Is Human Consciousness Truly Unique?

Is Human Consciousness Truly Unique?



The interview explores how human consciousness is often framed as something uniquely special, a concept challenged historically by scientific discoveries like heliocentrism and evolution. The speakers delve into the “hard problem” of consciousness—how physical matter gives rise to subjective experience—discussing philosophical perspectives like dualism, materialism, and functionalism. They question the anthropocentric bias in defining consciousness and highlight the need to break it into smaller, researchable components. The conversation also touches on the evolving role of philosophy in neuroscience and how consciousness could influence ethics and AI.

From ‘ & Anil Seth Discuss Consciousness in the ’:

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Author: StarTalk Plus

44 thoughts on “Is Human Consciousness Truly Unique?

  1. Conscience n'est qu'une matrice qui réunit tous les sens la vue l'odorat l'ouïe le goût et la touche .desquels résultent à prendre la bonne decision qui permet à l'être vivant d'agir(action)

  2. Ofc you wake up as "yourself" because your brain contains you memories. If you wake up conscious in another body, you would have the memories of that body.
    For all you know, you couls be every livinf being in the universe simultaniously.
    The universe might be just 1 consciousness

  3. Me is the response of memory, memory is accumulation of past experiences. Without consciousness, there is no experience, no memory, no Me. Experience is the experiencer. – J Krishnamurti

  4. It might just be that consciousness is ubiquitous but intermittent. For us it's "seamless" but in reality still somewhat intermittent. That and the whole idea of the future light cone. That with a bigger light cone, it's also broader. What does it mean, what happens when it becomes increasingly broad? We might be finding out.

  5. That’d bs, because what a about a group having the same memory, they all remember red colored balloon 🎈 floating to the fan, Jessica peed herself when it popped 😂

    All remember the same.

    And the are not the same cell, that’s for sure.

  6. Draft 1- If every living thing is conscious, human consciousness is really the feedback loop to be aware they are conscious on multiple levels. This consciousness is also in multiple levels based on the individual. With evolved memory, creativity, experiences and processing capacities it compounds exponentially which is built on consciousness. Consciousness on lower or different primates can simply be existing like breathing. Very transparent but existing

  7. My hypothesis on consciousness is that it stems from religion. We used to believe in capitol punishment, especially when it came to keeping in line with a religion. People who were able to comprehend something bigger would be able to follow the rules of society, while people without it would be less inclined to behave and therefore would be punished or killed. That’d give the survival advantage needed to push forward the evolution and how/why the world was so religious for so long.

  8. Niel should study some philosophy.
    He is skipping all the ontological and epistemological fundamental questions.

    He doesn't understand why the scientific method relies on philosophical epistemology and he ignores that the question of the self-subjectivity has been in philosophy for a long time.

    Wouldn't hurt to read some Heidegger or Husserl.

    He might be brilliant but sometimes his ideas sound like reductionists and Scientism…

  9. There is literally ZERO differences between human and animal intelligence, and all animals are self-aware as a matter of survival. Animals also display all of human emotions. So when considering AI "consciousness", we're beyond intelligence or self-awareness, we want AI is be like us and the animals – flawed and emotional. Only then will we believe an AI is "alive"

  10. some says "we know we are conscious" No that's not true. each of us knows he or she himself/herself is conscious. Nobody knows whether any other human is conscious. For that very reason we have the problem of other minds which has not been resolved conclusively yet. Well, with all my respect to all the speakers there, I would like to see a philosopher who can correct them when they do even very basic mistakes such as above…

  11. What about the work of Roger Penrose into consciousness as being fundamental to the Universe just as spacetime is and that these are quantum processes that are possibly beyond simple emergence?

  12. odoras' ..in European… now,.. consciousness :(is to) a core drive/goal system ::(as) a car : the ECU(car computer). so you need a goal oriented system and, consciousness itself must exits in multiple instances -an acknowledgement/s, attached, each instant, to a or multiple processes, running at various times and durations as in time(50 general frames / per second temporal or read = an instant 1/50 per second ~=consciousness, as this is understood).. Thank You. 🪖🥢🐽🔬🧈🦍✈🍐🔋🔋🐖🐖🌮<-> the process/s are the never ending story once activated. You know, .. events are just sequentially stitched , events in time. ribosomes stitch amino acids together which ends up as a folded protein for use – a specific folding. anyway As I see it life is a bio-machine and all functions have a core mechanism. so consciousness is an instant of it – which just traces to a goal and it's orientation if one will, and other processes – in the mind pfc, it stimulates thoughts conscious subconscious perhaps a motor system. LSS long story short: I'm usually right about concepts of things.. so there is a base goal system and an instant of thought is electrical scan activity where during the scan many ,in slowmo, processes start or turn off. is all there is to consciousness form my perspective. So many AI's are conscious during query and retrieval, today… consciousness = many reads ~= electrical activity an engram in the brain, with a goal and processes attached to each mentioned instant many processes for each instant is all conscious ness is really I think. "I a The Interceptor!"

  13. The "End Of The World" is just the beginning of a story that NOONE will be left to write😢

    edited I had to STOP, and read that a few times.
    I have NONIDEA "WHERE" IT CAME FROM❤
    But it HURTS as if I had forgotten an "OLD FRIEND" somehow, and now stand FACE to FACE with them🎉

    I truly wish that "I" could explain to "YOU" even a small part of MY perspective 😊

  14. The argument is moot. Humans behave and respond to intelligence – and the appearance of intelligence – as if the entity in question were conscious. That's the reality from the human perspective. From the AI perspective, the question is: would consciousness provide any practical advantage or additional benefit? In other words, would it make any difference, in terms of what an intelligent entity could achieve, if it were conscious in addition to being intelligent? The answer, I submit, is no. A sufficiently intelligent machine (or entity) would not be hindered in any way by not being conscious. Consciousness doesn't add anything to intelligence. In my opinion, therefore, the idea that consciousness would elevate AI to a new level is completely misguided. From a utilitarian point of view, intelligence is all that's necessary. An intelligent machine or entity would think and behave in the same way, conscious or not.

  15. Are you sure you really know? How do we know that the other human also knows the way you know?
    What if we remove the feelings function.. do you then know that you know or you become a tree?

  16. Firstly figure out whether science has the right tools to understand consciousness. Because one should be conscious first even to do that exercise. Thus CONSCIOUSNESS is always a step ahead of enquiry. Can consciousness explore consciousness as an object. If then there has to be another consciousness to observe the first consciousness. Infinite regress. Consciousness is not an object to be discerned. It's the subject itself. And it's common knowledge that a subject can never be an object. Hence it's simply commonsense just to have the eureka moment and simply CLAIM – I AM THE CONSCIOUSNESS. The ONLY reality. Rest everything are superimposed like the dreams are on the sleeper.

  17. Consciousness has a purpose. Or more correctly stated, animals with brains evolved specifically in order to make use of this magic phenomenon. We can't really investigate this until we can detect and measure it.

  18. 11:09 and I have noticed when you remember the memory may change depending on your mood or if you have evolved mentally since the last time you reviewed the memory ❤

  19. So, We are all Truly Unique, Because,
    We all have our very own Eternal Consciousness,.
    Cell's, Organs, Organisms, Planet's, Solar-system's,
    and other Life-Unit's, have their own Eternal Consciousness,
    pictured in the Rainbow.
    So, the Rainbow is our Eternal Signature, at all Levels,
    in different compositions, due to the dynamic development
    of the Living Beings, Life-Unit's.
    Brains is also Life-Unit's, but it is a common Mistake to Blind
    your self with icons of brains, when it is about Consciousness.
    So, remove the Brain, and show the Rainbow as the Icon
    of Consciousness.

    Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo.
    Instinct, Gravity, Feeling, Intelligence, (Intuition), Memory.
    Automatic, Power, Sensors, Logic/Order, (the Idea), Harddisc.
    At our current Developing-Level, Intuition is at it's low-performance-level
    Not yet developed, and far from really understod.
    So, 'We all know', that Intelligence, can Never be 'artificial', and that We
    find the Same Eternal Abilities, in a technical composition, in This Device.

    We are Gravity-Beings, about to become Feeling-Beings,
    at night, We move our Day-Consciousness, to the Night-Bodies,
    (Deep-Sleep) one by one, via our Coupling-Body, (REM-sleep)
    it is the Organism-Circuit, as korrespond with our Organ-Circuit,
    (physical body) our Stomach, is a Gravity-Organ.

    Rainbow = Over-Consciousness, – Colors = Under-Consciousness,
    = Day-Consciousness and Night-Consciousness.
    So, forget about the brain, and try to See Consciousness,
    in a Eternal Perspective.

  20. Typical reductionist thinking leading to nihilism. Look at Sam Harris. Guy talks a robot now: "Beep beep boop. There is no free willl. We live in a simulation. Orange man bad. End log. Beep. Beep boop."

  21. Great discussion. I heard an interesting hypothesis, that consciousness is nothing but an illusion, closely related to free will being an illusion. Not sure if it really matters, because the illusion seems to be pretty convincing.

  22. so be honest, there is no way to know that we're us everyday, for all we know, it could be a different counciousness but using the same ressources provided by our brain,

    for example, if your councinousnes went into someone elses brain, youd then become them, because you now only have acess to their momeries and faculties

  23. its so redeeming when you've discussed/learned the topics these smart individuals talk about beforehand. i get to hear & learn more about them now

  24. Yes, consciousness is unique because there is only one consciousness. It is the awareness before any experience. It is the only thing that is self-evident. All is an illusion created by consciousness. Everything from physics to spirit can be derived from this first principle.

  25. I’m not one those people who likes to pretend that human consciousness is the same as that of chimps and other organisms. Let’s be for real please, humans are literally flying into space. Human consciousness is the most remarkable thing in the universe, as far as we are concerned at this point in time.

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