WEBVTT 00:00:00.464 --> 00:00:03.057 I'm going to talk about consciousness. 00:00:03.081 --> 00:00:04.537 Why consciousness? 00:00:04.561 --> 00:00:07.363 Well, it's a curiously neglected subject, 00:00:07.387 --> 00:00:10.927 both in our scientific and our philosophical culture. 00:00:10.951 --> 00:00:12.199 Now why is that curious? 00:00:12.223 --> 00:00:15.709 Well, it is the most important aspect of our lives 00:00:15.733 --> 00:00:17.667 for a very simple, logical reason, 00:00:17.691 --> 00:00:20.064 namely, it's a necessary condition on anything 00:00:20.088 --> 00:00:22.541 being important in our lives that we're conscious. 00:00:22.565 --> 00:00:25.700 You care about science, philosophy, music, art, whatever -- 00:00:25.724 --> 00:00:29.178 it's no good if you're a zombie or in a coma, right? 00:00:29.202 --> 00:00:31.522 So consciousness is number one. 00:00:31.546 --> 00:00:33.990 The second reason is that when people do 00:00:34.014 --> 00:00:36.306 get interested in it, as I think they should, 00:00:36.330 --> 00:00:39.157 they tend to say the most appalling things. 00:00:39.181 --> 00:00:41.801 And then, even when they're not saying appalling things 00:00:41.825 --> 00:00:44.159 and they're really trying to do serious research, 00:00:44.183 --> 00:00:47.300 well, it's been slow. Progress has been slow. 00:00:47.324 --> 00:00:50.440 When I first got interested in this, I thought, well, 00:00:50.464 --> 00:00:52.646 it's a straightforward problem in biology. 00:00:52.670 --> 00:00:55.143 Let's get these brain stabbers to get busy and figure out 00:00:55.167 --> 00:00:56.027 how it works in the brain. 00:00:56.051 --> 00:00:58.051 So I went over to UCSF and I talked to all 00:00:58.075 --> 00:00:59.844 the heavy-duty neurobiologists there, 00:00:59.868 --> 00:01:01.420 and they showed some impatience, 00:01:01.444 --> 00:01:04.803 as scientists often do when you ask them embarrassing questions. 00:01:04.827 --> 00:01:08.561 But the thing that struck me is, one guy said in exasperation, 00:01:08.585 --> 00:01:10.728 a very famous neurobiologist, he said, "Look, 00:01:10.752 --> 00:01:14.151 in my discipline it's okay to be interested in consciousness, 00:01:14.175 --> 00:01:17.718 but get tenure first. Get tenure first." 00:01:17.742 --> 00:01:20.436 Now I've been working on this for a long time. 00:01:20.460 --> 00:01:22.414 I think now you might actually get tenure 00:01:22.438 --> 00:01:23.772 by working on consciousness. 00:01:23.796 --> 00:01:26.318 If so, that's a real step forward. 00:01:26.342 --> 00:01:29.223 Okay, now why then is this curious reluctance 00:01:29.247 --> 00:01:31.121 and curious hostility to consciousness? 00:01:31.145 --> 00:01:33.851 Well, I think it's a combination of two features 00:01:33.875 --> 00:01:35.756 of our intellectual culture 00:01:35.780 --> 00:01:38.282 that like to think they're opposing each other 00:01:38.306 --> 00:01:41.905 but in fact they share a common set of assumptions. 00:01:41.929 --> 00:01:45.867 One feature is the tradition of religious dualism: 00:01:45.891 --> 00:01:49.192 Consciousness is not a part of the physical world. 00:01:49.216 --> 00:01:51.119 It's a part of the spiritual world. 00:01:51.143 --> 00:01:52.655 It belongs to the soul, 00:01:52.679 --> 00:01:55.951 and the soul is not a part of the physical world. 00:01:55.975 --> 00:01:58.982 That's the tradition of God, the soul and immortality. 00:01:59.006 --> 00:02:01.087 There's another tradition that thinks it's opposed to this 00:02:01.111 --> 00:02:03.191 but accepts the worst assumption. 00:02:03.215 --> 00:02:07.269 That tradition thinks that we are heavy-duty scientific materialists: 00:02:07.293 --> 00:02:10.734 Consciousness is not a part of the physical world. 00:02:10.758 --> 00:02:13.380 Either it doesn't exist at all, or it's something else, 00:02:13.404 --> 00:02:16.030 a computer program or some damn fool thing, 00:02:16.054 --> 00:02:19.225 but in any case it's not part of science. 00:02:19.249 --> 00:02:21.433 And I used to get in an argument that really gave me a stomachache. 00:02:21.457 --> 00:02:23.052 Here's how it went. 00:02:23.076 --> 00:02:27.084 Science is objective, consciousness is subjective, 00:02:27.108 --> 00:02:30.411 therefore there cannot be a science of consciousness. 00:02:30.435 --> 00:02:36.915 Okay, so these twin traditions are paralyzing us. 00:02:36.939 --> 00:02:39.783 It's very hard to get out of these twin traditions. 00:02:39.807 --> 00:02:42.801 And I have only one real message in this lecture, 00:02:42.825 --> 00:02:46.185 and that is, consciousness is a biological phenomenon 00:02:46.209 --> 00:02:49.074 like photosynthesis, digestion, mitosis -- 00:02:49.098 --> 00:02:53.409 you know all the biological phenomena -- and once you accept that, 00:02:53.433 --> 00:02:56.048 most, though not all, of the hard problems 00:02:56.072 --> 00:02:58.323 about consciousness simply evaporate. 00:02:58.347 --> 00:03:00.376 And I'm going to go through some of them. 00:03:00.400 --> 00:03:02.709 Okay, now I promised you to tell you some 00:03:02.733 --> 00:03:05.448 of the outrageous things said about consciousness. 00:03:05.472 --> 00:03:09.048 One: Consciousness does not exist. 00:03:09.072 --> 00:03:11.278 It's an illusion, like sunsets. 00:03:11.302 --> 00:03:16.343 Science has shown sunsets and rainbows are illusions. 00:03:16.367 --> 00:03:18.266 So consciousness is an illusion. 00:03:18.290 --> 00:03:21.521 Two: Well, maybe it exists, but it's really something else. 00:03:21.545 --> 00:03:25.302 It's a computer program running in the brain. 00:03:25.326 --> 00:03:29.116 Three: No, the only thing that exists is really behavior. 00:03:29.140 --> 00:03:32.724 It's embarrassing how influential behaviorism was, 00:03:32.748 --> 00:03:34.079 but I'll get back to that. 00:03:34.103 --> 00:03:36.813 And four: Maybe consciousness exists, 00:03:36.837 --> 00:03:39.028 but it can't make any difference to the world. 00:03:39.052 --> 00:03:41.748 How could spirituality move anything? 00:03:41.772 --> 00:03:43.963 Now, whenever somebody tells me that, I think, 00:03:43.987 --> 00:03:46.253 you want to see spirituality move something? 00:03:46.277 --> 00:03:49.105 Watch. I decide consciously to raise my arm, 00:03:49.129 --> 00:03:51.714 and the damn thing goes up. (Laughter) 00:03:51.738 --> 00:03:55.485 Furthermore, notice this: 00:03:55.509 --> 00:03:59.480 We do not say, "Well, it's a bit like the weather in Geneva. 00:03:59.504 --> 00:04:02.128 Some days it goes up and some days it doesn't go up." 00:04:02.152 --> 00:04:04.783 No. It goes up whenever I damn well want it to. 00:04:04.807 --> 00:04:07.093 Okay. I'm going to tell you how that's possible. 00:04:07.117 --> 00:04:10.592 Now, I haven't yet given you a definition. 00:04:10.616 --> 00:04:12.950 You can't do this if you don't give a definition. 00:04:12.974 --> 00:04:15.936 People always say consciousness is very hard to define. 00:04:15.960 --> 00:04:17.819 I think it's rather easy to define 00:04:17.843 --> 00:04:20.028 if you're not trying to give a scientific definition. 00:04:20.052 --> 00:04:22.308 We're not ready for a scientific definition, 00:04:22.332 --> 00:04:24.094 but here's a common-sense definition. 00:04:24.118 --> 00:04:26.896 Consciousness consists of all those states of feeling 00:04:26.920 --> 00:04:28.964 or sentience or awareness. 00:04:28.988 --> 00:04:32.522 It begins in the morning when you wake up from a dreamless sleep, 00:04:32.546 --> 00:04:34.991 and it goes on all day until you fall asleep 00:04:35.015 --> 00:04:38.189 or die or otherwise become unconscious. 00:04:38.213 --> 00:04:41.309 Dreams are a form of consciousness on this definition. 00:04:41.333 --> 00:04:44.211 Now, that's the common-sense definition. That's our target. 00:04:44.235 --> 00:04:47.712 If you're not talking about that, you're not talking about consciousness. 00:04:47.736 --> 00:04:51.196 But they think, "Well, if that's it, that's an awful problem. 00:04:51.220 --> 00:04:55.154 How can such a thing exist as part of the real world?" 00:04:55.178 --> 00:04:57.512 And this, if you've ever had a philosophy course, 00:04:57.536 --> 00:05:00.263 this is known as the famous mind-body problem. 00:05:00.287 --> 00:05:03.526 I think that has a simple solution too. I'm going to give it to you. 00:05:03.550 --> 00:05:07.528 And here it is: All of our conscious states, without exception, 00:05:07.552 --> 00:05:13.053 are caused by lower-level neurobiological processes in the brain, 00:05:13.077 --> 00:05:15.234 and they are realized in the brain 00:05:15.258 --> 00:05:17.568 as higher-level or system features. 00:05:17.592 --> 00:05:20.724 It's about as mysterious as the liquidity of water. 00:05:20.748 --> 00:05:24.199 Right? The liquidity is not an extra juice squirted out 00:05:24.223 --> 00:05:25.889 by the H2O molecules. 00:05:25.913 --> 00:05:28.767 It's a condition that the system is in. 00:05:28.791 --> 00:05:33.929 And just as the jar full of water can go from liquid to solid 00:05:33.953 --> 00:05:36.001 depending on the behavior of the molecules, 00:05:36.025 --> 00:05:38.878 so your brain can go from a state of being conscious 00:05:38.902 --> 00:05:40.518 to a state of being unconscious, 00:05:40.542 --> 00:05:43.504 depending on the behavior of the molecules. 00:05:43.528 --> 00:05:47.889 The famous mind-body problem is that simple. 00:05:47.913 --> 00:05:51.066 All right? But now we get into some harder questions. 00:05:51.090 --> 00:05:54.510 Let's specify the exact features of consciousness, 00:05:54.534 --> 00:05:56.982 so that we can then answer those four objections 00:05:57.006 --> 00:05:58.269 that I made to it. 00:05:58.293 --> 00:06:02.536 Well, the first feature is, it's real and irreducible. 00:06:02.560 --> 00:06:04.590 You can't get rid of it. 00:06:04.614 --> 00:06:08.761 You see, the distinction between reality and illusion 00:06:08.785 --> 00:06:11.430 is the distinction between how things 00:06:11.454 --> 00:06:15.304 consciously seem to us and how they really are. 00:06:15.328 --> 00:06:17.180 It consciously seems like there's -- 00:06:17.204 --> 00:06:18.848 I like the French "arc-en-ciel" — 00:06:18.872 --> 00:06:21.046 it seems like there's an arch in the sky, 00:06:21.070 --> 00:06:24.826 or it seems like the sun is setting over the mountains. 00:06:24.850 --> 00:06:27.923 It consciously seems to us, but that's not really happening. 00:06:27.947 --> 00:06:29.850 But for that distinction between 00:06:29.874 --> 00:06:32.351 how things consciously seem and how they really are, 00:06:32.375 --> 00:06:36.406 you can't make that distinction for the very existence of consciousness, 00:06:36.430 --> 00:06:40.257 because where the very existence of consciousness is concerned, 00:06:40.281 --> 00:06:43.237 if it consciously seems to you that you are conscious, 00:06:43.261 --> 00:06:45.122 you are conscious. 00:06:45.146 --> 00:06:48.476 I mean, if a bunch of experts come to me and say, 00:06:48.500 --> 00:06:51.167 "We are heavy-duty neurobiologists and we've done a study 00:06:51.191 --> 00:06:53.917 of you, Searle, and we're convinced you are not conscious, 00:06:53.941 --> 00:06:55.989 you are a very cleverly constructed robot," 00:06:56.013 --> 00:06:59.258 I don't think, "Well, maybe these guys are right, you know?" 00:06:59.282 --> 00:07:01.821 I don't think that for a moment, because, I mean, 00:07:01.845 --> 00:07:04.731 Descartes may have made a lot of mistakes, but he was right about this. 00:07:04.755 --> 00:07:07.686 You cannot doubt the existence of your own consciousness. 00:07:07.710 --> 00:07:09.996 Okay, that's the first feature of consciousness. 00:07:10.020 --> 00:07:11.800 It's real and irreducible. 00:07:11.824 --> 00:07:15.031 You cannot get rid of it by showing that it's an illusion 00:07:15.055 --> 00:07:18.260 in a way that you can with other standard illusions. 00:07:18.284 --> 00:07:20.792 Okay, the second feature is this one 00:07:20.816 --> 00:07:23.257 that has been such a source of trouble to us, 00:07:23.281 --> 00:07:25.439 and that is, all of our conscious states 00:07:25.463 --> 00:07:28.403 have this qualitative character to them. 00:07:28.427 --> 00:07:30.808 There's something that it feels like to drink beer 00:07:30.832 --> 00:07:33.753 which is not what it feels like to do your income tax 00:07:33.777 --> 00:07:36.821 or listen to music, and this qualitative feel 00:07:36.845 --> 00:07:39.382 automatically generates a third feature, 00:07:39.406 --> 00:07:43.176 namely, conscious states are by definition subjective 00:07:43.200 --> 00:07:46.131 in the sense that they only exist as experienced 00:07:46.155 --> 00:07:48.326 by some human or animal subject, 00:07:48.350 --> 00:07:50.199 some self that experiences them. 00:07:50.223 --> 00:07:52.582 Maybe we'll be able to build a conscious machine. 00:07:52.606 --> 00:07:54.735 Since we don't know how our brains do it, 00:07:54.759 --> 00:07:58.870 we're not in a position, so far, to build a conscious machine. 00:07:58.894 --> 00:08:01.645 Okay. Another feature of consciousness 00:08:01.669 --> 00:08:05.796 is that it comes in unified conscious fields. 00:08:05.820 --> 00:08:08.152 So I don't just have the sight of the people in front of me 00:08:08.176 --> 00:08:10.866 and the sound of my voice and the weight of my shoes 00:08:10.890 --> 00:08:13.041 against the floor, but they occur to me 00:08:13.065 --> 00:08:16.523 as part of one single great conscious field 00:08:16.547 --> 00:08:18.539 that stretches forward and backward. 00:08:18.563 --> 00:08:20.308 That is the key to understanding 00:08:20.332 --> 00:08:22.747 the enormous power of consciousness. 00:08:22.771 --> 00:08:25.691 And we have not been able to do that in a robot. 00:08:25.715 --> 00:08:28.192 The disappointment of robotics derives from the fact 00:08:28.216 --> 00:08:30.550 that we don't know how to make a conscious robot, 00:08:30.574 --> 00:08:33.599 so we don't have a machine that can do this kind of thing. 00:08:33.623 --> 00:08:36.107 Okay, the next feature of consciousness, 00:08:36.131 --> 00:08:39.222 after this marvelous unified conscious field, 00:08:39.246 --> 00:08:42.015 is that it functions causally in our behavior. 00:08:42.039 --> 00:08:45.218 I gave you a scientific demonstration by raising my hand, 00:08:45.242 --> 00:08:46.968 but how is that possible? 00:08:46.992 --> 00:08:50.732 How can it be that this thought in my brain 00:08:50.756 --> 00:08:52.932 can move material objects? 00:08:52.956 --> 00:08:54.433 Well, I'll tell you the answer. 00:08:54.457 --> 00:08:56.457 I mean, we don't know the detailed answer, 00:08:56.481 --> 00:08:59.159 but we know the basic part of the answer, and that is, 00:08:59.183 --> 00:09:01.452 there is a sequence of neuron firings, 00:09:01.476 --> 00:09:04.539 and they terminate where the acetylcholine 00:09:04.563 --> 00:09:07.360 is secreted at the axon end-plates of the motor neurons. 00:09:07.384 --> 00:09:09.480 Sorry to use philosophical terminology here, 00:09:09.504 --> 00:09:13.451 but when it's secreted at the axon end-plates of the motor neurons, 00:09:13.475 --> 00:09:16.237 a whole lot of wonderful things happen in the ion channels 00:09:16.261 --> 00:09:18.143 and the damned arm goes up. 00:09:18.167 --> 00:09:20.267 Now, think of what I told you. 00:09:20.291 --> 00:09:22.009 One and the same event, 00:09:22.033 --> 00:09:25.044 my conscious decision to raise my arm 00:09:25.068 --> 00:09:27.839 has a level of description where it has all of these 00:09:27.863 --> 00:09:29.985 touchy-feely spiritual qualities. 00:09:30.009 --> 00:09:32.386 It's a thought in my brain, but at the same time, 00:09:32.410 --> 00:09:34.372 it's busy secreting acetylcholine 00:09:34.396 --> 00:09:36.063 and doing all sorts of other things 00:09:36.087 --> 00:09:38.695 as it makes its way from the motor cortex 00:09:38.719 --> 00:09:41.392 down through the nerve fibers in the arm. 00:09:41.416 --> 00:09:45.208 Now, what that tells us is that our traditional vocabularies 00:09:45.232 --> 00:09:48.592 for discussing these issues are totally obsolete. 00:09:48.616 --> 00:09:51.849 One and the same event has a level of description 00:09:51.873 --> 00:09:54.815 where it's neurobiological, and another level of description 00:09:54.839 --> 00:09:57.006 where it's mental, and that's a single event, 00:09:57.030 --> 00:09:59.554 and that's how nature works. That's how it's possible 00:09:59.578 --> 00:10:02.147 for consciousness to function causally. 00:10:02.171 --> 00:10:05.006 Okay, now with that in mind, 00:10:05.030 --> 00:10:08.073 with going through these various features of consciousness, 00:10:08.097 --> 00:10:11.245 let's go back and answer some of those early objections. 00:10:11.269 --> 00:10:14.854 Well, the first one I said was, consciousness doesn't exist, 00:10:14.878 --> 00:10:16.688 it's an illusion. Well, I've already answered that. 00:10:16.712 --> 00:10:18.712 I don't think we need to worry about that. 00:10:18.736 --> 00:10:22.068 But the second one had an incredible influence, 00:10:22.092 --> 00:10:23.912 and may still be around, and that is, 00:10:23.936 --> 00:10:27.103 "Well, if consciousness exists, it's really something else. 00:10:27.127 --> 00:10:30.866 It's really a digital computer program running in your brain 00:10:30.890 --> 00:10:33.414 and that's what we need to do to create consciousness 00:10:33.438 --> 00:10:34.867 is get the right program. 00:10:34.891 --> 00:10:37.415 Yeah, forget about the hardware. Any hardware will do 00:10:37.439 --> 00:10:40.582 provided it's rich enough and stable enough to carry the program." 00:10:40.606 --> 00:10:43.140 Now, we know that that's wrong. 00:10:43.164 --> 00:10:46.149 I mean, anybody who's thought about computers at all 00:10:46.173 --> 00:10:48.613 can see that that's wrong, because computation 00:10:48.637 --> 00:10:51.028 is defined as symbol manipulation, 00:10:51.052 --> 00:10:53.957 usually thought of as zeros as ones, but any symbols will do. 00:10:53.981 --> 00:10:57.079 You get an algorithm that you can program 00:10:57.103 --> 00:11:00.186 in a binary code, and that's the defining trait 00:11:00.210 --> 00:11:02.237 of the computer program. 00:11:02.261 --> 00:11:06.120 But we know that that's purely syntactical. That's symbolic. 00:11:06.144 --> 00:11:10.135 We know that actual human consciousness has something more than that. 00:11:10.159 --> 00:11:13.328 It's got a content in addition to the syntax. 00:11:13.352 --> 00:11:14.825 It's got a semantics. 00:11:14.849 --> 00:11:17.314 Now that argument, I made that argument 30 -- 00:11:17.338 --> 00:11:18.605 oh my God, I don't want to think about it — 00:11:18.629 --> 00:11:19.947 more than 30 years ago, 00:11:19.971 --> 00:11:22.876 but there's a deeper argument implicit in what I've told you, 00:11:22.900 --> 00:11:25.919 and I want to tell you that argument briefly, and that is, 00:11:25.943 --> 00:11:30.069 consciousness creates an observer-independent reality. 00:11:30.093 --> 00:11:33.557 It creates a reality of money, property, government, 00:11:33.581 --> 00:11:37.529 marriage, CERN conferences, 00:11:37.553 --> 00:11:40.148 cocktail parties and summer vacations, 00:11:40.172 --> 00:11:42.897 and all of those are creations of consciousness. 00:11:42.921 --> 00:11:45.732 Their existence is observer-relative. 00:11:45.756 --> 00:11:49.235 It's only relative to conscious agents that a piece of paper 00:11:49.259 --> 00:11:52.082 is money or that a bunch of buildings is a university. 00:11:52.106 --> 00:11:55.956 Now, ask yourself about computation. 00:11:55.980 --> 00:11:59.625 Is that absolute, like force and mass and gravitational attraction? 00:11:59.649 --> 00:12:01.757 Or is it observer-relative? 00:12:01.781 --> 00:12:05.284 Well, some computations are intrinsic. 00:12:05.308 --> 00:12:07.195 I add two plus two to get four. 00:12:07.219 --> 00:12:09.766 That's going on no matter what anybody thinks. 00:12:09.790 --> 00:12:12.255 But when I haul out my pocket calculator 00:12:12.279 --> 00:12:16.037 and do the calculation, the only intrinsic phenomenon 00:12:16.061 --> 00:12:19.212 is the electronic circuit and its behavior. 00:12:19.236 --> 00:12:20.976 That's the only absolute phenomenon. 00:12:21.000 --> 00:12:23.404 All the rest is interpreted by us. 00:12:23.428 --> 00:12:27.245 Computation only exists relative to consciousness. 00:12:27.269 --> 00:12:30.020 Either a conscious agent is carrying out the computation, 00:12:30.044 --> 00:12:33.806 or he's got a piece of machinery that admits of a computational interpretation. 00:12:33.830 --> 00:12:36.731 Now that doesn't mean computation is arbitrary. 00:12:36.755 --> 00:12:39.179 I spent a lot of money on this hardware. 00:12:39.203 --> 00:12:41.325 But we have this persistent confusion 00:12:41.349 --> 00:12:46.046 between objectivity and subjectivity as features of reality 00:12:46.070 --> 00:12:49.974 and objectivity and subjectivity as features of claims. 00:12:49.998 --> 00:12:53.140 And the bottom line of this part of my talk is this: 00:12:53.164 --> 00:12:56.791 You can have a completely objective science, 00:12:56.815 --> 00:12:59.703 a science where you make objectively true claims, 00:12:59.727 --> 00:13:03.133 about a domain whose existence is subjective, 00:13:03.157 --> 00:13:06.368 whose existence is in the human brain 00:13:06.392 --> 00:13:08.507 consisting of subjective states of sentience 00:13:08.531 --> 00:13:10.192 or feeling or awareness. 00:13:10.216 --> 00:13:14.529 So the objection that you can't have an objective science of consciousness 00:13:14.553 --> 00:13:18.737 because it's subjective and science is objective, that's a pun. 00:13:18.761 --> 00:13:21.446 That's a bad pun on objectivity and subjectivity. 00:13:21.470 --> 00:13:23.770 You can make objective claims 00:13:23.794 --> 00:13:27.812 about a domain that is subjective in its mode of existence, 00:13:27.836 --> 00:13:29.385 and indeed that's what neurologists do. 00:13:29.409 --> 00:13:31.933 I mean, you have patients that actually suffer pains, 00:13:31.957 --> 00:13:34.564 and you try to get an objective science of that. 00:13:34.588 --> 00:13:36.636 Okay, I promised to refute all these guys, 00:13:36.660 --> 00:13:38.211 and I don't have an awful lot of time left, 00:13:38.235 --> 00:13:40.140 but let me refute a couple more of them. 00:13:40.164 --> 00:13:42.354 I said that behaviorism ought to be 00:13:42.378 --> 00:13:45.643 one of the great embarrassments of our intellectual culture, 00:13:45.667 --> 00:13:48.536 because it's refuted the moment you think about it. 00:13:48.560 --> 00:13:51.393 Your mental states are identical with your behavior? 00:13:51.417 --> 00:13:54.544 Well, think about the distinction between feeling a pain 00:13:54.568 --> 00:13:56.247 and engaging in pain behavior. 00:13:56.271 --> 00:13:58.235 I won't demonstrate pain behavior, but I can tell you 00:13:58.259 --> 00:14:00.074 I'm not having any pains right now. 00:14:00.098 --> 00:14:04.194 So it's an obvious mistake. Why did they make the mistake? 00:14:04.218 --> 00:14:06.409 The mistake was — and you can go back and read 00:14:06.433 --> 00:14:09.100 the literature on this, you can see this over and over — 00:14:09.124 --> 00:14:12.683 they think if you accept the irreducible existence 00:14:12.707 --> 00:14:15.478 of consciousness, you're giving up on science. 00:14:15.502 --> 00:14:18.549 You're giving up on 300 years of human progress 00:14:18.573 --> 00:14:20.383 and human hope and all the rest of it. 00:14:20.407 --> 00:14:23.198 And the message I want to leave you with is, 00:14:23.222 --> 00:14:25.641 consciousness has to become accepted 00:14:25.665 --> 00:14:28.129 as a genuine biological phenomenon, 00:14:28.153 --> 00:14:30.596 as much subject to scientific analysis 00:14:30.620 --> 00:14:32.556 as any other phenomenon in biology, 00:14:32.580 --> 00:14:34.710 or, for that matter, the rest of science. 00:14:34.734 --> 00:14:36.092 Thank you very much. 00:14:36.116 --> 00:14:41.609 (Applause)