberg. For instance, Nir LaHav may look for activation of specific cognitive spaces during cognitive states and their absence during unconscious states. Okay, but how does this theory compare to others? Well, with Donald Hoffman, since LaHoff's theory posits consciousness as a relative property dependent on observers' frames of reference, it contradicts sharply with Hoffman's conscious realism. While Hoffman argues consciousness is fundamental and creates our perceived reality, Lahav suggests consciousness is a physical

phenomenon that appears different based on perspective. Consider Hoffman's desktop analogy. Hoffman may say that the computer, the desk it's on, and the room all around you are just constructs of consciousness, whereas Lahav would argue no, these are real physical objects, but our conscious experience of them depends on our cognitive frame of reference. But what about Bernardo Castrop? Castrop posits a universal consciousness that segments into individual minds. Lahav in contrast, grounds consciousness in physical cognitive systems.

Where Castrop sees consciousness as primary, Lahav sees it as an emergent property, albeit one that looks different from various perspectives. Joschebok's cortical conductor theory views consciousness as a memory of what our prefrontal cortex attended to, and this aligns more closely with Lahav than with Hoffman or Castrup. Both Bach and Lahav operate broadly within a physicalist framework, though Lahave would expand what physicalism is, adding the dimension of relativity. Suggesting that the quote-unquote memory Bach describes might appear differently from various cognitive frames of reference. So let's be clear, let's just think about an apple. Hoffman would say that that apple

doesn't exist as a physical object, it's a construct of consciousness, an icon if you will, in our species specific interface with reality. Whereas Kastrup would look at that apple and say that apple is a manifestation within universal consciousness experienced by an individual quote-unquote alter, which is you, of this universal consciousness. Bach would instead

describe your experience as a memory of your prefrontal cortex attending to certain sensory inputs and conceptual associations giving the impression of the apple. Now, LeHavre would say that the apple is a physical object, but your conscious experience of its redness is a measurement that depends on your cognitive frame of reference. From another frame, say a neuroscientist observing your brain, the same phenomenon might just appear as patterns of neuroactivity. Now some questions to ponder are, how does Heidegger's idea of being toward death influence your understanding of consciousness and its relation to time? What implications might the tension schema theory have for developing artificial consciousness?

How does understanding the boundary problem change our approach to studying altered states of consciousness? In what ways does Bach's theory challenge the notion of qualia as traditionally understood? How does Hoffman's theory account for shared experiences and consensus reality among different individuals? Does LeHavre's theory of relativistic consciousness finally bridge the gap between physicalist and non-physicalist theories of mind? Hi, if you're new to this channel, my name is Kurt Jaimungal, the host of Theories of Everything. My mission here is to lead the conversation, the host of Theories of Everything. My mission here is to

lead the conversation at the intersection of physics, philosophy, AI, and consciousness. If you share my excitement for exploring life's largest unanswered questions, I invite you to become a channel member. You'll gain early access to new episodes, sometimes days or even weeks prior to anyone else, plus members-only exclusive content that goes even deeper. As a member, you'll also receive a unique badge to stand out in the comments and top priority when I respond. Most importantly, your support helps me bring world-leading researchers for in-depth conversations that keep us at the bleeding edge.

The link to join is in the description and on screen. Thank you for watching, and I look forward to our continued journey together. See you on the member side And now as we enter layer 4 we find ourselves at the precipice of some of the most ambitious theories yet in this layer We'll explore Douglas Hofstadter's strange loops as well as the paradox of self-reference We'll also explore Penrose's quantum theory of consciousness We'll also explore Christopher Langdon's challenging CTMU. And we'll touch on John Joe McFadden's electromagnetic field theory of consciousness,

as well as David Chalmers' extended mind hypothesis. Oh, and Ian McGilchrist's relational dual aspect monism. Let's begin our journey into layer four of the consciousness iceberg. Douglas Hofstadter's strange loops. Douglas Hofstadter's strange loops is a concept he meticulously explores in his Pulitzer Prize-winning book, Girdle Escher Bach. Strange loops is a framework for understanding

the emergence of self-awareness and consciousness from how the brain models the world and itself. The core idea is that consciousness comes from self-referential feedback loops within the brain, where a system becomes aware of itself by representing itself within its own model of the world. Okay, you'll hear the term self far too many times to count throughout this entire iceberg, so expect some jamais-vous. Imagine a video camera pointed at a TV screen displaying its own output. What happens? Well, you get an infinite regress of images within images, each of them nested within the other one, creating a visual representation of self-reference.

Hofstadter argues that a similar process occurs in the brain where symbols and representations, initially referring to objects that are external and also events that are external, begin to refer back to the system itself, creating a loop. So this is what he calls a strange loop. He proposes that this strange loop is the key to self-awareness and the emergence of an I, a quote unquote I. Because of this, this is more of an explanation to me at least of self-consciousness rather than consciousness itself. Now that girdle in the girdle Escher Bach refers to Kurt Girdle, not Kurt Jaimungal, the other actually cool Kurt, who demonstrated that a formal system

of sufficient complexity, you have to put an asterisk there because there's some formalities to that, can contain self-referential statements that are both true and unprovable within the system itself. These quote unquote girdle sentences demonstrate the inherent limitations of formal systems and, according to Hofstadter, gives some clue to the nature of consciousness. How so? Because the network of interconnected neurons and its ability to process information in a hierarchical and recursive manner is seen by Hofstadter as a formal system capable of generating girdle-like sentences. These are those self-referential statements that point

back to the system itself, creating a loop that gives rise to self-awareness. Okay, quite complicated, so let's say, how does Hofstadter's idea compare to some of the others that we've encountered in this iceberg? Well, the Buddhist view of consciousness would say that the self is an illusion, at least according to some schools, and that may seem to contradict Hofstadter's strange loop which suggests that there is a real, albeit emergent self. While a strange loop could be seen as a process that creates the quote-unquote illusion of the stable self rather than a real and unchanging entity, this interpretation, the Hofstadter

one, still posits an emergent self, which is at odds with the Buddhist view of anatta, or no-self. How about how it compares to global workspace theory? Well, that theory suggests consciousness comes about when information is broadcast widely to a global workspace in the brain. This global workspace, by providing access to information from various brain regions, could be seen as a necessary condition for a strange loop to form. This means that while global workspace theory doesn't entail the strange loop, it may give

the neurological grounding for the loop to occur. Panpsychism on the other hand, which is that view that consciousness is a fundamental and ubiquitous feature of the physical world, could be seen as both compatible and contradictory to Hofstadter's strange loops. On the other hand, if consciousness comes from fundamental properties of matter, then the self-referential loops in the brain could be seen as a particular manifestation of this fundamental consciousness. How about how it relates to John Ravacki's theory of relevance realization, the one that emphasizes the mind's constant process of determining

what's important in any given situation. A strange loop could be seen as a high-level Relevance Realization where the system itself becomes relevant to its own model of the world. The system by representing itself within its own model recognizes its own existence and agency. Now this is merely speculation on my part. Then there's eliminative materialism. Try saying that five times fast.

That's the view that our common sense understanding of the mind is fundamentally flawed and that consciousness is an illusion that people like Daniel Dennett state, or at least stated. Daniel would have argued that there's no Cartesian theater in the brain, there's no central place where consciousness resides and instead Daniel Dennett may see consciousness as a product of distributed brain processes without any need for self-referential loops. Now one of the main criticisms of Hofstadter's theory is how the heck do you test this? Strange loops are more of a conceptual framework than a testable hypothesis. Another criticism is that Douglas Hofstadter's theory doesn't fully address the qualitative

aspects of consciousness, what philosophers call qualia. While strange loops might explain how a system becomes self-aware, they don't explain why this self-awareness is accompanied by subjective experience. Roger Penrose's Orchestrated Objective Reduction Roger Penrose, the mathematical physicist and Nobel laureate, argues in his book, The Emperor's New Mind, that consciousness comes from quantum processes. But where specifically?

And how specifically? Well some of that came about later when Stuart Hameroff entered the picture. Stuart says it's within microtubules Of course now these are tiny structures inside cells and neurons in particular Penrose posits that these quantum computations are responsible for the non-computable aspects of conscious experience. Remember Girdle that I just talked about. To Penrose, Girdle showed that there's something non-computational, non-formal going on with our mind's ability to understand. It's this ability to understand in particular. This is roughly because we can understand or we can see that the girdle sentence is

true even though the formal system itself can't prove it. Okay, so back to microtubules. Microtubules are the cylindrical polymers of the protein tubulin. Even though they're pretty much found in all cells, they're particularly abundant in neurons. But what do they do? They play a role in maintaining the cell structure, transporting molecules and regulating cell division. Okay, so what's the big deal? Well, Penrose and Hamerov suggest that the tubulin

molecules within these microtubules can exist in a superposition of states. So many people talk about microtubules, but actually they should be talking about tubulin. Now this superposition is a hallmark of states. So many people talk about microtubules, but actually they should be talking about tubulin. Now this superposition is a hallmark of quantum mechanics. These superpositions can be sustained. But for how long? Well it has to be sufficiently long enough for there to be some meaningful quantum computation. Penrose proposes that when these quantum superpositions in the tubulin reach a certain threshold determined by gravitational effects, a non-computable process called orchestrated objective reduction

occurs. He suggested that these events are moments of conscious experience providing a bridge between the quantum process and consciousness. The orchestrated part of orchestrated objective reduction just means that the quantum computations are orchestrated by the brain's electrical activity, or activity in general. But what does this orchestration quote-unquote do? It acts to synchronize the activity of microtubules across different neurons. Penrose and Hamerov argue that this synchronized activity gives rise to a unified conscious experience.

Now Roger Penrose doesn't explicitly endorse panpsychism, but his theory can be seen as compatible with it. How so? If consciousness arises or comes about from quantum processes, and these quantum processes are somehow fundamental to the universe, then it could be that consciousness is a fundamental feature of reality that is present in some form in all matter. This aligns with the panpsychist view that consciousness is not limited to brains, but instead is a property of the universe itself.

Now the reason I say that it could be seen as compatible, but not that it is compatible, is because for Penrose, consciousness isn't a feature of the universe that's just present within any given subatomic particle, but rather it's the collapse of particles that produce consciousness. And that's decidedly different. Thus, in some sense, it's a physicalist or materialist theory of consciousness. In fact, I spoke to Roger Penrose about this in particular, and you can click in the description for that full podcast. One of the primary criticisms of Penrose's theory

is that quantum effects are easily disrupted by any environmental noise. There's no consensus on whether microtubules actually play the role that Penrose suggests, even if just a couple months ago super radiance was found in microtubules, which is a quantum effect. However, it wasn't the quantum effect that they were looking for, but it does demonstrate that microtubules are capable of demonstrating something quantum-like even though they're relatively macroscopic. CTMU, the cognitive theoretic model of the universe.

Christopher Langan's cognitive theoretic model of the universe, also known as the CtMu, is highly ambitious. It's like super ambitious. It aims to explain everything, including consciousness, within a single unified framework. Now, here's a bit of a background. A theory of everything in physics is something that quote-unquote harmonizes general relativity with the standard model. And Langan takes this word from theory of everything, the everything word, farther than

just those two, standard model and general relativity. He takes it to mean everything in the universe, including the universe itself, including consciousness, including the laws, including you, including even what we can't model. Some more background is that Christopher Langan is an autodidact with an extremely high IQ. This was measured several times and he's had a rough underprivileged childhood. I've spoken to Christopher here for four hours on his theory, so click in the description to see. Langan argues that the universe is a self-referential system. In some sense, he thinks that consciousness comes from the universe's ability to reflect upon itself, though even what I just said isn't quite right.

It's difficult to summarize the CTMU shortly. The CTMU is grounded in the idea that information and cognition are both fundamental to reality. Information is self-referential. Okay, what does that mean? Well, it means that it refers back to itself. He suggests that the universe is a quote unquote self-configuring and self-processing language capable of understanding and manipulating its own information. Actually, to be more accurate, according to Christopher Langan, reality is both the language and the processing of that language.

And that's the entity that Langan calls self-configuring, self-processing language. Consciousness then is a fundamental aspect of this universal language, with humans and other conscious beings acting as tellers or agents that contribute to the universe's self-actualization. You'll notice that many theories of consciousness deride language as being a low-resolution means of communication. I personally think that's an extremely impoverished view of language, and you can see my Substack article here about how language is also the process of creation and discovery, not just transmission. Langen is similar in that he doesn't hold a language with such a low regard, and in fact he elevates it to the highest

category. It is what the universe is. The universe is not only expressed in language, but is that language. So how does the CTMU align or disalign with other theories we've explored? How about idealism? Well, CTMU somewhat aligns with idealism. How so? It sees consciousness as fundamental to reality, yes. The CTMU suggests that the universe is essentially mental and that the physical world is a manifestation

of consciousness, now this resonates with idealist philosophers like George Barclay and Bernardo Castrop. However, while Langen aligns with idealism, he would say that it's incomplete and akin to talking only about, say, the number three on a dice. Sure, there are three dots that exist, but there are other dots. We talk about this in this podcast with Kastrup and Langen here. Now how does CTMU align with materialism? In some sense, the CTMU aligns with materialism in the same way that it does with idealism, in the sense of encompassing it. Materialism,

by the way, would say that consciousness is a byproduct of the physical processes in the brain, whereas in the CTMU it sees consciousness as fundamental to the universe itself. One of the primary criticisms of the CTMU, other than its use of abstruse language, which is somewhat punny given it's a theory about language, is its reliance on the concept of self-reference. While self-reference is an established concept in mathematics and logic, its application to the universe as a whole isn't clear. It's not clear what it means for the universe to be self-referential, but at least to me, it's not entirely unclear. Nor is it for him. Wheeler, for instance, drew this image to talk

about the universe and an observer. In fact, I talk more about that in this podcast here with Amanda Gefter. John Joe McFadden's Conscious Electromagnetic Field Theory, also known as Semi-Field Theory. Have you ever wondered how this supposed lump of meat that we call our heads, which is what a denigrating materialist may say, gives rise to what we call conscious experience? Well, John Joe McFadden, a molecular geneticist, proposes a different sort of theory of consciousness that centers on the brain's electromagnetic field. He calls this the conscious electromagnetic information field theory, or semi-field theory.

McFadden argues that the brain's EM field integrates information from different brain regions. The EM field of our brain isn't just a byproduct of neural activity. Instead, it's the substrate of consciousness itself. McFadden suggests that this EM field integrates information from different brain regions, creating that unified experience we all know so well. Semi-field theory goes against the traditional view that consciousness is solely a product or byproduct of neural activity because EM field is the main dog here in consciousness, at least according to John Jo. How so? Well, it acts as some kind of global workspace that

binds together information from different brain regions. Notice that word quote-unquote binding, which should remind you of our previous layer, linked in the description, about the binding problem. McFadden suggests that this problem is solved because the brain's EM field unifies the diverse neural activity into a singular conscious experience. How? I'm unsure, but this is what he believes. I don't understand it. Additionally, semi-field theory gives an explanation of free will. It suggests that the EM field's influence on

neuronal activity allows our conscious intentions to shape our actions. The EM field acts as a sort of feedback loop that amplifies and synchronizes neural activity, leading to the emergence of a unified conscious experience. But how does it compare to other theories? So let's just take dualism for instance. Semi-field theory could be seen as a form of property dualism, where the brain's EM field is seen as a non-physical property that emerges from the physical activity of neurons.

However, McFadden himself rejects dualism, arguing that the EM field is a physical phenomenon that can be explained by the laws of physics. How about panpsychism? Well, semi-field theory doesn't align with panpsychism, it contradicts it. Panpsychism again says that consciousness is a fundamental property of all matter, but semi-field theory says that consciousness is a product of the brain's EM field, which is generated by the electrical activity of neurons. One of the main criticisms of semi-field theory is that it's unclear how the brain's EM field

could give rise to subjective conscious experience. While the theory suggests yes, okay, the EM field has something to do with consciousness, it doesn't explain how this integration of different brain regions result in the qualitative feel of conscious experience. So another criticism is that semi-field theory, like many others, they don't address the problem of qualia. Why would it be that a certain field configuration produces a specific quality of conscious experience, such as the smell of books in a library, or the slipperiness of ice, or the painfulness of pain? What's wonderful, though, is that McFadden's theory is potentially testable. We could look for evidence that

the brain's EM field is correlated with conscious experience, while we do already with EEG studies. If there are changes in the EM field that are consistently associated with changes in conscious experience, some would say that it lends credence to the semi-field theory. David Chalmers Extended Mind Hypothesis David Chalmers is a prominent philosopher of mind. He's one of the top figures in the consciousness study scene and he's the one that's known for formulating the hard problem of consciousness. In fact, without David Chalmers, we probably wouldn't even be talking about consciousness,

at least not in this high-brow philosophical manner, maybe we would if we were meditating at a monastery. But that'd be it. Now that hard problem of consciousness is something that comes up over and over again throughout this entire iceberg, as you're well aware, and what it is is an explanatory gap between physical processes in the brain and subjective experience. How do you ever bridge that divide? How does one give rise to the other? Now David Chalmers is known for that, but he's also known for his extended mind hypothesis

along with Andy Clark. Okay, so what does this hypothesis suggest? That the mind is not limited to the brain. It can extend into the environment through what? Through interactions with external objects and tools. Think of it like this. If you have a notebook, you store information on that notebook, it becomes a part of your cognitive system. Same with your phone in a sense, and thus potentially part of your conscious experience. Now does that mean that when you leave your room and

someone stabs your notebook like Harry Potter did to Tom Riddle that all of a sudden you'll dissipate into a sea of nothingness? Not exactly. But the extended mind hypothesis does go against the traditional view that the mind is confined in the brain. It suggests that the mind can incorporate external objects and tools into its cognitive process. These external elements become integrated into our cognitive system, although our conscious experience still remains rooted within us. So you don't have to worry about any horcruxes. Can we extend this idea from notebooks to other technologies?

Chalmers argues that we can. Again, he says that our smartphones, our computers, the internet can be a part of our extended minds. We increasingly rely on these technologies to store and process information and they become integrated into our cognitive apparatus, whatever that means. They may even contribute to our conscious experience. Keep in mind that David Chalmers emphasizes that this hypothesis is about cognitive processes extending into the environment rather than consciousness itself extending beyond the brain. He steadfastly maintains that while cognitive functions like memory and problem solving can be supported by external tools,

consciousness remains largely an internal phenomenon. Maybe even entirely. To be clear, Chalmers notes that while our minds can extend into the environment through these cognitive processes, our consciousness, the subjective experience of awareness, doesn't necessarily extend beyond the brain. Alright so now let's look for similarities, coherence, decoherence, and contradictions. How about with embodied cognition? Well the extended mind hypothesis comports with embodied cognition in the sense that it sees the mind as embedded in the environment.

Actually the four E's of cognitive science in general are consonant with Chalmers' view. Embodied cognition emphasizes the role of the body and the environment in shaping cognitive processes. How about Rupert Sheldrake's theory of morphic resonance? Well that's an extended mind theory as well. We talk about that here with Rupert Sheldrake and feel free to click on the screen or the link in the description. Internalism is something that does contradict the extended mind hypothesis. That's the view

that the mind is entirely contained within the brain. Internalists suggest that mental states are internal to the brain and that external objects and tools can only influence the mind indirectly by causing changes in the brain. Idealism is also something that the extended mind hypothesis doesn't fully align with. Why? Because the extended mind hypothesis focuses on how cognitive processes can extend into the environment through interactions with external objects without making claims about the fundamental nature of consciousness or the fundamental nature of those external objects. So one of the fundamental nature of consciousness or the fundamental nature of those external objects.

So one of the main criticisms of the extended mind hypothesis is that it blurs the boundary of the self. If consciousness can be extended beyond the brain, where does the self and the environment begin? Now this may not be such a critique since defining the self, the quote-unquote self, is one of the trickiest aspects of any theory. Indeed, it's a tricky aspect of any theory of objects. That is, what defines the essence of an object that delineates it completely from others. Ian McGilchrist's Relational Dual-Aspect Monism Ian McGilchrist is a psychiatrist, a neuroscientist, and a literary scholar who proposes a theory of consciousness. This one's often described as relational dual aspect

monism. That's a mouthful, but we'll explain it. This view, which is deeply informed by his research, by the way I constantly say there are only two books I recommend, Gödel Escher Bach and Master and His Emissary. Gödel Escher Bach we talked about earlier, Master and His Emissary is Ian McGilchrist's. That suggests that consciousness is a fundamental feature of reality. But that consciousness manifests in two distinct manners, the material world and the world of experience. McGilchrist argues that these two aspects are not separate

substances as traditionally thought of in dualism, but they are two sides of the same coin. He suggests that consciousness is a relational phenomenon. What does that mean? It means it comes about through the interaction with the brain and the world. It's only through interactions, through comparisons, through connections that we get the essence of mind and pattern. McGilchrist's theory is rooted in his research on the brain's two hemispheres. He argues that the left hemisphere is specialized for analyzing the world into discrete parts, abstracting and seeing sameness, while the right hemisphere is specialized for synthesizing

these parts into a unified whole, seeing context and distinctness. Ian suggests that consciousness comes about from this exchange between the two hemispheres or you can even call it a conversation. What's important though is not to see as the right as being right or the left as being more right or wrong or what have you, it's that each hemisphere provides a different mode of quote unquote attending to the world. I spoke to Ian McGilchrist for hours on end, four hours actually, both here and with John Ravecki.

So, solo one is here and one with John Ravecki is here. Many people consider it to be one of the best conversations on the Theories of Everything channel and also one of the best conversations with Ian himself, at least according to the comment section. Click on that if you'd like to see it. I highly recommend. Now let's compare McGilchrist's theory with panpsychism. Again, panpsychism says that consciousness is a property of all matter. McGilchrist considers himself to be a panentheist. You can actually hear Ian claim this explicitly. Again the podcast is linked on screen and in the description.

This means that God is in everything, but also transcends everything. This contrasts with panpsychism where consciousness is just fundamental to all matter and that's all. Whereas McGilchrist's view implies that there's a deeper unity, a more holistic, whatever you want to call it, view of consciousness that isn't just a property of matter. Panentheism accommodates both the imminence of the divine in the material world and its transcendence. Now one of the hugest criticisms of the Gilchrist theory is that it's unclear how would it be that the interaction between the brain and the world gives rise to subjective experience.

Again, the hard problem. While the theory suggests that consciousness is a relational phenomenon, it's not as if it gives a specific mechanism by which this relation could produce conscious experience. Whatever it is though, Ian McGilchrist's theory challenges us to reconsider our traditional assumptions about the mind-body relationship, not even just that, the mind-world relationship and your relationship with everyone else and your relationship with yourself. Welcome back to the consciousness iceberg. We've journeyed from the sunlit surface of the basic definitions in layer one through the heart problem and nondualism in layer two into the obscure theories of layer three

where we tackled Heidegger's Dasein and attention schema theory. In the previous layer, layer four, we explored the radical ideas of thinkers like Douglas Hofstadter's strange loops, Penrose's theory of quantum consciousness, Christopher Langan's CTMU, John Joe McFadden's conscious electromagnetic information field theory, David Chalmers' extended mind hypothesis, and Ian McGilchrist's relational dual aspect monism. Now as we descend into layer 5, we encounter some of the most profound and challenging concepts yet. In this layer lies Bernardo Kastrup's analytic idealism, a consciousness-only ontology. We'll then explore Karl Friston's free energy principle and its implications for understanding consciousness as a process of active inference.

Next, speaking of process, we venture into process philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead and his pan-experientialism, which is a view that sees experience as fundamental to reality itself. We'll also examine Mark Soln's groundbreaking work on affective neuroscience and his felt uncertainty principle, which places feelings, valences, technically, at the very heart of consciousness. Finally, we grapple with Thomas Metzinger's minimal, phenomenal selfhood. A theory that deconstructs the self into its most basic components. Let's begin Layer 5.

Bernardo Kastrup's Analytic Idealism Bernardo Kastrup champions analytic idealism, a consciousness-only ontology. But what does this mean? It asserts that phenomenal consciousness is fundamental and everything else in nature including the physical world is ultimately quote-unquote reducible to patterns of excitations within this fundamental consciousness. Most people tend to think of consciousness as emanating from the universe but to cast up the universe isn't some giant machine that somehow produces

consciousness. No, no. Consciousness is the fundamental reality. The physical universe is rather some sort of projection or manifestation of it. You can view Kastrup's PhD defense online as he's one of the few people in this field who has filmed his and made it public. He argues for his position analytically and rigorously. You'll notice the usage of the term dissociated alters to describe individual consciousnesses like ours. We're like islands surrounded by the ocean of cosmic consciousness. Our individual experiences come about from dissociation from this larger field which

he calls mind at large, and also through the interaction of these alters within this larger field, which he calls mind at large, and also through the interaction of these altars within this larger field. Crucially, Kastrup insists on the existence of an external world. Now this is a common criticism or misinterpretation of Kastrup's work. He's not an anti-realist. He believes objective reality does exist beyond individual minds, but this external world itself is mental in nature. It consists of external mental states, just as our mind consists of internal mental states.

The physical world as we perceive it isn't an independent reality, but rather what external mental states look like from across what he calls a dissociative boundary. This dashboard representation, what we call matter, is analogous to what neuroscientists observe when they study the brain. A representation of mental states, but not their source. How does this relate to other theories we've discussed? Remember Donald Hoffman's interface theory? Hoffman argues that our perceptions are like icons on a computer screen. They're so-called useful illusions. They're not vertical representations of reality. Well,

Castrop goes further. He says there's no computer, there's no screen, there's no independent reality behind the interface. Everything including the headset itself that Hoffman refers to is made of conscious states. It's all consciousness. But what about all the neuroscientific evidence correlating brain activity with mental states? Well Kastrup says these correlations exist, but the causation just goes in the other direction. Brain activity doesn't cause experience, it's rather experience causes brain activity. The brain is a sort of image or projection of consciousness.

It's not its source. In this sense, the brain and body are what our internal mental states look like, quote-unquote, when observed from an external perspective. You'll also notice this emphasis on perspectives, much like Nir LaHav's theory of relativistic consciousness, which we discussed in the previous layer. Now, what are the criticisms? Many argue that Kastrup's idealism is untestable, it's unfalsifiable. Well, how could you prove or disprove that the physical world is just a projection of consciousness? It's a valid criticism. But Kastrup argues that his theory is more parsimonious than materialism. It avoids the hard problem entirely.

It doesn't need to explain how physical processes come about to give consciousness because consciousness is the starting point. In other words, Kastrup may say fair point but your pet philosophy suffers from the same problems and often even more egregious problems to boot. Another criticism is the decomposition problem. How does seemingly distinct individual consciousnesses come about from a single unified field of consciousness? Kastrup addresses this by suggesting again that the individual consciousnesses are just dissociated alters within the larger field.

I've spoken to Castrop at length several times on this podcast, one four hour solo podcast that goes in depth into his analytic idealism that's on screen here, and then several others which are theolocutions, that is having Bernardo paired up with someone else where they riff off of one another and build each other's theories up as well as constructively criticize one another in real time. Links on screen and in the description. Carl Friston's Inactive Approach Slash Inference Carl Friston is also someone that I've spoken to at length several different times on this podcast. You'll see one solo here, another lecture here, another solo one here, another few theolo-cutions here.

Karl is the world's most cited neuroscientist, and he approaches consciousness through the lens of the free energy principle. Importantly actually, this isn't a theory of consciousness per se. Actually, I sent this script to Karl prior to reading it out to you here and editing it. He sent me back an email saying, upon fact-checking the below attributions with Professor Karl Friston, he smiled about the veracity of filling his pipe, but then reminded Kurt that the free energy principle is not a theory of consciousness.

This has the profound benefit of being applicable to everyone else's theories of consciousness almost. That pipe reference is a reference to something that comes up later in the script. Moving on, this principle states that all biological systems, including brains, strive to minimize surprise. They do this by building internal models of the world that predict sensory input. Consciousness in this view is an evolved mechanism for simulating scenarios and minimizing prediction errors.

It's not a thing, but a process of active inference. Now, speaking of processes, I just finished speaking with Matt Siegel on the process theory of Whitehead. Again, that's quite a technical podcast, and if you'd like to know more about the history of philosophy leading up to and even after Whitehead, I recommend you check that out, link on screen and in the description. Now, how does Karl's theory relate to the inactive approach that we discussed earlier?

Remember Alva Noah's idea that consciousness is out of our heads. Both of them emphasize the active role of the organism in shaping its experience. Consciousness isn't something that happens to us, it's something that we do. However, Karl goes further than Alva, formalizing this active engagement mathematically, using the concept of free energy to quantify the difference between predicted and actual sensory input. He argues that the brain constantly works to minimize this free energy, thus reducing surprise.

How does this compare to other theories? Consider global workspace theory. Both see consciousness as a process of information integration. However, GWT focuses on the broadcasting of this information within the brain, while Friston and his free energy principle emphasizes the predictive nature of this integration. Okay, what about the criticisms? Some argue that Friston's theory is far too abstract and too mathematical It doesn't explain what it's like to be conscious it focuses on the function of consciousness not its phenomenology

Now this is a valid criticism one that first in agrees with but he also points out that free energy Minimization is not just something for understanding consciousness, but various other fields like understanding life itself or robotics so it has an empirical basis. Another criticism is that the free energy principle doesn't address the hard problem. How does minimizing surprise create subjective experience? Again, Carl Friston would indeed say that's a fair point. He would then pour tobacco in a pipe and say that actually the hard problem is a pseudo problem fermented from a misunderstanding of the nature of consciousness. Alfred North Whitehead, a philosopher and mathematician,

developed a process-oriented metaphysics he calls the philosophy of organism. This is something we discuss at length, again Matt Segal and the link to that conversation is in the description. I recommend you check it out because it serves as a comprehensive introduction to process philosophy. To Whitehead, reality is made of concrete processes or sometimes pronounced processes for whatever reason of becoming that he referred to as actual occasions of experience. His ontology has been described

as pan-experientialism, that is, the view that all self-organizing beings, including photons and electrons, realize some degree of experience, albeit extremely rudimentary in most cases. It's not that your coffee mug is thinking. It's just that it's an enduring form that's composed and recomposed moment by moment by mutually quote unquote pre-hensive or feeling occasions of experience. There's so many new pieces of terminology here, so let's define some of them. Pre-hension refers to the capacity of an actual occasion to internally relate to and incorporate aspects of other actualities in its past environment, so-called physical prehension. As well as possibilities that are not present in the existing environments and these are

called conceptual prehensions. Now let's think about an electron interacting with particles in its environment. In Whitehead's framework, the electron pre-hens the electromagnetic field around it. Now this doesn't mean that the electron is necessarily conscious, it just feels or responds to the presence of other charges and fields integrating this information into its behavior such as determining its trajectory. Now how does this relate to panpsychism? Both see experience as fundamental to reality. But Whitehead's pan-experientialism is different.

He doesn't like to think about things having experience. He prefers to think about events or occasions of experience. Reality isn't made up of those substances you heard about in the previous layers, referring to Descartes in particular with these intrinsic properties. To Whitehead, you have a dynamic process of events pre-hending other events. This process avoids some of the traditional problems of panpsychism. Recall that combination problem. That is, how is it that these tiny bits of consciousness combine to form a unified experience? Well, Whitehead's pan-experientialism sidesteps this completely by focusing on the processes of concrescence, another new term. That is, the coming together of events to form new occasions of experience.

Now, what about the criticisms? Some argue that Whitehead's philosophy is too abstract, it's too metaphysical. I argue that it introduces too many unfamiliar terms, as is evident probably by you pausing and searching these terms and checking the transcript or just leaving the video entirely. I understand that. But I also understand that when someone's trying to put forward a new Weltanschauung, that they need to invent new language, bespoke language, because they have to train you or the person reading to understand their point of view, which is unfamiliar in territory. You wouldn't get mad at some city in Mexico for having different

street names compared to those in Manhattan. You need those different street names to signify different places. Now, another criticism is that it's difficult to connect to empirical science and that's a valid criticism. However, Whitehead would argue that his philosophy is based on a generalization from the findings of the special empirical sciences while also aiming for a more comprehensive understanding of reality that natural science alone can offer. Science is written and described in a language and it's in this language that we disprove or prove or provide evidence for so-and-so, but the language itself isn't validated or invalidated. It's rather just assumed.

And we then think of the validity of the language as how well the conclusions of whatever there's evidence for or against make intuitive sense to us, as well as internal consistency conditions. Whitehead would say that metaphysics is an experiment upon the instrument of language itself, and that his language is a more adequate one than the traditional substance-based or materialistic ways of thinking. Another criticism is that pan-experientialism doesn't explain what it's like to be conscious. It rather focuses on the structure of experience and less so on its phenomenology. This, though, is something we do explore with Matt Segal,

so again, click the link in the description, check it out. Mark Solm's Felt Uncertainty Principle and Affective Theories of Consciousness Mark Solm, a neuropsychoanalyst, posits that affect is the bedrock of consciousness. Now, affect is a fancy word for feeling, but what Mark means by this is valence, qualia, and action. And by valence, qualia, and action, he means firstly valence is the intrinsic positivity or negativity of a feeling. Affect inherently signals whether something is good or bad for the organism, so pleasure or pain for instance.

Qualia, on the other hand, is the subjective first-person experience of feelings. The affect here is the raw, phenomenal aspect of consciousness, what it feels like to be in a certain emotional state. Action, on the other hand, is the motivational component to affect, feeling the drive, something compelling the organism toward actions that address homeostatic imbalances or fulfills needs like seeking food, escaping danger. Mark grounds the assertion that affect is foundational to consciousness by suggesting that feelings are fundamental to how organisms navigate an unpredictable world. Solms locates the physiological mechanism for affect in the upper brainstem,

proposing that decreases and increases in expected uncertainty are felt as pleasure and unpleasure, respectively. This, he argues, is a more primal form of homeostasis. Now, Solms' theory resonates with Antonio de Masio's work on homeostatic feelings. Both emphasize the role of feelings in life regulation. However, Solm's goals further than Demacio by stating that affect constitutes the foundational form of consciousness. He's always going on about what he calls the cortical fallacy. That is, that only us more evolved creatures possess consciousness.

Mark by the way is pointing out that it's a fallacy. He's not agreeing with the premise. He's pointing out that the premise is false. So instead, Mark places the seat of consciousness in a more ancient part of the brain, extending consciousness to a broader range of species that otherwise, or usually are, neglected with the cortical focus. He contends that sentient subjectivity in its most rudimentary form is inextricably linked to affect. This theory contrasts with Graziano's attention schema theory, which posits that consciousness comes about from the brain's model of its own attention.

While Sohm emphasizes the feeling aspect, Graziano is the one who's highlighting the attentional mechanism. But for Sohms, the feeling of thirst is a direct manifestation of a physiological need, a core component of conscious experience. This feeling motivates the organism to seek water to ensure survival, for instance. Whereas for Graziano, the conscious experience of thirst is just a consequence of the brain modeling its attention to the body's dehydrated state. Solm also introduces an intriguing idea, drawing a parallel with Heisenberg's uncertainty principle in quantum mechanics.

Solm suggests that the act of thinking about a feeling inevitably changes the feeling itself. Super interesting, just as observing a quantum particle alters its state. Solm argues that the cognition is rendered conscious through the quote-unquote feeling of associated cognitions projected onto the cortex from the upper brain stem. For instance, the grief that you feel when you think about a lost loved one can morph into a dull ache when analyzed intellectually. The very act of introspection alters the feeling itself. Now, what are the criticisms? Some may contend that Psalms focus on affect is too narrow. Does that fully account for the complexity, for this richness that we have of conscious experience,

including all the thoughts, the perceptions, the memories we have? Again, that's a valid concern. Psalms would counter though by saying that these other aspects of consciousness are built upon a foundation of affect. Others would challenge Marx's reliance on the free energy principle. Does minimizing surprise actually explain the qualitative nature of feelings? Now this is a probing question. Psalms may respond that the qualitative nature of feelings is fomented from the categorical nature of needs, which are best resolved through affect.

A further criticism could target the analogy of the uncertainty principle. Is it a genuine principle? Is it just a suggestive analogy? Thomas Metzinger's Minimal Phenomenal Selfhood Thomas Metzinger, a philosopher, offers a representationalist and functionalist account of subjectivity. He argues that what we commonly call the self is an illusion, surprise surprise, a construct of the brain.

There's no little quote unquote me inside our heads pulling the levers of consciousness. Instead, there's a phenomenal self model, a PSM, a representation of the organism as a whole that we experience as real. This self-model, Metzinger contends, is transparent. We don't experience it as a model, we experience it as ourselves. We look through it, not at it. This is also an analogy that John Vervecky makes when taking off his glasses, saying that meditation allows you to inspect what you traditionally are looking through.

Metzinger's theory resonates with Buddhist philosophy, which also emphasizes the illusory nature of the self, as well as his focus and research on the experience of pure consciousness, or contentless wakefulness. Both go against the notion of a permanent unchanging ego. However, Metzinger's approach is more grounded in cognitive science, not a spiritual tradition. Metzinger uses the tools of neuroscience and philosophy to dissect the self-model and reveal its underlying mechanisms. By the way, thank you to Tevin Naidu for helping me with this section of Metzinger and the

previous one of Psalms. Tevin's channel is the Mind Body Solution. I recommend you check it out. Tevin's a great interviewer, he interviewed myself, me, Kurt, Jaimungal, even though that may be some phenomenal self-modeled illusion, doesn't matter. The PSM of Tevin and the PSM of Kurt came together and is on screen, link is in the description. As a side note, since Graziano was mentioned earlier, it's worth noting that Thomas refers to the attention schema as the phenomenal model of the intentionality relation. There's also interesting work exploring his epistemic agent model, EAM, and how it may

link to both Graziano's attention schema theory and Friston's free energy principle. For instance, a paper whose full title escapes me but it was something like self-modeling epistemic spaces from approximately 2020 delves into these connections. This perspective contrasts sharply with theories like Carl Jung, which posits that there is a collective unconscious and archetypes. Thomas Metzinger's focus is on the individual brain, not some universal reservoir of psychic energy.

He sees the self-model as a product of individual experience and neural processing. Now, this diverges from embodied cognition theories, which emphasize the role of the body and its interaction with the world in shaping the mind. While Messinger acknowledges the importance of the body and its representation in the PSM, embodied cognition theorists argue that the self extends beyond the brain, incorporating the body and its environment in a more fundamental manner. For Metzinger, the feeling of being quote unquote me is primarily a consequence of the brain's self-model. For an embodied cognition theorist, however, this feeling of quote unquote being me comes about from the interaction

of the body with its surrounding, the sense of agency derived from physical actions and their interactions. Metzinger also introduces the concept of minimal phenomenal selfhood, MPS, the most basic form of self-awareness. He argues that this minimal selfhood comes about from the integration of sensory information and bodily awareness into a coherent first-person perspective. It's that feeling of being a distinct identity, distinctly located in space, distinctly located at some place in time, an entity that has experience. For instance,

the simple awareness of your hand resting on the table. That's a tactile sensation and it's different than visual perception and that constitutes a basic form of self-awareness. A minimal phenomenal self. It's the feeling of your hand which is different than the table and different than the rest of the world. Okay, so what are the criticisms? Some argue that Thomas Messinger's theory is too deflationary. Does it actually account for the richness and depth of our subjective experience of self?

Now that's a legitimate question. Again, Metzinger would probably counter that his theory is revealing the true nature of the self by deconstructing the illusion. He's not eliminating the experience. Now others may say that, okay, the self is an illusion, does that mean that our sense of agency and responsibility and personal identity is also illusory? Now this is a weighty question, one that we've explored at length on this channel. You can see this interview with Robert Sapolsky on Free Will, where I counter Robert by bringing

up mathematician Raymond Smullian and Scott Aronson from Complexity Theory. But anyhow, Metzinger would respond by suggesting that these concepts are still meaningful and functional, importantly, even if they're based on a self-model and not a metaphysical self. So that's the difference. Metzinger argues that the phenomenal self-model creates a phenomenal property of mindness, like mine, this is mine, and that's sufficient for ethical and practical purposes. Now, a further criticism could target the concept of minimal phenomenal selfhood. Is it truly the most basic form of self-awareness? Is there something even more fundamental, something like a pre-reflective bodily awareness,

that precedes this minimal phenomenal selfhood? Well, we don't know, but from Whitehead's process metaphysics to Metzinger's self-model theory, from Kastrup's analytic idealism to Solm's affect-based framework, and from Freston's free energy principle, each of these perspectives gives a different aspect of consciousness and reality. Now they all differ in their foundations and methodology, but they all share commitment to rigorously addressing the deepest questions about the mind, about self, and existence. These theories demonstrate that the exploration of consciousness may remain one of humanity's

most profound intellectual endeavors. Sure, abridging philosophy and neuroscience and human experience, but it also may just remain a mystery, one that we can't agree if it's being solved because we don't even agree on the definition. Also, thank you to our partner, The Economist. Firstly, thank you for watching, thank you for listening. If you haven't subscribed or clicked that like button, now is the time to do so. Why? Because each subscribe, each like helps YouTube push this content to more people like yourself,

plus it helps out Kurt directly, aka me. I also found out last year that external links count plenty toward the algorithm, which means that whenever you share on Twitter, say on Facebook or even on Reddit, etc., it shows YouTube, hey, people are talking about this content outside of YouTube, which in turn greatly aids the distribution on YouTube. Thirdly, there's a remarkably active Discord and subreddit for theories of everything, where people explicate toes, they disagree respectfully about theories, and build as a community our own Toe.

Links to both are in the description. Fourthly, you should know this podcast is on iTunes, it's on Spotify, it's on all of the audio platforms. All you have to do is type in Theories of Everything and you'll find it. Personally, I gained from rewatching lectures and podcasts. I also read in the comments that hey, toll listeners also gain from replaying. So how about instead you re-listen on those platforms like iTunes, Spotify, Google Podcasts, whichever podcast catcher you use.

And finally, if you'd like to support more conversations like this, more content like this, then do consider visiting patreon.com slash KurtJayMungle and donating with whatever you like. There's also PayPal, there's also crypto, there's also just joining on YouTube. Again, keep in mind, it's support from the sponsors and you that allow me to work on toe full time. You also get early access to ad free episodes, whether it's audio or video, it's audio in the case of Patreon, video in the in the case of YouTube for instance this episode that you're listening to right now was released a few days earlier every dollar helps far more than you think either way your viewership is generosity enough thank you so much