December 21, 2023 • 61 mins
Today we welcome Dr. Antonio Damasio. He is an internationally recognized neuroscientist whose extensive research has shaped the understanding of neural systems and consciousness. With over a hundred journal articles and book chapters, he has earned many prestigious awards throughout his career. Currently, he serves as University Professor, the David Dornsife Professor of Neuroscience, Psychology, and Philosophy, and director of the Brain and Creativity Institute at the University of Southern California. His books Descartes’ Error, Looking for Spinoza, Self Comes to Mind, The Strange Order of Things, and Feeling & Knowing, have been published in translation and are taught in universities throughout the world. In this episode, I talk to Antonio Damasio about consciousness. People often think that the mind and consciousness are the same thing, but Dr. Damasio disputes this notion. He argues that it’s the complex relationship of both our brains and bodies that makes sentient thought possible. Homeostatic feelings like hunger and pain developed before emotions; and along with it came consciousness. We also touch on the topics of perception, mental illness, evolution, panpsychism, AI and machine learning. Website: dornsife.usc.edu/bc Twitter: @damasiousc
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, and welcome to the Psychology Podcast. Today's episode is
part of the best of series, where we highlight some
of the most exciting and enthralling and enlightening episodes from
the archives of the Psychology Podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Enjoy.
Speaker 3 (00:13):
That is what consciousness is about. It's about creating the
not disputable fact that I am doing my perceptions and
you are doing your perceptions, and the two channels of operation,
and then the two kinds of operation are of the
same type that they are occurring in different organss.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
Hello and welcome to the Psychology Podcast. Today we welcome
doctor Antonio Dimasio. Doctor Demasio is an internationally recognized neuroscientist
whose extensive research has shaped the understanding of neural systems
and consciousness well over one hundred journal articles and book chapters.
He has earned many prestigious awards throughout his career. Currently,
he serves as university professor, the David Dornzeif Professor of Neuroscience,
(01:05):
Psychology and Philosophy, and Director of the Brain Creativity Institute
at the University of Southern California. His books Descartesera, Looking First,
Minozza Self comes to Mind, the Strange Order of Things
and Feeling and Knowing have been published in translation and
are taught in universities throughout the world. In this stimulating episode,
I talked to Antonio Demasio about consciousness. People often think
(01:28):
that the mind and consciousness are the same thing, but
doctor Demasio disputes this notion. He argues that it's the
complex relationship of both our brains and bodies that makes
sentient thought possible. Homeostatic feelings like hunger and pain developed
before emotions, and along with it came consciousness. We also
touch on the topics of perception, mental illness, evolution, panpsychism,
(01:49):
AI and machine learning. So it's with great enthusiasm that
I now bring you doctor Antonio Demasio. It's nice to
finally meet you. We have some mutual friends in common.
I I'm dear friends with Mary Helen and Maardino yang oh.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
Z very highly of view and it's just yeah, nice to.
Speaker 3 (02:07):
Find means she's having a beautiful career. She was. She
was I think the first person we appointed to the
Brand Creativity Institute. Now seventeen years ago.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
Wow, time really does fly. Wow, that's how long ago
you guys started that. I remember when you started the institute.
Speaker 3 (02:27):
And yeah, that's exactly.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
It very exciting.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
Well, today I definitely want to discuss our mutual interest
in the neuroscience of creativity, but I wanted to start
off today's episode going back all the way back to
nineteen eighty nine. One of my favorite papers of yours
in the journal Cognition called time locked multi regional retroactivation.
Now we're going to have to explain and unpack what
(02:50):
in the world that means to our general audience of listeners.
But the reason why I wanted to double click on
that because I think that was a really seminal paper.
I hope you agree of modern day brain network systems
research on consciousness see that as a really seminal sort
of early ideas. So could you kind of unpack a
little bit what that paper showed.
Speaker 3 (03:09):
So we were interested in the idea that as as
you manipulate knowledge, perceptions of every kind, different considerations that
we make on what we're perceiving, what we are thinking
about based on those perceptions on all of that needs
(03:31):
to be stored in some way, and the storage, in
all likelihood proceeds by the by creating arrangements of memories
of traces of all of those events near the places
in the brain where they are formed to begin with.
(03:54):
So we have a number of portals into our brain
that large we come out of the dominant perceptual systems,
particularly of course the visual and the auditory, which clearly
dominate in most individuals, and then all the other senses
that we know of. And what is interesting is that
(04:17):
those the channeling of information from the sensory probes that
are located in the periphery of our body and also
the periphery of our nervous system and the central part
of the nervous system, they all land in different parts
(04:38):
of the brain, which is of course predictable, because we
have a channel that goes, for example, from our eyes
to a particular region of the cortex, which happens to
be visual context, and then the place where the things
that you're hearing right now, that I'm hearing of my
(05:00):
own voice, they land in another place. And then out
of those hubs where information is being sent to you
have the possibility of creating a sort of encircling where
you have not only the immediate processing of what is
(05:21):
being channel at the moment. In this case, for example,
I'm looking at your face and your bookcase behind you,
you're listening to my voice and probably looking at whatever
I have behind me, and so there's that early sensory processing.
But then all around there are structures that can actually
(05:41):
take a part the information that is coming in and
provide storage for that information, sometimes in a piecemeal form,
sometimes a holistic form. So you have the possibility of
creating memories for what is being processed right now, and then,
(06:04):
depending on how important those things are for your life,
they may stay on as permanent memories and be transformed
or they may be just disposed of in the course
of in the course of life. And then what is
interesting too is that most of the time our perceptions
(06:26):
are not occurring in one modality only. So for example,
right now there is a visual perception that we're both
having an auditory perception, but also lo and behold, we
have the perception quote unquote of what is happening in
our own body. For example, if all of a sudden
you would be you could be feeling hungry or thirsty,
(06:49):
or you could have pain somewhere, that would be perceived
as well, except that that would be arranged in a
different kind of system. There's a cortical component to it too,
as well, but by and large it doesn't happen in
the cortext that the most important part. They happen in
(07:10):
the brain stem. They happen in the spinal cord. So
you can have all of this fabrication of traces of
things that are happening to you, inside your body and
around you. They go to specific points in the nervous system,
not in one. It's very interesting as a parenthesis that
(07:33):
very often people that don't know anything about the brain
or about the mind studied in detail, can perfectly well
believe that all of this is going into one great
big tank, one great big sink, and it's all put together.
But it isn't. It's all separated at birth. It's all
(07:53):
separated and goes into different points, and those different points
where it occurs, they all already are sign of a
convergence of signals, and then from there they can go
to another set of stations where further integration of the
signals is done, and by again the process of convergence
(08:17):
of signaling a little bit of a pyramid going into
a point, and then eventually you can have combinations of
those different pyramids, of those different cooking points and create
something that is much larger that that's the great picture
(08:38):
that I had for the convergence from multiple regions. And
then what is interesting is that eventually you can have
a combination of facts. For example, right now i'm talking
to you, I have my perception review. I know that
(08:58):
i'm talking to you of this particular process, which is
really the process of learning and categorization and memory making.
But I also know that I just talked to my
assistant and we talked about a couple of specific things
that I need to get done as soon as I'm
done talking to you. And I'm also looking at a
(09:23):
page from Corina said. That's the Italian newspaper where there
is a review of my new book. And it's very good,
how it says, it's a lovely title, Body and Feeling
the romance of Damasio.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
I love it. I love it better than that.
Speaker 3 (09:49):
It's done by action, by a major measure Italian biologist. Anyway,
So all of this stuff is being integrated. And what's
interesting is that if next week you call me and
you remind me of this session we're having, I could
(10:10):
perfectly well remember not only parts of this conversation, but
part of what I just told you about that particular
review that happens to be on my desk. So things
have a way of being integrated by the time at
which they're occurring, but also by the happenstance of being
(10:31):
here at the right moment, and so things that are
not linked will be linked because at that time, in
this case, the time and which I am talking to you,
my eyes also fell on that page that was here
on my desk actually just died anyway, So that's what
I had in mind, and it has proven helpful to
(10:54):
explain problems of memory as well as making normal memory,
because we know that when you can damage one part
of this system, you don't lose memory across the board.
You lose certain specific memories and memories of certain kinds,
for example, that may be more related to the visual
(11:15):
system than to another. Anyway, very complicated answer for a
very complicated subject.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
Yeah, it's very complicated paper, you know. But the reason
why I bring this up is because I think it's extraordinary.
It was a theoretical paper and it seems to have
really a modern day work which is really focused on
systems level and brain networks. Is really borne out a
lot of those ideas, if not all of those ideas.
So I think it's kudos to you, kudos to you,
(11:44):
thank you very much. There's a sentence in that paper
that I wanted a link to your more modern work,
and let.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
Me just read this.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
You rate meaning is reached by time locked multi regional
retroactivation of widespread fragment records, say that ten times really quickly,
only the latter records can become contents of consciousness. I
found that a very fascinating two sentences for a number
of reasons. One, there does seem to be something unique
(12:13):
about humans. Areniquly developed about humans in terms of our
meaning making facilities, And I'd love to kind of get
into what is the neuro machinery and psychological process that
allow us to do that, and why turtles can't.
Speaker 2 (12:25):
Do that for instance.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
Second of all that second sentence, only the latter records
can become contents of consciousness. I wonder if you can
unpack that a little bit, because you go through a
lot in your new book on the distinction the crucial
distinction between mind and consciousness.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
And so I'm linking the distinction of.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
Mind and consciousness, which you make so clearly now with
that very complicated sentence that I just read from your
nineteen to eighty nine paper. I hope you're you're okay
with that linkage I made. I think it makes sense
in my head.
Speaker 3 (12:53):
I think it makes it makes pressure sense. And your
let's actually start with the the new things that pertain
to the new book, because that may help unpack the
older sentence and what I'm trying to do. The distinction
(13:15):
between mind and consciousness is critical for a variety of
first buying large people confuse the two. And you know
it says if creatures that are minded, be necessarily conscious,
and the two things will go together and could be interchangeable,
and that's not the case. The same way. Actually, in
(13:36):
our conversation yesterday by email, you mentioned something about your
interests in covert processing in things that are not in
fact in the mind, that I have to do with
it with an intelligence that is capable that is not minded.
(13:58):
And these are all different of this great big thing
that we call our conscious minds, and that include a
lot of our conscious process. So if you take simple creatures,
I wouldn't start with turtles, but I would something even
(14:19):
simple like bacteria or a variety of creatures with only
a few cells and a humiliated cells. Those creatures have
no nervous system to begin with, and yet they are
intelligent and capable within the niche of universe in which
(14:39):
they operate, and they can perfectly well detect certain the
presence or absence of something, which is really a form
of perception quote unquote, not a perception like we have
with detailed imaging exactly. Detecting and sensing are good words
(15:05):
for that, except that very often they connote other things
in the mind of people, and they can add to
the confusion. But anyway, they can detect sense stuff, and
they can with the machinery that they have, respond in
a certain way that is consonant with what they detected. Now,
(15:27):
that is an intelligence thing to do. There's no question
that it is adaptive and intelligent, and it is protecting
them because they may detect something that they need, such
as for example, food the food particle, or they may
detect something that is potentially harmful, and that's good because
it's going to protect their body and to allow them
(15:48):
to live as long as their machinery is meant for
it to live genetically speaking. Now, so that is intelligent,
but not minded and not conscious. Now, when you turn
to what we do at the other end, and what
many other creatures do in between. We have not only
(16:12):
the capacity to detect sense stuff, but then we also
have the capacity to represent what we detect it and
also represent ourselves as victims of the detection. And we
have the capacity to know that all of that relates
(16:34):
to our unique bargains. So these three tiers are very
very important to separate, and unfortunately, in the minds of
most people, this is one great big salad. And what
I'm trying to do if you ask me what is
the most important thing that I think I'm doing right now?
(16:54):
In addition to explaining stuff that I'm passionate about, such
as how you get to have a feeling, is actually
insisting on the separation. So you have a mind when
you are capable of representing something that you detected, and
fortunately for us, we have the capacity to represent tons
(17:16):
of things depending on the different sensory channel we have
help things outside of our bodies and inside of our lives.
Then we have an intelligence provided we are capable of
responding to things that are in our environment but not
necessarily representing it. And then we are conscious when we
(17:41):
connect the thing that we are mindful of with our
own organ is. The beauty of consciousness is that when
you have when you have, for example, I'm looking at you,
I know that it's need looking at you. Why do
I know that? Well, that's exactly the problem of consciousness.
(18:04):
The image that you are helping generate in my brain
is activating a variety of systems that are in my
brain and body, and that connects the tool indolently and
in such a way that I have no doubt that
it's me talking to you, Scott. There's no question. That
(18:28):
is what consciousness is about. It's about creating the not
disputable fact that I am doing my perceptions and you
are doing your perceptions, and the two channels of operation,
and then the two kinds of operation are over the
same type, but they are occurring in different organisms.
Speaker 2 (18:50):
Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
And this is a really unique aspect of your theory
of consciousness, which not everyone in the field has this
definition of consciousness. You know, there's a panpsychism is really
hot right now right the pan psychic people. Can I
say that, the pan psychic people, they wouldn't say it.
You have to have that criteria of the organism being
able to identify it with itself in order for it
(19:12):
to be conscious. And this makes your work very unique
and very influential, that you really are arguing that there's
a very important distinction.
Speaker 2 (19:19):
A lot of people in the field do not make this distinction.
You know, we should make that clear.
Speaker 3 (19:23):
Yeah, absolutely, yeah, And I think that if you don't
make those distinctions, I think you actually end up in
the place that led to pan psychism. I think there
is a very good reason why pan psycheism myth the
moment is popular, and there is an escape people that
(19:46):
have come up against the wall of consciousness and then
talk about such things as the heart problem of the
impossible problem, I really abstract in their view of what
can be, and as a result, almost anything goes. But
pen psyche is helpful because, well, you know, maybe the
(20:11):
reason why you can't explain it easily is because it's
everywhere and something that's not inside us, really something that
we capture from what's around us, which I find first
no evidence for and second no way of testing, no
(20:32):
way of doing an experiment that would cope with that.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
It's like strength theory.
Speaker 2 (20:38):
It's like strength theory and physics.
Speaker 3 (20:40):
But I think it I can understand that I have
sympathy for people that feel cornered and not and not
capable of explaining it. But I am simpathy is one
thing and I'm not in that camp. And there's one
thing let me add because that you know, we really
(21:02):
through your question where we sort of got to the
top of the problem very quickly. But one thing that
is extremely important for me is this. Most of the things,
probably everything that you read about consciousness, all of that
matter about mind, always talks about the brain alone. You know,
(21:27):
people said, we need to find out how the brain
creates consciousness. Excuse me, why just the brain? Why this
insistent insistence on the fact that the nervous system and
the nervous system alone is the creator of these things.
I dispute that I don't think it is. But you
don't need to go to the surround spirits to find it.
(21:52):
It's in your own body. The logical march here is
from creatures that are alives, have bodies, don't have nervous systems,
to creatures that eventually our life have bodies and have
nervous systems. And minds and consciousness are ultimately the product
(22:12):
of a particular relationship between the living organisms body and
the nervous system in that body. It's not that the
nervous system is plucked and putting this inside our bodies
and clear inside our skull and charged with creating minds
and creating consciousness. Not at all. I mean, of course,
(22:35):
you cannot have minds and consciousness without a nervous system.
But the nervous system is there as a partner in
the process that can lead to better life regulation. The
nervous system is a servant of homeostasies the same way
that the body in general is a possessor of homeostatic
(22:56):
operations that will allow that organism, that the living thing,
to continue for a lot of amount of time.
Speaker 1 (23:04):
Well, it sounds like there are implications there for those
who argue we might be able to upload our brain
someday and continue our consciousness. It sounds like you're saying, no,
that's not going to be possible, because the brain is
not only conscious.
Speaker 2 (23:17):
Conscious is not only in the brain, right.
Speaker 3 (23:18):
Exactly, So, the consciousness by when you analyze what it
really means to be conscious, when you come back to
the thought that I advanced for you, which is that
it's about knowing that I am here in my body
(23:40):
in this life and that the things that I have
in my mind, the representations I have, do not belong
somewhere else, do not belong in another or their might.
How do I know that their mind? Well, they know
that their mind because my nervous system is in constant
interaction the organism in which it is located and without
(24:04):
which it could not live.
Speaker 2 (24:06):
Yeah, I totally get it, and I want to.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
I just want to just for people who are not
as cognitive scientists, they're maybe listening to some of our conversation.
There are a lot of technical terms are throwing around, But
one implication I see from one of this as well,
with the upholding of the brain, is that we may
be able to uphold and replicate a mind, but not consciousness. Well,
I mean, maybe might not even be able to do
the mind. But it seems like at the very best,
(24:29):
maybe what we can do is just replicate Scott Berry
Kaufman's mind, but I'm never going to be able to
identify it with the forces. Could be sitting in a
that of zero ones.
Speaker 3 (24:39):
You got it, and you've got it right, And that's
exactly it. And that's of course we don't need to
go there, but that's exactly One of the problems about
official intelligence right now is that you can with our
current capabilities, we can have something like the contents of
your mind in an artificial normally creature. If you're going
(25:02):
to make it conscious, that's another story. And for that,
you know, it's almost an absurdity to think it could
be conscious if it's not living, because the entire thing
of the entire notion of consciousness is right now, you
can have a simile lacra of consciousness. I have no
problem with that. In fact, we have a paper that
(25:24):
probably you may know about. The paper is in Nature
Machine Intelligence on whether on how you make this linkage
between between a robot and a real body with minds
and conscious capabilities, and it is a it's an interesting
thing to discuss.
Speaker 1 (25:46):
That is very interesting, and we are shooting towards the top.
I understand. I totally get we haven't gone through all
the steps yet, and of what is feeling?
Speaker 2 (25:53):
I have a million other.
Speaker 1 (25:54):
Questions that we're supposed to talk about along the way
before we get here. But this is really interesting. So
while we're here for a second, the idea of can
we ever make feeling machines? Since since we're kind of
talking about that right now, I would like to link
that to the idea of why is feeling so essential
to consciousness in your model, and how do you even
define feeling?
Speaker 2 (26:14):
And then and then why not let's have fun. Let's
link that to.
Speaker 1 (26:16):
Whether or not we'll be able to create feeling machines
as an implication of that.
Speaker 3 (26:20):
Okay, very good. Well, so, just a little teaching point
for people that are sort of cutting a little of
these terms like feeling and emotion. Very often, when people
think feeling or hear the words feeling, they immediately portray
(26:41):
an emotion, and of course that's the beginning of disaster
because the two things are in fact associated one all
the time, but plenty plenty of the time they're not.
So we could start by saying this, what came first,
feelings or emotions, And in all likelihood feelings did, because
(27:03):
feelings are in fact mental expressions of certain states of
the organism to begin with, and to begin with that
to add with, because when you have an emotional feeling,
you are also dealing with a state of your organisms.
But let's start with feelings the way they likely began
(27:26):
in the history of life, and the feelings that must
have been. The first were what I call homeostatic feelings,
and they occurred in creatures with nervous systems. That's very
important to realize. And by the way, on once you
remember the strong link that I have between feelings and consciousness,
(27:48):
you again to have this link between feeling and consciousness
and nervous systems, you know, it doesn't make any sense
to talk about it. If they're no nervous systems, they
don't need any feelings if you systems anyway, So what feeling.
There's anesthetic feelings first to give in an organism that
(28:09):
is multi sealuble and has the systems, is a sense
actually a mental representation of something important that is happening
in that body, such as, for example, being hungry or
being thirsty, or having pain or feeling damn good. Those
(28:30):
are the fundamental aesthetic feelings. Desire is too, but if
we don't need to go there to earning them, monitor
the desire.
Speaker 1 (28:39):
It's Valentine's Day today, Well, hold on, hold on, we're
talking today Valentine's Day, folks, even though we're going to
release this later, just so people know.
Speaker 3 (28:48):
Okay, So, what what is Hider telling you? You and
only you? It's telling you that there's a good time
to have energy brought into your body, and that's unlacking.
And if you're thirsty, it's telling you something. And by
the way, totally conscious right there. And then that's great
(29:11):
consciousness first emergence. It's telling you in no uncertain terms,
this is lacking. You need this, And of course it's
not telling you in so many words. Doesn't use words.
It does use the language of feeling with its spontaneous, natural,
occurring consciousness. And that's why I like to say that
(29:34):
feelings were the inaugural events of consciousness one fine day,
after lots of variations on the theme of organism regulation,
this magic motion occurred within living organisms with nervous systems,
(29:55):
and that was feeling, and it is so successful. It
is so good telling you immediately drink, eat, recoil from
an attack, do something because you're having pain and it's
probably going to kill you, do something to prevent it
or avoid it, or go to the doctor. All of
(30:18):
those things were extremely informational. They were giving you therein
then useful information to maintain your life. There's no way
you could have proceeded life in a complicated organism with
multice nervous system if you did not have that information.
In other words, you went rapidly from five hundred million
(30:42):
years ago. You went rapidly from having organisms that, unless
they were lucky, they would die to organisms that even
if they were not like lucky, they had enough information
to do something useful about that life and to read
use the risk of death. And this makes perfect sense
(31:04):
from an evolutionary perspective, and that's where I think consciousness
began at the level of feeling. Now, because you wanted
me to say things about feeling for your listeners, then
I will also say that the confusion with emotion is
a problem because what developed in living creatures as emotions,
(31:28):
which don't develop with humans developed before and of course
are theatricals. There are certain kinds of expression that you
can have in the body and in the face once
you have a face that is manipulable with different muscle groups.
It's certain kinds of expressions that register something that is
(31:52):
happening to you, something that is in the environment, some
reaction that you have to others. Examples feeling an emotion
of fear when you are recoiling from something that potentially
may attack and which is accompanied by a feeling of fear.
(32:15):
So this is where things get extremely complicated and people
really need to think a little bit, because then it's
clear as daylight. When you are having the emotion fear,
your eyes bulge, you pull back and blow and behold,
your body changed. And because your body changed, those changes
(32:40):
are what produced the feeling of fear. But the emotion
itself is a set of actions. By the way, the
word emotion etemologically it's perfect. It's about the Latin air modery.
It's to move to the outside. You have its an
actor studio. You know, you're just doing things. And by
(33:02):
the way, if you have anger, the same thing. You know,
it's a different sort of theatricals. But it's again represented
in your body. And if you are terribly if you
want to seduce somebody, you also do the corresponding theatricals.
Then they also are felt because they are represented internally
(33:27):
with your nervous system, and they can end up being
a feeling, which is subjective. Emotions by themselves are not subjective.
Emotions by themselves are directed to the outside.
Speaker 1 (33:39):
Yeah, so that's something I'm trying to understand about. In
terms of the chicken and egg thing, here and the
way you described it, it was like emotions come first
and then it influences your feelings. But you had said
prior that through the course of human evolution, feelings probably
came first, exactly.
Speaker 3 (33:54):
So that's where you need to distinguish between the horty
aesthetic and the emotional in a proper set. So the
things that came first were the homeostatic feelings, and probably
the creatures that had homostatic feelings, if I would have
to guess, and I wouldn't bet anything on it, but
(34:16):
if I would have to guess, they did not have emotions.
They had feelings because they were having representations, mental representations
of the state of the body, their bodies, and that
was the critical issue here. That's why this has a logic,
which is the logic of life and the logic of
survival that came first because it was so important for
(34:41):
that organism. When you start having emotions, it's at a
point in which you have already some complex interactions with
other beings, and those other beings can cross you and
you get angry, or they can do something, or the
environment can do something that threatened zoo and you get
(35:01):
fear and so forth. So it's a different stage, and
it's actually more It reflects a greater complexity of the organism,
although in the end they don't need to be more
complex as phenomena, but they're reflecting something else. But all
of this can end up felt, and felt simply means
(35:27):
that you automatically know it's in you, it's in your organism,
and that also means that you are automatically conscious. The
two things have to go together.
Speaker 1 (35:38):
I hear what you're saying. I'm just trying to think
this through my own personal life, because my gosh, you're right.
We are such social humans, you know, the humans are
such social beings, I should say, And there is a
performative aspect to emotions, which I'm now thinking in my head, like,
am I ever when I'm just having like an imagination
of things? Do I ever recoil in fear in the
same way physically on the outside, I would look like
(36:00):
if I was with another person and we were both
recounting the experience. I'm trying to do the experiment in
my head to verify what you're saying scientifically, and it's yeah,
you're you're right. I never really thought about that really, Yeah,
so we may have feelings when we're lost in our
own thoughts and when we're in touch with our.
Speaker 2 (36:19):
Own organism, so to speak.
Speaker 1 (36:21):
But there is something about emotions that is it seems
like deeply social and yeah, it's fascinating.
Speaker 3 (36:28):
You're right, Oh, I think it's absolutely social. And I
think that you know, it's part of for example, you,
as you are communicating with me, your face has been
animated now several times by for example, a smile. True,
(36:50):
you smile when you were wondering what I was saying,
is probably right, and you smile in consonants. But that
is I don't think it's theatricals in the sense that
it was totally delibrated by you. It's probably part of
your repertoire emotional of emotional phenomenon when you communicate with others,
(37:15):
because you have been doing it all your life, if
you have adjusted yourself to the same spe all sorts
of things that would be of that kind, or for example,
the way your face is on a couple of times
already manifested doubt in relation to what I was saying. Oh,
being puzzled, but puzzled in a way that was probably
(37:39):
not positive, which is perfectly fine, But you will register
or what you're doing right now, you know which you are.
You know the fact that I said, it's perfectly fine,
you reacted with laughter and quite behind exactly. But but
but that is it's all. It's part of the interaction.
(38:00):
You're doing it along with me in this social interaction.
And this has very little to do with being hungry
or being thirsty or being in pain. You know, those
are different things. Those are spontaneously occurring in relation to
(38:22):
what your nervous system is getting in an interaction with
its own body, or I like to say the opposite,
it's the organism's own nervous system, because that's the way
that that's the way it is, and it is it's
completely different. But by the way, one thing so that
(38:43):
in case we end up because this is so interesting
and we're doing in so many directions, so that I
don't forget there's something fundamentally different about the perception of
our body by our nervous system and the perception of
the outside world. So for example, right now I'm perceiving you,
(39:04):
and I can look out and perceive the you know,
the cinemonic amounts. There's no way that the I can
go interactively with the cineamonic amount montas only with you,
that's the level of the perceptual object. But with my
body that happens. So if my body sends a signal
(39:28):
from one particular point, say, for example, I'm actually I'm
having pain in an act. Sorry to say, you're not
opinion anyway, And that's because I was moving books yesterday
and the day before and one of the times I
carried too many books in one go and I twisted
(39:51):
muscles and I have a pain. But it's interesting is
that there's there's signals that are coming from the muscles,
that the muscle fibers that have been disrupted and fromly torn,
and they are going into the spinal cording in this
case the brainstead and then the central nervous system un
(40:16):
all the way up to the to the context, although
in many cases don't need to, Okay, well, it's interesting
is that the signals come in and literally ascend in
the nervous system. But the nervous system as the possible
needed to respond to the origin of the perception. So
(40:37):
we have a cross stock between our body, it's non
neural components and the nervous system. The non neural components
of the body talk to the nervous system. The nervous
system talks back one thing that it does that you
experience constantly, as to do with pain or as to
(41:01):
do with itch. For example, if you have an itch
in your skin, skin is dry, itchy, Well, it's itchy
for a bit. You can scratch it a bit and
we'll go. But then we'll come back. But then after
a while, even if you don't do anything about it,
it will go, and it will go because the simple
never system is sending signals back to that place, doing
(41:24):
at the local level chemical corrections of the environment so
that the thing gets suggested. So it's never the case
that you have a body here and a nervous system here,
like I have my brain here and you on the screen.
There's no way that screen and you are going to
(41:47):
do anything to my nervous system directly, whereas in the
case of interception that happens all the time. So that's
another fundamental way, which by the way, has been completely
neglected by anybody that is doing theory on consciousness. With
extremely rare exceptions, there's no way that you can understand
(42:11):
this phenomenon without achnowledgy interception. That is the perception of
the interior quote unquote is different in its design, in
its operation, from the perception of the outside work. Is
that two things that are computed different. Now, of course,
in our in our high functioning minds and brains, it
(42:33):
all works together very well. Yes, they are different, and
that's those those differences that give you an entry into
problems like consciousness and that you can explore and exploit
to your advantage for sure.
Speaker 1 (42:50):
I mean, if you're a psychopath, you know you can.
Absolutely there's a real huge distinction between feelings and emotions,
and if you're an actor, there's a huge distinction. But
it seems like in most people's everyday lives there's a
great feedback between the two that makes it more genuine,
so to speak. In my view, there seems to be
something different between the way I'm responding to you socially today,
(43:10):
an actor would respond to you because I am feeling
things that are correlated at a p less than point
zero five level with the expression on my face. So
it's not completely random, you know what.
Speaker 3 (43:23):
Absolutely, I totally agree with you. Yeah, And the connection
to acting is only useful to give to bring home
the point that certain things can be fabricated as a
level of actions, because they have to begin with actions.
(43:44):
And of course, what we call a great actor is
someone that can do those expressions so well that it
looks spontaneously real as opposed to being fabricated by technique.
Speaker 1 (44:00):
You know what, I would even go one step further
and say, probably the best actors are those that have
a really good congruence between a fabricated emotion and then
the genuine experience that.
Speaker 3 (44:10):
I totally agreat and I think and that actually speaks
to the distinctions for example, actor studio actors and non
extra studio actors have that kind of difference.
Speaker 2 (44:23):
They're good.
Speaker 1 (44:24):
It's such a talent, it's so amazing. I mean, I
obviously can you learn that, but I do think there's
a certain talent component in there as well. And that's
a fascinating question, is what is that talent component?
Speaker 2 (44:33):
You know, it makes you good to that.
Speaker 1 (44:35):
I love thinking about the aberrations or the outliers to
lots of this.
Speaker 2 (44:39):
Kind of stuff.
Speaker 1 (44:40):
You know, we started thinking about things like schizophrenia, you know,
and the way that those that mind is the different
connection altered brain network connections.
Speaker 2 (44:50):
In people's schizophrenia.
Speaker 1 (44:51):
Would you say that when they're having a psychotic episode
that they're not Let's say they're having a disassociative episode
where they're not identifying their contents of their mind with themselves.
Would you argue that in those states, schizophrenic patients are
not conscious?
Speaker 2 (45:10):
Are your definition?
Speaker 3 (45:12):
Oh no, no, no, no, I never never argue that. No.
I think they are conscious because there is a there's
something Scott's said, something that I want to tell you
because you're interested in this and also to your listeners.
There's something very beautiful about feelings, whatever they are. There
(45:33):
is the continuity. Amnisthetic feelings have a continuity. That's something
that you know. While against somebody said, oh, so you
talk about the amnisthetic feelings and you say that anisthetic
feelings are the reason why you are conscious, and that
you require them to be conscious spontaneously. And so but
(45:54):
since I'm not hungry all the time, and I'm not
harmy all the time, and I'm not at first the
all the time, and then what happens that when I
become unconscious between my hunger and thirst episodes, and I said, no,
you're you're you're constantly feeling. You have this continuous feeling
of being alive. I've called it several times, a feeling
(46:16):
of existence, the feeling of being alive. It's if you
if you meditate a little bit, but if you just
be quiet, you real you realize that there's something hummy
in you, which is being alive, and which, by the way,
if you would not be alive, which you would not
notice it. Do you know that for sure?
Speaker 2 (46:38):
Are you sure?
Speaker 1 (46:39):
Do we know that for sure?
Speaker 3 (46:42):
No? I don't don't.
Speaker 2 (46:43):
I don't matter.
Speaker 3 (46:45):
I don't know that for sure. I suspect strongly anyway.
So this feeling of continuity is extremely important. So when
when you I have to tell you that I've not
I've thought about feelings in psychiatric conditions on purpose sort
of avoided thinking about feelings in schizophrenia that I've thought
(47:09):
about them in diversion, for example. And I think there's
always a continuity, a feeling of existence. It's there, and
it's humming along because you are in this interaction between
the nervous system and the and the body. So it's inevitable.
So you could say that the other feelings, the feelings
(47:33):
of anger, of thirst, and so forth, a sort of
if you plot it as a running graph, are things
that come the crest on top of that hamming up
and down. Feeling is constantly there on your monitor as
the feeling of life, the feeling of existence.
Speaker 1 (47:52):
But as I understand your theory, feeling is a necessary
but not sufficient condition for consciousness. In order for conscious
to occur, there needs to be this real coordinated operation
of being, feeling and knowing, And it does seem like
concerned schizophract patients, the knowing part is not there. So
that's why I ask you the very point of question.
According to your definition, it seems like you would say
(48:13):
that they're not conscious even though they're feeling.
Speaker 3 (48:16):
No. But I think that the way in which you're
taking that combination being feeling and knowing is not as
literal as that. So, of course, what are the conditions
you have to have a living organism. You have to
have an organism that has a nervous system. You have
the possibility of interactions of the nervous system and the
(48:37):
rest of the body, and then you have the sort
of bubbling bubbling up a sense, which is a feeling
that there is life sticking in there. The knowing very
(49:00):
interesting question do you need to be in addition to
it being there spontaneously. No question is asked, do we
need to have a reflection on I don't think so.
And I think that what is failing in schizophrenia is
that's the level of a reflection on what is happening
in that organism?
Speaker 2 (49:21):
Is that be a ten?
Speaker 3 (49:23):
Yeah, So the question the spontaneous feeling of existence is
still there. It doesn't go away, but it's quite interesting.
Speaker 2 (49:37):
Yeah, I'm not letting go.
Speaker 1 (49:39):
I'm not letting this go because it is very interesting.
It brings raises a lot of interesting questions I asked
associative episodes.
Speaker 3 (49:45):
I'm going to I'm going to think very carefully about
your question of schizophrenia, and I will send you an answer.
Speaker 2 (49:54):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (49:54):
I really truly appreciate that this is this is what
a good scholarly conversation is about. So we're model that
right now. So wonderful, beautiful. Let's talk about creativity a
little bit. You know, it's a topic we both love,
uh and the neuroscience of creativity. I know you're very
interested in complex emotions, things like the bitter sweet. You know,
my friend Susan Kane just wrote a whole book about
(50:15):
this emotion bitter sweet. But I know that you're really
interested in mixed valence emotions, and I'm I'm absolutely namored
with that as well. What's the role of these kinds
of mixed emotions and in helping us have more complex
cognitive prostis like creativity and meaning making.
Speaker 3 (50:30):
M Yeah, everything's fair, the it goes in the mix.
You know, creativity is such an extraordinary shield to look at.
I think that depending on you see, it all depends
(50:51):
on what you're working on, if you're if you're writing
literary sentences, or if you're making, uh, if you're reading
a painting or a sculpture. They're very different, different levels
of operation, different complexities, and they all take they all
(51:14):
exploit this amazing high level of consciousness that we have
gotten to, which, by the way, is one of the
reasons why people are so confused about consciousness and why
it is so difficult to bring them down to the
simple fact that feelings us containeous events in consciousness, because
(51:37):
most of what people have been thinking and reading about creativity,
about sorry about consciousness, has pulled them up and has
taken them to not only high level consciousness, but to
the consequences of high level consciousness in the form of
(51:58):
the creative objects that are around us. So nobody ever
started looking at consciousness from the bottom up. People start
looking at consciousness in the extended consciousness that we have
when we have this sort of literary sense of the
universe together with the science that is a company and
(52:23):
creativity is so central to this. But again it sort
of pushes you up where you have consequences of being conscious,
but where the real operations are no longer in the
domain of consciousness, but rather in the domain of knowledge
and creativity, in the domain of manipulation of knowledge. Now,
(52:44):
of course, you couldn't manipulate that knowledge if you were
not conscious to begin with, if you had not been
so richly conscious that you gave two every little bit
of knowledge that you have in your brain right now,
you gave it the gift of conscious consciousness, which really
(53:08):
means you gave it the possibility of connecting with your life.
That's it. You're conscious, even if you're thinking. You have
just been listening to particular passage of Walls Are or Bach.
Those are so incredibly complex in the way they were
written or in the way they're being performed by a supersoloist,
(53:33):
and that is only available to you if you can
bring down that threat into your body and if you
can connect it to the state of your body. At
that point, that's when consciousness occurred. But of course we
have spent most of our lives thinking about it from
the top at the level of extended consciousness. This is
(53:58):
not even a good name. I told you, I coined it.
So's yeah, I don't like to use extended. It's extended
mine really consciousness.
Speaker 1 (54:10):
Well, I coumptaely agree with what you just said, and
it links to my own work on reduced de latent
inhibition and creativity and creative achievement work I did in
my dissertation where creative people tend to have this reduced
threshold for that pregating mechanism for kind of allowing in
some of that more sensory information and not tagging things
(54:31):
as irrelevant. There's also work that obviously, like people like
Jordan Peterson and Shelley Carson did as well. So I
think that's more of a bottom up approach along the
lines of what you're talking about.
Speaker 3 (54:41):
Right, Yeah, yeah, absolutely, yeah, very good.
Speaker 2 (54:45):
Very good.
Speaker 1 (54:45):
Yes, I got it very good from the famous Antonio Demasia. Yeah,
you know, in another area of creativity that I really
am fascinated with, which I nerd out a lot with
our mutual friend and colleague, Mary helen Imity Yang is
the default mode network, And I'm wondering, I want to
hear your thoughts about the default I just saw your
(55:06):
emotion there on your face there when I said default
mode network. What are your thoughts on that? And it's
linkage to creativity?
Speaker 3 (55:13):
It's too earthy in the wanting for default network.
Speaker 2 (55:18):
I love that.
Speaker 3 (55:22):
I'm still out asleep.
Speaker 2 (55:25):
You don't want to go there?
Speaker 1 (55:26):
Well, it does seem like the default mode network, which
is a network of brain areas in the medial surface
of the prefrontal cortex primarily that seems to support a
lot of different forms of social cognition, imagination, mental time
travel into the future, and as Mary hand Helen imerdo
Yang has talked about it's connection to meaning making and
(55:46):
how that could potentially be connected to creativity. Do you,
personally in your own work, do you do you see
that as a central hub of creativity of the neuroscience
of creativity.
Speaker 3 (55:57):
Assume you see it as a very important component, an
important contributory. I don't know if I would call it
the central hobbit, but something and important. Oh yeah, absolutely, absolutely,
you should talk about it. You know about it.
Speaker 2 (56:14):
I know about it. Well.
Speaker 1 (56:15):
The thing that fascinates me about the defaultal network, and
in relation to our conversation today, is that you can
kind of to be poetic about it when you're jamming
in the space of your default network, when you're improvising,
when you're just in touch with the stream of your mind,
not necessarily consciousness, but the mind, right, the stream of mind.
Speaker 2 (56:38):
Or we William James, you know, called it. You called
it the stream of conscious he called it. You should
have called it the stream of mind.
Speaker 3 (56:42):
I just realized.
Speaker 2 (56:44):
I just realized that.
Speaker 1 (56:45):
But it seems like when we're jamming in the stream
of our mind, great amazing creative things to come out,
you know, when you're doing jazz and provisation, when you're
trying to again the state where you're doing poetry. So
it does seem like consciousness is not conscious can even
get in the way sometimes of creative generation.
Speaker 3 (57:03):
It could. That's that's that's a perfectly perfectly reasonable thought. Yeah, absolutely, yeah, maybe.
Speaker 2 (57:11):
Maybe you.
Speaker 3 (57:14):
It might not be bad at certain points to sort
of separate yourself from that hook, that from from the
fangs of consciousness. Yeah, yeah, yeah, maybe maybe maybe that's
exactly you know, flights of poetic fancy are exactly moments
in which you make that link more tenuous about that.
Speaker 1 (57:39):
Yeah, And obviously we can't stay in that state all
the time twenty four to seven.
Speaker 2 (57:43):
Oh no, no, it wouldn't be good for it.
Speaker 3 (57:45):
No, it wouldn't be See that's another interesting call of it,
because that it would move you away from the The
really life saving consequences of being conscious basically have to
do with the house management, you know, consciousness basically it's
(58:06):
all about keeping keeping the thing going as well as possible.
And then there's the flights of fancy that's in another.
Speaker 2 (58:15):
In another sphere, another sphere.
Speaker 3 (58:19):
Can I have a question where we have to go
very very soon? So can I ask you a question?
Speaker 2 (58:26):
Of course?
Speaker 3 (58:26):
Of course? So are you really interested in ben Psychis?
Speaker 1 (58:33):
I think it's interesting, but I don't. I'm very skeptical.
Speaker 3 (58:39):
Yeah you don't. You don't buy it.
Speaker 2 (58:44):
I'm skeptical of it, but I haven't not bought it yet.
I haven't bought it yet either. I'm still thinking about
whether I should buy it. But yeah, yeah, I'm skeptical.
But some of my closest friends, you know, like Anka
Harris in her own right, she wrote a book and consciousness.
She loves it. She loves it.
Speaker 1 (59:02):
Philip Golf, Philip Golf loves it. He'll tell he was
on my podcast. He was extolling the merits of it.
Speaker 3 (59:07):
You know, I know, I know, I know, I know,
I know. I know that people that are very much
like as people that can think that there's there's nothing
wrong with it other than being wrong. There's nothing wrong
with there's wrong if you fall for it forever.
Speaker 1 (59:29):
Well, I will say, uh, sort of ending here today,
I really do see your the logic of what you've
outlined and why consciousness seems to require the coordinated effort
of these three called them systems in a way, these
three elements of the body that interacting with each other
(59:50):
in very unique ways. And but this this element that
the nervous system is an important part of it does
have deep loications. We never answered the machine question, So
maybe we should end on that one because we had
that threads. That's a thread that's still open. Can we
ever have filling machines? And you have argued in your
book a new generation of filling machines can probably become
efficacious assistance to really feeling humans as hybrids of natural
(01:00:13):
and artificial creatures. No less important. This new generation of
machines would constitute a unique laboratory for the investigation of
human behavior and mind in a variety of actual, realistic settings.
So that's exciting coming down the pipeline. And when we
can start to meld fast computer processors with the nervous
system so we can get the coordinated effort of the
(01:00:34):
elements you talk about in a way that has like
a super duper hyped up processing capability, that could be.
Speaker 2 (01:00:40):
Party some interesting forms of consciousness, right.
Speaker 3 (01:00:43):
And you would have to have some kind of body
aspect to it and others. You will need to mimic
certain properties of a living organism in order to get
to it with any hope of success. Y and right
now we don't have that, but I think it's pertually possible. Yeah,
(01:01:05):
it's possible.
Speaker 1 (01:01:06):
And Tonia, oh my man, thank you so much for
this chat today. It really was delightful to talk to you.
We should keep up the nerdy conversation.
Speaker 3 (01:01:13):
Very good anytime. I enjoyed talking to you.
Speaker 2 (01:01:17):
So much with your book. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 1 (01:01:27):
To this episode of The Psychology Podcast. If you'd like
to react in some way to something you heard, I
encourage you to join in the discussion at thus psychology
podcast dot com. We're on our YouTube page, The Psychology Podcast.
We also put up some videos of some episodes on
our YouTube page as well, so you'll want to check
that out. Thanks for being such a great supporter of
the show, and tune in next time for more on
(01:01:49):
the mind, brain, behavior, and creativity.
Hello, and welcome to the Psychology Podcast. Today's episode is
part of the best of series, where we highlight some
of the most exciting and enthralling and enlightening episodes from
the archives of the Psychology Podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Enjoy.
Speaker 3 (00:13):
That is what consciousness is about. It's about creating the
not disputable fact that I am doing my perceptions and
you are doing your perceptions, and the two channels of operation,
and then the two kinds of operation are of the
same type that they are occurring in different organss.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
Hello and welcome to the Psychology Podcast. Today we welcome
doctor Antonio Dimasio. Doctor Demasio is an internationally recognized neuroscientist
whose extensive research has shaped the understanding of neural systems
and consciousness well over one hundred journal articles and book chapters.
He has earned many prestigious awards throughout his career. Currently,
he serves as university professor, the David Dornzeif Professor of Neuroscience,
(01:05):
Psychology and Philosophy, and Director of the Brain Creativity Institute
at the University of Southern California. His books Descartesera, Looking First,
Minozza Self comes to Mind, the Strange Order of Things
and Feeling and Knowing have been published in translation and
are taught in universities throughout the world. In this stimulating episode,
I talked to Antonio Demasio about consciousness. People often think
(01:28):
that the mind and consciousness are the same thing, but
doctor Demasio disputes this notion. He argues that it's the
complex relationship of both our brains and bodies that makes
sentient thought possible. Homeostatic feelings like hunger and pain developed
before emotions, and along with it came consciousness. We also
touch on the topics of perception, mental illness, evolution, panpsychism,
(01:49):
AI and machine learning. So it's with great enthusiasm that
I now bring you doctor Antonio Demasio. It's nice to
finally meet you. We have some mutual friends in common.
I I'm dear friends with Mary Helen and Maardino yang oh.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
Z very highly of view and it's just yeah, nice to.
Speaker 3 (02:07):
Find means she's having a beautiful career. She was. She
was I think the first person we appointed to the
Brand Creativity Institute. Now seventeen years ago.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
Wow, time really does fly. Wow, that's how long ago
you guys started that. I remember when you started the institute.
Speaker 3 (02:27):
And yeah, that's exactly.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
It very exciting.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
Well, today I definitely want to discuss our mutual interest
in the neuroscience of creativity, but I wanted to start
off today's episode going back all the way back to
nineteen eighty nine. One of my favorite papers of yours
in the journal Cognition called time locked multi regional retroactivation.
Now we're going to have to explain and unpack what
(02:50):
in the world that means to our general audience of listeners.
But the reason why I wanted to double click on
that because I think that was a really seminal paper.
I hope you agree of modern day brain network systems
research on consciousness see that as a really seminal sort
of early ideas. So could you kind of unpack a
little bit what that paper showed.
Speaker 3 (03:09):
So we were interested in the idea that as as
you manipulate knowledge, perceptions of every kind, different considerations that
we make on what we're perceiving, what we are thinking
about based on those perceptions on all of that needs
(03:31):
to be stored in some way, and the storage, in
all likelihood proceeds by the by creating arrangements of memories
of traces of all of those events near the places
in the brain where they are formed to begin with.
(03:54):
So we have a number of portals into our brain
that large we come out of the dominant perceptual systems,
particularly of course the visual and the auditory, which clearly
dominate in most individuals, and then all the other senses
that we know of. And what is interesting is that
(04:17):
those the channeling of information from the sensory probes that
are located in the periphery of our body and also
the periphery of our nervous system and the central part
of the nervous system, they all land in different parts
(04:38):
of the brain, which is of course predictable, because we
have a channel that goes, for example, from our eyes
to a particular region of the cortex, which happens to
be visual context, and then the place where the things
that you're hearing right now, that I'm hearing of my
(05:00):
own voice, they land in another place. And then out
of those hubs where information is being sent to you
have the possibility of creating a sort of encircling where
you have not only the immediate processing of what is
(05:21):
being channel at the moment. In this case, for example,
I'm looking at your face and your bookcase behind you,
you're listening to my voice and probably looking at whatever
I have behind me, and so there's that early sensory processing.
But then all around there are structures that can actually
(05:41):
take a part the information that is coming in and
provide storage for that information, sometimes in a piecemeal form,
sometimes a holistic form. So you have the possibility of
creating memories for what is being processed right now, and then,
(06:04):
depending on how important those things are for your life,
they may stay on as permanent memories and be transformed
or they may be just disposed of in the course
of in the course of life. And then what is
interesting too is that most of the time our perceptions
(06:26):
are not occurring in one modality only. So for example,
right now there is a visual perception that we're both
having an auditory perception, but also lo and behold, we
have the perception quote unquote of what is happening in
our own body. For example, if all of a sudden
you would be you could be feeling hungry or thirsty,
(06:49):
or you could have pain somewhere, that would be perceived
as well, except that that would be arranged in a
different kind of system. There's a cortical component to it too,
as well, but by and large it doesn't happen in
the cortext that the most important part. They happen in
(07:10):
the brain stem. They happen in the spinal cord. So
you can have all of this fabrication of traces of
things that are happening to you, inside your body and
around you. They go to specific points in the nervous system,
not in one. It's very interesting as a parenthesis that
(07:33):
very often people that don't know anything about the brain
or about the mind studied in detail, can perfectly well
believe that all of this is going into one great
big tank, one great big sink, and it's all put together.
But it isn't. It's all separated at birth. It's all
(07:53):
separated and goes into different points, and those different points
where it occurs, they all already are sign of a
convergence of signals, and then from there they can go
to another set of stations where further integration of the
signals is done, and by again the process of convergence
(08:17):
of signaling a little bit of a pyramid going into
a point, and then eventually you can have combinations of
those different pyramids, of those different cooking points and create
something that is much larger that that's the great picture
(08:38):
that I had for the convergence from multiple regions. And
then what is interesting is that eventually you can have
a combination of facts. For example, right now i'm talking
to you, I have my perception review. I know that
(08:58):
i'm talking to you of this particular process, which is
really the process of learning and categorization and memory making.
But I also know that I just talked to my
assistant and we talked about a couple of specific things
that I need to get done as soon as I'm
done talking to you. And I'm also looking at a
(09:23):
page from Corina said. That's the Italian newspaper where there
is a review of my new book. And it's very good,
how it says, it's a lovely title, Body and Feeling
the romance of Damasio.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
I love it. I love it better than that.
Speaker 3 (09:49):
It's done by action, by a major measure Italian biologist. Anyway,
So all of this stuff is being integrated. And what's
interesting is that if next week you call me and
you remind me of this session we're having, I could
(10:10):
perfectly well remember not only parts of this conversation, but
part of what I just told you about that particular
review that happens to be on my desk. So things
have a way of being integrated by the time at
which they're occurring, but also by the happenstance of being
(10:31):
here at the right moment, and so things that are
not linked will be linked because at that time, in
this case, the time and which I am talking to you,
my eyes also fell on that page that was here
on my desk actually just died anyway, So that's what
I had in mind, and it has proven helpful to
(10:54):
explain problems of memory as well as making normal memory,
because we know that when you can damage one part
of this system, you don't lose memory across the board.
You lose certain specific memories and memories of certain kinds,
for example, that may be more related to the visual
(11:15):
system than to another. Anyway, very complicated answer for a
very complicated subject.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
Yeah, it's very complicated paper, you know. But the reason
why I bring this up is because I think it's extraordinary.
It was a theoretical paper and it seems to have
really a modern day work which is really focused on
systems level and brain networks. Is really borne out a
lot of those ideas, if not all of those ideas.
So I think it's kudos to you, kudos to you,
(11:44):
thank you very much. There's a sentence in that paper
that I wanted a link to your more modern work,
and let.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
Me just read this.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
You rate meaning is reached by time locked multi regional
retroactivation of widespread fragment records, say that ten times really quickly,
only the latter records can become contents of consciousness. I
found that a very fascinating two sentences for a number
of reasons. One, there does seem to be something unique
(12:13):
about humans. Areniquly developed about humans in terms of our
meaning making facilities, And I'd love to kind of get
into what is the neuro machinery and psychological process that
allow us to do that, and why turtles can't.
Speaker 2 (12:25):
Do that for instance.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
Second of all that second sentence, only the latter records
can become contents of consciousness. I wonder if you can
unpack that a little bit, because you go through a
lot in your new book on the distinction the crucial
distinction between mind and consciousness.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
And so I'm linking the distinction of.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
Mind and consciousness, which you make so clearly now with
that very complicated sentence that I just read from your
nineteen to eighty nine paper. I hope you're you're okay
with that linkage I made. I think it makes sense
in my head.
Speaker 3 (12:53):
I think it makes it makes pressure sense. And your
let's actually start with the the new things that pertain
to the new book, because that may help unpack the
older sentence and what I'm trying to do. The distinction
(13:15):
between mind and consciousness is critical for a variety of
first buying large people confuse the two. And you know
it says if creatures that are minded, be necessarily conscious,
and the two things will go together and could be interchangeable,
and that's not the case. The same way. Actually, in
(13:36):
our conversation yesterday by email, you mentioned something about your
interests in covert processing in things that are not in
fact in the mind, that I have to do with
it with an intelligence that is capable that is not minded.
(13:58):
And these are all different of this great big thing
that we call our conscious minds, and that include a
lot of our conscious process. So if you take simple creatures,
I wouldn't start with turtles, but I would something even
(14:19):
simple like bacteria or a variety of creatures with only
a few cells and a humiliated cells. Those creatures have
no nervous system to begin with, and yet they are
intelligent and capable within the niche of universe in which
(14:39):
they operate, and they can perfectly well detect certain the
presence or absence of something, which is really a form
of perception quote unquote, not a perception like we have
with detailed imaging exactly. Detecting and sensing are good words
(15:05):
for that, except that very often they connote other things
in the mind of people, and they can add to
the confusion. But anyway, they can detect sense stuff, and
they can with the machinery that they have, respond in
a certain way that is consonant with what they detected. Now,
(15:27):
that is an intelligence thing to do. There's no question
that it is adaptive and intelligent, and it is protecting
them because they may detect something that they need, such
as for example, food the food particle, or they may
detect something that is potentially harmful, and that's good because
it's going to protect their body and to allow them
(15:48):
to live as long as their machinery is meant for
it to live genetically speaking. Now, so that is intelligent,
but not minded and not conscious. Now, when you turn
to what we do at the other end, and what
many other creatures do in between. We have not only
(16:12):
the capacity to detect sense stuff, but then we also
have the capacity to represent what we detect it and
also represent ourselves as victims of the detection. And we
have the capacity to know that all of that relates
(16:34):
to our unique bargains. So these three tiers are very
very important to separate, and unfortunately, in the minds of
most people, this is one great big salad. And what
I'm trying to do if you ask me what is
the most important thing that I think I'm doing right now?
(16:54):
In addition to explaining stuff that I'm passionate about, such
as how you get to have a feeling, is actually
insisting on the separation. So you have a mind when
you are capable of representing something that you detected, and
fortunately for us, we have the capacity to represent tons
(17:16):
of things depending on the different sensory channel we have
help things outside of our bodies and inside of our lives.
Then we have an intelligence provided we are capable of
responding to things that are in our environment but not
necessarily representing it. And then we are conscious when we
(17:41):
connect the thing that we are mindful of with our
own organ is. The beauty of consciousness is that when
you have when you have, for example, I'm looking at you,
I know that it's need looking at you. Why do
I know that? Well, that's exactly the problem of consciousness.
(18:04):
The image that you are helping generate in my brain
is activating a variety of systems that are in my
brain and body, and that connects the tool indolently and
in such a way that I have no doubt that
it's me talking to you, Scott. There's no question. That
(18:28):
is what consciousness is about. It's about creating the not
disputable fact that I am doing my perceptions and you
are doing your perceptions, and the two channels of operation,
and then the two kinds of operation are over the
same type, but they are occurring in different organisms.
Speaker 2 (18:50):
Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
And this is a really unique aspect of your theory
of consciousness, which not everyone in the field has this
definition of consciousness. You know, there's a panpsychism is really
hot right now right the pan psychic people. Can I
say that, the pan psychic people, they wouldn't say it.
You have to have that criteria of the organism being
able to identify it with itself in order for it
(19:12):
to be conscious. And this makes your work very unique
and very influential, that you really are arguing that there's
a very important distinction.
Speaker 2 (19:19):
A lot of people in the field do not make this distinction.
You know, we should make that clear.
Speaker 3 (19:23):
Yeah, absolutely, yeah, And I think that if you don't
make those distinctions, I think you actually end up in
the place that led to pan psychism. I think there
is a very good reason why pan psycheism myth the
moment is popular, and there is an escape people that
(19:46):
have come up against the wall of consciousness and then
talk about such things as the heart problem of the
impossible problem, I really abstract in their view of what
can be, and as a result, almost anything goes. But
pen psyche is helpful because, well, you know, maybe the
(20:11):
reason why you can't explain it easily is because it's
everywhere and something that's not inside us, really something that
we capture from what's around us, which I find first
no evidence for and second no way of testing, no
(20:32):
way of doing an experiment that would cope with that.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
It's like strength theory.
Speaker 2 (20:38):
It's like strength theory and physics.
Speaker 3 (20:40):
But I think it I can understand that I have
sympathy for people that feel cornered and not and not
capable of explaining it. But I am simpathy is one
thing and I'm not in that camp. And there's one
thing let me add because that you know, we really
(21:02):
through your question where we sort of got to the
top of the problem very quickly. But one thing that
is extremely important for me is this. Most of the things,
probably everything that you read about consciousness, all of that
matter about mind, always talks about the brain alone. You know,
(21:27):
people said, we need to find out how the brain
creates consciousness. Excuse me, why just the brain? Why this
insistent insistence on the fact that the nervous system and
the nervous system alone is the creator of these things.
I dispute that I don't think it is. But you
don't need to go to the surround spirits to find it.
(21:52):
It's in your own body. The logical march here is
from creatures that are alives, have bodies, don't have nervous systems,
to creatures that eventually our life have bodies and have
nervous systems. And minds and consciousness are ultimately the product
(22:12):
of a particular relationship between the living organisms body and
the nervous system in that body. It's not that the
nervous system is plucked and putting this inside our bodies
and clear inside our skull and charged with creating minds
and creating consciousness. Not at all. I mean, of course,
(22:35):
you cannot have minds and consciousness without a nervous system.
But the nervous system is there as a partner in
the process that can lead to better life regulation. The
nervous system is a servant of homeostasies the same way
that the body in general is a possessor of homeostatic
(22:56):
operations that will allow that organism, that the living thing,
to continue for a lot of amount of time.
Speaker 1 (23:04):
Well, it sounds like there are implications there for those
who argue we might be able to upload our brain
someday and continue our consciousness. It sounds like you're saying, no,
that's not going to be possible, because the brain is
not only conscious.
Speaker 2 (23:17):
Conscious is not only in the brain, right.
Speaker 3 (23:18):
Exactly, So, the consciousness by when you analyze what it
really means to be conscious, when you come back to
the thought that I advanced for you, which is that
it's about knowing that I am here in my body
(23:40):
in this life and that the things that I have
in my mind, the representations I have, do not belong
somewhere else, do not belong in another or their might.
How do I know that their mind? Well, they know
that their mind because my nervous system is in constant
interaction the organism in which it is located and without
(24:04):
which it could not live.
Speaker 2 (24:06):
Yeah, I totally get it, and I want to.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
I just want to just for people who are not
as cognitive scientists, they're maybe listening to some of our conversation.
There are a lot of technical terms are throwing around, But
one implication I see from one of this as well,
with the upholding of the brain, is that we may
be able to uphold and replicate a mind, but not consciousness. Well,
I mean, maybe might not even be able to do
the mind. But it seems like at the very best,
(24:29):
maybe what we can do is just replicate Scott Berry
Kaufman's mind, but I'm never going to be able to
identify it with the forces. Could be sitting in a
that of zero ones.
Speaker 3 (24:39):
You got it, and you've got it right, And that's
exactly it. And that's of course we don't need to
go there, but that's exactly One of the problems about
official intelligence right now is that you can with our
current capabilities, we can have something like the contents of
your mind in an artificial normally creature. If you're going
(25:02):
to make it conscious, that's another story. And for that,
you know, it's almost an absurdity to think it could
be conscious if it's not living, because the entire thing
of the entire notion of consciousness is right now, you
can have a simile lacra of consciousness. I have no
problem with that. In fact, we have a paper that
(25:24):
probably you may know about. The paper is in Nature
Machine Intelligence on whether on how you make this linkage
between between a robot and a real body with minds
and conscious capabilities, and it is a it's an interesting
thing to discuss.
Speaker 1 (25:46):
That is very interesting, and we are shooting towards the top.
I understand. I totally get we haven't gone through all
the steps yet, and of what is feeling?
Speaker 2 (25:53):
I have a million other.
Speaker 1 (25:54):
Questions that we're supposed to talk about along the way
before we get here. But this is really interesting. So
while we're here for a second, the idea of can
we ever make feeling machines? Since since we're kind of
talking about that right now, I would like to link
that to the idea of why is feeling so essential
to consciousness in your model, and how do you even
define feeling?
Speaker 2 (26:14):
And then and then why not let's have fun. Let's
link that to.
Speaker 1 (26:16):
Whether or not we'll be able to create feeling machines
as an implication of that.
Speaker 3 (26:20):
Okay, very good. Well, so, just a little teaching point
for people that are sort of cutting a little of
these terms like feeling and emotion. Very often, when people
think feeling or hear the words feeling, they immediately portray
(26:41):
an emotion, and of course that's the beginning of disaster
because the two things are in fact associated one all
the time, but plenty plenty of the time they're not.
So we could start by saying this, what came first,
feelings or emotions, And in all likelihood feelings did, because
(27:03):
feelings are in fact mental expressions of certain states of
the organism to begin with, and to begin with that
to add with, because when you have an emotional feeling,
you are also dealing with a state of your organisms.
But let's start with feelings the way they likely began
(27:26):
in the history of life, and the feelings that must
have been. The first were what I call homeostatic feelings,
and they occurred in creatures with nervous systems. That's very
important to realize. And by the way, on once you
remember the strong link that I have between feelings and consciousness,
(27:48):
you again to have this link between feeling and consciousness
and nervous systems, you know, it doesn't make any sense
to talk about it. If they're no nervous systems, they
don't need any feelings if you systems anyway, So what feeling.
There's anesthetic feelings first to give in an organism that
(28:09):
is multi sealuble and has the systems, is a sense
actually a mental representation of something important that is happening
in that body, such as, for example, being hungry or
being thirsty, or having pain or feeling damn good. Those
(28:30):
are the fundamental aesthetic feelings. Desire is too, but if
we don't need to go there to earning them, monitor
the desire.
Speaker 1 (28:39):
It's Valentine's Day today, Well, hold on, hold on, we're
talking today Valentine's Day, folks, even though we're going to
release this later, just so people know.
Speaker 3 (28:48):
Okay, So, what what is Hider telling you? You and
only you? It's telling you that there's a good time
to have energy brought into your body, and that's unlacking.
And if you're thirsty, it's telling you something. And by
the way, totally conscious right there. And then that's great
(29:11):
consciousness first emergence. It's telling you in no uncertain terms,
this is lacking. You need this, And of course it's
not telling you in so many words. Doesn't use words.
It does use the language of feeling with its spontaneous, natural,
occurring consciousness. And that's why I like to say that
(29:34):
feelings were the inaugural events of consciousness one fine day,
after lots of variations on the theme of organism regulation,
this magic motion occurred within living organisms with nervous systems,
(29:55):
and that was feeling, and it is so successful. It
is so good telling you immediately drink, eat, recoil from
an attack, do something because you're having pain and it's
probably going to kill you, do something to prevent it
or avoid it, or go to the doctor. All of
(30:18):
those things were extremely informational. They were giving you therein
then useful information to maintain your life. There's no way
you could have proceeded life in a complicated organism with
multice nervous system if you did not have that information.
In other words, you went rapidly from five hundred million
(30:42):
years ago. You went rapidly from having organisms that, unless
they were lucky, they would die to organisms that even
if they were not like lucky, they had enough information
to do something useful about that life and to read
use the risk of death. And this makes perfect sense
(31:04):
from an evolutionary perspective, and that's where I think consciousness
began at the level of feeling. Now, because you wanted
me to say things about feeling for your listeners, then
I will also say that the confusion with emotion is
a problem because what developed in living creatures as emotions,
(31:28):
which don't develop with humans developed before and of course
are theatricals. There are certain kinds of expression that you
can have in the body and in the face once
you have a face that is manipulable with different muscle groups.
It's certain kinds of expressions that register something that is
(31:52):
happening to you, something that is in the environment, some
reaction that you have to others. Examples feeling an emotion
of fear when you are recoiling from something that potentially
may attack and which is accompanied by a feeling of fear.
(32:15):
So this is where things get extremely complicated and people
really need to think a little bit, because then it's
clear as daylight. When you are having the emotion fear,
your eyes bulge, you pull back and blow and behold,
your body changed. And because your body changed, those changes
(32:40):
are what produced the feeling of fear. But the emotion
itself is a set of actions. By the way, the
word emotion etemologically it's perfect. It's about the Latin air modery.
It's to move to the outside. You have its an
actor studio. You know, you're just doing things. And by
(33:02):
the way, if you have anger, the same thing. You know,
it's a different sort of theatricals. But it's again represented
in your body. And if you are terribly if you
want to seduce somebody, you also do the corresponding theatricals.
Then they also are felt because they are represented internally
(33:27):
with your nervous system, and they can end up being
a feeling, which is subjective. Emotions by themselves are not subjective.
Emotions by themselves are directed to the outside.
Speaker 1 (33:39):
Yeah, so that's something I'm trying to understand about. In
terms of the chicken and egg thing, here and the
way you described it, it was like emotions come first
and then it influences your feelings. But you had said
prior that through the course of human evolution, feelings probably
came first, exactly.
Speaker 3 (33:54):
So that's where you need to distinguish between the horty
aesthetic and the emotional in a proper set. So the
things that came first were the homeostatic feelings, and probably
the creatures that had homostatic feelings, if I would have
to guess, and I wouldn't bet anything on it, but
(34:16):
if I would have to guess, they did not have emotions.
They had feelings because they were having representations, mental representations
of the state of the body, their bodies, and that
was the critical issue here. That's why this has a logic,
which is the logic of life and the logic of
survival that came first because it was so important for
(34:41):
that organism. When you start having emotions, it's at a
point in which you have already some complex interactions with
other beings, and those other beings can cross you and
you get angry, or they can do something, or the
environment can do something that threatened zoo and you get
(35:01):
fear and so forth. So it's a different stage, and
it's actually more It reflects a greater complexity of the organism,
although in the end they don't need to be more
complex as phenomena, but they're reflecting something else. But all
of this can end up felt, and felt simply means
(35:27):
that you automatically know it's in you, it's in your organism,
and that also means that you are automatically conscious. The
two things have to go together.
Speaker 1 (35:38):
I hear what you're saying. I'm just trying to think
this through my own personal life, because my gosh, you're right.
We are such social humans, you know, the humans are
such social beings, I should say, And there is a
performative aspect to emotions, which I'm now thinking in my head, like,
am I ever when I'm just having like an imagination
of things? Do I ever recoil in fear in the
same way physically on the outside, I would look like
(36:00):
if I was with another person and we were both
recounting the experience. I'm trying to do the experiment in
my head to verify what you're saying scientifically, and it's yeah,
you're you're right. I never really thought about that really, Yeah,
so we may have feelings when we're lost in our
own thoughts and when we're in touch with our.
Speaker 2 (36:19):
Own organism, so to speak.
Speaker 1 (36:21):
But there is something about emotions that is it seems
like deeply social and yeah, it's fascinating.
Speaker 3 (36:28):
You're right, Oh, I think it's absolutely social. And I
think that you know, it's part of for example, you,
as you are communicating with me, your face has been
animated now several times by for example, a smile. True,
(36:50):
you smile when you were wondering what I was saying,
is probably right, and you smile in consonants. But that
is I don't think it's theatricals in the sense that
it was totally delibrated by you. It's probably part of
your repertoire emotional of emotional phenomenon when you communicate with others,
(37:15):
because you have been doing it all your life, if
you have adjusted yourself to the same spe all sorts
of things that would be of that kind, or for example,
the way your face is on a couple of times
already manifested doubt in relation to what I was saying. Oh,
being puzzled, but puzzled in a way that was probably
(37:39):
not positive, which is perfectly fine, But you will register
or what you're doing right now, you know which you are.
You know the fact that I said, it's perfectly fine,
you reacted with laughter and quite behind exactly. But but
but that is it's all. It's part of the interaction.
(38:00):
You're doing it along with me in this social interaction.
And this has very little to do with being hungry
or being thirsty or being in pain. You know, those
are different things. Those are spontaneously occurring in relation to
(38:22):
what your nervous system is getting in an interaction with
its own body, or I like to say the opposite,
it's the organism's own nervous system, because that's the way
that that's the way it is, and it is it's
completely different. But by the way, one thing so that
(38:43):
in case we end up because this is so interesting
and we're doing in so many directions, so that I
don't forget there's something fundamentally different about the perception of
our body by our nervous system and the perception of
the outside world. So for example, right now I'm perceiving you,
(39:04):
and I can look out and perceive the you know,
the cinemonic amounts. There's no way that the I can
go interactively with the cineamonic amount montas only with you,
that's the level of the perceptual object. But with my
body that happens. So if my body sends a signal
(39:28):
from one particular point, say, for example, I'm actually I'm
having pain in an act. Sorry to say, you're not
opinion anyway, And that's because I was moving books yesterday
and the day before and one of the times I
carried too many books in one go and I twisted
(39:51):
muscles and I have a pain. But it's interesting is
that there's there's signals that are coming from the muscles,
that the muscle fibers that have been disrupted and fromly torn,
and they are going into the spinal cording in this
case the brainstead and then the central nervous system un
(40:16):
all the way up to the to the context, although
in many cases don't need to, Okay, well, it's interesting
is that the signals come in and literally ascend in
the nervous system. But the nervous system as the possible
needed to respond to the origin of the perception. So
(40:37):
we have a cross stock between our body, it's non
neural components and the nervous system. The non neural components
of the body talk to the nervous system. The nervous
system talks back one thing that it does that you
experience constantly, as to do with pain or as to
(41:01):
do with itch. For example, if you have an itch
in your skin, skin is dry, itchy, Well, it's itchy
for a bit. You can scratch it a bit and
we'll go. But then we'll come back. But then after
a while, even if you don't do anything about it,
it will go, and it will go because the simple
never system is sending signals back to that place, doing
(41:24):
at the local level chemical corrections of the environment so
that the thing gets suggested. So it's never the case
that you have a body here and a nervous system here,
like I have my brain here and you on the screen.
There's no way that screen and you are going to
(41:47):
do anything to my nervous system directly, whereas in the
case of interception that happens all the time. So that's
another fundamental way, which by the way, has been completely
neglected by anybody that is doing theory on consciousness. With
extremely rare exceptions, there's no way that you can understand
(42:11):
this phenomenon without achnowledgy interception. That is the perception of
the interior quote unquote is different in its design, in
its operation, from the perception of the outside work. Is
that two things that are computed different. Now, of course,
in our in our high functioning minds and brains, it
(42:33):
all works together very well. Yes, they are different, and
that's those those differences that give you an entry into
problems like consciousness and that you can explore and exploit
to your advantage for sure.
Speaker 1 (42:50):
I mean, if you're a psychopath, you know you can.
Absolutely there's a real huge distinction between feelings and emotions,
and if you're an actor, there's a huge distinction. But
it seems like in most people's everyday lives there's a
great feedback between the two that makes it more genuine,
so to speak. In my view, there seems to be
something different between the way I'm responding to you socially today,
(43:10):
an actor would respond to you because I am feeling
things that are correlated at a p less than point
zero five level with the expression on my face. So
it's not completely random, you know what.
Speaker 3 (43:23):
Absolutely, I totally agree with you. Yeah, And the connection
to acting is only useful to give to bring home
the point that certain things can be fabricated as a
level of actions, because they have to begin with actions.
(43:44):
And of course, what we call a great actor is
someone that can do those expressions so well that it
looks spontaneously real as opposed to being fabricated by technique.
Speaker 1 (44:00):
You know what, I would even go one step further
and say, probably the best actors are those that have
a really good congruence between a fabricated emotion and then
the genuine experience that.
Speaker 3 (44:10):
I totally agreat and I think and that actually speaks
to the distinctions for example, actor studio actors and non
extra studio actors have that kind of difference.
Speaker 2 (44:23):
They're good.
Speaker 1 (44:24):
It's such a talent, it's so amazing. I mean, I
obviously can you learn that, but I do think there's
a certain talent component in there as well. And that's
a fascinating question, is what is that talent component?
Speaker 2 (44:33):
You know, it makes you good to that.
Speaker 1 (44:35):
I love thinking about the aberrations or the outliers to
lots of this.
Speaker 2 (44:39):
Kind of stuff.
Speaker 1 (44:40):
You know, we started thinking about things like schizophrenia, you know,
and the way that those that mind is the different
connection altered brain network connections.
Speaker 2 (44:50):
In people's schizophrenia.
Speaker 1 (44:51):
Would you say that when they're having a psychotic episode
that they're not Let's say they're having a disassociative episode
where they're not identifying their contents of their mind with themselves.
Would you argue that in those states, schizophrenic patients are
not conscious?
Speaker 2 (45:10):
Are your definition?
Speaker 3 (45:12):
Oh no, no, no, no, I never never argue that. No.
I think they are conscious because there is a there's
something Scott's said, something that I want to tell you
because you're interested in this and also to your listeners.
There's something very beautiful about feelings, whatever they are. There
(45:33):
is the continuity. Amnisthetic feelings have a continuity. That's something
that you know. While against somebody said, oh, so you
talk about the amnisthetic feelings and you say that anisthetic
feelings are the reason why you are conscious, and that
you require them to be conscious spontaneously. And so but
(45:54):
since I'm not hungry all the time, and I'm not
harmy all the time, and I'm not at first the
all the time, and then what happens that when I
become unconscious between my hunger and thirst episodes, and I said, no,
you're you're you're constantly feeling. You have this continuous feeling
of being alive. I've called it several times, a feeling
(46:16):
of existence, the feeling of being alive. It's if you
if you meditate a little bit, but if you just
be quiet, you real you realize that there's something hummy
in you, which is being alive, and which, by the way,
if you would not be alive, which you would not
notice it. Do you know that for sure?
Speaker 2 (46:38):
Are you sure?
Speaker 1 (46:39):
Do we know that for sure?
Speaker 3 (46:42):
No? I don't don't.
Speaker 2 (46:43):
I don't matter.
Speaker 3 (46:45):
I don't know that for sure. I suspect strongly anyway.
So this feeling of continuity is extremely important. So when
when you I have to tell you that I've not
I've thought about feelings in psychiatric conditions on purpose sort
of avoided thinking about feelings in schizophrenia that I've thought
(47:09):
about them in diversion, for example. And I think there's
always a continuity, a feeling of existence. It's there, and
it's humming along because you are in this interaction between
the nervous system and the and the body. So it's inevitable.
So you could say that the other feelings, the feelings
(47:33):
of anger, of thirst, and so forth, a sort of
if you plot it as a running graph, are things
that come the crest on top of that hamming up
and down. Feeling is constantly there on your monitor as
the feeling of life, the feeling of existence.
Speaker 1 (47:52):
But as I understand your theory, feeling is a necessary
but not sufficient condition for consciousness. In order for conscious
to occur, there needs to be this real coordinated operation
of being, feeling and knowing, And it does seem like
concerned schizophract patients, the knowing part is not there. So
that's why I ask you the very point of question.
According to your definition, it seems like you would say
(48:13):
that they're not conscious even though they're feeling.
Speaker 3 (48:16):
No. But I think that the way in which you're
taking that combination being feeling and knowing is not as
literal as that. So, of course, what are the conditions
you have to have a living organism. You have to
have an organism that has a nervous system. You have
the possibility of interactions of the nervous system and the
(48:37):
rest of the body, and then you have the sort
of bubbling bubbling up a sense, which is a feeling
that there is life sticking in there. The knowing very
(49:00):
interesting question do you need to be in addition to
it being there spontaneously. No question is asked, do we
need to have a reflection on I don't think so.
And I think that what is failing in schizophrenia is
that's the level of a reflection on what is happening
in that organism?
Speaker 2 (49:21):
Is that be a ten?
Speaker 3 (49:23):
Yeah, So the question the spontaneous feeling of existence is
still there. It doesn't go away, but it's quite interesting.
Speaker 2 (49:37):
Yeah, I'm not letting go.
Speaker 1 (49:39):
I'm not letting this go because it is very interesting.
It brings raises a lot of interesting questions I asked
associative episodes.
Speaker 3 (49:45):
I'm going to I'm going to think very carefully about
your question of schizophrenia, and I will send you an answer.
Speaker 2 (49:54):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (49:54):
I really truly appreciate that this is this is what
a good scholarly conversation is about. So we're model that
right now. So wonderful, beautiful. Let's talk about creativity a
little bit. You know, it's a topic we both love,
uh and the neuroscience of creativity. I know you're very
interested in complex emotions, things like the bitter sweet. You know,
my friend Susan Kane just wrote a whole book about
(50:15):
this emotion bitter sweet. But I know that you're really
interested in mixed valence emotions, and I'm I'm absolutely namored
with that as well. What's the role of these kinds
of mixed emotions and in helping us have more complex
cognitive prostis like creativity and meaning making.
Speaker 3 (50:30):
M Yeah, everything's fair, the it goes in the mix.
You know, creativity is such an extraordinary shield to look at.
I think that depending on you see, it all depends
(50:51):
on what you're working on, if you're if you're writing
literary sentences, or if you're making, uh, if you're reading
a painting or a sculpture. They're very different, different levels
of operation, different complexities, and they all take they all
(51:14):
exploit this amazing high level of consciousness that we have
gotten to, which, by the way, is one of the
reasons why people are so confused about consciousness and why
it is so difficult to bring them down to the
simple fact that feelings us containeous events in consciousness, because
(51:37):
most of what people have been thinking and reading about creativity,
about sorry about consciousness, has pulled them up and has
taken them to not only high level consciousness, but to
the consequences of high level consciousness in the form of
(51:58):
the creative objects that are around us. So nobody ever
started looking at consciousness from the bottom up. People start
looking at consciousness in the extended consciousness that we have
when we have this sort of literary sense of the
universe together with the science that is a company and
(52:23):
creativity is so central to this. But again it sort
of pushes you up where you have consequences of being conscious,
but where the real operations are no longer in the
domain of consciousness, but rather in the domain of knowledge
and creativity, in the domain of manipulation of knowledge. Now,
(52:44):
of course, you couldn't manipulate that knowledge if you were
not conscious to begin with, if you had not been
so richly conscious that you gave two every little bit
of knowledge that you have in your brain right now,
you gave it the gift of conscious consciousness, which really
(53:08):
means you gave it the possibility of connecting with your life.
That's it. You're conscious, even if you're thinking. You have
just been listening to particular passage of Walls Are or Bach.
Those are so incredibly complex in the way they were
written or in the way they're being performed by a supersoloist,
(53:33):
and that is only available to you if you can
bring down that threat into your body and if you
can connect it to the state of your body. At
that point, that's when consciousness occurred. But of course we
have spent most of our lives thinking about it from
the top at the level of extended consciousness. This is
(53:58):
not even a good name. I told you, I coined it.
So's yeah, I don't like to use extended. It's extended
mine really consciousness.
Speaker 1 (54:10):
Well, I coumptaely agree with what you just said, and
it links to my own work on reduced de latent
inhibition and creativity and creative achievement work I did in
my dissertation where creative people tend to have this reduced
threshold for that pregating mechanism for kind of allowing in
some of that more sensory information and not tagging things
(54:31):
as irrelevant. There's also work that obviously, like people like
Jordan Peterson and Shelley Carson did as well. So I
think that's more of a bottom up approach along the
lines of what you're talking about.
Speaker 3 (54:41):
Right, Yeah, yeah, absolutely, yeah, very good.
Speaker 2 (54:45):
Very good.
Speaker 1 (54:45):
Yes, I got it very good from the famous Antonio Demasia. Yeah,
you know, in another area of creativity that I really
am fascinated with, which I nerd out a lot with
our mutual friend and colleague, Mary helen Imity Yang is
the default mode network, And I'm wondering, I want to
hear your thoughts about the default I just saw your
(55:06):
emotion there on your face there when I said default
mode network. What are your thoughts on that? And it's
linkage to creativity?
Speaker 3 (55:13):
It's too earthy in the wanting for default network.
Speaker 2 (55:18):
I love that.
Speaker 3 (55:22):
I'm still out asleep.
Speaker 2 (55:25):
You don't want to go there?
Speaker 1 (55:26):
Well, it does seem like the default mode network, which
is a network of brain areas in the medial surface
of the prefrontal cortex primarily that seems to support a
lot of different forms of social cognition, imagination, mental time
travel into the future, and as Mary hand Helen imerdo
Yang has talked about it's connection to meaning making and
(55:46):
how that could potentially be connected to creativity. Do you,
personally in your own work, do you do you see
that as a central hub of creativity of the neuroscience
of creativity.
Speaker 3 (55:57):
Assume you see it as a very important component, an
important contributory. I don't know if I would call it
the central hobbit, but something and important. Oh yeah, absolutely, absolutely,
you should talk about it. You know about it.
Speaker 2 (56:14):
I know about it. Well.
Speaker 1 (56:15):
The thing that fascinates me about the defaultal network, and
in relation to our conversation today, is that you can
kind of to be poetic about it when you're jamming
in the space of your default network, when you're improvising,
when you're just in touch with the stream of your mind,
not necessarily consciousness, but the mind, right, the stream of mind.
Speaker 2 (56:38):
Or we William James, you know, called it. You called
it the stream of conscious he called it. You should
have called it the stream of mind.
Speaker 3 (56:42):
I just realized.
Speaker 2 (56:44):
I just realized that.
Speaker 1 (56:45):
But it seems like when we're jamming in the stream
of our mind, great amazing creative things to come out,
you know, when you're doing jazz and provisation, when you're
trying to again the state where you're doing poetry. So
it does seem like consciousness is not conscious can even
get in the way sometimes of creative generation.
Speaker 3 (57:03):
It could. That's that's that's a perfectly perfectly reasonable thought. Yeah, absolutely, yeah, maybe.
Speaker 2 (57:11):
Maybe you.
Speaker 3 (57:14):
It might not be bad at certain points to sort
of separate yourself from that hook, that from from the
fangs of consciousness. Yeah, yeah, yeah, maybe maybe maybe that's
exactly you know, flights of poetic fancy are exactly moments
in which you make that link more tenuous about that.
Speaker 1 (57:39):
Yeah, And obviously we can't stay in that state all
the time twenty four to seven.
Speaker 2 (57:43):
Oh no, no, it wouldn't be good for it.
Speaker 3 (57:45):
No, it wouldn't be See that's another interesting call of it,
because that it would move you away from the The
really life saving consequences of being conscious basically have to
do with the house management, you know, consciousness basically it's
(58:06):
all about keeping keeping the thing going as well as possible.
And then there's the flights of fancy that's in another.
Speaker 2 (58:15):
In another sphere, another sphere.
Speaker 3 (58:19):
Can I have a question where we have to go
very very soon? So can I ask you a question?
Speaker 2 (58:26):
Of course?
Speaker 3 (58:26):
Of course? So are you really interested in ben Psychis?
Speaker 1 (58:33):
I think it's interesting, but I don't. I'm very skeptical.
Speaker 3 (58:39):
Yeah you don't. You don't buy it.
Speaker 2 (58:44):
I'm skeptical of it, but I haven't not bought it yet.
I haven't bought it yet either. I'm still thinking about
whether I should buy it. But yeah, yeah, I'm skeptical.
But some of my closest friends, you know, like Anka
Harris in her own right, she wrote a book and consciousness.
She loves it. She loves it.
Speaker 1 (59:02):
Philip Golf, Philip Golf loves it. He'll tell he was
on my podcast. He was extolling the merits of it.
Speaker 3 (59:07):
You know, I know, I know, I know, I know,
I know. I know that people that are very much
like as people that can think that there's there's nothing
wrong with it other than being wrong. There's nothing wrong
with there's wrong if you fall for it forever.
Speaker 1 (59:29):
Well, I will say, uh, sort of ending here today,
I really do see your the logic of what you've
outlined and why consciousness seems to require the coordinated effort
of these three called them systems in a way, these
three elements of the body that interacting with each other
(59:50):
in very unique ways. And but this this element that
the nervous system is an important part of it does
have deep loications. We never answered the machine question, So
maybe we should end on that one because we had
that threads. That's a thread that's still open. Can we
ever have filling machines? And you have argued in your
book a new generation of filling machines can probably become
efficacious assistance to really feeling humans as hybrids of natural
(01:00:13):
and artificial creatures. No less important. This new generation of
machines would constitute a unique laboratory for the investigation of
human behavior and mind in a variety of actual, realistic settings.
So that's exciting coming down the pipeline. And when we
can start to meld fast computer processors with the nervous
system so we can get the coordinated effort of the
(01:00:34):
elements you talk about in a way that has like
a super duper hyped up processing capability, that could be.
Speaker 2 (01:00:40):
Party some interesting forms of consciousness, right.
Speaker 3 (01:00:43):
And you would have to have some kind of body
aspect to it and others. You will need to mimic
certain properties of a living organism in order to get
to it with any hope of success. Y and right
now we don't have that, but I think it's pertually possible. Yeah,
(01:01:05):
it's possible.
Speaker 1 (01:01:06):
And Tonia, oh my man, thank you so much for
this chat today. It really was delightful to talk to you.
We should keep up the nerdy conversation.
Speaker 3 (01:01:13):
Very good anytime. I enjoyed talking to you.
Speaker 2 (01:01:17):
So much with your book. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 1 (01:01:27):
To this episode of The Psychology Podcast. If you'd like
to react in some way to something you heard, I
encourage you to join in the discussion at thus psychology
podcast dot com. We're on our YouTube page, The Psychology Podcast.
We also put up some videos of some episodes on
our YouTube page as well, so you'll want to check
that out. Thanks for being such a great supporter of
the show, and tune in next time for more on
(01:01:49):
the mind, brain, behavior, and creativity.
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