WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.000 I'm going to talk about consciousness. 00:00:03.000 --> 00:00:04.000 Why consciousness? 00:00:04.000 --> 00:00:07.000 Well, it's a curiously neglected subject, 00:00:07.000 --> 00:00:10.000 both in our scientific and our philosophical culture. NOTE Paragraph 00:00:10.000 --> 00:00:12.000 Now why is that curious? 00:00:12.000 --> 00:00:15.000 Well, it is the most important aspect of our lives 00:00:15.000 --> 00:00:17.000 for a very simple, logical reason, 00:00:17.000 --> 00:00:20.000 namely, it's a necessary condition on anything 00:00:20.000 --> 00:00:22.000 being important in our lives that we're conscious. 00:00:22.000 --> 00:00:25.000 You care about science, philosophy, music, art, whatever -- 00:00:25.000 --> 00:00:29.000 it's no good if you're a zombie or in a coma, right? 00:00:29.000 --> 00:00:31.000 So consciousness is number one. 00:00:31.000 --> 00:00:34.000 The second reason is that when people do 00:00:34.000 --> 00:00:36.000 get interested in it, as I think they should, 00:00:36.000 --> 00:00:39.000 they tend to say the most appalling things. 00:00:39.000 --> 00:00:41.000 And then, even when they're not saying appalling things 00:00:41.000 --> 00:00:43.000 and they're really trying to do serious research, 00:00:43.000 --> 00:00:47.000 well, it's been slow. Progress has been slow. NOTE Paragraph 00:00:47.000 --> 00:00:50.000 When I first got interested in this, I thought, well, 00:00:50.000 --> 00:00:52.000 it's a straightforward problem in biology. 00:00:52.000 --> 00:00:55.000 Let's get these brain stabbers to get busy and figure out 00:00:55.000 --> 00:00:56.000 how it works in the brain. 00:00:56.000 --> 00:00:57.000 So I went over to UCSF and I talked to all 00:00:57.000 --> 00:00:59.000 the heavy-duty neurobiologists there, 00:00:59.000 --> 00:01:01.000 and they showed some impatience, 00:01:01.000 --> 00:01:04.000 as scientists often do when you ask them embarrassing questions. 00:01:04.000 --> 00:01:08.000 But the thing that struck me is, one guy said in exasperation, 00:01:08.000 --> 00:01:10.000 a very famous neurobiologist, he said, "Look, 00:01:10.000 --> 00:01:14.000 in my discipline it's okay to be interested in consciousness, 00:01:14.000 --> 00:01:17.000 but get tenure first. Get tenure first." NOTE Paragraph 00:01:17.000 --> 00:01:20.000 Now I've been working on this for a long time. 00:01:20.000 --> 00:01:22.000 I think now you might actually get tenure 00:01:22.000 --> 00:01:23.000 by working on consciousness. 00:01:23.000 --> 00:01:26.000 If so, that's a real step forward. NOTE Paragraph 00:01:26.000 --> 00:01:29.000 Okay, now why then is this curious reluctance 00:01:29.000 --> 00:01:31.000 and curious hostility to consciousness? 00:01:31.000 --> 00:01:33.000 Well, I think it's a combination of two features 00:01:33.000 --> 00:01:35.000 of our intellectual culture 00:01:35.000 --> 00:01:38.000 that like to think they're opposing each other 00:01:38.000 --> 00:01:41.000 but in fact they share a common set of assumptions. 00:01:41.000 --> 00:01:45.000 One feature is the tradition of religious dualism: 00:01:45.000 --> 00:01:49.000 Consciousness is not a part of the physical world. 00:01:49.000 --> 00:01:51.000 It's a part of the spiritual world. 00:01:51.000 --> 00:01:52.000 It belongs to the soul, 00:01:52.000 --> 00:01:55.000 and the soul is not a part of the physical world. 00:01:55.000 --> 00:01:59.000 That's the tradition of God, the soul and immortality. 00:01:59.000 --> 00:02:01.000 There's another tradition that thinks it's opposed to this 00:02:01.000 --> 00:02:03.000 but accepts the worst assumption. 00:02:03.000 --> 00:02:07.000 That tradition thinks that we are heavy-duty scientific materialists: 00:02:07.000 --> 00:02:10.000 Consciousness is not a part of the physical world. 00:02:10.000 --> 00:02:13.000 Either it doesn't exist at all, or it's something else, 00:02:13.000 --> 00:02:16.000 a computer program or some damn fool thing, 00:02:16.000 --> 00:02:19.000 but in any case it's not part of science. 00:02:19.000 --> 00:02:21.000 And I used to get in an argument that really gave me a stomachache. 00:02:21.000 --> 00:02:23.000 Here's how it went. 00:02:23.000 --> 00:02:27.000 Science is objective, consciousness is subjective, 00:02:27.000 --> 00:02:30.000 therefore there cannot be a science of consciousness. NOTE Paragraph 00:02:30.000 --> 00:02:36.000 Okay, so these twin traditions are paralyzing us. 00:02:36.000 --> 00:02:39.000 It's very hard to get out of these twin traditions. 00:02:39.000 --> 00:02:42.000 And I have only one real message in this lecture, 00:02:42.000 --> 00:02:46.000 and that is, consciousness is a biological phenomenon 00:02:46.000 --> 00:02:49.000 like photosynthesis, digestion, mitosis -- 00:02:49.000 --> 00:02:53.000 you know all the biological phenomena -- and once you accept that, 00:02:53.000 --> 00:02:56.000 most, though not all, of the hard problems 00:02:56.000 --> 00:02:58.000 about consciousness simply evaporate. 00:02:58.000 --> 00:03:00.000 And I'm going to go through some of them. NOTE Paragraph 00:03:00.000 --> 00:03:02.000 Okay, now I promised you to tell you some 00:03:02.000 --> 00:03:05.000 of the outrageous things said about consciousness. 00:03:05.000 --> 00:03:09.000 One: Consciousness does not exist. 00:03:09.000 --> 00:03:11.000 It's an illusion, like sunsets. 00:03:11.000 --> 00:03:16.000 Science has shown sunsets and rainbows are illusions. 00:03:16.000 --> 00:03:18.000 So consciousness is an illusion. 00:03:18.000 --> 00:03:21.000 Two: Well, maybe it exists, but it's really something else. 00:03:21.000 --> 00:03:25.000 It's a computer program running in the brain. 00:03:25.000 --> 00:03:29.000 Three: No, the only thing that exists is really behavior. 00:03:29.000 --> 00:03:32.000 It's embarrassing how influential behaviorism was, 00:03:32.000 --> 00:03:34.000 but I'll get back to that. 00:03:34.000 --> 00:03:36.000 And four: Maybe consciousness exists, 00:03:36.000 --> 00:03:38.000 but it can't make any difference to the world. 00:03:38.000 --> 00:03:41.000 How could spirituality move anything? 00:03:41.000 --> 00:03:43.000 Now, whenever somebody tells me that, I think, 00:03:43.000 --> 00:03:45.000 you want to see spirituality move something? 00:03:45.000 --> 00:03:49.000 Watch. I decide consciously to raise my arm, 00:03:49.000 --> 00:03:51.000 and the damn thing goes up. (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:03:51.000 --> 00:03:55.000 Furthermore, notice this: 00:03:55.000 --> 00:03:59.000 We do not say, "Well, it's a bit like the weather in Geneva. 00:03:59.000 --> 00:04:02.000 Some days it goes up and some days it doesn't go up." 00:04:02.000 --> 00:04:04.000 No. It goes up whenever I damn well want it to. NOTE Paragraph 00:04:04.000 --> 00:04:06.000 Okay. I'm going to tell you how that's possible. 00:04:06.000 --> 00:04:10.000 Now, I haven't yet given you a definition. 00:04:10.000 --> 00:04:12.000 You can't do this if you don't give a definition. 00:04:12.000 --> 00:04:15.000 People always say consciousness is very hard to define. 00:04:15.000 --> 00:04:17.000 I think it's rather easy to define 00:04:17.000 --> 00:04:20.000 if you're not trying to give a scientific definition. 00:04:20.000 --> 00:04:22.000 We're not ready for a scientific definition, 00:04:22.000 --> 00:04:24.000 but here's a common-sense definition. 00:04:24.000 --> 00:04:26.000 Consciousness consists of all those states of feeling 00:04:26.000 --> 00:04:28.000 or sentience or awareness. 00:04:28.000 --> 00:04:32.000 It begins in the morning when you wake up from a dreamless sleep, 00:04:32.000 --> 00:04:35.000 and it goes on all day until you fall asleep 00:04:35.000 --> 00:04:38.000 or die or otherwise become unconscious. 00:04:38.000 --> 00:04:41.000 Dreams are a form of consciousness on this definition. NOTE Paragraph 00:04:41.000 --> 00:04:44.000 Now, that's the common-sense definition. That's our target. 00:04:44.000 --> 00:04:47.000 If you're not talking about that, you're not talking about consciousness. NOTE Paragraph 00:04:47.000 --> 00:04:51.000 But they think, "Well, if that's it, that's an awful problem. 00:04:51.000 --> 00:04:55.000 How can such a thing exist as part of the real world?" NOTE Paragraph 00:04:55.000 --> 00:04:57.000 And this, if you've ever had a philosophy course, 00:04:57.000 --> 00:05:00.000 this is known as the famous mind-body problem. 00:05:00.000 --> 00:05:03.000 I think that has a simple solution too. I'm going to give it to you. 00:05:03.000 --> 00:05:07.000 And here it is: All of our conscious states, without exception, 00:05:07.000 --> 00:05:13.000 are caused by lower-level neurobiological processes in the brain, 00:05:13.000 --> 00:05:15.000 and they are realized in the brain 00:05:15.000 --> 00:05:17.000 as higher-level or system features. 00:05:17.000 --> 00:05:20.000 It's about as mysterious as the liquidity of water. 00:05:20.000 --> 00:05:24.000 Right? The liquidity is not an extra juice squirted out 00:05:24.000 --> 00:05:25.000 by the H2O molecules. 00:05:25.000 --> 00:05:28.000 It's a condition that the system is in. 00:05:28.000 --> 00:05:33.000 And just as the jar full of water can go from liquid to solid 00:05:33.000 --> 00:05:35.000 depending on the behavior of the molecules, 00:05:35.000 --> 00:05:38.000 so your brain can go from a state of being conscious 00:05:38.000 --> 00:05:40.000 to a state of being unconscious, 00:05:40.000 --> 00:05:43.000 depending on the behavior of the molecules. 00:05:43.000 --> 00:05:47.000 The famous mind-body problem is that simple. NOTE Paragraph 00:05:47.000 --> 00:05:51.000 All right? But now we get into some harder questions. 00:05:51.000 --> 00:05:54.000 Let's specify the exact features of consciousness, 00:05:54.000 --> 00:05:57.000 so that we can then answer those four objections 00:05:57.000 --> 00:05:58.000 that I made to it. NOTE Paragraph 00:05:58.000 --> 00:06:02.000 Well, the first feature is, it's real and irreducible. 00:06:02.000 --> 00:06:04.000 You can't get rid of it. 00:06:04.000 --> 00:06:08.000 You see, the distinction between reality and illusion 00:06:08.000 --> 00:06:11.000 is the distinction between how things 00:06:11.000 --> 00:06:15.000 consciously seem to us and how they really are. 00:06:15.000 --> 00:06:17.000 It consciously seems like there's -- 00:06:17.000 --> 00:06:18.000 I like the French "arc-en-ciel" — 00:06:18.000 --> 00:06:21.000 it seems like there's an arch in the sky, 00:06:21.000 --> 00:06:24.000 or it seems like the sun is setting over the mountains. 00:06:24.000 --> 00:06:27.000 It consciously seems to us, but that's not really happening. 00:06:27.000 --> 00:06:29.000 But for that distinction between 00:06:29.000 --> 00:06:32.000 how things consciously seem and how they really are, 00:06:32.000 --> 00:06:36.000 you can't make that distinction for the very existence of consciousness, 00:06:36.000 --> 00:06:40.000 because where the very existence of consciousness is concerned, 00:06:40.000 --> 00:06:43.000 if it consciously seems to you that you are conscious, 00:06:43.000 --> 00:06:45.000 you are conscious. 00:06:45.000 --> 00:06:48.000 I mean, if a bunch of experts come to me and say, 00:06:48.000 --> 00:06:50.000 "We are heavy-duty neurobiologists and we've done a study 00:06:50.000 --> 00:06:53.000 of you, Searle, and we're convinced you are not conscious, 00:06:53.000 --> 00:06:55.000 you are a very cleverly constructed robot," 00:06:55.000 --> 00:06:59.000 I don't think, "Well, maybe these guys are right, you know?" 00:06:59.000 --> 00:07:01.000 I don't think that for a moment, because, I mean, 00:07:01.000 --> 00:07:04.000 Descartes may have made a lot of mistakes, but he was right about this. 00:07:04.000 --> 00:07:07.000 You cannot doubt the existence of your own consciousness. 00:07:07.000 --> 00:07:09.000 Okay, that's the first feature of consciousness. 00:07:09.000 --> 00:07:11.000 It's real and irreducible. 00:07:11.000 --> 00:07:15.000 You cannot get rid of it by showing that it's an illusion 00:07:15.000 --> 00:07:18.000 in a way that you can with other standard illusions. NOTE Paragraph 00:07:18.000 --> 00:07:20.000 Okay, the second feature is this one 00:07:20.000 --> 00:07:23.000 that has been such a source of trouble to us, 00:07:23.000 --> 00:07:25.000 and that is, all of our conscious states 00:07:25.000 --> 00:07:28.000 have this qualitative character to them. 00:07:28.000 --> 00:07:30.000 There's something that it feels like to drink beer 00:07:30.000 --> 00:07:33.000 which is not what it feels like to do your income tax 00:07:33.000 --> 00:07:36.000 or listen to music, and this qualitative feel 00:07:36.000 --> 00:07:39.000 automatically generates a third feature, 00:07:39.000 --> 00:07:43.000 namely, conscious states are by definition subjective 00:07:43.000 --> 00:07:46.000 in the sense that they only exist as experienced 00:07:46.000 --> 00:07:48.000 by some human or animal subject, 00:07:48.000 --> 00:07:50.000 some self that experiences them. 00:07:50.000 --> 00:07:52.000 Maybe we'll be able to build a conscious machine. 00:07:52.000 --> 00:07:54.000 Since we don't know how our brains do it, 00:07:54.000 --> 00:07:58.000 we're not in a position, so far, to build a conscious machine. NOTE Paragraph 00:07:58.000 --> 00:08:01.000 Okay. Another feature of consciousness 00:08:01.000 --> 00:08:05.000 is that it comes in unified conscious fields. 00:08:05.000 --> 00:08:08.000 So I don't just have the sight of the people in front of me 00:08:08.000 --> 00:08:10.000 and the sound of my voice and the weight of my shoes 00:08:10.000 --> 00:08:13.000 against the floor, but they occur to me 00:08:13.000 --> 00:08:16.000 as part of one single great conscious field 00:08:16.000 --> 00:08:18.000 that stretches forward and backward. 00:08:18.000 --> 00:08:20.000 That is the key to understanding 00:08:20.000 --> 00:08:22.000 the enormous power of consciousness. 00:08:22.000 --> 00:08:25.000 And we have not been able to do that in a robot. 00:08:25.000 --> 00:08:28.000 The disappointment of robotics derives from the fact 00:08:28.000 --> 00:08:30.000 that we don't know how to make a conscious robot, 00:08:30.000 --> 00:08:33.000 so we don't have a machine that can do this kind of thing. NOTE Paragraph 00:08:33.000 --> 00:08:36.000 Okay, the next feature of consciousness, 00:08:36.000 --> 00:08:39.000 after this marvelous unified conscious field, 00:08:39.000 --> 00:08:42.000 is that it functions causally in our behavior. 00:08:42.000 --> 00:08:45.000 I gave you a scientific demonstration by raising my hand, 00:08:45.000 --> 00:08:46.000 but how is that possible? 00:08:46.000 --> 00:08:50.000 How can it be that this thought in my brain 00:08:50.000 --> 00:08:52.000 can move material objects? 00:08:52.000 --> 00:08:54.000 Well, I'll tell you the answer. 00:08:54.000 --> 00:08:56.000 I mean, we don't know the detailed answer, 00:08:56.000 --> 00:08:59.000 but we know the basic part of the answer, and that is, 00:08:59.000 --> 00:09:01.000 there is a sequence of neuron firings, 00:09:01.000 --> 00:09:04.000 and they terminate where the acetylcholine 00:09:04.000 --> 00:09:07.000 is secreted at the axon end-plates of the motor neurons. 00:09:07.000 --> 00:09:09.000 Sorry to use philosophical terminology here, 00:09:09.000 --> 00:09:13.000 but when it's secreted at the axon end-plates of the motor neurons, 00:09:13.000 --> 00:09:16.000 a whole lot of wonderful things happen in the ion channels 00:09:16.000 --> 00:09:18.000 and the damned arm goes up. 00:09:18.000 --> 00:09:20.000 Now, think of what I told you. 00:09:20.000 --> 00:09:22.000 One and the same event, 00:09:22.000 --> 00:09:25.000 my conscious decision to raise my arm 00:09:25.000 --> 00:09:27.000 has a level of description where it has all of these 00:09:27.000 --> 00:09:30.000 touchy-feely spiritual qualities. 00:09:30.000 --> 00:09:32.000 It's a thought in my brain, but at the same time, 00:09:32.000 --> 00:09:34.000 it's busy secreting acetylcholine 00:09:34.000 --> 00:09:35.000 and doing all sorts of other things 00:09:35.000 --> 00:09:38.000 as it makes its way from the motor cortex 00:09:38.000 --> 00:09:41.000 down through the nerve fibers in the arm. 00:09:41.000 --> 00:09:45.000 Now, what that tells us is that our traditional vocabularies 00:09:45.000 --> 00:09:48.000 for discussing these issues are totally obsolete. 00:09:48.000 --> 00:09:51.000 One and the same event has a level of description 00:09:51.000 --> 00:09:54.000 where it's neurobiological, and another level of description 00:09:54.000 --> 00:09:57.000 where it's mental, and that's a single event, 00:09:57.000 --> 00:09:59.000 and that's how nature works. That's how it's possible 00:09:59.000 --> 00:10:02.000 for consciousness to function causally. NOTE Paragraph 00:10:02.000 --> 00:10:05.000 Okay, now with that in mind, 00:10:05.000 --> 00:10:08.000 with going through these various features of consciousness, 00:10:08.000 --> 00:10:11.000 let's go back and answer some of those early objections. NOTE Paragraph 00:10:11.000 --> 00:10:14.000 Well, the first one I said was, consciousness doesn't exist, 00:10:14.000 --> 00:10:16.000 it's an illusion. Well, I've already answered that. 00:10:16.000 --> 00:10:18.000 I don't think we need to worry about that. 00:10:18.000 --> 00:10:22.000 But the second one had an incredible influence, 00:10:22.000 --> 00:10:23.000 and may still be around, and that is, 00:10:23.000 --> 00:10:27.000 "Well, if consciousness exists, it's really something else. 00:10:27.000 --> 00:10:30.000 It's really a digital computer program running in your brain 00:10:30.000 --> 00:10:33.000 and that's what we need to do to create consciousness 00:10:33.000 --> 00:10:34.000 is get the right program. 00:10:34.000 --> 00:10:37.000 Yeah, forget about the hardware. Any hardware will do 00:10:37.000 --> 00:10:40.000 provided it's rich enough and stable enough to carry the program." NOTE Paragraph 00:10:40.000 --> 00:10:43.000 Now, we know that that's wrong. 00:10:43.000 --> 00:10:46.000 I mean, anybody who's thought about computers at all 00:10:46.000 --> 00:10:48.000 can see that that's wrong, because computation 00:10:48.000 --> 00:10:51.000 is defined as symbol manipulation, 00:10:51.000 --> 00:10:53.000 usually thought of as zeros as ones, but any symbols will do. 00:10:53.000 --> 00:10:57.000 You get an algorithm that you can program 00:10:57.000 --> 00:11:00.000 in a binary code, and that's the defining trait 00:11:00.000 --> 00:11:02.000 of the computer program. 00:11:02.000 --> 00:11:06.000 But we know that that's purely syntactical. That's symbolic. 00:11:06.000 --> 00:11:10.000 We know that actual human consciousness has something more than that. 00:11:10.000 --> 00:11:13.000 It's got a content in addition to the syntax. 00:11:13.000 --> 00:11:14.000 It's got a semantics. NOTE Paragraph 00:11:14.000 --> 00:11:17.000 Now that argument, I made that argument 30 -- 00:11:17.000 --> 00:11:18.000 oh my God, I don't want to think about it — 00:11:18.000 --> 00:11:19.000 more than 30 years ago, 00:11:19.000 --> 00:11:22.000 but there's a deeper argument implicit in what I've told you, 00:11:22.000 --> 00:11:25.000 and I want to tell you that argument briefly, and that is, 00:11:25.000 --> 00:11:30.000 consciousness creates an observer-independent reality. 00:11:30.000 --> 00:11:33.000 It creates a reality of money, property, government, 00:11:33.000 --> 00:11:37.000 marriage, CERN conferences, 00:11:37.000 --> 00:11:40.000 cocktail parties and summer vacations, 00:11:40.000 --> 00:11:42.000 and all of those are creations of consciousness. 00:11:42.000 --> 00:11:45.000 Their existence is observer-relative. 00:11:45.000 --> 00:11:49.000 It's only relative to conscious agents that a piece of paper 00:11:49.000 --> 00:11:52.000 is money or that a bunch of buildings is a university. NOTE Paragraph 00:11:52.000 --> 00:11:55.000 Now, ask yourself about computation. 00:11:55.000 --> 00:11:59.000 Is that absolute, like force and mass and gravitational attraction? 00:11:59.000 --> 00:12:01.000 Or is it observer-relative? 00:12:01.000 --> 00:12:05.000 Well, some computations are intrinsic. 00:12:05.000 --> 00:12:07.000 I add two plus two to get four. 00:12:07.000 --> 00:12:09.000 That's going on no matter what anybody thinks. 00:12:09.000 --> 00:12:12.000 But when I haul out my pocket calculator 00:12:12.000 --> 00:12:16.000 and do the calculation, the only intrinsic phenomenon 00:12:16.000 --> 00:12:19.000 is the electronic circuit and its behavior. 00:12:19.000 --> 00:12:21.000 That's the only absolute phenomenon. 00:12:21.000 --> 00:12:23.000 All the rest is interpreted by us. 00:12:23.000 --> 00:12:27.000 Computation only exists relative to consciousness. 00:12:27.000 --> 00:12:30.000 Either a conscious agent is carrying out the computation, 00:12:30.000 --> 00:12:33.000 or he's got a piece of machinery that admits of a computational interpretation. 00:12:33.000 --> 00:12:36.000 Now that doesn't mean computation is arbitrary. 00:12:36.000 --> 00:12:39.000 I spent a lot of money on this hardware. 00:12:39.000 --> 00:12:41.000 But we have this persistent confusion 00:12:41.000 --> 00:12:46.000 between objectivity and subjectivity as features of reality 00:12:46.000 --> 00:12:49.000 and objectivity and subjectivity as features of claims. 00:12:49.000 --> 00:12:53.000 And the bottom line of this part of my talk is this: 00:12:53.000 --> 00:12:56.000 You can have a completely objective science, 00:12:56.000 --> 00:12:59.000 a science where you make objectively true claims, 00:12:59.000 --> 00:13:03.000 about a domain whose existence is subjective, 00:13:03.000 --> 00:13:06.000 whose existence is in the human brain 00:13:06.000 --> 00:13:08.000 consisting of subjective states of sentience 00:13:08.000 --> 00:13:10.000 or feeling or awareness. 00:13:10.000 --> 00:13:14.000 So the objection that you can't have an objective science of consciousness 00:13:14.000 --> 00:13:18.000 because it's subjective and science is objective, that's a pun. 00:13:18.000 --> 00:13:21.000 That's a bad pun on objectivity and subjectivity. 00:13:21.000 --> 00:13:23.000 You can make objective claims 00:13:23.000 --> 00:13:27.000 about a domain that is subjective in its mode of existence, 00:13:27.000 --> 00:13:29.000 and indeed that's what neurologists do. 00:13:29.000 --> 00:13:31.000 I mean, you have patients that actually suffer pains, 00:13:31.000 --> 00:13:34.000 and you try to get an objective science of that. NOTE Paragraph 00:13:34.000 --> 00:13:36.000 Okay, I promised to refute all these guys, 00:13:36.000 --> 00:13:38.000 and I don't have an awful lot of time left, 00:13:38.000 --> 00:13:40.000 but let me refute a couple more of them. 00:13:40.000 --> 00:13:42.000 I said that behaviorism ought to be 00:13:42.000 --> 00:13:45.000 one of the great embarrassments of our intellectual culture, 00:13:45.000 --> 00:13:48.000 because it's refuted the moment you think about it. 00:13:48.000 --> 00:13:51.000 Your mental states are identical with your behavior? 00:13:51.000 --> 00:13:54.000 Well, think about the distinction between feeling a pain 00:13:54.000 --> 00:13:56.000 and engaging in pain behavior. 00:13:56.000 --> 00:13:58.000 I won't demonstrate pain behavior, but I can tell you 00:13:58.000 --> 00:14:00.000 I'm not having any pains right now. 00:14:00.000 --> 00:14:04.000 So it's an obvious mistake. Why did they make the mistake? 00:14:04.000 --> 00:14:06.000 The mistake was — and you can go back and read 00:14:06.000 --> 00:14:08.000 the literature on this, you can see this over and over — 00:14:08.000 --> 00:14:12.000 they think if you accept the irreducible existence 00:14:12.000 --> 00:14:15.000 of consciousness, you're giving up on science. 00:14:15.000 --> 00:14:18.000 You're giving up on 300 years of human progress 00:14:18.000 --> 00:14:20.000 and human hope and all the rest of it. 00:14:20.000 --> 00:14:23.000 And the message I want to leave you with is, 00:14:23.000 --> 00:14:25.000 consciousness has to become accepted 00:14:25.000 --> 00:14:28.000 as a genuine biological phenomenon, 00:14:28.000 --> 00:14:30.000 as much subject to scientific analysis 00:14:30.000 --> 00:14:32.000 as any other phenomenon in biology, 00:14:32.000 --> 00:14:34.000 or, for that matter, the rest of science. NOTE Paragraph 00:14:34.000 --> 00:14:36.000 Thank you very much. NOTE Paragraph 00:14:36.000 --> 00:14:41.000 (Applause)