Consciousness
Giulio Tononi and the baffling nature of consciousness
Giulio Tononi and the baffling nature of consciousness
POSTED MAY 20, 2019
Why do some philosophers consider consciousness an illusion? Why have neuroscientists not been able to find its source in the physical human brain? The conversation "Why is Consciousness So Baffling?", between neuroscientist Giulio Tononi and "Closer to Truth" creator and host Robert Lawrence Kuhn proposes some possible answers. [link below]
Why do some philosophers consider consciousness an illusion? Why have neuroscientists not been able to find its source in the physical human brain? The conversation "Why is Consciousness So Baffling?", between neuroscientist Giulio Tononi and "Closer to Truth" creator and host Robert Lawrence Kuhn proposes some possible answers. [link below]
Tononi considers consciousness to be "all that we experience" - what goes away when we fall asleep and what comes back when we awake. Re-interpreting Descartes' "I think, therefore I am" as "I am conscious, therefore I am" Tononi proposes that it is the only thing we can be absolutely sure of. Neuroscientists searching for the origin of consciousness in the physical structure of the brain are working the problem backwards. The question is better asked from the viewpoint of consciousness: how should physical structures, including the brain, be organized in order to account for the properties of consciousness?
Tononi considers consciousness to be "all that we experience" - what goes away when we fall asleep and what comes back when we awake. Re-interpreting Descartes' "I think, therefore I am" as "I am conscious, therefore I am" Tononi proposes that it is the only thing we can be absolutely sure of. Neuroscientists searching for the origin of consciousness in the physical structure of the brain are working the problem backwards. The question is better asked from the viewpoint of consciousness: how should physical structures, including the brain, be organized in order to account for the properties of consciousness?
Giulio Tononi's "Phi: A Voyage from the Brain to the Soul" is an imaginative journey by Galileo with three other scientists (Crick, Turing, and Darwin) exploring consciousness. In the final stage, Galileo meditates on how consciousness is an evolving, developing, ever-deepening awareness of ourselves in history and culture—that it is everything we have and everything we are.
Giulio Tononi's "Phi: A Voyage from the Brain to the Soul" is an imaginative journey by Galileo with three other scientists (Crick, Turing, and Darwin) exploring consciousness. In the final stage, Galileo meditates on how consciousness is an evolving, developing, ever-deepening awareness of ourselves in history and culture—that it is everything we have and everything we are.
Closer to Truth explores fundamental questions about the universe, brain/mind, religion and meaning through intimate conversations with leading scientists, philosophers, scholars, theologians and creative thinkers.
Closer to Truth explores fundamental questions about the universe, brain/mind, religion and meaning through intimate conversations with leading scientists, philosophers, scholars, theologians and creative thinkers.