104 - Consciousness Isn’t What It Seems To Be

Program Notes

Guest speaker: Susan Blackmore

(Minutes : Seconds into program)

03:30 Jon Hanna introduces Susan Blackmore

08:04 “A lot of people kind of think that scientists like myself are kind of pushing the problem [of what is consciousness] away, some are, but there’s a huge excitement about what we do with this mystery, and it’s a very strange mystery indeed.”

09:22 “That’s what we mean by consciousness, in contemporary science, what it’s like for you.”

09:38 Susan talks about ‘the great chasm’ between mind and brain, sometimes called the ‘fathomless abyss’ … “It’s the chasm between subjective, how it is to me, and objective, how we believe it must be in the real physical world. Don’t underestimate this problem.”

11:48 “So that’s the sense in which I mean consciousness might be an illusion: not what it seems to be.”

18:48 Susan begins her discussion about free will.

24:34 “You can see the readiness potential building up in someone’s brain a long time, a long time in brain terms, before they know they are spontaneously and freely act.”

26:56 “We can believe that free will is an illusion. That’s my preferred solution. I don’t want to press it on you, but it seems this way: When you look at these results, and many other results too, consciousness just doesn’t seem to be the thing that starts things off.”

51:07 “I suggest, that when you’re walking around in your ordinary life, just realize how much you are not seeing, but you are not seeing it all.”

Books discussed in this podcast

The Meme Machine by Susan Blackmore

Consciousness: An Introduction by Susan Blackmore

Conversations on Consciousness: What the Best Minds Think about the Brain, Free Will, and What It Means to Be Human by Susan Blackmore

Consciousness Explained by Daniel C. Dennett
Susan Blackmore’s books on Amazon.com

Transcript

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Greetings from cyberdelic space.

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This is Lorenzo, and I’m your host here in the Psychedelic Salon.

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But before I get into today’s program, I thought I should mention that I know from my email that there are a lot of regulars who stop by the salon each week,

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but who never have used any of the psychedelic medicines that are talked about here in the salon from time to time.

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But since I can’t personally respond to each of you, want you to know that as I’ve said on more than one

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occasion it isn’t the substances that make a person psychedelic it’s your

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thinking that makes all the difference here as you know the the word

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psychedelic literally means mind manifesting so one way to think of it is

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that a psychedelic person is one who is interested

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in the manifestation of their own mind in a three-dimensional universe that also appears to be

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connected to time in some way. My guess is that just having the urge to listen to the beginning

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of this podcast, whether or not a person hangs around and comes back each week just by checking out the psychedelic salon

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in my humble opinion at least

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makes you psychedelic

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and I guess for you bloggers who have fun

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flaming me for my long-winded introductions

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well, hey, I see what you mean

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and so moving on

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from what I gather both from email

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and in listening to some of the podcasts on the Cannabis Podcast Network,

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there are a lot of conversations taking place around the subject of free will.

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And as I think I’ve mentioned before, that is also a topic that Mary C. and I have spent a great deal of time discussing,

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sometimes changing our opinions one way or another and then back again.

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But hey, it’s a ticklish topic to be sure.

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And it also comes up in today’s talk by Susan Blackmore.

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Now I won’t bother you with all of the little details about this story, but during the past

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eight days, Susan’s name has come up in a wide variety of ways and from several completely

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different directions.

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So, as I was filing some CDs at the MindStates conferences that JT had sent me,

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I noticed Susan’s talk on the top of the stack.

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And after having her name come up in so many different ways in the past few days,

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well, there really wasn’t any decision left for me to make about who would be our guest on today’s program.

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I still remember hearing this talk when she first gave it,

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and I’m here to tell you that it really blew me away.

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I didn’t necessarily agree with everything she had to say at the time,

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but I can say for sure that some of the ideas she sets out in this talk

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can keep you chewing on them for weeks.

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So I hope it has the same effect on you today

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as it did on me back in 2003

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in Berkeley, California at the Mind States 4 conference.

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We’ll join the audience

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just as John Hanna’s microphone cuts in

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during his introduction of the one and only

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Susan Blackmore, who tells us that

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consciousness isn’t really what it seems to be.

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She’s written a book called The Meme Machine.

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She’s also written a new book that’s coming out in about a month or two, which is a textbook on consciousness.

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And I just wanted to say a little bit about how I met her.

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And I just wanted to say a little bit about how I met her.

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We went out to dinner at the Tucson Towards a Science of Consciousness conference,

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and we had a dinner, and she told me that she used to work in parapsychology research,

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and that she got sort of disenchanted with that after finding out that the person that she was working with or underneath was

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sort of skewing the results and cheating.

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And so she kept looking into it, and she really wanted, you know, it was like Mulder’s poster,

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I want to believe.

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She wanted to believe, but after she looked into it and looked into it more, she realized

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she was no longer a believer in parapsychology.

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And so when she told me that, I thought, oh, well, I have a story for you, but I have a story. So I’ll tell you the story that I told her, which was that one night

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my father was having a dream. I also have an older brother. So my father was having a dream,

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and in his dream, he was walking up to a gathering where there were a whole lot of people gathered

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around. He couldn’t really see what was happening. And so he sort of pushed his way into the front

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of the crowd, and he realized he was at a hanging. But he couldn’t see the face of the person who was being hung.

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It was some public hanging.

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The face was sort of obscured.

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All of a sudden, he woke up.

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The reason that he woke up was that my older brother, who was in the next room sleeping, was screaming.

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And so he thought, okay, well, I’ll go in and see what’s going on with my son.

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And so he goes in and asks him, well, what’s wrong?

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And my older brother says, I just had a

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dream that I was being hung. And so, you know, that always stuck with me. It’s sort of a strange

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thing. So I told the story to Sue. And Sue said, yes, well, you know, there’s probably some number

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of people every night who have a dream that they’re watching a hanging. And there’s another

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number of people who have a dream that they’re being hung, and although it’s, you know, a coincidence, it certainly is within the realm of probability,

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and she left it at that. And so I thought, okay, well, that sounds reasonable, but what really the

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realization I had was, oh my god, this poor woman, every time somebody tells her, you know, every time

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she says that she doesn’t believe in parapsychology anymore, somebody tells her, like, some half-baked

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story like mine, but no, but you must believe, somebody tells her some half-baked story like,

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but no, but you must believe because my dad had this dream and it was so real.

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So I felt very sorry for her.

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And so I thought, well, what can I do to make it up for her?

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So I asked her to come here and flew her in.

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And anyway, she’s great.

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You’ll get to know her a little bit more.

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She’s moderating as well and being the emcee for the event.

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So Susan Blackmore.

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Thank you very much.

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Thank you.

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Thank you.

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Well, what can I say after that?

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Yes, please don’t tell me any stories of that kind.

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You will see my eyes glaze over and I will fall dead at your feet.

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Please talk to me about something more interesting.

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We’ve got plenty of interesting things happening here, haven’t we? Now, you, are you conscious? Sure? He’s pretty

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damn sure. What about you? Are you conscious? Yes, you are. Are you? You’re semi? Only semi?

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Well, that’s a slight advantage. Now, is there anyone who’s not conscious? Yes, you’re not. Excellent. We got two or three. How do you know? Yeah. You don’t know. Okay. Now, you, are you conscious?

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While I’ve been doing that, you probably have become what feels like more conscious.

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Because just asking the question, are you conscious now, does something rather peculiar.

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It makes you kind of go, uh?

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And become aware of a whole lot more stuff.

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Were you conscious before I started that?

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What about you?

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You get this sense that a moment ago you weren’t and now you’ve become…

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Any of you recognize what I’m talking about?

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Yeah?

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It’s very peculiar, isn’t it?

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There are many peculiar things about consciousness. That’s just one that I happen to pick on.

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Is it doing something? Now, scientists at the moment have woken up to the fact that there’s a huge

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problem here. Most of the last century, people were just sort of not really allowed to talk about it. Now you get an awful lot

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of neuroscientists, psychologists,

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philosophers saying things like this.

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It’s the most important problem in the biological

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sciences. It’s the last surviving

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mystery. It’s one of the most

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baffling problems in science.

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It really is.

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This is really exciting.

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You know,

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a lot of people kind of think that scientists like myself are kind of pushing the problem away. Some are, but there’s a huge excitement about what we do with this mystery. And it’s a very strange mystery indeed.

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What is the mystery? Okay, I need something. Can somebody give me something to demonstrate a mystery with? Anything will do. Oh yes, your hat will be lovely, thank you. Excellent hat.

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Right, here is a hat. Yes? Do we agree there’s a hat?

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Now, do you think there’s a real hat here or some object, like a real physical thing?

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Yes? Yeah? Okay, it’s made of molecules or whatever people tell you it’s made of, yeah?

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Now, are you having an experience of seeing this hat?

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Yeah?

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Yeah?

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That’s the only way you can perceive it.

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Of course you are having an experience.

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Yes, you’re laughing, I know.

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But you are having an experience.

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The color of this hat, how does it look to you?

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I mean, how it looks to you, is that the same as how it looks to him?

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You can’t ever know, can you?

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It’s an old philosophical problem.

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Probably as kids you went round and round that one and didn’t get anywhere.

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But the point is, there’s two different things here.

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Your experience of the hat, which is private and subjective and yours alone and nobody can know what it’s like.

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That’s what we mean by consciousness in contemporary science.

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What it’s like for you.

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That’s the definition.

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Not really a definition.

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That’s what we mean.

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What it’s like for you.

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But we also think there’s a real hat made of physical stuff.

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Now, you try getting away from that.

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Nobody successfully got away from that.

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In the 1890s, it was called the great chasm or the

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fathomless abyss. It’s the great chasm between mind and brain, the mind-body problem. It’s the

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great chasm between the inner and the outer, the experience that I’m having and the hat I believe

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exists in the real world. It’s the chasm between subjective, how it is to me, and objective, how we believe

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it must be in the real physical world. Don’t underestimate this problem. There are probably

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lots of you out there who, if you don’t come and tell me stories about psychic phenomena,

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will tell me you’ve got a theory of consciousness that solves the problem. Well, if you have, you’re a genius. Tell the world

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about it. It’s a really difficult problem. It is not solved by having a kind of stuff called

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consciousness that hangs about somewhere. It’s not solved by being a pure materialist and saying

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it’s all stuff. It’s not solved at the moment anyway at all. So we can have fun with it. My talk is suggesting that consciousness is an

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illusion. Now, when people say consciousness is an illusion, if they’re not thinking clearly about it,

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they think I mean it doesn’t exist. That’s not what I mean. Look up illusion in the dictionary

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and it says something that isn’t what it seems to be

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so that’s the sense in which I’m going to use the word illusion something that

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it really does exist it’s there but it’s not what it seems to be here’s a very

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simple little illusion rather nice one isn’t it there’s something there there’s

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a slide there’s black and white drawing It looks as though the chap at the top is bigger

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and more menacing and more frightening

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than the poor little chap running away at the front, doesn’t it?

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But they are exactly the same size.

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My son drew it and I watched him pick it up

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in whatever he was using, paint shop or something,

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and move it and it’s exactly the same.

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Funny, isn’t it so that’s the sense in which I mean consciousness might be an illusion not what it seems to be what is it what is it well what does it

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seem to be let’s think for a minute about how it seems how does it seem to

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you does it seem as though there’s a you somewhere inside your head

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who is watching your experiences on your own kind of world screen,

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pulling the levers to control things,

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saying, I’m going to move my arm, I’m going to move my legs.

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And because I say so, it happens.

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Is that how it feels?

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Anyone put up their hands if it feels a bit like that?

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Pretty brave of you, about a quarter of you say, I mean, surely it feels like that. It still feels

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like that to me, and goodness knows I’ve practiced trying to make it not feel that way, but it feels

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that way, as though I’m in here looking out. Somehow I’m in here looking out through the eyes.

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It feels that way. Maybe it is that way, but let’s start from at least that feeling.

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If any of you genuinely don’t feel that way, it’s very interesting.

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There are some people who’ve got out of that. There are some people who never seem to get into it.

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Some of you probably blown your minds out of it completely.

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But that’s the kind of common view.

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Now this is called by the American philosopher Dan Dennett, the Cartesian Theatre.

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Have any of you read Dan Dennett’s book Consciousness Explained?

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Oh wonderful, about 20 of you.

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This is where he explains the Cartesian Theatre.

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It’s this idea, Cartesian from Descartes.

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Now Descartes believed in the separate mind and body.

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He’s not, Dennett is not talking about that.

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Why he calls it Cartesian is simply because it has this idea

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of there being somebody in there.

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And that’s what he calls the Cartesian theatre.

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There’s somebody in here

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who is experiencing stuff.

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The stuff comes into consciousness

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and it’s kind of in some mythical place,

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mythical time,

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where it all happens

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and things become

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conscious, and then they go out of consciousness again. That’s the theory he calls the Cartesian

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theater. And of course, he says, it can’t be like that. It really, really can’t. Could I have a

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brain for a minute, please? Could I have your brain? Could you just stand up here, please?

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Thank you. Right, I’m just going to cut this head open along the parting here.

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Well, you can’t see, but I can see inside.

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And all I can see is a whole lot of brain cells.

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You know? Thank you. That’ll do. I’ll put it, sorry.

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Okay. Hundreds and hundreds and thousands of brain cells,

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all connected to each other, all firing and, you know.

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There’s no middle.

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There’s no special hole where, you know, consciousness happens.

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There’s no place for the me. In fact,

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there isn’t a center at all. Things don’t come into the middle and go out. There isn’t a middle. They’re all just… That’s just one of the many reasons why Dennett rejects

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the idea of the Cartesian theater. He says, when you discard Cartesian dualism, that’s

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Descartes’ idea of separate mind and body, or soul and a body, two separate things.

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When you discard Cartesian dualism, you must discard the show that would have gone on in the Cartesian theatre and the audience as well.

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For neither the show nor the audience can be found in the brain, and the brain is the only place there is to look for them.

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Now, you might try looking somewhere else.

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You might not agree with him that the brain is the only place to look.

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But it’s certainly the place to start, because we know that if you do strange things to brains, it changes the experience.

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So, he goes on to say that if you believe that in the Cartesian theater you are a Cartesian

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materialist putting it even more strongly if I say what is in your

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consciousness now can you answer do you think that there is an answer though yeah

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okay so the feeling I think many of you may have is something like this if I say

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what’s in your consciousness now?

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You can’t tell me because that would sort of spoil it, but you think there must be an answer.

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Because, well, doesn’t it feel that way?

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Yeah, it feels that way.

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Okay, then you’re a Cartesian materialist.

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You believe that there’s such a thing as being in consciousness.

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Some things are in consciousness and some aren’t.

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That’s the normal way of thinking about it.

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Right? Okay. I think I agree with that. That’s most of the time how it seems. Most of the time.

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That’s also the way most current theories of consciousness

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have things. I won’t go on about current

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theories of consciousness. There are lots of them. But this is an example of very popular

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what’s called global workspace theories.

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And they talk about there being this

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kind of working memory space into

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which information comes and then

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it goes out again. And when it’s in

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there, it’s in consciousness.

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It’s like being lit up by the spotlight of

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attention. And then when it leaves,

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it’s… Is that me, that noise?

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What am I doing?

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Oh, please fix me.

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I’m going to get fixed.

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Well, I’ll try.

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I can’t stand still. It’s too difficult.

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So, don’t worry about these theories.

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My point really is just that the majority of neuroscientists who talk about consciousness

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are what Dennett would call Cartesian materialists.

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They’re looking for the way in which things come into consciousness and go out again.

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They’re trying to understand the neural correlates of consciousness.

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They’re trying to understand when you have an experience of seeing that,

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what sort of hat would you call it?

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Beige hat, I don’t know, khaki hat.

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They want to know which of the bits in the brain firing that makes you conscious.

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It’s bizarre. It’s really difficult.

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How can firings of neurons, this is called the hard problem of consciousness,

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how can firings of neurons be your experience of that hat?

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Huh?

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How can they?

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And yet we know when you stop the firings,

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the consciousness goes away.

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There’s got to be, but it’s a mystery.

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Anyway, that’s the sort of theory

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which is basically still Cartesian materialism.

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It still has the idea of a place into which things come

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or a kind of firing or something that makes things conscious and the rest are not.

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The problem is deep and difficult.

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Rather than try and have flow diagrams like that one I just showed you and theories that say this bit produces consciousness I’m going to have having some fun instead so I need

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you all to help me would you please all hold out your hand in front of you and

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then now put your hands down oh sorry I want to ask you a question first sorry

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oh you’re so obedient it’s wonderful all right, I want to ask you a question first. Sorry. Oh, you’re so obedient. It’s wonderful.

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All right, I’m going to ask you a question first.

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Do you believe in free will?

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Excellent. We’ve got a real believer.

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By free will, I mean the idea that you can consciously and deliberately

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decide to do something of your own free will without being coerced by anybody

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and then do it.

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Okay, hands up who believes in that free will.

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That looks like a large majority.

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Let’s have a hand show of those who don’t.

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Okay, that’s about maybe a tenth or so.

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Okay, fine.

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Right, now we’re going to all use our free will, okay?

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Could you please hold out your arm in front of you?

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I know this is a trivial, trivial task,

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but I can’t get you to do something really deep and meaningful.

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Well, I could, but I don’t think I will.

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Whenever you feel like it, of your own free will,

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just go like that.

00:19:37 ►

I want you to keep doing this for a bit.

00:19:39 ►

I’ll shut up and let you do it.

00:19:41 ►

And just feel the experience of doing it of your own free will

00:19:44 ►

whenever you feel like it you might not do it at all of your own free will

00:19:50 ►

it’s up to you okay you’ve got the feel of that you can do it can’t you now this

00:19:59 ►

was precisely the task set in a perhaps one of the most famous experiments ever in consciousness studies

00:20:06 ►

by Benjamin Libet, who worked here in San Francisco.

00:20:10 ►

And he worked with neurosurgeons, and he did a whole range of experiments on the timing of conscious experiences.

00:20:17 ►

And this particular one was an experiment on what he called spontaneous voluntary action.

00:20:24 ►

Now, what he did was he got people to do

00:20:28 ►

exactly what I’ve asked you to do,

00:20:30 ►

to hold out their arm,

00:20:31 ►

and then whenever they felt like it,

00:20:33 ►

just to flex their wrist.

00:20:36 ►

And he got them to do this for quite a long time,

00:20:39 ►

an average of about 40 times each,

00:20:41 ►

so that he could get enough data to record things.

00:20:44 ►

Now, what was he going to record?

00:20:47 ►

The question in his mind was this.

00:20:50 ►

What starts the action?

00:20:55 ►

Is it a brain event that starts it?

00:21:01 ►

Or is it your consciousness that starts it?

00:21:06 ►

How could you find out?

00:21:08 ►

Well, you’ve got to find out the order

00:21:10 ►

in which these things happen.

00:21:12 ►

The order in which your conscious decision

00:21:14 ►

to act happens,

00:21:16 ►

and the time when your conscious decision

00:21:18 ►

to act happens, and the time

00:21:20 ►

when the first brain event happens.

00:21:23 ►

So here you see

00:21:24 ►

what he’s doing. The subject

00:21:26 ►

has electrodes on the wrist that will measure the exact time to the nearest

00:21:32 ►

millisecond when the hand moves. Then he has a electroencephalogram on his head

00:21:39 ►

that measures the brain events and will detect what is called a readiness

00:21:43 ►

potential in the motor cortex. The part of the brain controlling motor activity

00:21:48 ►

builds up activity for about nearly a second, about 900 milliseconds, nearly a

00:21:58 ►

second before the movement you can begin to see activity and it starts to build

00:22:03 ►

up and then the action happens.

00:22:06 ►

That was already known before he did the experiments, but then he wanted to time the time at which the person

00:22:13 ►

spontaneously and of their own free will decided to act. How do you time that?

00:22:19 ►

Well, the way he did it was to have a spot revolving on a screen.

00:22:23 ►

So I’m going to be a spot revolving on a screen, right?

00:22:26 ►

Now, what the subjects had to do as the spot went round

00:22:30 ►

was after they acted, they had to shout out, tell him,

00:22:35 ►

where the spot was when they decided to act.

00:22:39 ►

So if it was here, am I doing this clockwise?

00:22:42 ►

Is that clockwise?

00:22:43 ►

Okay, so if it’s here, they shout one. If it’s here, they shout three. If it’s here, they shout six. Am I doing this clockwise? Is that clockwise? Okay, so if it’s here, they shout one.

00:22:45 ►

If it’s here, they shout three.

00:22:46 ►

If it’s here, they shout six.

00:22:47 ►

Am I doing this right?

00:22:49 ►

And if it’s here, they say nine and so on.

00:22:51 ►

You get the idea?

00:22:53 ►

Okay, now I want you to be subjects, please.

00:22:54 ►

Hold out your arms again.

00:22:56 ►

And then when you spontaneously and over your own free will decide to act,

00:22:59 ►

just shout out where the spot is, okay?

00:23:13 ►

Okay, good.

00:23:15 ►

You can do it, can’t you?

00:23:16 ►

Yeah?

00:23:19 ►

I mean, it’s quite tricky, but you get the idea.

00:23:20 ►

It is quite possible.

00:23:23 ►

The reason I get you to do it is because a whole lot of people argue that they’re not really doing it in Rira. But I’ve done it lots of times. People can do it. Now, the point is,

00:23:30 ►

it doesn’t really matter when you shout. The timing is, what you are really doing is saying,

00:23:35 ►

when it happened, that’s when it happened. It doesn’t matter that there’s a delay in when you

00:23:39 ►

shout out, because you say three, by then it’s gone on, but that doesn’t matter. Okay? So that’s how he timed the moment of will, he called W. So which do you think comes first? Will or the readiness

00:23:53 ►

potential? It certainly does. The readiness potential comes a long way first. Here you see the time at which the muscle moves. Here is the moment of will,

00:24:08 ►

200 milliseconds before the action. And right back here, that’s a different experiment,

00:24:14 ►

right back here at minus half a second is the readiness potential. You can see the readiness

00:24:19 ►

potential building up in someone’s brain a long time, a long time in brain terms, before

00:24:26 ►

they know they’re going to spontaneously and freely act.

00:24:32 ►

We should have known that.

00:24:33 ►

You all shouted out readiness potential.

00:24:35 ►

I mean, if you take a kind of naturalistic view of what’s going on in the brain, it’s

00:24:40 ►

got to be that way.

00:24:41 ►

But all hell broke loose in the psychology community.

00:24:44 ►

Endless arguments. going on the brain. It’s got to be that way. But all hell broke loose in the psychology community, endless arguments, because it just doesn’t fit with people’s ordinary beliefs about free will.

00:24:53 ►

Now, there are lots of different interpretations of this experiment.

00:24:58 ►

Many people said the results are false. That’s the reason I got you to do this,

00:25:03 ►

because most of the arguments said that in one way

00:25:06 ►

or another people can’t do it, or the timing doesn’t work or something. It’s possible to say

00:25:11 ►

that. I’m not going to go into all those arguments. I’m convinced, as much as I can be, that the

00:25:17 ►

results are valid. The interpretation is very difficult. You can say no, but as my friend Richard Gregory says,

00:25:28 ►

sorry, I should not have put that yet.

00:25:31 ►

I’ll take it away again.

00:25:34 ►

What Libet himself said was,

00:25:37 ►

you can’t consciously start an action,

00:25:40 ►

because it builds up in the brain first,

00:25:42 ►

but you can consciously veto it.

00:25:45 ►

You can stop it before it happens.

00:25:48 ►

Now, I had a wonderful time talking with

00:25:50 ►

Libet about this. We went to Golden Gate

00:25:52 ►

Park and wandered around and

00:25:53 ►

talked about this, and what he was really getting

00:25:56 ►

at, I think, was, in the end,

00:25:57 ►

was something to do with moral responsibility.

00:26:00 ►

Because these results

00:26:02 ►

seem

00:26:02 ►

to threaten the idea that we’re really responsible.

00:26:07 ►

But he said, well you can be responsible because you can stop things.

00:26:10 ►

So you’re not responsible for having thoughts of murdering somebody or raping them or something, you know,

00:26:16 ►

but you are responsible for not stopping, if you don’t stop those thoughts.

00:26:20 ►

That was his kind of interpretation.

00:26:22 ►

And as Richard Gregory said, that means that

00:26:25 ►

we don’t have free will, but we do have free won’t. You can believe that if you like. Many

00:26:32 ►

people agree with Libet. It seems a little bit of a bodge up to me. But what else can

00:26:38 ►

we believe? We can believe that free will is an illusion. That’s my preferred solution. I don’t want to press it on you,

00:26:45 ►

but it seems this way.

00:26:48 ►

When you look at these results,

00:26:50 ►

and many other results too,

00:26:52 ►

consciousness just doesn’t seem to be

00:26:54 ►

the thing that starts things off.

00:26:56 ►

If you think that free will has to be to do

00:26:58 ►

with conscious free will,

00:27:00 ►

then that’s definitely the way it seems,

00:27:02 ►

but perhaps it is not like that,

00:27:05 ►

so it’s an illusion in the sense that I explained before.

00:27:08 ►

But things get a little bit more complicated still.

00:27:12 ►

Dennett would say, oh dear,

00:27:15 ►

sorry, I forgot I got this one in here.

00:27:18 ►

This is from Daniel Wegner,

00:27:21 ►

who’s done lots of experiments on free will.

00:27:23 ►

And he’s done experiments which show, for example,

00:27:26 ►

what gives somebody the feeling that they’ve got free will.

00:27:30 ►

And it turns out that you can do a lot of experiments

00:27:32 ►

where people are absolutely convinced that they’ve done something

00:27:35 ►

when actually the experiment has manipulated them.

00:27:38 ►

His take on the illusion is something like this.

00:27:42 ►

What happens all the time?

00:27:44 ►

I think to myself,

00:27:45 ►

hey, that party sounds fun. It’s $15 and it’s be too late. I’ll be in there. But maybe I’ll go.

00:27:50 ►

Maybe I’ll, oh, well, I think I will. Okay, I’ll go to the party tonight. Now, and then I go.

00:27:56 ►

And I find myself there and I go, wow, I came here of my own free will. Now, what Wegener says is,

00:28:02 ►

two things happen and it happens all the time, hundreds of times every day probably.

00:28:06 ►

We have a thought that we’re going to do something, and we do it.

00:28:11 ►

And we go, aha, my thought caused me to do it.

00:28:16 ►

But, he says, that’s only the way it seems.

00:28:20 ►

How it really is, is that unconscious processes, like those measured by Libet, cause the thought, and other unconscious processes cause the action, and we have an illusion, we confuse correlation and cause, and we come to the conclusion that we have free will.

00:28:38 ►

So, there are many ways of believing that free will is an illusion, that’s just one of them.

00:28:43 ►

But, another possibility

00:28:45 ►

is that you simply can’t time experiences.

00:28:49 ►

Dennett would say,

00:28:50 ►

if you say that consciousness comes too late,

00:28:55 ►

you’re a Cartesian materialist.

00:28:57 ►

You’re believing that there is a time

00:28:59 ►

at which things come into your consciousness.

00:29:02 ►

But what if that itself is wrong?

00:29:06 ►

Maybe the illusion is even deeper than we thought.

00:29:09 ►

I wonder if there’s any way of getting some fresh air in here

00:29:12 ►

because I can see, I can understand.

00:29:14 ►

I hope you’re not yawning because I’m so boring.

00:29:17 ►

I hope you’re yawning because it’s hot.

00:29:22 ►

Okay, okay, it’s all right, it’s all right, I hear you.

00:29:25 ►

Any people in charge, can we open any doors or anything?

00:29:30 ►

Anybody know?

00:29:32 ►

Yes, excellent, thank you John.

00:29:34 ►

John’s going to open a few doors or something.

00:29:36 ►

Okay.

00:29:40 ►

I am going to need somebody who doesn’t mind being prodded with a sharp knife.

00:29:46 ►

Oh, we’ve got a volunteer up there who wants to be prodded with it.

00:29:49 ►

I’m also going to need a bare arm to prod.

00:29:52 ►

So, oh yes, you’ve got a nice t-shirt.

00:29:53 ►

You’ll do absolutely fine.

00:29:55 ►

And you’ll have some fresh air to waken you up when you’ve collapsed.

00:30:00 ►

There’s some steps around there.

00:30:03 ►

Now, I’m just going to do a little experiment.

00:30:04 ►

I must say that this experiment doesn’t always work.

00:30:07 ►

When it works and the person lives, it’s quite fun.

00:30:11 ►

But if it doesn’t, forgive me.

00:30:13 ►

It’s worth it just to have a go.

00:30:15 ►

God, he’s really willing, isn’t he?

00:30:17 ►

This is fun.

00:30:18 ►

Yeah, yeah, absolutely right.

00:30:21 ►

Yeah, absolutely.

00:30:22 ►

Okay, can you just push that as far up as it will go?

00:30:25 ►

Now, I don’t want you to see what I’m doing.

00:30:28 ►

Gosh, he’s so obedient.

00:30:29 ►

Right, stay like that.

00:30:30 ►

Now, I want you all to watch very carefully what I’m doing, all right?

00:30:34 ►

Are you ready?

00:30:35 ►

Are you ready, sir?

00:30:36 ►

Yes.

00:30:36 ►

Don’t faint, will you?

00:30:37 ►

Okay, I’m ready.

00:30:40 ►

What did you feel?

00:30:42 ►

Where were they?

00:30:46 ►

Show us again where they were.

00:30:50 ►

Excellent, excellent.

00:30:52 ►

Thank you very much.

00:30:54 ►

Isn’t he good?

00:30:56 ►

Some people describe it as a little animal running up.

00:31:00 ►

So it’s called the cutaneous rabbit.

00:31:02 ►

There wasn’t one here.

00:31:05 ►

And there wasn’t one here. And there wasn’t one here.

00:31:06 ►

What you actually had was

00:31:08 ►

one, two, one, two, three.

00:31:11 ►

One, two, three.

00:31:14 ►

Strange, isn’t it?

00:31:16 ►

Now, just stay there a minute.

00:31:18 ►

This is very peculiar.

00:31:20 ►

You were conscious of them, weren’t you?

00:31:22 ►

Yeah.

00:31:23 ►

So, if you ask what was in consciousness when,

00:31:27 ►

let’s have your arm again.

00:31:28 ►

Now, the real mysterious one is number three.

00:31:31 ►

It went one, two, three, right?

00:31:33 ►

But he feels number three here.

00:31:36 ►

Now, after this one has happened,

00:31:39 ►

how does he know which way it’s going to go

00:31:42 ►

in order to feel number three there

00:31:44 ►

rather than, say, down here?

00:31:46 ►

It’s like precognition.

00:31:47 ►

Oh, precognition exists after all.

00:31:48 ►

I was wrong all those years.

00:31:50 ►

I didn’t say that.

00:31:53 ►

Now, what was happening?

00:31:55 ►

Maybe consciousness stores it all up and then replays it later so it can get it right.

00:32:00 ►

That doesn’t sound very convincing, does it?

00:32:03 ►

Maybe it wipes it out.

00:32:04 ►

Maybe you were conscious of it being here and there,

00:32:07 ►

but then afterwards you did some kind of funny thing in the brain

00:32:10 ►

and replayed it as though it was all over.

00:32:12 ►

Could it be like that?

00:32:15 ►

Whatever you do, whichever way you try and play it,

00:32:18 ►

it does seem very peculiar.

00:32:20 ►

It seems like you’re just trying to solve the problem

00:32:23 ►

in some post-hoc kind of way.

00:32:28 ►

Thank you.

00:32:30 ►

Thanks very much.

00:32:31 ►

I think he deserves a round of applause, don’t you?

00:32:40 ►

Right.

00:32:40 ►

I am going to show you a picture for a very brief length of time.

00:32:43 ►

You’ve seen it already briefly, but it doesn’t matter. You can have another go.

00:32:46 ►

And I just want you to look as quickly as you can and take in as much as you can, all right?

00:32:57 ►

Oh, bleh.

00:33:00 ►

Stay.

00:33:01 ►

What did you see?

00:33:03 ►

Somebody put their hand up and tell me what they saw.

00:33:05 ►

What did you see?

00:33:08 ►

A guy with horns and score.

00:33:09 ►

Just one?

00:33:11 ►

Just one.

00:33:11 ►

Okay, that’s something funny with his eyes.

00:33:13 ►

What did you see?

00:33:15 ►

Okay, you saw several pictures.

00:33:19 ►

You saw several pictures.

00:33:20 ►

Any idea how many?

00:33:22 ►

You saw 18 pictures and one of them had horns and

00:33:25 ►

everybody agree yes you saw a whole lot of pictures and one of them had horns

00:33:29 ►

and a scar yes we’re all the pictures the same except for the one with the

00:33:36 ►

horns okay now what’s so special about this well you that is that is indeed

00:33:43 ►

what was that that is Dan Denn, who some people call the devil.

00:33:47 ►

And my son, who did all these pictures for me, said,

00:33:52 ►

oh, can I put horns on him?

00:33:53 ►

And I did ask Dan, and he said it’s fine.

00:33:56 ►

There are, in fact, 18 of them, well counted.

00:34:01 ►

Now, you saw that for three seconds.

00:34:00 ►

Well counted.

00:34:04 ►

Now, you saw that for three seconds.

00:34:11 ►

You move your eyes about four or five times a second.

00:34:18 ►

So the maximum number of places that you can have looked in that time is three times about 15.

00:34:26 ►

Now, even if you systematically looked at each one, you’re unlikely to have seen, well, you couldn’t have seen all of them.

00:34:30 ►

But you won’t have done that because you picked on the one with horns and had a good look at that.

00:34:31 ►

Now, we know from our understanding of the visual system,

00:34:34 ►

it’s been known for 100 years,

00:34:37 ►

that you can only see in high-resolution detail with the very middle,

00:34:41 ►

with the fovea.

00:34:42 ►

So when you’re actually looking at one spot on that picture,

00:34:45 ►

let’s say you look here at Dan’s nose,

00:34:48 ►

which is quite likely where you do look,

00:34:50 ►

in the time that you’re on there, about a fifth of a second,

00:34:53 ►

about that much will be in focus

00:34:56 ►

and the rest of the picture will be a blur.

00:34:59 ►

There is no way that you can have looked in detail

00:35:03 ►

to be sure that all those pictures are the same.

00:35:05 ►

If there is any such thing as being in

00:35:08 ►

consciousness, you cannot

00:35:09 ►

have got those all in there.

00:35:12 ►

And yet you say with confidence

00:35:14 ►

and you’re right that there are

00:35:16 ►

18 identical pictures of Dan Dennett,

00:35:18 ►

one of which has horns on.

00:35:20 ►

What’s going on?

00:35:21 ►

This amazing information gathering system

00:35:23 ►

of your brain is gathering enough information to come to that conclusion,

00:35:26 ►

and that’s the right conclusion.

00:35:28 ►

And it’s particularly spent some time on the horns.

00:35:31 ►

It has pop-out detectors.

00:35:32 ►

These are special mechanisms which find differences

00:35:37 ►

and just draw your eye to those differences.

00:35:39 ►

So if you get a uniform picture with something different,

00:35:43 ►

your eyes will naturally go there

00:35:44 ►

by this unconscious attentional mechanism.

00:35:48 ►

So, you have an illusion that all of this stuff was in your head.

00:35:55 ►

We know it can’t be.

00:35:57 ►

Now, I’ve got a few other ways of showing you a similar, coming to a similar conclusion.

00:36:06 ►

When you look around the world,

00:36:08 ►

do you get this idea that you kind of build up a picture like this?

00:36:11 ►

As you look around,

00:36:13 ►

you’re building up a bigger and bigger picture.

00:36:16 ►

Yeah?

00:36:16 ►

As you look around this room,

00:36:17 ►

you’re gathering the information

00:36:19 ►

until it builds up a proper picture in your head.

00:36:21 ►

That’s how it seems, doesn’t it?

00:36:23 ►

That’s the kind of theory that

00:36:25 ►

psychology’s been working on and cognitive science and artificial intelligence have been

00:36:29 ►

working on for a long time, that we build up a picture in our head with every saccade

00:36:33 ►

as we look around. Because what we are experiencing is the picture in our head. That’s what’s

00:36:38 ►

in consciousness. Now, if that were true, then it would be the case, I think, that if you were looking around this room, say, and something really big changed, you’d notice it.

00:36:58 ►

Because you’ve got a rich and vivid picture in your head of this room.

00:37:03 ►

Right?

00:37:04 ►

Now, as you move your eyes around, you think,

00:37:06 ►

of course I’d notice if some big thing changed. So I want you to look at some pictures. I’m going

00:37:11 ►

to show one version of a picture and then another version of the picture and something is going to

00:37:16 ►

change. Now some of you will see it straight away, so don’t shout out what it is and spoil it for the other people. See if you can see what changes. Hands up

00:37:29 ►

if you can see what’s changing. Hands up if you can’t see. You’re the interesting ones.

00:37:36 ►

Some of them are going down. Okay, hands up if you can’t see two things that are changing.

00:37:43 ►

Right, keep looking. The hands are going up and down and all over the place.

00:37:48 ►

There are two quite big things changing. Okay, tell them. It’s the lamp and the keyboard.

00:37:58 ►

Now, it’s a very strange phenomenon. I’m sorry, with this laptop and this setup,

00:38:02 ►

the timing isn’t quite right, so this isn’t perfect perfect I’m sorry about that. But it’s a very strange

00:38:07 ►

phenomenon it’s called change blindness. It’s been very well documented over the

00:38:10 ►

last I don’t know seven or eight years. I did the first experiment on this in about

00:38:14 ►

Dan Dennett had come across earlier experiments just before that. And we now

00:38:21 ►

know that you can have enormous changes. Here’s one experiment that’s not mine.

00:38:25 ►

See if you can see what happens in this one, what’s changing here.

00:38:31 ►

Hands up who can’t see it.

00:38:34 ►

Oh, lots of you can’t see it.

00:38:36 ►

That’s much better than my silly picture that I took myself in there.

00:38:39 ►

Oh, they’re going down, they’re going down, you see it.

00:38:43 ►

Okay, shout out for them.

00:38:48 ►

It’s the bar at the back.

00:38:56 ►

Now, Dan Simons did this experiment for a particular reason, to show that the change can be right in the middle of the picture and you still don’t see it. Now, if you think

00:39:03 ►

you have a rich and vivid and complete picture in

00:39:06 ►

your head, in your brain, you ought to see it. It suggests that you do not

00:39:12 ►

have such a picture. Whatever you do have, it’s not that. You do not have a rich and

00:39:18 ►

vivid picture of the world in your head. So when important people like Francis Crick, you remember Watson and Crick

00:39:27 ►

who discovered the double helix, the structure of DNA. Francis Crick is studying consciousness.

00:39:31 ►

He is looking for the neural correlates of the vivid representation in the brain of the

00:39:36 ►

scene before us. But it looks like there is no such thing. That’s how difficult consciousness studies is. I think people are looking for

00:39:47 ►

something that doesn’t exist. Damasio talks about the movie in the brain. Same argument.

00:39:55 ►

But things are even worse than this. I would like to show you a video now, if my video

00:40:01 ►

person is ready for this. This is quite complicated because we’ve got to switch over

00:40:05 ►

from one computer to the other.

00:40:06 ►

So let’s hope that this will work.

00:40:08 ►

Now, you have a very important task to do.

00:40:12 ►

What you’re going to see

00:40:13 ►

is a whole lot of American students.

00:40:15 ►

Oh, I’m in America.

00:40:15 ►

I shouldn’t say that.

00:40:18 ►

A whole lot of students

00:40:19 ►

playing around with a ball.

00:40:21 ►

They’re throwing the ball around.

00:40:22 ►

There are two teams,

00:40:23 ►

the white team and the black team.

00:40:25 ►

You must concentrate on the white team,

00:40:29 ►

and I want you to count the number of times the ball is passed from the white to white.

00:40:34 ►

So just watch the white team and count the number of passes, okay?

00:40:37 ►

If anyone has seen this before, please don’t shout out the right answer,

00:40:41 ►

because I want everybody to do their own counting, all right?

00:40:44 ►

So as soon as we get this ready, get ready to count. Watch the white team and

00:40:49 ►

count the number of times they pass the ball. Watch the white team. Just the white people.

00:40:58 ►

Count the number of times they pass the ball to each other. Keep counting, keep counting. Okay. Right. How many did you

00:41:13 ►

see? How many times did they pass it? Okay, let’s have one at a time. Andy, shut up, all

00:41:19 ►

you nuisance people. How many? 17. Okay, hands up. How many saw 17? Hands down. Who saw 16? Hands down. Who saw 18?

00:41:30 ►

Hands down. Who saw something completely different? Who saw another number? Did anybody not see a gorilla? Who didn’t see a gorilla? You didn’t see the gorilla? No?

00:41:56 ►

Would you please play it again, Sam? You didn’t see the gorilla? What sort of an audience are you?

00:42:08 ►

Didn’t see the gorilla, I don’t know.

00:42:12 ►

Very small gorilla in the corner? Perhaps it’s a tiny gorilla down here.

00:42:17 ►

Perhaps it peeps out of the lift when you’re not looking. Well, don’t clap me, clap Dan Simons.

00:42:39 ►

This was his film.

00:42:41 ►

It’s what’s called Inattentional Blindness.

00:42:44 ►

If you don’t pay attention, you don’t see it.

00:42:52 ►

What does that say?

00:42:54 ►

Shh.

00:42:56 ►

What does that say about what’s in your consciousness?

00:43:01 ►

What does that say about the idea that I’m in here

00:43:04 ►

and I’m experiencing this rich

00:43:06 ►

world out here, that right now I am conscious of this room? I don’t know what it says about it,

00:43:13 ►

but it certainly says something a bit strange and a bit worth thinking about.

00:43:19 ►

How many times was it? I have no idea. I think it’s 17.

00:43:27 ►

So one day I’ll sit down and count it properly.

00:43:31 ►

People usually get them widespread like you did.

00:43:33 ►

Sorry, I really should know the answer.

00:43:35 ►

People don’t even usually care about that after they’ve seen the gorilla.

00:43:39 ►

Now, what really interests me about this,

00:43:41 ►

I have used here some experiments,

00:43:44 ►

scientifically carried out experiments on people,

00:43:49 ►

but what I want to do with that is to think, well, what’s wrong with my view of the world?

00:43:55 ►

Because even though I know all this, I’m still stuck in the Cartesian theatre.

00:44:01 ►

I still can’t quite get away from the idea that I’m conscious of all this

00:44:07 ►

now. It can’t be true that all this is in my consciousness, but what is it like really?

00:44:13 ►

Surely I know what it’s like if anybody does, don’t I? Or maybe I don’t. Maybe I need to look.

00:44:21 ►

Maybe I need to be able to see more clearly. William James, one of my great heroes,

00:44:27 ►

he wrote The Principles of Psychology in 1890. Who’s read that? Oh, well done. It’s two volumes,

00:44:34 ►

it’s 1,100 pages altogether, but it’s a fantastic book. But he said that introspective analysis

00:44:42 ►

in cases like this is like trying to seize a spinning

00:44:45 ►

top to catch its motion, or trying to turn up the gas quickly enough to see how the darkness

00:44:51 ►

looks.

00:44:52 ►

I love that, don’t you?

00:44:54 ►

Turn it up, quick, quick.

00:44:55 ►

He’d have loved electricity, wouldn’t he?

00:44:57 ►

You could do it even quicker.

00:45:00 ►

The modern equivalent is it’s like trying to look in the fridge to see whether the light’s

00:45:04 ►

always on.

00:45:12 ►

I keep doing it.

00:45:16 ►

Can I catch myself not being conscious?

00:45:20 ►

If I look quick enough, if I blink, can I catch myself out?

00:45:25 ►

Not having the illusion of it all being here.

00:45:28 ►

How can I get out of it?

00:45:30 ►

It’s got to be an illusion.

00:45:33 ►

I’m not going to be happy with the idea

00:45:35 ►

there’s a soul or a spirit or a conscious phenomenon

00:45:37 ►

or some kind of dark or quantum mechanical theories of consciousness.

00:45:40 ►

They don’t help.

00:45:43 ►

Somehow, I want to be able to see my way out of this

00:45:46 ►

directly.

00:45:50 ►

Perhaps it’s something like this, that

00:45:51 ►

rather than there being things that are

00:45:53 ►

in consciousness, every time

00:45:56 ►

we look, every time we ask

00:45:58 ►

ourselves, am I conscious now?

00:45:59 ►

Or every time I ask you at the beginning, are you conscious now?

00:46:03 ►

Always the

00:46:04 ►

answer is yes. You never catch yourself saying no, do you? Because at that moment you at the beginning, are you conscious now? Always the answer is yes.

00:46:06 ►

You never catch yourself saying no, do you?

00:46:09 ►

Because at that moment of asking the question,

00:46:11 ►

a backward stream is concocted.

00:46:14 ►

You look back and pull it like with the thing on the arms.

00:46:16 ►

So you always seem to be being conscious.

00:46:18 ►

What about the rest of the time?

00:46:22 ►

And how can we look?

00:46:25 ►

One way, William James took, and many other people.

00:46:37 ►

He took nitrous oxide and became convinced that the world was made of thoughts.

00:46:40 ►

Many other people have said the same.

00:46:42 ►

Nitrous oxide turns you into an idealist. How wonderful that your whole philosophy can be changed

00:46:45 ►

by a little molecule with, you know, three

00:46:47 ►

atoms.

00:46:50 ►

And there are plenty more interesting molecules as well

00:46:52 ►

as I expect you know.

00:46:55 ►

There are

00:46:56 ►

other ways too.

00:46:58 ►

Perhaps more arduous

00:46:59 ►

and maybe we need

00:47:01 ►

more than just

00:47:03 ►

a quick fix.

00:47:05 ►

Maybe we have to take some time.

00:47:06 ►

And I’ll just tell you a very famous story some of you may know.

00:47:11 ►

I’m interested in Zen, and it’s a Zen story.

00:47:14 ►

And it’s a story about Hui Neng, who was the sixth patriarch of Chan, Chinese Zen.

00:47:21 ►

And he was very, very famous, and he had his monastery in the mountains.

00:47:24 ►

Of course, I’m making half of it up

00:47:26 ►

this is my words of the story

00:47:29 ►

but there is Huy Neng in his monastery

00:47:31 ►

and one day along comes a monk

00:47:33 ►

who’s been travelling for days

00:47:34 ►

to come and see the famous master

00:47:38 ►

and he gets there exhausted

00:47:39 ►

thinking oh my god the master’s going to be so frightening etc

00:47:42 ►

and the master says to him

00:47:44 ►

well hello monk, what’s your name?

00:47:46 ►

And he tells him, and where have you come from?

00:47:48 ►

He says, oh, I’ve come from the mountain over such and such.

00:47:50 ►

Did you have a good journey? How was the weather?

00:47:52 ►

Are you tired? How are your feet?

00:47:54 ►

And the monk answers, this is very nice, this master,

00:47:57 ►

and he answers all the questions.

00:47:58 ►

And then Huineng says to him,

00:48:01 ►

and what is this thing that has thus come?

00:48:04 ►

And how did it get here?

00:48:07 ►

And the monk doesn’t know what to say.

00:48:11 ►

So he stays in the monastery

00:48:12 ►

and he sits and he looks

00:48:16 ►

and he looks into, what is it?

00:48:21 ►

What is this?

00:48:23 ►

What is this thing that has come?

00:48:25 ►

How did this get here? how did this get here?

00:48:27 ►

how did this get here?

00:48:29 ►

and he looks

00:48:29 ►

for eight years

00:48:31 ►

and eventually he goes to the master

00:48:34 ►

and he says

00:48:34 ►

master I have had a little awakening

00:48:36 ►

and the master says

00:48:37 ►

what is it?

00:48:39 ►

and he says

00:48:40 ►

well to say that it is like something

00:48:42 ►

is to miss the point

00:48:44 ►

good says the master but it’s like something is to miss the point. Ah, good, says the master.

00:48:46 ►

But it’s not like anything.

00:48:48 ►

Remember the definition of consciousness is what it’s like to be.

00:48:52 ►

It’s not like anything.

00:48:54 ►

Can it still be trained, cultivated?

00:48:57 ►

And the monk says, oh, yes, it can.

00:48:59 ►

And gets on with his practice.

00:49:04 ►

What did he see?

00:49:05 ►

What does anybody you see who wakes up?

00:49:09 ►

I have no idea whether this is about the same kind of thing

00:49:14 ►

that I’ve been talking about.

00:49:16 ►

But I suspect it might be.

00:49:18 ►

And so I want to look too.

00:49:21 ►

But I don’t know what I will find when I do look.

00:49:25 ►

And I’m not going to give you any answers.

00:49:28 ►

I’ll just leave you to wonder for yourself

00:49:30 ►

whether perhaps this is all a grand illusion.

00:49:49 ►

Thank you.

00:49:55 ►

Since I was told I’m allowed to have the time I was originally allotted,

00:49:57 ►

we’ve got about ten minutes for questions.

00:50:00 ►

So, back there, thank you.

00:50:06 ►

Oh, yes, I’m sure that that’s why it worked. Sorry, I’ll repeat the question.

00:50:07 ►

His question was with the gorilla video, how important is it that you’re given an explicit

00:50:12 ►

direction not to pay attention to black forms?

00:50:15 ►

That is certainly necessary.

00:50:16 ►

If I just showed you that video and said, just watch this video, then afterwards you

00:50:20 ►

would report back to me that you saw lots of people throwing a ball and a gorilla walking

00:50:23 ►

through.

00:50:24 ►

I have to do it quite strongly, and not so strongly as to put you off, and I have

00:50:29 ►

to do something to stop the people laughing. And some of you did laugh, you rotters, but it didn’t

00:50:33 ►

spoil it, thank goodness. Because if I say don’t laugh, then, you know, anyway, it depends crucially

00:50:38 ►

on that. But that doesn’t change the main point. I mean, everybody wouldn’t laugh if it weren’t for the fact that you

00:50:45 ►

expect you ought to have seen it.

00:50:47 ►

And after this, I suggest that

00:50:49 ►

you walk around, you know, when you’re walking around

00:50:51 ►

in your ordinary life, just realize

00:50:53 ►

just how much you are not seeing.

00:50:56 ►

That you are not seeing it all.

00:50:58 ►

You’re seeing what you attend. It’s more like

00:51:00 ►

it’s more like experience.

00:51:02 ►

What is experience? I don’t

00:51:04 ►

know! But it’s more like it’s this is experience? I don’t know.

00:51:07 ►

But it’s more like it’s this and a bit and a… And it’s not the continuous, solid, rich thing that we think it is.

00:51:13 ►

So I don’t think it’s spoiled by that.

00:51:14 ►

Okay, there’s going to be an awful lot of questions.

00:51:16 ►

I’ll have to deal with them as best I can.

00:51:19 ►

Yes?

00:51:20 ►

How much is the problem of consciousness to do with the fact

00:51:24 ►

that we’re using a particular kind of language to describe things like the cutaneous rabbit?

00:51:34 ►

Let’s take the problem of language. There are some people who say well it’s only in

00:51:37 ►

our Western culture that we have this problem but this problem has been around

00:51:40 ►

a long long time. I. In ancient Greek philosophers and many other philosophical systems,

00:51:48 ►

you have various kinds of breakdowns that lead you into dualism.

00:51:54 ►

And they depend on which culture you’re in, what the dualism is.

00:51:57 ►

And in our own philosophical tradition, it shifted.

00:52:00 ►

The traditional mind-body problem was really about the body.

00:52:04 ►

It got kind of shifted to the brain as we learned more about it.

00:52:07 ►

And most people are now happy to think of the body as a mechanism,

00:52:10 ►

which Descartes really started,

00:52:11 ►

but they’re not happy to think of the brain that way.

00:52:13 ►

But it’s now shifted to the hard problem, which is to do with neural firings.

00:52:16 ►

It keeps shifting, and it’s different in different philosophical traditions.

00:52:19 ►

But there’s always a kind of tendency to dualism.

00:52:22 ►

And even in Buddhism, which I talked about at the end,

00:52:26 ►

one of the main kind of objectives is to see non-duality.

00:52:30 ►

So I think that it isn’t just a question of the language we use

00:52:33 ►

and the particular experiments we do.

00:52:35 ►

They may make the specific way we go about it,

00:52:37 ►

but the problem, I think, is fundamental in human experience.

00:52:40 ►

I can’t say that for sure, but that’s how it appears to me.

00:52:44 ►

Yes?

00:52:47 ►

Good question. It’s a question about the relationship between hallucinations and what we’re all seeing now.

00:52:52 ►

So if we all were to think of this as a tree, would you please think of this as a tree?

00:52:56 ►

All of you, right together now, think of this as a tree.

00:53:00 ►

And our question was, is this the same as our experience of the real world?

00:53:09 ►

Well, we can say in terms of what’s going on in the brain, it’s very similar.

00:53:16 ►

When you imagine a tree, it sets off firing the same parts of the visual cortex that are set off when you see a tree.

00:53:18 ►

And this has actually been done with brain scans.

00:53:20 ►

It was suspected for a long time, and we know it’s true now.

00:53:27 ►

But you will find that if you’re looking at a real tree you’ve also got information going through the optic nerve, through the lateral geniculate and through visual areas that are not there when you try and imagine it. So there’s

00:53:30 ►

that difference. But the real clincher of a difference is this. If I ask everyone

00:53:35 ►

about their tree they will all have different kinds of trees. I’ll see a

00:53:38 ►

willow tree but you’ll see an oak and you’ll see some mythical tree with

00:53:40 ►

orange leaves. And we can’t do experiments on it but But this thing, you know, I can tell you,

00:53:47 ►

if I ask you what’s going to happen when I go like this,

00:53:49 ►

you’ll say, my foot will hit it and it’ll make a noise.

00:53:52 ►

And it does.

00:53:53 ►

And that throws us right back into the problem

00:53:56 ►

that there really does seem to be a difference.

00:53:57 ►

And I don’t know how you get out of that.

00:54:00 ►

Yes.

00:54:02 ►

What do I think is happening in déjà vu?

00:54:04 ►

Well, I don’t know what’s happening in all deja vu.

00:54:07 ►

There may be some cases where people get this great sense of this has happened before. I know

00:54:13 ►

what’s going to happen next and they really do. But we know certain things about deja vu. First

00:54:18 ►

of all, people who have temporal lobe epilepsy quite often get deja vu as part of the aura.

00:54:23 ►

And we know exactly where it happens. It’s in the temporal lobe epilepsy quite often get deja vu as part of the aura. And we know exactly where it happens.

00:54:25 ►

It’s in the temporal lobe, about here somewhere. And there is a specific part of temporal lobe

00:54:31 ►

that you can stimulate artificially, either with electrodes on the skull or using TMS,

00:54:36 ►

transcranial magnet stimulation, and you can force an experience of deja vu. And it is called

00:54:42 ►

inappropriate sense of familiarity. What it seems to be is that you’ve got a familiarity

00:54:46 ►

detector that looks all the time

00:54:48 ►

is looking at stuff and telling, giving some kind

00:54:50 ►

of a message as to how familiar things are.

00:54:52 ►

And that can under certain circumstances

00:54:54 ►

just fire when it shouldn’t.

00:54:56 ►

And you get this huge sense of

00:54:57 ►

I know, I’ve been here before.

00:55:00 ►

But you haven’t.

00:55:04 ►

As I said, there may be cases where people can actually predict,

00:55:07 ►

but there’s none that I know of, because usually it’s too quick.

00:55:10 ►

By the time you know that, it’s already happened.

00:55:12 ►

And people get this sense of having dreamed, maybe I dreamed it before,

00:55:14 ►

but I think that’s because you can’t place it.

00:55:16 ►

You don’t know how to put it in.

00:55:18 ►

Was it yesterday?

00:55:19 ►

It’s a bit hazy, so it’s a dream.

00:55:21 ►

So I think certainly the vast majority and possibly all déjà vu experiences are that.

00:55:28 ►

Yes, his question is,

00:55:29 ►

taking Libet’s experiment on the hand moving,

00:55:33 ►

have there been experiments with more complex actions?

00:55:36 ►

Because he’s quite right in implying

00:55:38 ►

this is a pretty tedious and boring thing.

00:55:39 ►

You know, when you think of free will,

00:55:41 ►

you do not think of twitching your hand, you know.

00:55:43 ►

You think of things like taking important decisions in your life.

00:55:48 ►

And important decisions in your life can’t be done very easily in experiments,

00:55:51 ►

so those haven’t been done.

00:55:52 ►

But he then said, what about something like playing squash?

00:55:55 ►

Or personally, I play ping pong, and that’s, you know, it’s very fast.

00:55:59 ►

And obviously, it’s absolutely clear you’re reacting much faster

00:56:04 ►

than you can possibly be conscious of it.

00:56:06 ►

You’re conscious of playing the game, whatever that means, and I really don’t know what that does mean.

00:56:11 ►

But there’s no question about it, you cannot consciously see the ball coming towards you

00:56:17 ►

in time for it to sort of come into consciousness, and then you respond and do it.

00:56:21 ►

But it’s also known that there are two streams in the visual system.

00:56:25 ►

The eventual stream and the dorsal stream.

00:56:27 ►

And it looks like one leads to the perception of objects

00:56:30 ►

and the knowledge that you’re playing ping pong and all of that

00:56:32 ►

and the other simply controls

00:56:33 ►

and you can control the fast

00:56:36 ►

actions. You can separate these out and

00:56:37 ►

some people have brain damage to one or the other

00:56:39 ►

and they can still do these fast things.

00:56:41 ►

People with that kind of brain damage can say they can’t

00:56:43 ►

see anything at all but they can grasp it like that things. People with that kind of brain damage can say they can’t see anything at all,

00:56:45 ►

but they can grasp it like that.

00:56:47 ►

Quite extraordinary.

00:56:48 ►

So that’s a partial answer to your question.

00:56:51 ►

I think I’m just going to take two more questions,

00:56:53 ►

and then we’ll have to stop.

00:56:55 ►

You back there with a… yeah.

00:56:59 ►

No, I probably slightly slurred them there,

00:57:01 ►

because there’s a tendency of people who talk about the two visual streams

00:57:03 ►

to say that the perception stream is the

00:57:05 ►

conscious stream and the

00:57:08 ►

Action stream is the unconscious stream and I don’t think that’s valid

00:57:11 ►

But I suppose the sense in which I meant it was that the kinds of things that you report being conscious of are

00:57:18 ►

the sort of things which you have perceived in the sense of

00:57:21 ►

Recognizing them as objects or knowing their faces or that kind of thing. So I’m sorry I’m being a bit loose there with the terms,

00:57:28 ►

and I should be more careful with people who know something about this.

00:57:34 ►

We’ll take one more question.

00:57:36 ►

You right at the back there.

00:57:37 ►

I’m sorry to all the others.

00:57:38 ►

I do apologize.

00:57:41 ►

Is looking for conscious…

00:57:43 ►

I can see some of you like that question,

00:57:47 ►

so it’s a good thing that I’m forced into answering it.

00:57:50 ►

Isn’t looking for consciousness in the brain

00:57:51 ►

like looking for the TV station inside the TV set?

00:57:55 ►

No, I don’t think it’s like that at all.

00:57:57 ►

That, I think, is part of the same kind of illusion.

00:58:00 ►

It’s such a popular idea, this,

00:58:02 ►

that somehow consciousness is out there and this is the transmitter that is kind of bringing it in. It’s an a popular idea, this, that somehow consciousness is out there,

00:58:05 ►

and this is the transmitter that is kind of bringing it in.

00:58:07 ►

It’s an idea that I once found enormously attractive.

00:58:10 ►

Bergson, in 1911, wrote a wonderful book of that kind.

00:58:13 ►

It was about the limitations. The brain is actually limiting consciousness.

00:58:17 ►

Actually, it’s all there, and we’re just filtering it through, the sort of selection.

00:58:21 ►

I love this idea. In fact, it’s one of the ideas that set me off doing my PhD,

00:58:25 ►

which was on extrasensory perception as a cognitive process.

00:58:29 ►

And I had a whole theory about this, of that kind.

00:58:33 ►

I think there are a lot of reasons why that it’s not like that at all.

00:58:36 ►

But one of them is simply that if you really start looking in a television

00:58:39 ►

with the best science you have available,

00:58:40 ►

you’ll pretty soon work out that there’s a signal coming in.

00:58:43 ►

And that when there isn’t a signal coming in, you can’t see a picture, and you pretty soon solve it.

00:58:47 ►

Now, it is possible that we’ll find something like that in the brain.

00:58:52 ►

But as we learn more and more and more, we’re beginning to understand all the interactions.

00:58:56 ►

And we know if you put a drug in here, it changes it.

00:58:59 ►

We know if you cut this bit out, you’ll lose that.

00:59:02 ►

It just doesn’t look that way to me.

00:59:04 ►

It may be, but I don’t think so.

00:59:07 ►

And we’ll have to leave it there.

00:59:13 ►

As much as I’d like to begin kicking around

00:59:16 ►

some of the issues that Susan raised in this talk,

00:59:19 ►

I’m going to leave that to interacting with any comments

00:59:22 ►

you might want to leave on our notes

00:59:23 ►

from the Psychedel salon blog which you can find at www.psychedelicsalon.org and before i go any farther i want to be sure to

00:59:34 ►

thank the kind donors who are supporters, guests, and friends of these podcasts

00:59:51 ►

who I was in the middle of some form of phone or email correspondence with,

00:59:56 ►

but recently seem to have dropped off the face of the earth,

00:59:59 ►

well, what can I say other than the man burns in only 29 days.

01:00:04 ►

What can I say other than the man burns in only 29 days.

01:00:11 ►

So my days are now being consumed with constant trips to the hardware store and lumberyard in a desperate attempt to rebuild my shade structure that was destroyed in one of the big windstorms last year.

01:00:18 ►

And by the way, I’m looking forward to the fact that there are quite a few salonners coming to Burning Man this year,

01:00:23 ►

including Mallory and Max,

01:00:25 ►

who will be coming from Alaska to

01:00:27 ►

experience their first burn,

01:00:29 ►

and my old friend Fernando, who’s coming

01:00:31 ►

all the way from Italy. I think

01:00:33 ►

the last time Fernando and I were together

01:00:35 ►

in person was back in 99

01:00:37 ►

in Palenque, which was

01:00:39 ►

also the year that Terrence McKenna

01:00:41 ►

made his last appearance at that conference.

01:00:44 ►

And that leads me right up to the other part of my excited anticipation about this year’s

01:00:49 ►

burn, and that is what our Palenque Norte micro camp will be doing.

01:00:55 ►

However, before I get to that, there are a few emails from fellow salonners that I want

01:00:59 ►

to be sure to mention.

01:01:01 ►

And I know that some of you aren’t really all that interested in what must by now seem like the cult of Burning Man.

01:01:08 ►

And if you want to follow that line of thought a bit further,

01:01:11 ►

you might want to also go back and re-listen to podcast number three,

01:01:16 ►

where Eric Davis, in one of the very first Planque Norte lectures,

01:01:20 ►

spoke about the cults of Burning Man.

01:01:22 ►

But now, as they say on Monty Python, but now for something completely different. The Cults of Burning Man And Bruce, by the way, is also the person who interceded with Ralph Abraham to obtain all of the trialogue tapes for us.

01:01:48 ►

In fact, last November, when I was staying with Bruce and digitizing the trialogues,

01:01:53 ►

we recorded what still will eventually become the first in a new series of podcasts I’m going to begin later this year.

01:02:00 ►

And I guess I should kick myself now for being so slow to get it out, because it would have been a great scoop now that Bruce is on the front page of many tech newspapers, even made it to USA Today and others like that.

01:02:13 ►

If you follow the adventures of spaceflight, then team have become what I think may be the very first group of futurists

01:02:26 ►

to have NASA buy into their proposal for a major repositioning of thought about the near future of space missions.

01:02:35 ►

I won’t go into all of the details right now, but the headline is something like,

01:02:40 ►

Bruce Dahmer and the Digital Space Commons designed the new NASA mission and spacecraft.

01:02:47 ►

How’s that for a headline?

01:02:49 ►

And you can read some of the exciting news about this, one of our fellow Saloners,

01:02:53 ►

through a series of links on the main Digital Space Commons website,

01:02:58 ►

which is at www.digitalspace.com

01:03:05 ►

So congratulations to Bruce, Galen, and the entire VR3D team at the Commons.

01:03:12 ►

Bravo, you guys!

01:03:14 ►

And when I eventually get the first of the Matrixcasts out

01:03:17 ►

with my late-night chat with Bruce about these things,

01:03:21 ►

it’s going to be kind of fun, I think,

01:03:22 ►

to see how a late night’s dream can

01:03:25 ►

sometimes materialize, at least as long as there’s some daytime work that gets done on it as well.

01:03:32 ►

Now, recently I’ve received a surprising number of emails from fellow salonners who seem to

01:03:37 ►

confirm my hunch that if and when you’re ready to get a little closer to the people and medicines

01:03:43 ►

our speakers are talking about,

01:03:47 ►

that they will actually find you.

01:03:51 ►

And each of these stories has its own unique twist,

01:03:53 ►

sort of like the one that came from Brendan.

01:03:55 ►

Here’s what Brendan had to say.

01:04:01 ►

After listening to the latest podcast, I was just instantly jaw-dropped.

01:04:04 ►

I just had to write to tell you this little story.

01:04:08 ►

I really came to an instant sense of how small the world really is.

01:04:14 ►

Around last February or so, I was at my college attending a career fair of sorts.

01:04:18 ►

I was searching for summer opportunities in a field of studies which would allow me to do more research into shamanism.

01:04:22 ►

I really wanted to find a way down to Ecuador for a while, and to no avail.

01:04:27 ►

So I ended up leaving, not finding what I was looking for.

01:04:31 ►

As soon as I left the building to go to my next class,

01:04:34 ►

my eyes gazed across the campus through the trees blowing in the wind,

01:04:38 ►

and I immediately knew what I saw.

01:04:40 ►

A ceremony of sorts, with a handful of courageous and open students,

01:04:44 ►

and a guy dressed in white and an odd-looking hat.

01:04:48 ►

A shaman. I knew it was too good to be true.

01:04:51 ►

To make a long story short, I learned this shaman was from Ecuador.

01:04:56 ►

He came to me, instead of me going to him.

01:04:59 ►

Now, Brendan’s message goes on, but that’s the kind of thing that seems to be happening to a lot of us these days.

01:05:06 ►

So I’ve begun to look at coincidences as clues, you know, clues that I’m on the right path.

01:05:12 ►

When the coincidences and synchronicities begin to taper off, at least for me,

01:05:18 ►

I find that it’s time to check the direction I’m taking, because maybe I’ve drifted off what was once a well-marked path.

01:05:25 ►

Another email I want to be sure to mention

01:05:28 ►

comes from one of the many Jameses who join us each week.

01:05:32 ►

And he says,

01:05:33 ►

I just finished listening to Podcast 101.

01:05:37 ►

It was quite exciting to hear of an ayahuasca journey

01:05:39 ►

by someone around my age,

01:05:41 ►

and with a moniker James as well.

01:05:44 ►

But I just wanted to correct you, though, on the part at the end where you quoted from one of my emails to you.

01:05:50 ►

It’s a great piece to be certain, but that is because it was refined over many nights by the late stand-up comedian Bill Hicks.

01:05:56 ►

I believe I mentioned that in the email, but I can’t find it now.

01:06:00 ►

Regardless, I merely want to set the record straight and point you towards the very psychedelic, intelligent, and hilarious work of this great American comic, who sadly died in 1994.

01:06:12 ►

No doubt my fellow listeners picked up on this as well.

01:06:15 ►

Well, thanks for picking up on that, James.

01:06:18 ►

And yes, you did say in your email that it was from Bill Hicks, but I totally forgot to say that when I read the quote.

01:06:24 ►

And like many of our fellow saloners,

01:06:27 ►

Bill Hicks is one of my favorite comedians, too.

01:06:30 ►

In case you haven’t heard him,

01:06:32 ►

just go to the psychedelicsalon.org website

01:06:35 ►

and in the left sidebar in the links to recent news section

01:06:39 ►

under the war on drugs category.

01:06:41 ►

Got all that?

01:06:43 ►

I’ve added links to two Bill Hicks videos.

01:06:46 ►

One is a bit about

01:06:48 ►

drugs and evolution, and in the

01:06:50 ►

other he tells what he calls a

01:06:51 ►

positive drug story, which I’m sure

01:06:54 ►

you’ll find amusing. So if you

01:06:56 ►

haven’t heard the late, great Bill

01:06:58 ►

Hicks yet, well, maybe you owe it to yourself

01:07:00 ►

to check him out.

01:07:01 ►

And James ended his email by saying,

01:07:04 ►

Hope Burning Man goes well for you.

01:07:06 ►

Well, thanks for that, James,

01:07:08 ►

and thanks for bringing up my current obsession,

01:07:11 ►

the 2007 Burning Man Festival.

01:07:14 ►

To begin with,

01:07:15 ►

if you want to hear what Alex Gray thinks about Burning Man,

01:07:18 ►

there’s a great interview with him

01:07:20 ►

that was done at last year’s event.

01:07:22 ►

And you can find that on Burncast number 28.

01:07:25 ►

And the Burncast, by the way, is a

01:07:27 ►

podcast that focuses

01:07:29 ►

exclusively on the Burning Man event.

01:07:32 ►

Now, what’s up with

01:07:34 ►

Planque Norte on the playa this year?

01:07:36 ►

That’s the question I

01:07:37 ►

started with last January

01:07:39 ►

as I was thinking back to the

01:07:41 ►

huge success we had in 2006

01:07:44 ►

in the big tent provided by Cliff and the good people who built and financed in Theon Village.

01:07:50 ►

And if you were there, you know what I mean.

01:07:52 ►

Now, if I was a younger man, I might try to do something even bigger this year,

01:07:57 ►

but my current trajectory seems to be in the older direction,

01:08:02 ►

and so I no longer have this insane urge to compete with myself.

01:08:07 ►

Okay, let me just cut to the chase.

01:08:09 ►

I could simply point you to the webpage that I’m in the process of building

01:08:13 ►

with all of this information on it,

01:08:15 ►

but since this is a podcast and you most likely aren’t sitting at your computer right now,

01:08:20 ►

I’m going to read a few of the things about our plans for this year’s burn.

01:08:24 ►

And by the way,

01:08:26 ►

you can find this information along with more detailed plans as they evolve on my matrixmasters.com

01:08:33 ►

website. Right at the top of the home page, you’ll find an obnoxiously big link to our 2007 Burning

01:08:40 ►

Man page. Unless, of course, you’re listening to this podcast after some time in September

01:08:46 ►

And then you can

01:08:48 ►

find a link to the final version of that

01:08:50 ►

page by following the Burning

01:08:52 ►

Man link at the very top of

01:08:53 ►

any MatrixMasters.com

01:08:56 ►

or PsychedelicSalon.org

01:08:59 ►

webpage.

01:09:00 ►

That’ll take you to our main

01:09:01 ►

Planque Norte page where you’ll find links

01:09:04 ►

to our schedule for every year since we began the Planque Norte concept.

01:09:08 ►

First of all, here’s the announcement that I put in the official Burning Man program that you’ll get at the gate.

01:09:15 ►

From 3 to 6 p.m. on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday in the Yurt at the Pod Cluster, which can be found at 730 and intertidal, the following will take place.

01:09:26 ►

Lorenzo, host of the Psychedelic Salon

01:09:28 ►

podcast, will be

01:09:29 ►

moderating a series of community

01:09:31 ►

discussions regarding issues relating

01:09:33 ►

to the theme of this year’s burn.

01:09:35 ►

These discussions will be led by

01:09:37 ►

leading authors, artists, researchers

01:09:40 ►

and futurists. A listing of

01:09:41 ►

the speakers, including days and times

01:09:43 ►

they will participate,

01:09:50 ►

will be posted at the Interactive Yurt Gallery in the Pod Cluster. And here’s a little of what I say about it on the website. Topic leaders include Eric Davis, Daniel Pinchbeck, John Hanna,

01:09:57 ►

Preet Chopra, Brock, Raphael Eisner, Seabrook Leaf, Tom Patterson, Roberto Venosa, Martina Hoffman, and Valerie Mojeco, among others.

01:10:08 ►

And I also mention what may actually become the most memorable of this year’s Playa Logs,

01:10:14 ►

and that is the potential for ad hoc Playa Logs.

01:10:17 ►

You see, in addition to the regularly scheduled Playa Logs,

01:10:21 ►

my co-host and I will be turning on our recorders and capturing Playa Logs all over Black Rock City. Thank you. Will my co-host be, you ask? Well, one of the frequent requests that I receive is to tell more about Burning Man,

01:10:47 ►

but from the perspective of somebody going for the first time.

01:10:51 ►

So what better way to do this, I figured, than to just ask a first-time burner to help with the ply logs.

01:10:58 ►

And since Burning Man is such a colorful event,

01:11:00 ►

I decided to ask for help from one of the most colorful people I know,

01:11:05 ►

who is also planning on coming to his first burn this year. And that is the one and only Matt Palomary,

01:11:11 ►

or Mateo as you may know of him from podcasts number 80 and 89. But on the playa, he may also

01:11:19 ►

be known by the handle I gave him a few years ago, and that’s Casawack. More about that some other day.

01:11:26 ►

So come on by the pod cluster near 730 and Intertidal and stop by and say hello.

01:11:33 ►

And for the first few of you who mention it, our fellow salonner Justin,

01:11:38 ►

who is part of my new favorite rock group, Fab Om, whose song,

01:11:41 ►

and Drifting Away, I played at the end of podcast number 96 with Charlie Grobe.

01:11:47 ►

Well, anyway, Justin sent me a dozen or so copies of their CD titled Release,

01:11:53 ►

and I’m going to keep one for myself and give the rest away at Burning Man

01:11:56 ►

to the first few people who come up and mention Vav Ohm to me.

01:12:01 ►

So even if you don’t have time to stop for a visit, well, come on by anyway and say hello.

01:12:06 ►

Matt Palomary is going to be in our camp, as will John Hanna himself, along with some other close

01:12:12 ►

friends that I’m sure you’ll enjoy meeting. Now as to the genesis of the Planque Norte

01:12:18 ►

Plylogues, let me read again from the website I’m building. Long ago and far away, there gathered a small

01:12:27 ►

group of people in a Lacandon jungle near the ruins at Palenque, Mexico. Each year,

01:12:32 ►

for a couple of weeks, a few hundred inquisitive souls sat around the end of the pool at the

01:12:37 ►

Chan Ka Hotel and talked. They told stories and jokes, they sang, they danced, and they

01:12:43 ►

sat on their porches late into the night talking about their cosmic dreams.

01:12:48 ►

Those were great days, those lazy days around the pool in Palenque.

01:12:52 ►

But those days have moved on, and that little tribe gathers in Palenque no more.

01:12:57 ►

But their conversations never died.

01:13:00 ►

In fact, they can often be heard in various nooks and crannies of Black Rock City.

01:13:04 ►

In 2003, a few of us initiated the Planque Norte Conversations,

01:13:09 ►

which evolved into the Planque Norte Lectures by 2006.

01:13:13 ►

Now the time has arrived to return to our roots,

01:13:16 ►

conversations with the people we’ve been bumping into at conferences and festivals for many years now.

01:13:22 ►

Anyone who has attended a conference in the past,

01:13:27 ►

like Mind States or the Entheobotany seminars in Palenque,

01:13:31 ►

will tell you that while the speakers are what drew them to the conference,

01:13:34 ►

it was the people they met there that kept them coming back.

01:13:40 ►

So we are going to attempt to recreate that vibe at the end of the pool in Palenque and record a series of plyologues or group conversations on the plyo.

01:13:45 ►

It is our hope that these conversations will eventually reach people far and wide.

01:13:50 ►

Hopefully our conversations will never end,

01:13:52 ►

but will reach the ears of all who are ready to listen.

01:13:56 ►

So that, my friends, is only the beginning of what I hope is in store for the plyologs.

01:14:03 ►

My hope is for you to continue them with your

01:14:06 ►

friends, relatives, neighbors, co-workers

01:14:08 ►

and anybody else who shares an interest

01:14:10 ►

in exchanging ideas

01:14:11 ►

about better ways for us humans to

01:14:13 ►

get along and live on this beautiful little

01:14:16 ►

planet together. And I’m going

01:14:18 ►

to see if we can’t figure a way to

01:14:19 ►

share them with each other in some way or another.

01:14:23 ►

Now one more thing about the

01:14:24 ►

Plylogs and then I’ll let you go for today.

01:14:26 ►

I want to be sure to give

01:14:28 ►

credit to Bruce Dahmer for

01:14:29 ►

coming up with the word plylogue.

01:14:32 ►

While I was working on the

01:14:33 ►

concept for this year’s Planque Norte

01:14:35 ►

contribution to the playa, I kicked

01:14:37 ►

the idea around with a few other people

01:14:39 ►

and Bruce was one of them.

01:14:41 ►

He instantly understood what I was trying to do

01:14:44 ►

and he came right back with the suggestion that the word plylog would apply to it.

01:14:49 ►

Well, for me, the coining of that word finally put into focus

01:14:53 ►

what I hope these conversations will become.

01:14:56 ►

And, of course, one of the nice things about that word is that, as of just now,

01:15:01 ►

when I googled the word plylog, P-L-A-Y-A-L-O-G-U-E, there were no hits.

01:15:09 ►

Zero.

01:15:10 ►

Bruce has coined a new word, at least according to Google, whose only comeback was,

01:15:16 ►

did you mean play along?

01:15:19 ►

So I hope that we all someday play along together with a plylog.

01:15:24 ►

Oh, and Bruce wants you to know that his invention of that word is, as he says,

01:15:29 ►

with apologies and thanks to Terrence, Ralph, and Rupert.

01:15:33 ►

And before I forget it, my thanks also go out to John Hanna for producing the Mind States conferences,

01:15:40 ►

to JT for recording and editing today’s talk,

01:15:43 ►

and, of course, to the one and only Susan Blackmore,

01:15:46 ►

who already has a large following among our fellow salonners,

01:15:50 ►

and whose very interesting mind has given us so much to think about today.

01:15:55 ►

Before I go, I want to mention that this and all of the podcasts from the Psychedelic Salon

01:16:00 ►

are protected under the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Sharealike 2.5 license.

01:16:06 ►

And if you have any questions about that, just click on the Creative Commons link at the bottom of the Psychedelic Salon webpage,

01:16:13 ►

which, of course, you can find at www.psychedelicsalon.org.

01:16:18 ►

And if you have any questions, comments, complaints, or suggestions about these podcasts,

01:16:23 ►

well, just send them to lorenzo at matrixmasters.com.

01:16:28 ►

I guess I should mention that matrixmasters.com is also my personal website.

01:16:35 ►

Before I started podcasting, that was where I spent a lot of my online time.

01:16:39 ►

In fact, if you’re interested, my book, The Spirit of the Internet, Speculations on the Evolution of Global Consciousness, is on that site for you to read in HTML format.

01:16:51 ►

And if I can ever remember to do it, I plan on putting it up online in PDF format for you to download for free.

01:16:58 ►

But since I started these podcasts, I haven’t added a lot of new material to that site.

01:17:03 ►

these podcasts, I haven’t added a lot of new material to that site.

01:17:08 ►

But some of my essays are there, along with a brief resume or CV or whatever you call it for those of you who are wondering about those kinds

01:17:12 ►

of things. However, my plan after Burning Man is to focus on

01:17:16 ►

two main channels of communication with you, in addition to the podcasts, of course.

01:17:21 ►

Since my email has become a little unruly,

01:17:24 ►

what I hope to do is to interact with

01:17:26 ►

you about these podcasts via the comments section under each one on the psychedelicsalon.org

01:17:33 ►

notes from the Psychedelic Salon blog. And I’m going to think of those comments as the

01:17:38 ►

main form of electronic mail that I read each week. But for conversations about other topics,

01:17:45 ►

I hope to use some form of interactive blog that we’ll set up on MySpace

01:17:49 ►

or someplace like that.

01:17:50 ►

Now, with all of this, plus the ongoing physical preparations

01:17:54 ►

required to survive Burning Man,

01:17:57 ►

it’s very doubtful that you’ll be hearing from me,

01:18:00 ►

either via podcast or via email,

01:18:02 ►

until sometime after I get back and decompress around the middle of September.

01:18:07 ►

If I get a little extra time and have the energy, I’ll try to get one more podcast out before I leave for the playa.

01:18:13 ►

But if I don’t, you can bet on the fact that I’ll be with you in spirit

01:18:17 ►

as we all listen to some of the other great podcasts on the net,

01:18:22 ►

like KMO’s Sea Realm and all of the shows on the Cannabis Podcast Network,

01:18:27 ►

which you can find at www.dopefiend.co.uk.

01:18:34 ►

And there’s links to those on our Psychedelic Salon blog as well.

01:18:39 ►

And by the way, I stopped by Lefty’s Lounge, which you can find on the Cannabis Podcast Network.

01:18:45 ►

I stopped by the other day, so you might hear me over there, too.

01:18:48 ►

But as the song goes, just because you don’t hear from me, it doesn’t mean I’m not thinking about you.

01:18:54 ►

And Jacques, Cordell, and Wells, my friends who make music under the name Chateau Hayouk,

01:18:59 ►

thanks again for the use of your music here in the salon, you guys.

01:19:03 ►

I really appreciate it.

01:19:03 ►

Thanks again for the use of your music here in the salon, you guys.

01:19:04 ►

I really appreciate it.

01:19:11 ►

And for now, this is Lorenzo signing off from Cyberdelic Space.

01:19:36 ►

Be well, my friends. Thank you.

⚗️ alembic

Explorer

104 - Consciousness Isn’t What It Seems To Be

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