Today we welcome Dr. Anil Seth. He is the Professor of Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience at the University of Sussex, where he is also Co-Director of the Sackler Centre for Consciousness Science. His research has been supported by the European Research Council, the Wellcome Trust, and the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research. Dr. Seth’s 2017 main-stage TED talk is one of the most popular science TED talks, with more than 13 million views. His latest book, which has received numerous accolades, is called Being You: A New Science of Consciousness.

In this episode, I talk to Dr. Anil Seth about the new science of consciousness. Although we don’t exactly know how or why consciousness exists, Dr. Seth thinks this shouldn’t stop us from exploring its properties. One of the things he explores in his research is the conditions for consciousness. Everyone has their own way of perceiving the world. Perceptual diversity exists and we would be misguided to try and standardize consciousness on a single dimension. We also touch on the topics of intelligence, panpsychism, free will, AI technology, and the after life. 

Website: www.anilseth.com

Twitter: @anilkseth

Topics

02:08 The hard problem of consciousness

07:02 The value of inner experiences

12:22 Experiencing is consciousness

15:51 Panpsychism 

19:01 The condition for consciousness

21:38 Neuroscience of consciousness

27:32 Perceptual diversity

37:09 Perception Census

43:00 Can we measure consciousness?

49:13 Individual differences in experiencing 

56:40 Experience of free will is not an illusion

1:09:24 Cybernetic free will

1:12:55 Can artificial intelligence produce consciousness? 

1:24:24 The desire to persist