Christof Koch - Must the Universe Contain Consciousness?

christoph the the idea of fine tuning where the universe is just perfectly made seemingly for human beings for conscious to to exist is a very controversial one among scientists and how religionists use it looking at it from the standpoint of consciousness as you look at our universe did consciousness have to happen i don't think there's any logical necessity for consciousness to have happened however i think it was statistically very likely if my way of thinking about consciousness is correct i link consciousness to complexity to certain types of complexity brain any network and any system that has a certain type of complexity that needs to be mathematically defined and has been mathematically defined we will will have conscious we'll have experience we'll have some measure some modicum of consciousness if it's a small network like a bees network it will have little if it's a human brain it might have an enorm enormous amount of conscious sensation the evidence seems to suggest to me as a physicist that we do live in a universe that seems to be certainly conducive to life conducive to you know planets that live for a long time in a capital zone there's you know evolution by natural selection that inexorably seems to breed complexity complex organisms we can see it in the evolutionary record and then if complexity breeds con is identical or gives rise to consciousness then you sort of you have the statistically likelihood that somewhere conscious beings will have evolved first they just have an inkling of of course they have some conscious sensation probably body centered conscious sensation or pain and pleasure and nausea later on it becomes more sophisticated at some point consciousness begins to reflect upon itself because the brain becomes so hypertrophied and so then you get self-consciousness that we spend a lot of time on that we obsess about ours ourselves most other animals don't um don't do that and i think this uh this evolution can go on at some point it can go on to on on to our descendant onto computers and at some point you can imagine there's some sort of global planetary white consciousness as imagined for instance by taylor de charding okay well this is a grand vision to say the least but it seems to be there are two critical nodal points in in this uh this grand vision the first is that as the universe evolves from the big bang complexity emerges in the universe and increases and increases uh even though the second law of thermodynamics goes to disorder there are clumps of increasing uh complexity because it draws uh energy from other people but we see that in the universe i think that's a given that's a fact why that occurs maybe it's a different story but the fact that that occurs is is is a given the second piece which you're postulating i think is that if you have complexity then you will have consciousness to me that's a lot less clear yeah so at this point that's a theory i think it's the most promising theory we have of consciousness yeah but it says um it makes specific predictions that you can measure this is not mere psycho metaphysics this actually makes some testable claims about for example which what type of complexity you need is any type of complexity enough is it just enough neurons most certainly not okay the neurons have to be heavily networked in a particular way but not just randomly there has to be certain structures a certain structured network give rise to much more complexity of this ilk called integrated information after the the person who originated this idea giulio tanoni and so you can make some measurable prediction with the theory but fundamentally does say that certain types of complex system will have experiences query them being highly networked and having this complexity and if they have that it will surely have consciousness one is it is this is fully determined it is the same thing it is the same thing it's just a different way one is the view from inside the head it is the light inside the head this is the voice inside your skull it's liquidity it's the only way you will ever know about anything it's experience and it arises so it's identical with it's it's it's uh it arises from this particular substrate you have some system we have some neurons and nodes and transistors or whatever that fire they don't fire and they give rise to conscious uh to conscious sensation yeah and it's uh it's an absolute it's it's two ways of looking at the same thing so yes you can't say one is causing the other one is the other well they're not the same because my underlying brain is not the same as my conscious state right now i'm in conscious state i hear you or hear my own voice i'm conscious sort of somewhat of of the space we're in right that is not the same as my brain that gives rise to it they're closely related if i change this brain my consciousness will change but they're not one and the same okay so what what is the statistical probability that this would have occurred in this universe order of magnitude i mean that is identical to the order of magnitude that complex entities will have evolved and i don't know what that is it seems to be at least on our planet it's it seems to have happened and of course we can speculate how likely is it on other planets okay but i think it's very likely given the large number of planets we now know that associated with a large number of a large number of galaxies you have the same kinds of complexity but it's not it's not it's not just general complexity because you could say that the sun is complex yes it has to be this integrated type of of complexity it's not just hugely not it's not numbers of differentiated states because by that measure a hard disk with 16 gigabyte would would be conscious has to be integrated complexly where all these individual parts are connected together in very specific ways that give rise to to this thing called integrated information but whenever you have such things and they could be crystals on a planet where you know that's barely above zero but you have you know your superconductivity flowing and you have now these crystals that interact albeit at a very slower time scale could be other could be some other beings that live in you know the corona of the sun as long as they have this integrated complexity they will have conscious states they will have experiences it will mean something to be them it feels like something to be them and this is built into the fabric of the universe the universe that's just the cosmos we find ourselves in you surprised by that i find it wonderful i find it i find it an incredible ecstatic uplifting vision

Channel: Closer To Truth

Views: 23,452

Keywords: closer to truth, robert lawrence kuhn

Id: lBrlPy0b97Y

Length: 6min 2sec (362 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 08 2021