Consciousness & Reality Colloquium: From Beast Machines to Dreamachines

Caltech Consciousness & Reality Colloquium Series

Anil Seth

Professor of Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience, University of Sussex

Co-director of the Sackler Centre for Consciousness

Consciousness remains one of the central mysteries in science and philosophy. In this talk, I will illustrate how the framework of predictive processing can help bridge from mechanism to phenomenology in the science of consciousness – addressing not the ‘hard problem', but the ‘real problem'. I will advance the view that predictive processing, precisely because it is not itself a theory of consciousness, offers a powerful approach for addressing the real problem. Then, turning the lens inwards, I will explore how the experience of being an embodied self can be understood in terms of control-oriented predictive (allostatic) regulation of the interior of the body. This implies a deep connection between mind and life, providing a new way to understand the subjective nature of consciousness as emerging from systems that care intrinsically about their own existence. I will finish by describing a recent art-science collaboration – the dreamachine –  which involves mass stroboscopically-induced visual hallucinations and a large-scale online survey – The Perception Census.

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ABOUT THE EVENT

This lecture will be accessible to an interdisciplinary audience, and Caltech members from all divisions are welcome to join. Select questions from the Q&A window will be answered after the lecture.

ABOUT THE SERIES

The Consciousness & Reality colloquium series promotes interdisciplinary investigations on mind, cognition, consciousness, and the nature of reality. The colloquia will be held once a month. The next colloquium will be delivered by Jim Tucker (Bonner-Lowry Professor of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences; Director of the Division of Perceptual Studies at the University of Virginia Health System) on Apr 26.