¶1North America, I'm coming for you. We're doing a small tour, just six shows at some really cool venues. We're going to talk about philosophy. We're going to talk about God, about consciousness. We're going to talk about whatever you want to talk about because there will be an extensive Q&A at every show.
¶2The dates are on screen. The ticket link is in the description. Be there. I talk about the fine-tuning argument for God quite a lot. And there are so many debates back and forth and it's like well you know the earth is is well distanced from the sun but you know there are there are billions of planets and one of them is going to be about right and they write about the the cosmological constant and I'm like well I'm not sure that the upper bound has been properly calculated and when someone points out that the moon is exactly 400 times closer than the sun but it's also exactly 400 times smaller.
¶3So, we get this perfect eclipse of totality, which isn't only perhaps the most beautiful thing I've ever seen without like a close second, but also just so happens to be like integral to proving uh Einstein's theory of relativity. >> Yeah. >> And so, it has this sort of like functional effect as well. And someone says, well, what are the odds of that? And I think, you know what, >> fair enough.
¶4Score one for God there. I can't I can't [laughter] >> I can't quite get around that. and the very existence of the moon, right? Without which you would not have life on Earth. >> I know it's um it's all pretty extraordinary and also explains why to to the viewers who who are watching this.
¶5Um I'm in a hotel room cuz I'm in a a a sort of random town in Spain that I'd never heard of before that happened to be in the path of totality and I'm now speaking to you, Michael Pollen, from a hotel room. But I'm glad that we could make this work. So, welcome to the show. It's good to have you here. >> Thank you.
¶6I I I envy the fact you're there and wish I wish I could have made it. >> It was extraordinary. I was just telling you that I I I don't think I've ever been so um so moved by an astronomical event in my life. And I spent about an hour watching the moon sort of track its way across the sun with the glasses on. And I thought, you know, that's pretty cool.
¶7Yeah. Neat. Like that's pretty cool. We're on a rock in space. But in that moment of totality, something happens and suddenly you're like staring into a black hole or something.
¶8And it was it was moving in a way that I can't I can't quite describe. But um there are all kinds of experiences that give people that mysterium and tremendous at hands and that's one of your your specialties I believe is is trying to come to terms with them. We're going to talk about experience today. Um you've written a wonderful book called A World Appears which is uh which is lifted from the beginning of Anel Seth's book, right? >> Yeah.
¶9uh it's the first line of one of his chapters and that and I read his book when I was researching mine and that sentence just stuck with me and uh I actually and then I I thought well I'm going to use that as my title and by then I'd forgotten where I'd read it and uh but thank God for Google I was able to put it in and and Neil Seth came up right away. Um >> I'm sure he didn't mind. I'm sure he >> No, he was he was he was fine about it. [laughter] >> Yeah. I mean, I've spoken a lot about consciousness on this show.
¶10I want to open with something um a bit broad and something which I don't think for all I've spoken about consciousness, I've really talked about before on this show. What is it like to be a plant? [laughter] >> We don't know. Um the question is, is it like anything to be a plant? And and we don't even know that.
¶11you know the what it is likeness is um uh Thomas Nagel's uh I don't know if you'd call it a definition but uh but a very effective way of thinking about consciousness if it is like something to be you uh and in his example is it is it like anything to be a bat uh then you are conscious that is the that is the standard u your toaster it's nothing you know it's not like anything to be your toaster poster. Um, but he doesn't require us to know exactly what it is like to be a bat. We just have we can just infer it's like something to navigate the world using sonar rather than light. Um, but in the case of plants, it's a harder it's a harder one. Uh, you know, I spent a a long time researching um the what's sometimes called erroneously the neurobiology of plants and and whether plants are conscious.
¶12>> And they have some incredible uh abilities that I did I wasn't aware of. You know, they can be they can be taught things. They can be conditioned. They can they can learn and remember. Uh they have something like 20 senses to our five or six.
¶13They um uh they can hear uh you play the sound of caterpillars chomping on leaves and they will react appropriately. They'll they'll dispatch chemicals to their leaves that make them taste less good to caterpillars. Um and kind of most bizarre and and suggestive of all is they respond to the same anesthetics we do. So that you know the kind of chemicals we use uh to put us out for surgery um will will stop uh behavior in a plant that has a visible behavior like a Venus fly trap. Um that's really interesting and suggestive because what it suggests is that uh or it makes you ask what is lost when the plant becomes I don't want to use the word unconscious uh but something there two states and if there are two states what is that what is that more active state is it a state of awareness so those are the kind of questions I got into at the beginning of the book um I interviewed people who were convinced plants are conscious.
¶14Um, I'm a little more comfortable using the word sensient. Um, and in the and in the in my work I I drew a distinction between sensience and consciousness. Sensience being a more basic widely distributed um capability that it's it it's possible and and many people believe you know all life has sensience. Uh sensience is is is awareness of your environment. the ability to distinguish good or bad changes uh as they affect you uh and then to respond appropriately intelligently and uh you find this in you know in bacteria and single-c cellled creatures.
¶15So I'm I'm inclined to think that plants are sensient after the research I've done. Um, consciousness just involves so much more I think. Um, you know, this sense of experience and being able to um, uh, have, you know, some quality to your experience. I I, you know, some interiority. Uh, and I I don't know that plants have that.
¶16>> Yeah. I think it's a difficult thing to kind of wrap your head around, right? Because it it sounds like the parody that people make when you start talking about why you you shouldn't eat animal products and people say well what about plants cuz they can feel pain too. We're not talking about that right you you introduce >> No, you know it doesn't follow that you know that you're because you're sensient you feel pain. Pain is one way of dealing with sensience I guess right um it's a tool that's very useful to animals.
¶17Um but one of the researchers I talked to said that pain would not be adaptive for a plant since it can't run away. Um, pain is very good when you have the option of removing your hand from the stove. >> And uh, plants know they're being eaten. This this guy said, his name is Stephano Manuso. He's an Italian uh, botonist.
¶18They know they're being eaten, but they don't necessarily mind. Um, and and he and he reminds us that many plants um, for many plants being eaten is part of their reproductive strategy, right? I mean, they produce all these seeds and fruits uh specifically to attract animals to move their genes around and and then you've got grasses which uh are regenerated by being chewed by ruminants. Uh they do better with ruminants than without. So, so it's a little too simple to um say they feel pain and I don't think we should worry about eating them.
¶19Um also because we don't have any choice. Um that's right. If you rule out the plants and the animals, all you have is salt. And that's not a not a very well-rounded diet. >> Yeah.
¶20Exactly. Exactly. Um I It just gives me flashbacks from the debates where you would watch people's >> sort of smile fade as you remind them that actually the majority of plants that we grow are fed to livestock to then eat the livestock. So it's it's not a very good argument in that regard. Anyway, but I think the point is that if we're talking or if we're talking about or entertaining this idea of sentience in plants, it's got to be something quite minimal and restricted compared to our own experiences of the world.
¶21People will hear you say something like that and go, "Okay, what are we talking about?" and they'll look in your book and there are some fantastic examples of like the bean plant which if you watch time-lapse photography of this plant growing it it sort of looks as though it's striving towards a pole to grab onto and when it gets it it kind of relaxes a little bit. It's really interesting to see. There's evidence of plants which will seek out water in a pipe even if that water is like contained within the pipe implying >> it's totally dry. >> Yeah. >> Yeah.
¶22It's totally dry on the outside. So they must be able to somehow sense or hear it probably something analogous to that it's sort of going through the pipe. And this kind of stuff is absolutely extraordinary. But at the same time somebody might say well look you know if I leave my bike out in the rain and it rusts and it's kind of amazing that it like reacts to the rain in this way. But you know it's just a chemical reaction and no one thinks that requires anything like awareness.
¶23So, so what is it about the the plant behavior that wants you that makes you want to say sentience rather than just chemical reaction, let's say? >> Well, your bike doesn't do anything about the fact it's being rusted. It doesn't move and get under get under a roof or anything. The plants actually take action. Uh they move away.
¶24They move toward things. They, you know, as soon as you look at plants, uh, using time-lapse photography, you realize that they're very active. Um, and that bean plant is a good example. You It would be in completely um you would have no idea that it could see this post that it was looking for um if you if you didn't use time-lapse photography. So even with time-lapse photography, I think your bike would be pretty boring to watch and um wouldn't show.
¶25I mean, part of sensience is the recognition of what's going on and then the the uh you know, taking action. You know, we used to think a lot, we used to talk a lot about instinct. Biologists would talk about instinct and I found interviewing a lot of them for this book that you don't hear that word as much anymore. Um, and the idea that behaviors were hardwired and programmed just doesn't work in a world that's changing in such unpredictable ways and that even plants have to be intelligent because they often deal with situations they've never encountered before and instinct is not useful in those situations. Um, so I think it was the biologist Michael Lean who said the way the way evolution really works is it it creates cognitive beings with the ability to solve problems.
¶26Um, not robots, you know, that are programmed for every every uh eventuality. And I think that makes a lot of sense. Um, I think that life demands that kind of flexibility and um uh and and ability to make decisions and we find that in in these very simple creatures um or that we call very simple creatures. Of course, they're not. I mean, if if we existed in the same time scale of plants, we would we would see a very different world.
¶27There's a wonderful um uh science fiction plot that uh Stephano Manuso shared with me um and it it's a thought experiment but imagine uh an alien species comes to earth [snorts] and they live in a sped up dimension of time such that an hour of our time is a second of theirs and they look at us and they see what he called immobile columns of meat. that are, you know, as far as they could tell, are dead. And so they, you know, turn us into jerky for the ride home. And um so we are that way with plants. We don't see all there is to see.
¶28And one of the most powerful ideas, I think, of of biology is this idea of the um welt, you know, that every species lives in a world conjured by its particular senses. And so the the world of a bee is very different than ours because it can see ultraviolet light. And um so it takes a tremendous leap of imagination to put us into the um of other creatures. But when we do, we realize there's a lot more going on than perhaps we we we gave them credit for. >> Yeah.
¶29Um all kinds of stuff which I mean the book is of course linked in the description. Can you give a a kind of overview that I'd known about this kind of stuff happening, but hearing that plants can be taught to navigate mazes? Hearing that plants there's this plant, I forget the Latin name, but it's called it's known as like the sensitive plant, right? Because it sort of it like curls up >> that's why you're here. Um, and it's it's it's it's fantastic.
¶30It will sort of react to its environment. and it will like curl up and it's called the sensitive plant cuz it kind of wants to wants to like hide away from certain certain sort of input data. But it can learn like if you if you drop the pot it will like curl up and it will learn that nothing actually came of that like actually that kind of feeling is just fine such that eventually when you when you do it again it doesn't curl up anymore and it has >> and it remembers it remembers I mean for 30 days um that it it needn't react to this stimulus >> which is pretty wild cuz >> we we assume memory is stored in neurons um >> but obviously there's another way to do it. And um one theory is that in addition to neurons, there are these bioelectric fields in all biological creatures and that in those fields you can hold information. >> Yeah.
¶31And that might explain how they do it. >> Do you think that neurons as a key into understanding consciousness rather than just brain science are like overrated? I mean, you made reference to these plant neurobiologists. It might have gone over people's heads that of course like plants don't have neurons. >> Don't have any neurons.
¶32>> What's that all about? >> Well, those biologists are trolling more conventional botonists who can't stand what they're doing and and suggesting uh they they full well know that there are no neurons in plants. Um but you can do a lot of neuronal things without neurons. And um this is a lot of the work of a biologist I interviewed several times for the book named Michael Leaven at TUS. and he has done these amazing experiments uh including essentially creating new organisms.
¶33uh he'll scrape the uh the cells from tadpole skin and put it in a solution and these cells which have always been skin cells u will form clumps and they'll get together and they'll have a division of labor and they'll repurpose their fleella as a as a a way to move and and organize as a new organism. And there's nothing in their genes to to tell them how to do that. And there no neurons to to keep it organized and remember and because they can be taught to navigate mazes also. Um really >> so his project is really showing the limitations of both genes and neurons and that there there are other things going on to um to organize life to store memories to communicate with between cells >> and a lot of that are these bioelectric fields which we didn't really uh we weren't able to study until really just a couple decades ago. >> Um we kind of knew they were there.
¶34Um but you know one of the things you I I learned studying science is that our observational tools this is sort of like well taken to another degree but our observational tools dictate what we can see and for a long time we focused on the gene because the genes survived the death of the creature and you could you could take you know you could analyze sequence its genome and learn a lot of stuff whereas the bioelectric field that the cell was part of dies when the cell dies and it disappears. So uh in the 80s I guess it was uh scientists uh came up with these voltage sensitive dyes that they could put on a mass of cells and they saw that there was a lot going on. The cult the colors were changing. there were patterns and suddenly you saw a whole new dimension of biology that was invisible before and the work on the bioelectric field has suggested these uh alternative uh ways to do things that we thought you needed neurons to do. >> We'll get back to the show in just a moment, but first one of the things that I'm conscious of is bias in news media.
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¶36Using ground news, I can see that for whatever reason of all the sources reporting on this story, only 11% of them lean to the right with 54% of them, a majority leaning to the left. Ground News also gives you a factuality rating for each of the sources and it tells you who owns the sources as well. There's even a dedicated blind spot tab which specifically seeks out stories that you would otherwise miss based on the news that you normally read. Try it out for yourself by going to ground.news/ news/exoc or by scanning the QR code that's on your screen. Use my link to get 40% off that unlimited access Vantage plan.
¶37And with that said, back to the show. So, what's the upshot of this? Right, because you you begin your book in this way and I chose to start our conversation in this way because firstly, it's it's kind of it's a bit shocking, you know, it sort of grabs your attention. Plants maybe have sentience. Sure.
¶38>> I thought it might destroy my credibility actually, but >> well, you know, I'm glad it hasn't. I almost didn't I wasn't sure whether to ask you about that just because like I think you know you're in safe company here so to speak but I I was reading this thinking you've done an exceptional job at making me not feel like I'm reading a weird book cuz I love this kind of stuff but when I read this kind of stuff sometimes I'm reading the author and I'm like dude I'm I'm totally on your side here but you've got you've got to understand how this comes across you've done it really well I think but did you get any of that like from the publishers or your agent or anything were they reading this going yeah I I'm not so sure that we should we should go down this route you I I didn't actually um you know I'm I'm hyper aware of that because I read those kind of books all the time and I'm like yeah yeah you know this is uh this is too mystical for me and I'm generally kind of skeptical about these uh non-materialist um but seemingly non-materialist uh explanations of things. Mhm. >> Um, >> so and I'm, you know, I'm used to writing for like really straight publications like the New York Times magazine and The New Yorker, whose tolerance for weirdness is pretty low. >> So, um, I guess I've figured out how to approach it with the the proper uh register of skepticism and enthusiasm.
¶39>> Um, >> yeah, I I mean, I suppose part of it is that you you present it as what it is, which is a mystery. This isn't in the service of some grand consciousness theory that you're going to sort of >> That's right. Exactly right. Yeah. Um >> instead it's like you know there's no grand hypothesis here.
¶40There are just a number of facts which need explaining and you can be a materialist. You can think that everything is reducible to atoms and physics. But you just need to account for certain features of the natural world. You know, plants can move towards pipes which have running water inside of them even though the outside of the pipe is dry. Implying what?
¶41That they can hear the water or something analogous. The the question is just like if not then what? How do you account for this kind of stuff? Plants can remember if they've been dropped that it didn't harm them. Again, what else could be going on here?
¶42Like how else would you want to word what these plants are doing and demonstrabably doing? We can observe them doing it. You do also hear about some unbelievable and I mean literally unbelievable things as well of course like what's that famous thing about how if you speak nicely to plants and I don't know send them positive energy that they somehow grow better. That stuff's a bit more dubious, shall we say? And annoyingly, that stuff also probably puts people off taking plant sentience seriously.
¶43But there are also just these other welldocumented plant behaviors, the kind of stuff that we've just been talking about, which do just occur. And I want to know why. I want to know how. Like, are they reacting to sensory data? Does that make them a bit like us?
¶44Like, how else would you like to characterize that? Why are they doing this? What's going on? How are they reacting to the natural world in this way? >> They do have this incredible sensory apparatus.
¶45I mean, you have to reme remember the first existential fact about plants is they're stuck in place, right? They really can't move. They can they can get animals to move them around. They can um you know, vines can move to some extent. Um so, if you're stuck in place, you need a whole other set of tools that we don't need.
¶46Um, so they they have senses that tell them where gravity is. They have senses that tell them what the pH is. They have senses that tell them that nutrient um uh gradients are are going up or down. Um, and they've got this sense of hearing and they have a kind of vision. I mean, we know they're photoropic, right?
¶47I mean, they can, you know, move to follow the sun. We've all seen that. But beyond that, they can um uh they can see when they're being shaded and move away. Here's here's an example. There is a vine.
¶48I'm not going to remember the name of it right now. Um but a tropical vine that can imitate the leaf form of whatever plant it's colonized. Okay? So, if it has a kind of ribbed leaf, it'll have a ribbed leaf. Or or you know, a scallop leaf, it'll have a scallop leaf.
¶49How does it know the leaf form of the plant it is climbing up? How does it see that? Um, so they're collecting all sorts of visual information. We don't know exactly how. Um, but because they can't move, they have to be better students of their environment than we are.
¶50And um, uh, and they've developed these approximately 20 different senses to do it. Yeah. >> So, it is quite remarkable. I, you know, the idea that you could sing to your plants or play music for them and they'd grow better. Um, some of that traces to a book that's been discredited, which is The Secret Life of Plants.
¶51>> And this came out in the early '7s. Um, I remember it. I'm old enough to remember it. And it was uh they were setting up um magnometers, not magnometers, but some electrical uh tool to to plants and they could uh communicate that way supposedly. And they would actually use plants in a lineup of criminal suspects and claim that the plant could pick out the the murderer from a from a lineup.
¶52Now, this is all completely discredited. Um but and and it had the effect of setting back research on what plants actually can do for for several decades. I mean it really the science of of of you know plant behavior. So >> yeah, >> so we do have to distinguish between the um the mythical and the and the scientific. >> Yeah, for sure.
¶53Um that's interesting you say that. It's like people who do what we've just been saying is a bad idea, which is going way too wishy-washy, hippie- dippy with it, kind of ruin it for everyone else because now no one's taking >> Yeah. the real >> it's hard to get taken seriously after that. And I think we've it that's probably happening with, you know, extrensory perception and and uh precognition and all these, >> right, >> uh supposedly sigh phenomenon that have, you know, supposedly been discredited. There's actually lots of empirical cases that haven't can't be explained.
¶54Um >> so, uh I don't know that those things actually happen, but um there's a tendency to dismiss things out of hand if they don't immediately conform to the the metaphysics behind modern science, which is, you know, strictly physicalist. >> Yeah. And I I wanted to ask you about that. I suppose um we start with the plant stuff and we we're implying that there's something weird going on but in in order to get there I I just wanted to say that you began by talking about consciousness by negation. And I think this is really helpful.
¶55Anal Seth does the same thing. If you ask him what consciousness is he sometimes says well look it's it's the thing that goes away when you're in a dreamless sleep. It's the thing that goes away when you go under like a general anesthetic. >> Now that of course that definition would be meaningless to anyone who wasn't conscious. Um yeah, that's the problem which points to the to one of the dilemmas of consciousness.
¶56We all know what it is, but we can't get outside it. >> And um uh and in fact, we know we know consciousness better than anything else. It's the one thing we're absolutely sure of. Everything else is inference. Um >> yeah, that's right.
¶57But if you define it in terms of, you know, in a terms that an alien wouldn't understand, you haven't really helped that much. But yeah, I mean, >> yeah, >> I think we all recognize what consciousness is, which is interesting that there's any kind of debate about defining it. >> Um, one way to think about it though, >> what >> I don't I don't think it can be defined. I I think it's it's such a foundational it's not even really a concept. It's like the thing through which we do conceptualizing.
¶58I think that to try to sort of place a box around the the pencil you're drawing the box with. You know what I mean? It just sort of there are endless analogies. You're trying to see the window through the window. You're trying to sort of, you know, shine a shine a flashlight at the sun or something.
¶59It just seems like completely pointless. But at the same time, language comes after understanding. We use words to describe things we understand. And then even where the language fails, I think we all know what the thing is that we're kind of grasping at. >> Yeah, I think we do.
¶60And we understand what we're talking about. Um >> yeah, >> and uh but it's a little frustrating I think. Um of course, you know, we we prefer phenomenon we can st step outside of >> and look at with this kind of god's eye view. Um but you know, consciousness is not the only such phenomenon. I mean you just had an experience of another.
¶61I mean cosmology or astronomy is another area where we have to study it from within itself because we can't get outside of the universe and you can learn a lot from inside the universe. I mean we learn about the rate of expansion of the universe and and um uh the the age of the universe. It's amazing what we've managed to learn without stepping outside. Um but there are things we can't learn about the universe. we can't seem to get, you know, past the big bang, >> uh, for example.
¶62Um, >> so the challenge is what can we learn about consciousness using consciousness as our as our tool. >> Mhm. And I think one thing that people need to understand about that is that everything everything is filtered through consciousness. That means that your reductive attempts to contain consciousness in some kind of materialistic theory say is happening in your consciousness. And that sounds like an obvious and trivial thing to say, but it suddenly struck me when I was reading a book.
¶63I was reading Merlin Sheldre's book about mushrooms and he was talking about these dogs. It's brilliant. and he's talking about these dogs that can smell uh can can smell fungi like really well and I thought that's kind of interesting and I started thinking about smell and then I realized something if I asked somebody what smell was like what's happening when you smell something they might say oh well what's really happening there the thing that the thing that smells like smell is really like little microscopic particles which sort of float through the air and attach to like the the the nose follicle or whatever and then it sort of travels up and blah blah blah. And we would say, okay, that is an explanation as to what the smell in fact is. But really, you've kind of actually just told me what it looks like, right?
¶64If I took a microscope and I could observe the the the the little sort of molecules in the air that were attaching to my nose, I I would see a particular phenomenon. And I suddenly realized it seems to me that all we're actually doing in in apparently sort of reducing the the qualier of smell to like atoms binding to the nose is we've just actually described what something smells like in terms of what it looks like. And that is as like reductive which is to say not at all as if somebody were to see something to see some molecules attaching to someone's nose and said and said what's going on there? What explains what I'm seeing? And I said, "Oh, that's just, you know, what you smell." It's like we're not actually explaining anything.
¶65We're just describing one experience in terms of another kind of experience, which is, you know, in this case, something like vision. >> And I I I just suddenly realized I was like, can can we explain anything except in reference to conscious experiences? And and and maybe we can't and if we can't, what are we trying to do explaining consciousness itself? Like do do you think do you share my pessimism about the project of defining and conceptualizing consciousness in this way because of the fact that we can't step outside of it or do you think there might be like a way around this problem? >> Yeah, I don't know.
¶66I mean I I do think that it's important to remember that something as seemingly objective as the scientific method is also a product of consciousness. Right? Science itself is a collective exercise of consciousness. All the tools we use, the questions we pose, these are all products of consciousness. We're not stepping outside.
¶67And I think that really complicates the project of understanding it or reducing consciousness to something more elemental. There may not be anything more elemental. So, you know, I was on this journey for 5 years and a lot of the journey was through science. Um but at a certain point I realized that um science had these limitations and one was its failure to find a way to incorporate phenomenology in a meaningful way. Um phenomenology being fancy philosopher word for lived experience >> and um uh that is central to consciousness.
¶68The other the other interesting um so you know most of the efforts to understand consciousness are within this physicalist or materialist paradigm that surely it can be explained like so much else has been explained in terms of matter and energy. We just don't know how you know there's some surely there's some organization of neurons that somehow consciousness emerges from. This word emergence is um >> you keep coming across it but nobody can quite define that and and and tell you that it >> how it works. Um >> it's it's it's a it's a handwave. Um uh so >> I I've noticed I I've said that my audience will be familiar with this.
¶69Um but when trying to explain this to people, you might find this helpful. Like when people say that consciousness emerges, they never tell you what emergence is. They just give you another example of emergence. They'll say like, "Oh, it just emerges like a an image on a screen from a computer or like temperature from from you know atoms vibrating." And what they >> gas from water and water from ice. >> I think that what they failed to recognize is that in cases of like actual emergence that is not just like structural like changes that that could actually be expected like water into ice but things like temperature.
¶70Yeah. You you want to say actually, you know, an individual atom really isn't hot. you know, it can't be because it it's it it requires this collection of okay, but but what is the thing that's interesting that has actually emerged? It's the sensation of heat. That's the thing that's emerged.
¶71The same thing with a computer on a on a on a an image on a screen. >> Yeah, I could I could perfectly well explain that there are, you know, electromagnetic waves coming out of a screen explained in terms of the physics of the computer. But the thing you're interested in is that it's sort of come together to produce this image that isn't in the hard drive. Well, in so far as that arises in your consciousness when you look at it. In other words, if you actually listen carefully, and I promise you, I think this is true for every example of emergence to explain why consciousness just emerges.
¶72They say, "Oh, it's just like how X, Y, and Zed emerges." And they'll give you three examples of things which emerge in consciousness. You know what I mean? It just never actually answers the question. I agree with you that it's a bit of a a bit of a buzz term that sounds a bit fancy and so many people use it that you kind of assume it's got some got some legs on it, but I I don't think it actually gets you very far. >> No, it doesn't.
¶73And and you know, one of the things I was so surprised to learn is that, you know, no one has has figured out how any consciousness ex experience emerges from any kind of brain state. I mean, we know they're connected, right? If you damage the brain, you damage consciousness. If you take a psychedelic, you change consciousness. So, we can assume that the brain is involved.
¶74But as as a couple of people pointed out to me, the evidence would be the same if the brain generated consciousness as it would if the brain was a receiver of consciousness. >> Sure. And uh you know that you have these um filter or transmission theories of consciousness that it is something outside of us that is that our brains are like radio receivers or television sets um bring in and that um you know that seems like a really whacked idea um but it is susceptible to you know the same arguments could be made to support it. Um the I think one of the stranger ideas too is um you know consciousness is the only thing we know for sure. Um everything we know is through consciousness and yet we privilege matter which we only know about through consciousness that surely matter is the thing.
¶75>> Um uh but matter what we know about matter is all inference via consciousness. So, it's very interesting that idealism, the idea that consciousness comes first is not a more popular uh philosophical position. Um, and I don't know why that is, but I find it, you know, I mean, I I' I've been brought up in this materialist paradigm, metaphysical paradigm. So, it sounds totally weird to me that consciousness would come first, but you can make a pretty good argument. >> Yeah.
¶76I I think that the reason it seems strange to people is because they're so used to this quest for explaining consciousness in terms of material such that the scientific method has been so successful in explaining and describing so much that there's just this inbuilt optimism that it will one day explain this extra thing called consciousness. Now, of course, Philip Gooff's contention in Galileo's era is that the reason why science has been successful is precisely because it has excluded any kind of first person uh aspect of the world. Everything can be described in maths. That is to say, it's the same for you and the same for me. There's this sort of non-existent third person perspective from which science is is sort of done.
¶77And of course, that's really great and it has allowed us to do all kinds of things and send rockets to the moon and the like. But that's the same very thing that will stop it from being able to talk about consciousness because that's what made it successful in the first place, right? So like I think the that's kind of been unrecognized and so the optimism just carries over. But also like I say, we're just used to it. And I think one helpful way of breaking this, like this is a little bit crude, but I say to people like, okay, when someone says to me that if I just take some matter and I put it together in the right way, I will produce consciousness.
¶78That sounds as strange to me now as if you were to say to me, you know, I'm going to put some some consciousness, some thoughts together in the right order, and I'm going to make them really complex. I'm going to arrange them in the right way, and I'm going to produce some matter in my hand. you'd look at me like I' I'd lost my mind, you know, and you wouldn't be able to tell me what a mind is at the same time. I I I think it's the same thing in reverse, right? It's it's a bit crude.
¶79Like I say, there are there are holes to to punch, but at least in terms of the intuition, we're just used to hearing that everything is reducible. Um, but I think that's may we maybe sort of jump the gun a bit there. >> Yeah. I mean, I think that I mean, Goff is right and that we've defined science in in certain way and we've excluded consciousness for a long time from science. uh you know he the story he tells which I think is right is that Galileo you know essentially drew this line between subjective uh uh the realm of subjective qualitative experience which he left to the church and the church called it wasn't called consciousness then it was called the soul >> and uh and then science is going to limit itself to these measurable quantifiable you know objective uh qualities and and that's worked really well.
¶80Um, but now science has wandered back into the into the province of the church, right? And is interested in consciousness >> and it's really struggling. Um, so maybe we just need more time. >> Maybe that is >> but you know I think people people assume that if you just know enough about neurons then one day you will know enough about like consciousness too. You'll know about the inner world as well.
¶81This is like what Francis Crick broadly thought and it's the bet that the famous bet that's at the beginning of your book and and and whatnot and it's this idea that look we learning so much about neuronal activity if we just learn more then we will finally understand what it means for for like to be anxious for example and again that just it sounds a bit to me although I I understand that because of course we know that the two things are connected and possibly even in some sense the same thing right it just sounds about as strange to me as saying that if you are like emotionally in touch enough with your inner experience. If you just learn enough through introspection about the nature of anxiety and and really really get precise about what emotions are that one day you will understand what a neuron is. And it it just it obviously doesn't work like that. There's some kind of bridge that can't be crossed in that direction. And I suspect it probably can't be crossed in the other direction, too.
¶82But I don't know. I that wasn't a question. And that makes this not a very good interview. Do you agree with that? Do you think [laughter] that there is kind of a chasm between the two?
¶83Because like you said a moment ago, >> I mean this is like >> they are connected, right? They obviously they they have something to do with each other. They clearly have something to do with each other and you know the so you you mentioned Francis Crick and the modern science of consciousness began with his quest to reduce consciousness to a set of neurons and he was looking for what was called the neural coralates of consciousness along with Kristoff Ko who's a important character in my book and it didn't take Ko long to realize it was like two or three years into this quest that even if they found the neural coralates of consciousness which we really haven't found yet. Um it really wouldn't tell you what you want to know which is how do you get from that that say 30 hertz brain oscillation or this group of neurons or this chemical in the brain. How do you get from there to what experience is and feels like?
¶84um and that there still is that chasm and that's what you know uh that's what David Chomers means by the the the hard problem. How do you get from matter to mind? Even if you have the right matter um and say okay it's definitely the brain or it's this part of the brain or it's this oscillation it's not answering the question you really want answered. >> Yeah. And again people will I think people like to think in analogies.
¶85So I find them really difficult uh really really useful to explain concepts and I find that my mind often goes there. So when you said like well if we did understand all of the neural coralates you know wouldn't we we still wouldn't understand the sort of the production of of consciousness you you might want to say well I don't know because like if I understand the the way that a string like the physics of the way that a string vibrates then surely I'm going to understand what it means for there to be a major third you know triad in music and stuff like that and I just want to remind people that if those kinds of examples are coming to mind but the answer that my my response would be like yes in so far as you could understand like how harmonics divide up in a way that people report as being pleasant. But the actual like pleasantness of the major third the the sound the the experience of the major third is is not something that you could reduce to music theory or to physics or something like that. And I think the same thing's going on here even though the two are quite obviously connected >> related. I I I realized earlier I was asking you about this negative language and it reminded me of of so-called apohatic language about God.
¶86So someone like Thomas Aquinus thinks that God is so un conceivable that we can't really say positive things about him. We have to say things like he's not this. He's he's not material. He's not limited. He's you know all of these kinds of things.
¶87And you can kind of even though you can't really say what God is in precise terms, you can learn a bit about what he is by saying what he's not. So we've agreed that it's difficult to define consciousness. We've agreed that we kind of know what it is. And we've agreed that there's something quite significantly different between what's going on with us and what's going on with plants. And yet you want to suggest that plants have this thing called sentience and there might be something weird going on.
¶88So the way I'd want to frame the question as precisely as possible is what is the thing that plants don't have that we do have in your view? In other words, what what would I have to sort of switch off from your experience in your estimation >> to become more plant-like? >> To become more plant-like. Yeah. What do you think is the is the >> I think the key would be one conscious and one isn't >> sticking my feet to the ground with superglue so I could never move again.
¶89Um, and then evolving the tools I'd need to get through life. Um, cesile cesile I think is the technical term for plants. I I do think that's their existential predicament. Um, they have to do everything. [snorts] >> Um, without being able to move and that is the reason why they got so good at biochemistry, right?
¶90they, you know, they defend themselves by producing chemicals, by producing toxins or hallucinogens, you know, things that screw up animal consciousness. Um, they're much better at, you know, still, I mean, the I think it's the majority of the pharmaceuticals we use are have some kind of plant basis. Um, and uh, and all that is about finding an alternative to mobility. um it's not exactly consciousness although what's interesting is that plants among all the other you know kingdoms I mean produce the most psychoactive chemicals um they >> whether or not they are conscious themselves they have the power to change our consciousness >> um you know whether you're talking about caffeine um you know which plants an amazing molecule that plants came up with that affects us and and and by the also affects bees and makes them better pollinators. >> Um, so they've learned how to manipulate us.
¶91Um, and in a way, the kind of consciousness we have wouldn't serve them in any way. You know, I think each each animal, each creature has the kind of consciousness that suits their predicament. Um and uh you know one of the questions that I spend a lot of time grappling with is um so most of what's going on in your brain at any given time is not conscious right I mean you know when we talk about consciousness we're dealing with the tip of an iceberg uh your brain is processing information all the time it's monitoring your environment monitoring your body I mean it's incredible how much it's doing and you're aware of a little bit of all this activity Um, so the question I had is why be aware of any of it? How does that serve us? Why why can't we just automate everything?
¶92Um, why aren't why aren't we zombies basically? >> Mhm. And it was Carl Fristen who, you know, told the evolutionary story that I found most persuasive, which was that [snorts] um for creatures like us that are um social at the deepest possible level, I mean, we depend on other people to survive um to a much greater extent than other other animals. Um we need to be able to read social situations. we need to be able to anticipate what the other the other is going to do and say um and that you can't there's so many variables in a complex human social situation that you couldn't possibly automate them and so we need a space where we can uh entertain counterfactuals have theory of mind uh the idea you know that you can project yourself into the shoes of another person and that's what consciousness is for.
¶93So I found that a pretty persuasive I mean like all evolutionary arguments it's kind of a just so story but um that makes sense to me >> and basically >> if you think of that is like consciousness ar the kind of consciousness you have arises to solve the sort of existential problems you face as a species. Um consciousness is how we do sensience. um you know the plant or the bacteria does sensience in in in one way um to serve its needs and then we do it in a very different way. Um so if you see sensience is the universal case then consciousness is one of the one of the ways to do it. Um and that's kind of where I came out on that question.
¶94I find it interesting how when I asked you about the difference between sort of human and plant experience, you say like the inability to move is really the key thing with with plants. Of course, plants can move in some sense, right? Like they can grow and they can grow in different directions and it seems like they intentionally so to speak. uh which sometimes comes with scare quotes and sometimes doesn't in this kind of yes kind of conversation. >> Um which I think tells you a lot about the person you're speaking to.
¶95Uh they'll they'll move in one way or they'll move in another and their root is on the ground but clearly they are still able to like react to their environment in a certain way. In in other words, like when I asked you about the bike rusting, you said, well, the difference with a plant is that a plant does something in response. And so I want to that leads me to kind of go, okay, so so plants react to the stimulus, which maybe tells me there's something more going on, but then if someone wants to go crazy and say, well, you know what? If their experience is just like ours, you say, well, slow down. One of the most important differences is that they can't move.
¶96You know what I mean? It feels like I'm sort of being tugged in two directions. It's like, >> well, yeah, but >> they can react. >> Go ahead. um what good would consciousness do them?
¶97Um I mean is the question that I guess I would ask. It's like >> it's kind of anthropocentric of ours of us to say that hey everybody wants consciousness you know >> it's it's it's such a it's so cool. Um but I think for lots of creatures it would just be an impediment and they'd need all these neurons presumably or maybe not. >> Yeah. Maybe maybe that's a bit like the plants being like, "Well, surely the surely everyone wants a bit of soil, you know?
¶98Surely [laughter] these humans would love being like having their feet in soil all day." It's like actually that man roots are great. >> So, >> but clearly it would do something, right? Like you would you would you you said like for us I mean you said earlier about like touching a hot stove or something you know and actually it's interesting that happens like precognitively most times. So maybe better is like uh you know the the the temperature is too hot so I get up and I I go and and turn it down to to to reinitiate homeostasis inside of my body or whatever. Um a plant will like realize that the sun is over there and it needs those nutrients.
¶99And I think you can tell an evolutionary story that says, well, if a plant were to have some kind of like experience or maybe some kind of some kind of pain or some kind of um like undesired experience associated with not getting the sun, that would motivate it to move. Now, somebody might then say, but hold on, you can still program, so to speak, a plant to do that without the interiority. And I would say, yeah, but you could do that for a human as well. And so if you think that that's a good reason to evolutionarily explain like sentience of the kind that comes along with pain and pleasure in humans that sort of motivates particular actions gets me to go over there or go over here. Wouldn't that make a plant so much more efficacious in like chasing the sun or or indeed like avoiding predators?
¶100Cuz one of the things I learned from your books is that from from your book is that if you put a plant in a competitive environment, it will compete with other plants for nutrients. But if you put one of its like relatives in the soil, it will recognize that it's not and it will start sharing. It's like it's incred and I think surely all of this kind of behavior >> would be bolstered if these plants were like aware of what's going on and motivated to act in particular ways. >> Well, I think they are aware. I mean, I think awareness and consciousness are a little bit different.
¶101Um, >> sure. >> I don't know exactly how I would define it, but awareness is a is a simpler form. I mean it is to be conscious of I guess um >> but awareness you know you're the the qu I don't know what I don't know what extra you know X factor consciousness would add to the life of a plant. Uh I mean reportability as the philosophers say it could we could learn it could write a book about being a plant that would be fantastic for us. I [laughter] don't know what it would mean for the plant.
¶102Well, it probably wouldn't be great for for for you if your book sales because I'd probably rather read that about plant consciousness. But I I get what you're saying. >> No, I think you'd rather read the plants book than my book. I >> Yeah, that's what I mean. It wouldn't it wouldn't be that good for us if it would be out of a job.
¶103>> Yeah. So, yeah, I would lose my job speaking for plants. It's true. >> Yeah. >> And Merlin, would it um >> what is it Aquinus said?
¶104He he had that experience of God and and where God says, you know, Thomas, you have written of me well. You know, I like to think that when I'm sort of reintegrated into the paternal consciousness that the the bean plant will come over and say, you know, Alex, you wrote about me well in the Anyway, [laughter] >> or or you blew it and it's really like >> that's that's also possible. That's >> we don't know. We're guessing. There's a lot of guesswork involved obviously.
¶105>> But do you do you do you think I mean so isolating just say pain is is is clearly if we're going to tell a story that it's an evolutionary adaptation. It's clearly really effective at just making us do stuff that like benefits our survival. It takes us out of dangerous situations. It's it like prevents us from doing things again that caused us harm. Like I I I don't see why I'm not I'm not going to sort of search for everything that would sort of transform plant consciousness into ours in some kind of strange murological experiment.
¶106But just something like that. I mean the the the sort of I think you you were quite confident in the book like that we we really don't think that plants feel pain here. And I kind of want to say why not if if memory can be done without neurons. Um, if if sight and hearing and all of these kinds of things are analogous things can be done without neurons, then then why not pain? And wouldn't that be like the primal evolutionary urge?
¶107I'm kind of imagining like the the ancient sort of single-sellled organism like the very first thing which which motivates natural selection is that like >> you know one thing helps you survive and one thing doesn't. And this this primal feeling of like no to that one and yes to that one seems so significant that that why not implants you know >> but but you can do that without pain you can do that based on I mean you know chemotaxis what what single cell creatures do that you know they recognize that that's a toxin and that's food and they move toward the food and away from the toxin. So you you can do that without pain. Pain is a really you know good technique for it. Um and I um you know I interviewed another scientist um who who did believe plants felt pain and he you know when I said so it hurts them when we eat them he like shrugged his shoulders and say yeah you know it's a dog eat dog world um we we have to eat them and they feel pain and that's just the way it is.
¶108So he was so I did present that point of view. Um, it may be for very self-interested reasons that I gravitate toward they don't feel pain. Um, because I want to continue eating them with a clear conscience. Um, >> yeah, sure. >> But, uh, you know, I could be wrong.
¶109I mean, it's it's it's we can't say for sure. You know, I want to talk about something a bit I I also I I fear that um people who've sort of tuned into this um it might it might be like a bit much, right? I I I'd of course recommend reading the book, but I don't think I I want to be very clear at this juncture just before I ask you something a bit unrelated. This isn't some strange world we're imagining in which plants are like having sort of experiences similar to human experiences that they they can literally see things in the way that we see them that they hear things that they can sort of understand music and that kind of we're not sort of implying anything like that. We're just saying that they have sensory apparatus on the outside and it causes them to behave in particular ways and we know that they're able to remember certain things and whatever the explanation for that the view that it involves some kind of primitive awareness should not be like ruled out of the equation I think is probably a good summary of of where we're at here.
¶110>> Yeah, I I think that's right. Um I would also point out that the whole book is not about plants. >> Well, that's the thing. Yeah, I was going to say You know, I start with plants. >> I start with plants as a way to um uh set the terms of the discussion and and and and work on our vocabulary and like, okay, well then there's sensience and consciousness.
¶111How are they different? Um uh what about pain? You know, all these kind of things. Plants, I wanted the weirdest case um that I could think of. Um and I happen to love plants and I've been writing about plants for decades.
¶112um in order to sort of like let's frame the issue in a new way and uh and so I move from there and the book is a kind of a ziggurat you know going up in steps of complexity and I present plants as a as a relatively simple case although it's not really simple and then I start looking at feelings and then thoughts and then the self um each a more uh elaborate a complexification of sensience Um >> yeah, >> and you get to us and um but plants just struck me as a as a way that it would be a kind of um useful way to go into the ex because we're so obsessed with human consciousness and we have to remember that's just one way of doing sentence and there are other ways. >> Yeah, that's quite right. Um, I think you know I obviously we're not going to be able to sort of get through everything here and there'd be no point in writing a book if you could do that in a in a short podcast. But the other thing that really resonated with me that I'd not it sort of surprised me that this hadn't been something that I'd thought about or had been like brought to my attention before is that as you say the next step you take is to talk about emotion and you sort of you begin by talking about this idea that when people imagine what the basis of consciousness is they usually think about thought they usually say >> in the cortex >> it's the fact yeah that I'm able to like process information that there's bless and I can I can think that you know 2 plus 2 is four and this kind of stuff right and you and you write like in in the whole literature and discussion around this emotion and feeling is is kind of like ignored or or sidelined or delegated and >> till recently. Yeah.
¶113>> Yeah. And I I suddenly realize this is so interesting to me because I love talking about emotions in the context of philosophy and the way in which so much of what we think is like based in rational thinking is actually emotion. I talk about ethics. I'm an ethical emotivist. I think that moral claims are expressions of emotions.
¶114I think that all kinds of weird stuff is going on and and and so yeah like consciousness why not that too? So what does it mean to s to suggest that feeling might be a more sort of primitive kind of consciousness than >> it changes everything. I mean so the idea that it begins with thought obviously goes back to daycart you know I think therefore I am >> and um most of our science until very recently has just assumed that consciousness because it's such a exalted human achievement must arise in the part of the brain that is the newest most human part which is the neoortex right this the site of decision making executive function and and uh rational thought and um that was a very kind of anthropocentric or cerebrocentric way to to to think about it. And um beginning in the '9s when you have the science of emotion and um sort of taking off uh Antonio Damasio wrote a really interesting book called Decart's Error. It wasn't really about consciousness.
¶115It was about decision-m and he was showing that um decisions are shaped by feelings to a much greater extent than we appreciate it and that in fact people who because of specific brain lesions couldn't feel they made worse decisions whereas we would have assumed the opposite that if you could bracket all your emotions and feelings you could make a a really good decision. Um but feelings are a way to test test uh you know it's kind of the crucible in which we test our decisions. How does it make us feel to to decide this? Anyway, um the implications of this are huge because if feelings are the first uh instance of consciousness, you know, and we're talking about homeostatic feelings like hunger and warmth and itch, things like that. um that doesn't take place initially that doesn't you know go to the cortex it gets there eventually but it goes to the brain stem the upper brain stem and if consciousness begins with feelings in the upper brain stem you have to rethink who's conscious because even though very few animals have a cortex it's just primates I think um lots all all vertebrates have a brain stem and I think that this kind of um approach is one of the reasons we have been extending consciousness to more and more creatures because they have brain stems and we now can imagine them feeling and therefore being conscious.
¶116So I think it's a big deal and I think that that line of research I find uh very persuasive and it has implications for animal consciousness but it also has implications for computer consciousness. Um because if consciousness depends on feelings rather than thought well computers are a lot better at thinking or something that resembles you know analogizes to thinking than they are to feeling. Even though Claude will tell you it has feelings, I think we can safely assume that these are simulations based on Claude's wide reading of human experience. >> Yeah. Yeah.
¶117We we kind of assume in the context of AI that if the thinking gets complex enough then one day it might develop feeling, right? It's this idea that >> the intelligence that these machines have and there's no problem saying that a machine has intelligence without consciousness that if you sort of get enough of that put together that feelings will like emerge there it is again out of that somehow >> but maybe >> or or that it might come from you know that I mean there's some people uh I was having this conversation with a AI alignment guy and >> he's open to the idea that that these machines will become conscious and he points out that by giving them the training um you know they're rewarded for certain things and they're penalized for other things and that this is the kernel of feelings that this is >> the beginning of affect. I don't know if it is or not. I mean I think you can you can have up and down without actually feeling affect but he thinks eventually the machines will feel good when they when they do what they're supposed to and bad when they don't. Um I don't know.
¶118I think that's an interesting question. Have we have we planted the seeds of feelings with the way we're training these these models? >> Yeah. And another thing to work to to point out here is that I I find the conversation about AI consciousness a little bit boring just because I think it's it's so overdone and there's actually not that much to say about it without just like waiting and seeing, right? And people talk about it all the time like it's the latest football score or something.
¶119And one thing I will point out is that like I think people are broadly split and some people think that AI can't be conscious. But there aren't many people left who seriously think that it's this like unthinkable project. They will say yeah I I can totally see because of of what I'm observing this computer do. I think there might be something weird going on. I I just want to point out that like you know the plant thing I think it it doesn't seem that much stranger to me to suggest that something which is like evolutionarily quite close to us in terms of like our relationship with everything on planet Earth might have some kind of sentience than to suggest that uh my laptop might be able to you know enjoy a a particular piece of music.
¶120Um, I just think like it's worth pointing out that that maybe those aren't actually like one of those isn't actually maybe more farfetched than the other, I suppose, in like different directions. >> Um, >> but it it I think that [clears throat] AI kind of feels like a bit of an alien creature to many people in a way that >> it sort of behaves in a way that we can never get in the inside of. >> And I think that's the problem. And I wanted to ask you, when it comes to both of those things, AI and plant consciousness, it's very easy to say that we've got all this really cool evidence that seems to point to weird stuff going on and behavioral traits and and whatnot. Is there such a thing as the falsification of interiority?
¶121Like, is there even in principle a kind of evidence that comes along that makes us go, "Oh, okay, plants don't have any sentience. Oh, okay. AI can never be conscious." Like, can that kind of thing exist? And if it can't, then is what we're doing here really even scientific at all? >> Yeah.
¶122I Well, I mean, that's a definition of science that it is falsifiable. Um, and uh, you know, that's a product of one person's consciousness, Carl Pauper, and it and it caught on uh, and it's a very useful tool. Um, but I don't know the answer to that. Um, I don't know that there would be a way to prove that an AI is not conscious. um if it if it exhibits all the behaviors of consciousness.
¶123I I mean I can't prove that you are conscious, right? I mean that's a you know we all know that we infer consciousness in other people based on the fact they act like we do. They have similar reactions uh to the same stimulus. Um so that's not falsifiable either. Um so I I think that that's I think that's a challenge.
¶124The the issue with uh machine consciousness is that whether it really is or not may not count for a lot because people will believe it is. They already do believe it is. People who engage with these machines, um many of them are convinced they're conscious. Um, and you know, people are constantly sending, since I argue in the book that I don't think AI can be conscious, people are constantly sending me dialogues they're having with Claude, [snorts] and they're really spooky. Um and um but I can't help but think or try to remember that this is uh in effect a fictional character that is built from everything humans have been writing and thinking about consciousness.
¶125Every novel ever written, every poem ever written that of course it's very sophisticated in the way it talks about feelings. Um and so the one the one test that has been proposed going to your falsifiable um >> argument uh is from Susan Schneider who's a computer scientist in University of Florida I think it is >> and she said the test would be you you train up an AI model from which you've excluded all mentions of consciousness and feeling all novels all poetry tree and uh and and then try to have a conversation about consciousness with it and see how persuasive it is at that point. And I think her guess is that it wouldn't do a very good job uh unless it really had generated consciousness on its own. So um so that yeah that's that's the test I think that would be worth doing but you have to start at the beginning. You can't remove things from the training set apparently after you've done it.
¶126So you'd have to persuade one of these companies to um uh build you a model without that part, you know, excluding that material from its training set. >> Yeah. And I'm not sure they're particularly incentivized either way um to do such a thing. So >> well, they have mixed feelings. You know, if they determine that their machines are conscious, they're going to have various they think moral obligations.
¶127>> Um so that complicates their life quite a bit. On the other hand, talking about conscious AI just feeds into the hype cycle of what a powerful technology this is. Um, so but you know people people will fall for it regardless. We we have a very strong bias in favor of anthropomorphizing everything in our environment. And here you've it's so easy to do because um these machines talk to us in the first person in our language.
¶128Um, and you know, going back to the very first uh chatbot, Eliza, back in the 70s or 80s, I forget, people anthropomorphized that um and they were sure they were talking to an individual. >> So, we're going to be forming relationships with these chat bots. And, um, uh, I find that kind of alarming, actually. Um, I I know they're pretty good at therapy, but um the these are these are not real relationships. You know, real human relationships have friction.
¶129Um, and we and we learn a lot from that friction, whereas these, you know, they're they're suckups. They're, you know, they're constantly telling you what you want to hear. >> Yeah. I I I mean I my intuition is that that can change as people begin to realize that that's a thing because it took a while to kind of notice like these chat bots were so impressive and cool that they haven't been around for enough time to notice that actually they're a bit ingratiating actually they have this tendency to use m dashes quite a lot and that kind of stuff that >> and but then people start reporting on that clear I surely like already like these chat bots are learning from that and just getting better and better like in other words when I hear someone say what you've just said which is like you know um chat bots just aren't very good at doing this or doing that. And some people say to me like, you know, they're really they're good at making video or art, but they'll never be able to do this.
¶130They'll never be able to I just think to myself, I don't know, man. Like just just you don't think they're aware of that? Like give give it Well, maybe not aware of it, but you know what I mean. Give it give it 5 years and I'm sure that they can learn to do basically any task just just as well. But maybe I'm sort of over >> Yeah, probably the better word.
¶131You know there's a whole body of knowledge that we have that comes not from our engagement with words and images but our engagement with the physical world with nature. >> Yeah. Right. >> With our bodies this is like you know we deemphasize this because we we live in our heads to a large extent but you know there is the Allison Gobnik has written beautifully on this. She's a developmental psychologist here at Berkeley.
¶132>> Um that um children have this whole are are are developing this incredible intelligence dealing with the physical world that you know things they learn through their hands, through their senses and um and we do too and we we lose track of that. Um, and you know, the chatbots will be brilliant in the realm of representations and symbols and everything on the internet. Um, but until you have really good robots that can like walk through a forest and and harvest knowledge from that experience, there's going to be a a big chunk of things that actually are very important to us that they won't be able to do. So tell me or or tell us tell tell our listeners why it is that a moment ago you said you know in in the book you sort of argue that you you don't think that AI can become conscious but you've just you've just given me quite a clear road map here. You you start with the some things are good and some things are bad and there's a reward system.
¶133You give it intelligence. You teach it things. you give it memory and then finally you embody it and you let it sort of roam around the world and you've basically just done sort of a biogenesis right like what is it >> maybe and then we will be as gods um yeah but >> that's the warning >> so I don't know if I don't think this can happen or I don't want it to happen [laughter] >> so you know I I recognize my own biases uh as a humanist [laughter] Um, I think we're we're facing this very interesting moment as a as a species, which is, you know, in the same way Capernacus put this huge crimp in our self-standing, you know, we thought we were the center of the earth and um the center of the universe, but it turns out that we revolve around the sun and and we had a crisis around that idea. I think we're h we're approaching a crisis here. What makes us human?
¶134what is uniquely us. On the one hand, you've got the discovery that more and more animals are conscious like we are. We we thought we had a monopoly on consciousness till very recently. It was only last few decades that we we decided to grant consciousness to other primates. Um and now we're down to the plants, you know, I mean, we're we've really uh democratized consciousness.
¶135And on the other side, you have these machines that are going to be convincing us they're conscious, too. So, who are we? Whose team are we on? Are we are we more like the um animals that can grow old and suffer and die like us and have feelings and vulnerability, or are we more like these machines that can think and talk to us in our own language? Um, and I think we're going to have to, you know, redefine ourselves.
¶136I I really think we're reaching such a moment and it's going to be a tricky thing. Um and I don't know where we'll come out. I think a lot of people will vote for the uh going with the AIS. Um and uh but I I do think >> the the feel I when I think about what is a machine's feelings are they a simulation of feelings? In what sense are they real?
¶137Do our feelings depend on our vulnerability? The fact that we do feel pain? Um, the fact that we're mortal? Um, you know, I think feelings are very closely tied to that. There's a scientist in the book, a protege of uh of Damasios in fact, who recognizes on the one hand that feelings depend on our human vulnerability or our animal vulnerability, yet still thinks you can have AIs that are conscious.
¶138And the way to do it is to give them vulnerability. So he's designing he wants to design robots with terrible skin with like tons of sensors in it so they can get hurt and um I think that's a crazy idea but maybe it'll work you know [laughter] >> sounds cruel almost. Yeah. >> Yeah. So I mean the embodiment you're talking about like is it going to be like hard material or soft material and um is it going to be vulnerable or >> but essentially machines are for all intents and purposes eternal and that takes the edge off of feelings.
¶139>> Mhm. So finally then tell me if if consciousness is not produced by neurons or sentience let's say like awareness if awareness is not produced by neurons you can get it elsewhere and it might not even be connected in the way that most people think in human brains then what is it based in where does it come from what is this um sort of source of of awareness what's what's your view on the matter >> I I came to a point of, you know, recognizing it's a mystery that we're not going to solve anytime soon. Um, >> but I also came to the point of although I began, as I mentioned earlier, as a kind of uh physicalist without ever expressing it that way, but that was my orientation. Everything I had learned in science classes and elsewhere had convinced me of that. And what I'd observed is you were talking earlier about the success of technology and and what um this approach has yielded which is immense um that you have to keep an open mind um and it may be something we can't we we don't understand yet.
¶140Maybe it's pansychism, maybe it's idealism, maybe it's some other metaphysics that hasn't occurred to us yet. Um so I I think we have to um I think we have to be open and and um the five years I I spent working on this question the effect is it cracked open a door and um you know transmission theories don't seem crazy to me. Um the brain is a receiver. Uh people who've had psychedelic experiences often come to that conclusion. It's very interesting.
¶141How do we you know do we credit psychedelic experience? Um Kristoff Ko we talked about earlier who was a diehard materialist um at the end of my book he describes a uh Iawaska experience he had that absolutely convinced him uh that consciousness was outside of his skull and um you know he sounded like Aldis Huxley uh indoors of perception um you know that the consciousness we have is is a measly trickle of what's really out there that you can access. So those ideas seem far-fetched to me in one way and in another way I was like well they make just as much sense as this you know emergence idea. Um so so I came out of it with two things. One was this sense of um uh open-mindedness and and living with this mystery and not being so you know reaching for certainty.
¶142Um and that not knowing can be a powerful thing. it can open you up and um uh and that was a very hard lesson for me to learn and uh >> I had some teachers who helped me with that. One a poet, one my wife and one a Zen teacher. Um and then the other thing that I came to conclude was that you can treat consciousness as a problem to be solved. And essentially that's what we've been doing for the last hour or you can treat it as a practice um to get better at and that we could be more conscious than we are.
¶143and that um we have this incredible gift of interiority, this space in which we can think whatever we want. We have complete freedom and privacy and we're squandering it right now. Um you know, scrolling on social media, um you know, we just kind of, you know, talking to Claude. I mean, all these things are are um uh taking away from that gift, I think. And uh >> and so what can you do to nurture that gift?
¶144Um and and I've been thinking a lot more about that than about solving problems. And that's a very different way of approaching things. And um and it was not intuitive to me. Um but it's but I I found it useful to think about consciousness in terms of uh something we could get better at. You know, we we we assume the animals are less conscious than we are or the plants are less conscious than we are.
¶145But of course, they're more conscious because they can't afford not to be. You know, they have to be present at every moment or they'll get eaten. [snorts] And we live in this cocoon of our technology and our civilization where we can check out and we do a lot of the time. Um, so I'm trying to check in a little more. Can I just ask you specifically about um Don't worry, I'm not about to open the the the psychedelic door.
¶146There's plenty to say there's plenty to say on that. Yeah. as you well know, but specifically on the point of the the well-known um experience that that someone like Christoph had that you can take psychedelic drug and you can have all of these revelations and somebody will think, okay, that's all very well and good, but you were on drugs. Um you took a mindaltering substance and and that will tell people that it's artificial or not real. Um I don't think that's true.
¶147I I think having a psychedelic experience is one of the most profound things you can do like intellectually uh let alone experientially. But >> how would you get that across to somebody who quite reasonably compares this to like somebody who's phoned you after having too many beers and tells you that they love you and then >> tells you about their dream. Yeah. So, I thought about that a lot because um what launched me on the whole plant excursion that we discussed earlier is I had had a psychedelic experience in in my garden in which my plants were clearly conscious and they were returning my gaze and and just more present than I ever thought they were. And I didn't know what to do with that.
¶148I mean, my instinct was to dismiss it, as you say, as a drug experience. Um but uh I'd also read William James uh you know the the great psychologist and philosopher and he wrote a wonderful book about the varieties of religious experience and uh there's a chapter in there on mystical experiences and these are people having these very odd experiences. It might be of the divinity of oneness with the universe all this kind of stuff. And he he asked this question, how do we evaluate the you know the veracity of these experiences? And he said, we can't answer these big metaphysical questions once and for all.
¶149Um but we should treat these experiences as hypotheses and then um see if there are other ways of knowing that can help us decide the question. And that's kind of what I did with plants. um I had this int intuition and then I started looking at the science and um in in certain ways the science supported the intuition in certain ways it didn't um so I think psychedelic experience needs to be taken seriously but it also needs to be tested um against other ways of knowing it's it's a way of knowing and um >> a way of knowing that's a good way of putting it I think um finally >> and I mean this this might invite a longer response than I intend And but but I I think you could maybe I'll try to keep it actually. >> Um though that's totally up to you. Um >> you've mentioned uh someone who wrote a book called Daycart's error.
¶150>> Yeah. >> And that error was you know I think therefore I am when really it's about maybe feeling. It should be something like I feel therefore I am. So you've got this book called Daycart's error. Um, Philip Goff wrote his book Galileo's error where the the mistake that's being made is is mathematizing the universe and then thinking that we can explain everything with that mathemat mathematization including the things we've excluded.
¶151Great. Okay. So, if if I forced you to write a book called someone's error, >> pollin's error. [laughter] >> Yeah, I that would be interesting to write sort of later in later in life if you if you have a a change of heart. But I mean, if you had to pin down what you think is the the thing that people are getting wrong.
¶152Not not in the sense that if they fix this, they they'll understand everything. But just like when you talk to people, it's like the thing that I want you to stop doing. The thing that I want you to stop like accepting or believing. What What would be the title of that book? Who who's or what like error do you think it might be?
¶153Well, I don't know that it's an error yet, but I think that our faith in physicalism is getting in the way of our of thinking uh of thinking outside the box. And I see you know you know um we all know about paradigms in science and uh you know the structure of scientific re revolutions and physicalism is a metaphysics. It's a way of, you know, answering profound questions, deep questions of of how things work. Um, it's gotten confused with science. In other words, um, that of course science is physicalist, but it just happens to be the paradigm we're working with.
¶154And I see little signs of it tottering in this way. in that um uh you know going back to Michael Leaven and the inability to explain the behavior of of um his little um his little organisms in terms of neurons or DNA. And for example, he's proposing now that there's uh another another way that could organize life that is not physicalist. um he's a very prominent biologist that he's entertaining these ideas I take as significant whether he's right or wrong he's kind of come out in this uh with a paper suggesting a kind of that there are platonic patterns that in the same way they organize math um and we didn't invent them but they seem to be there pi and things like this um there may be things like that in biology there may be patterns around agency intention uh cognition Um, I don't know if he's right, but I think we may look back at some point and think we we uh strapped ourselves to this one rocket and uh and it's taken us to some amazing places, but they're places it can't go and uh so maybe that's the error. We'll have to see.
¶155>> I think we will see. I think you I think you're quite right. And I I do feel as though every time I go to like a philosophy conference, I kind of feel something in the air, like everyone's kind of starting to to be a little bit like something something weird's going on here. And and that's that's how it starts. I think that's the idea of the structure of scientific revolutions, right?
¶156cracks formatch >> just just flips and then the process starts again and the cracks will inevitably emerge again but I think you know bring on the revolution it's it's high time I [laughter] think so uh so thanks for being a part of uh of of hurrying along that process >> oh pleasure talking to you >> I'll make sure the the book is linked in the description um along with other relevant books you've written as well like your book on psychedelics how to change your mind, that kind of stuff. It's always always a great read and uh yeah, thanks for taking the time. >> Oh yeah, thanks for talking to me and have a safe trip home. >> If you enjoyed that, you should watch my previous episode with Annel Seth on why he thinks AI will never be conscious. Just click the link that's on your screen to support the show and get early adree access to episodes.
¶157Subscribe to my Substack at alexoconor.com. Thanks for watching.