I’m a long-time fan of Michael Pollan. He’s a science writer, so I think this belongs in this category. It’s a walk through many ideas on consciousness. Mark Solms is referenced (Felt Uncertainty section), as is Anil Seth (at the very end). About two-thirds through it shifts to more about psychedelics and he tells of a brain scientist who had an experience and now is exploring the “idealism” theory of consciousness.
That’s followed by more discussion of the “limits of science”, something that usually involves speculation about what’s real, but this conversation remains grounded in data and logic. At the, he talks about one of his sources, the book “The Blind Spot” by Evan Thompson, Adam Frank, and Marcelo Gleiser. The blind spot is science’s inability to deal with lived experience. Like the classic question of how do we experience the color red? It’s a frequency and our brain constructs it, so it’s a sort of illusion. But it’s also a fact of nature, wherein we live, how does science deal with that?
The real blind spot is our unexamined self-absorbed, self-serving nature. And our love for the mysterianism.
Science is dealing with it pretty well, the problem is with people’s preferences, and human self-absorption, and that child of god exceptionalism mentality we inhabit and cling to, refusing to examine it.
I’ve listened to Pollan’s recent book a couple times, (even purchased a hardcopy for going through again and make notations), but by my second listen through, and though I’m impressed with the author and much of what he’s written - in the end he’s a journalist, and equal time reporter who didn’t take his examination any further. He’s friends with Chalmers and all that locked-in mindset crowd, so they got the velvet glove treatment, rather than some healthy critique - rather disappointing.
Plus, he didn’t work at pulling any strands together and his final chapter was a let down that simply repeated the standard bromides. Still, I found the book is a decent review of where the science is at, he even gives Arthur Reber his due.
Unfortunately, too much springtime work to hope to tackle that video, though I’d like to. But alas it shall have to wait for calmer winds and a shorter honey-do list.
How we filter science is not science. "The Blind Spot’ is a book that makes a statement about science. You are bringing in something else. You are taking the words “blind spot” and doing some free association.
It’s our thought processes.
Viewed through our respective sense and knowledge filters.
The science is looking at the physical world,
and we humans process our science through our metaphysical mental thought filters.
I was doing free association with the words of your description.
Sounds like dancing with the “Why” question, when science’s forte is the “How” question. Expecting answers to the “Why” questions can only lead to confusion, especial if one hasn’t even wrestled with and figured out the Physical Reality ~ Human Mind divide.
0:30 has a reveal - It’s the excitement of the question that matters. It’s provocative and unanswerable when properly framed, it’s sexy in a way simply arriving upon conclusion based on evidence isn’t.
Ezra makes a claim there how we know nothing about thought. But as soon as scientists start explaining the steps to get from Y to X, the philosopher nix it. Oh that is the Easy Problem and trivial compared to their monumental human construct. What is the experience? They tell me no, all the physical juices and signaling happening within the body doesn’t tell us anything. Why would one think our body can’t be aware of that?
What exactly are philosophers asking for, besides a delicious problem to play with?
