Understanding Consciousness

In this episode, I talk about how Karl Friston's research shines some light on how to learn better.

In the first half of this episode I discuss about what I learnt from Karl Friston's videos on youtube, namely, the predictive coding and Markov blanket. In the second half of the episode I discuss the inner world of consciousness and how metaphors are a powerful way to gain some interesting insights about the mind.

Trying to understand the free energy principle is the crucial next step in trying to make sense of the theories about consciousness. Link to research paper: https://www.fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk/~karl/The%20free-energy%20principle%20A%20unified%20brain%20theory.pdf Link to my video on Entropy and Maxwell's demon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ScnelNSyKm4

Donald Hoffman's research has grabbed our attention and our most cherished views of reality are under doubt.

How do you find the next steps when the last effort failed?

We go through Bayes Theorem of Probability and try to see how the brain uses actions to learn better. Research Paper: https://doi.org/10.1093/nc/niz012

We understand the context of the new paper which is a study of how the brain acts as a scientist, trying new hypothesis on reality.

What is the concept of free energy and what does it tell about the nature of mind?

We go through the conclusion of the paper and find some interesting implications about the nature of voluntary and involuntary actions

We go through the experimental setup, what it takes to ensure good, clean, sparkly data, and realise some harsh reality about the nature of finding truth. You can read and download the paper here: https://doi.org/10.1093/nc/niy013

We take a step back to notice other happenings in the consciousness research space. I talk about the latest Very bad wizards episode on split brain experiments, and about David Eagleman's research on the sensory substitution vest, and how it can help us understand some aspects of perception.

We dive into the experimental setup of the research paper, and are moderately fascinated by it. You can read and download the paper here: https://doi.org/10.1093/nc/niy013

We change the name of our podcast to better reflect the material discussed. And we start with a brand new research paper that handles sensory perception and prediction

We talk about the final characteristic for distinguishing altered states to normal waking state, which is 'experience of unity of time and self'

What about the cognitive functions? What about memory, and attention, and creativity, and such nifty abilities of the mind? Do they not get hampered in altered states?

Today we talk about the first research characteristic: Sensory perception, and how does it change from waking consciousness to altered states

We pivot away from Susan Pockett's book, on to the journal Neuroscience of Consciousness

We start with the new paper called 'Dimensions of consciousness and the psychedelic state'

I take a step back to understand why we have made the segregations that we have made and are they even necessary. Are our conceptual segregates helping or hindering the question of consciousness?

We start with the second chapter of the book "Nature of Consciousness" by Susan Pockett. This chapter talks about the states of consciousness and how they relate to the Electromagnetic wave data

A summary of the last week's learning: - The start of the idea - Discovering previous work - Understanding the nature of evidence - Understanding the methodological pitfalls - Some thoughts on the whole picture

In this episode we finish the last part of the first chapter, that deals with the possible effects of memory and attention on the gathering of evidence. We realise that both of these things are not very well understood, at least at the time this book was written.

I go through various methodological requirements mapped out by Susan Pockett, including limitations of EEG and MEG, problems in separating useful data from bodily noise, and even mentally generated noise. It turns out that experimental science is hard.

We dive into the actual criteria that are mapped out so that EM Field theory of consciousness can be judged fairly.

In this podcast, I go along with Susan Pockett's establishment of the framework in which her EM field theory and the experimental evidence will be scrutinised.

I start with understanding the point of view from which Susan Pockett is approaching this subject, and I find that it's kind of similar to my interests.

I go further down the road in understanding different versions of electromagnetic theory of consciousness. I understand that Johnjoe McFadden's definition of consciousness doesn't match completely with mine. So I turn towards Susan Pockett's work

This is the starting point for the journey. And this message is retroactive. I start with the question that motivated me to find some answers.