The Mystery of Consciousness

If you suffer a stroke in area V4 on the left side of your brain, you lose all perception of color in the right half of vision. You are otherwise normal. If a powerful magnet stimulates area V4 on the right side of your brain, you experience psychedelic colors in the left half of vision. Neural activity in area V4 is highly correlated with your conscious experiences of color. Neuroscience has discovered dozens of fascinating correlations between neural activity and conscious experiences. But no scientific theory can explain why. The relation between neural activity and conscious experiences is just as mysterious as the relation between rubbing a lamp and the appearance of a genie.

In this webinar, we discover why neuroscience has failed to understand consciousness. Neuroscience assumes that we see reality as it is, that space, time and objects exist even when they are not perceived, and that objects such as neurons have genuine causal powers. We discover, to the contrary, that evolution by natural selection shapes our senses to hide reality from us. Perception is not a window on reality; it is more like a windows interface on your laptop. Spacetime is your desktop, and physical objects, like apples and neurons, are simply icons on this desktop. Neural activity cannot cause conscious experiences, because neurons don’t exist when they are not perceived.

If spacetime and physical objects are not objective reality, then what is? We explore the idea that consciousness itself is objective reality, and that conscious agents create spacetime and objects to interface with other conscious agents. This idea has been turned into a scientific theory with a mathematically precise denition of conscious agents. Conscious agents do not out the laws of physics; they explain the genesis of these laws. We explore this theory, some of its surprising predictions, and its implications for the dialogue between science and spiritual.

In short, this webinar explores:

• The relationship between consciousness and the brain
• Why the brain does not cause our conscious experiences
• How evolution shaped our senses to hide reality from us
• Why our senses instead serve as a user interface
• How to develop a science in which consciousness is fundamental
• The relationship between science and spirituality

Introduction video below: