What it is like to be an experiencing being, what exactly is this weird thing we call consciousness? How does consciousness relates to the physical, i.e. the world of neurons and brain networks? Here I touch upon some of the deep philosophical problems that arise when we try to understand consciousness (The hard problem, the problem of other minds).

I try to sketch out how we can understand consciousness as a software state produced by our brains, as a simulated virtual reality of the external world. The purpose of this software state being to resolve conflicts that face the organism which can not be resolved automatically - they require the intervention of an attentional system to single out features which are relevant to the organism. Plus other topics.

I hope you guys enjoyed this episode :)

Timestamps:

00:00 - preamble

00:19 - intro

03:21 - the primacy of consciousness

05:33 - the problem of other minds

07:26 - conceptual representations of experience

09:00 - a model of the contents of attention

11:51 - the hard problem of consciousness

15:37 - dualism and consciousness as emergent

17:51 - a simulated model of reality

22:47 - final remarks

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