#927 - Annaka Harris - Unpacking The Mystery Of Consciousness

Modern Wisdom

Chris Williamson

Society & Culture, Health & Fitness

4.7 • 4.6K Ratings

🗓️ 12 April 2025

⏱️ 68 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Annaka Harris is an author, editor, and speaker focused on neuroscience and consciousness. What does it mean to be conscious? What is consciousness? These questions have puzzled humanity for millennia. Despite our greatest scientific breakthroughs and philosophical efforts, are we any closer to understanding the origins and true nature of consciousness? Expect to learn the most unsettling idea about consciousness that keeps Annaka up at night, if consciousness is behind our eyes, if love is a 3-dimensional construct, if consciousness is just a malfunction of the brain, rather than an essential feature, if AI is conscious or not, if neuroscience has been useful in unraveling the deep questions of consciousness, the illusions that dominate our brains, If we are living in a world where 99% of people are philosophical zombies and we just don’t know and much more… Sponsors: See discounts for all the products I use and recommend: https://chriswillx.com/deals Get a 20% discount on Nomatic’s amazing luggage at https://nomatic.com/modernwisdom Sign up for a one-dollar-per-month trial period from Shopify at https://shopify.com/modernwisdom Find Kettle & Fire Maui Nui Venison Bone Broth at Whole Foods stores nationwide. Extra Stuff: Get my free reading list of 100 books to read before you die: https://chriswillx.com/books Try my productivity energy drink Neutonic: https://neutonic.com/modernwisdom Episodes You Might Enjoy: #577 - David Goggins - This Is How To Master Your Life: https://tinyurl.com/43hv6y59 #712 - Dr Jordan Peterson - How To Destroy Your Negative Beliefs: https://tinyurl.com/2rtz7avf #700 - Dr Andrew Huberman - The Secret Tools To Hack Your Brain: https://tinyurl.com/3ccn5vkp - Get In Touch: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/modernwisdompodcast Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact - Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	What do you think is the most unsettling idea about consciousness that keeps you up at night?
0:06.9	Hmm. I wouldn't call it unsettling. I would call it exciting and mysterious and I'm a bit obsessed,
0:18.9	thinking about how it is that all of this non-conscious matter in the
0:26.9	universe, this universe that is apparently made of all this non-conscious matter, in some
0:31.8	instances, gets configured in such a way that there's an experience of being that matter from the inside and how
0:40.6	that process takes place, how it could be, let me go back, so what it's like actually to jump on
0:51.6	that spectrum.
0:52.4	So clearly, there's a range of conscious experiences that
0:55.7	a living being or system can have. Some very, very minimal experiences. Maybe, you know, if
1:01.8	snails are conscious, there's very minimal experience of being a snail, maybe pressure,
1:07.6	a sense of heat and cold, maybe some very rudimentary experience of hunger,
1:14.6	desire to move toward food, that type of thing, then all the way up to human beings and all
1:19.3	the things that we experience.
1:21.3	But the question for me and the thing that does keep me up at night is what is that transition from no consciousness
1:31.0	to consciousness? And how is that anything but a completely unexplained mystery? There doesn't
1:39.4	seem to be anything. I've worked with neuroscientists for more than 20 years now and studied the science
1:45.3	of consciousness and, you know, we have not made any progress in the sciences and understanding
1:50.9	how consciousness comes to be. That was a long answer to your question.
1:57.1	Why is that the case? Why has it been such a dead end?
2:01.4	I think it's a categorically different thing than anything else science has studied before.
2:08.3	And actually, Philip Goff has a wonderful book that explains this very well called Galileo's Error.
2:14.4	And it is because we have these fantastic tools in science for studying behavior from the outside.
	...

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