Description:
This episode is about where consciousness begins. Mark Solms, neuropsychologist and psychoanalyst at the University of Cape Town, joins to explain why he thinks it begins not in the cortex but in raw feeling from the upper brainstem.
We discuss patients who lost REM sleep but kept dreaming, what that means for Freud’s wish theory, and children born without a cortex who still giggle and startle. He argues the hard problem was tackled from the wrong end, starting with visual perception instead of feeling.
The conversation also covers dual-aspect monism, Markov blankets and the free energy principle, his attempt to engineer an artificial agent that feels, and why he thinks that at death the second law wins.
TIMESTAMPS:
- 00:00 - What Is Consciousness?
- 07:00 - Why Would We Self-Sacrifice?
- 15:37 - The Beggar: Care vs Rage
- 22:33 - What Is Neuropsychoanalysis?
- 31:15 - Why Do We Dream?
- 45:42 - Affect, Sentience, Consciousness
- 51:57 - Can You Betray Your Feelings?
- 56:58 - Hidden Motives and Willpower
TIMESTAMPS:
- 00:00 - What Is Consciousness?
- 07:00 - Why Would We Self-Sacrifice?
- 15:37 - The Beggar: Care vs Rage
- 22:33 - What Is Neuropsychoanalysis?
- 31:15 - Why Do We Dream?
- 45:42 - Affect, Sentience, Consciousness
- 51:57 - Can You Betray Your Feelings?
- 56:58 - Hidden Motives and Willpower