”What Is Consciousness?” with Janet Varney

Journos

We're introducing a new feature here on JOURNOS: a sort of journalism detective agency. You've got a question, we do journalism on it and find the answer.

(I should say that the term "do journalism on it" has had a mixed reception.)

Our first question comes from friend and guinea pig of the show, Janet Varney, who asks a pretty simple little question: "What is consciousness?"

Brandon & Stephen hunted far and wide and interviewed a couple of experts about theories of consciousness, the hard and soft problems, whether you can communicate with people in vegetative states, and more.

And then we talked to Janet about it and got deep on how these theories affect our view of ourselves, our world, and shine some light on what version of reality we'd all prefer.

Get ready to think about how we talk about thinking, and what we think we're talking about when we talk about what we're thinking about. It's a trip from the neurons to the stars.

NOTES

• Timothy Bayne weighs in on when consciousness starts and name-calling in the field
• Martin Monti talks mind-reading, vegetative states, and cloning consciousness
• Finding consciousness in the brain
• The juices & jolts of consciousness
• Anil Seth says we create our reality
• ... And takes a stab at defining consciousness
• ... Which may be a fight against entropy
• The current academic-type theories
• The recent catfight over one theory of consciousness
• Some history of panpsychism
• ... And a little more history of panpsychism
• ... And more on whether consciousness might be everywhere
• Orchestrated Objective Reduction Theory
• ... Is wet enough for quantum
• You're never far from Buddhism