365: Making Sense of Self with Anil Seth
“The self is itself a perception. It’s not that the self does the perceiving. The experience of being a self is just part of the unfolding of all conscious experience, and all conscious experience is formed of perceptions of one sort or another.”
Indre continues to pursue her fascination with the neural basis of consciousness in this week’s episode. In her never ending quest to understand how the biology of the brain gives rise to every experience we’ve ever had, ever will have, and everything in between, she has picked the brains of a number of experts in the field over the years. Today is no exception as she revisits this favorite topic by welcoming to the podcast Anil Seth, Professor of Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience at the University of Sussex, and Co-Director of the Sackler Centre for Consciousness Science, for a discussion about his new book Being You: A New Science of Consciousness.
Anil starts off by explaining physicalism and why he supports it, and then going on to describe the experience of going under general anesthesia, how it differs from sleep, and its amnestic and interruptive impact. He also looks at the relationship between sensory signals and perception, the experience of being a self, integrated information theory, and the work of Giulio Tononi. The episode draws to a close with Anil reviewing his case for the beast machine, the purpose behind humans being meta-conscious, and what we can learn from studying the effects of psychedelics on selfhood. Anil’s ability to render the complex thoroughly accessible, as demonstrated in his new book, is also clearly on display in today’s informative and fascinating conversation about the very nature of selfhood.
