How Does Consciousness Actually Work? | Alex O'Connor, Karl Friston, Susan Schneider, Jan Westerhoff

Karl Friston, Susan Schneider, Jan Westerhoff and Alex O'Connor debate consciousness.

How does the brain interact with reality to create experience?

The nature of human experience, or consciousness, has divided thinkers for centuries. The Scottish philosopher Hume saw experience as nothing more than a bundle of perceptions, and denied the existence of a self holding them all together. Kant disagreed, arguing that sensation had to be organised by concepts for there to be experience. It is a debate that has echoed through the Western tradition. You might think science would have settled the matter, but the same dispute is still present amongst neuroscientists. Some argue that sensation is independent of how we think, a neutral bedrock of data which enables us to experience reality. While others claim what we take to be reality is an illusion created by our brain.

Do our thoughts and concepts shape and structure experience and what we take to be reality? Are current theories of neuroscience taking sides in this deeper underlying philosophical dispute? Does the existence of the self and the nature of reality depend on our philosophical outlook, or is there a fact of the matter that we might uncover?

Karl Friston is a Professor of Imaging Neuroscience at University College London and Principle Research Fellow for the Wellcome Trust. Jan Westerhoff is a professor of Buddhist philosophy at Oxford University. He researches the philosophical aspects of the religious traditions of ancient India, and contemporary analytic metaphysics. Susan Schneider is an American philosopher and cognitive scientist, known for her work on the nature of consciousness, artificial intelligence, and the future of mind.

The Institute of Art and Ideas features videos and articles from cutting edge thinkers discussing the ideas that are shaping the world, from metaphysics to string theory, technology to democracy, aesthetics to genetics.

00:00 Introduction
01:53 How does the brain interact with reality to create the human experience?
02:30 Karl Friston
06:00 Jan Westerhoff
09:07 Susan Schneider
11:50 Is the question of consciousness a neuroscientific question?
12:29 Susan Schneider
14:17 Karl Friston