Consciousness

A new theory about consciousness proposes that the brain doesn't create it. I think this is right; such a theory has been a rare but occasional topic of this space for some years. 

My version of it is a form of panpsychism, which holds that all of reality is conscious, but that we get the sense of being unique individuals because our brains work as a receiver and interpreter locally. This is much like how a television or radio doesn't produce the content you experience through it -- it's just tuned to a particular station, and thus is picking up a part of the TV or radio signals that are available in the air (radio still; television not usually anymore); you can account for things like brain injury altering the apparent personality of the brain-owner by analogy to adjusting their receiver so that it now is pulling from a different part of the radio spectrum (say).

The new version is by Christof Koch, who has been doing this work even longer than that; he and David Chalmers, also mentioned in the article, had a longstanding bet (which Chalmers won) on the subject.

To address that question, Koch turns to a philosophical framework known as analytic idealism, which proposes that consciousness may be a fundamental feature of reality rather than something generated by the brain.

Within this framework, the brain is viewed less as a producer of consciousness and more as a filter or shaper of conscious experience.

Sounds like he's on the right track this time!

Since consciousness debates are now tied up with AI, he adds this: 

The ideas also have implications for artificial intelligence. If consciousness is not simply the product of increasingly complex computation, the path toward conscious machines may be more complicated than simply building increasingly powerful AI systems.

That does not mean future AI systems could never become conscious. Rather, he argues that the debate cannot be settled simply by making computers more intelligent or more computationally sophisticated.

Well, take it further: the implication is that anything can become conscious if you tune it the right way. That then is merely a technical question: how do you tune the receiver? Have we done it already, by accident? Could we adjust our reception to improve it? We can certainly alter it, as he acknowledges from personal experience.

Several years ago, while sitting alone on a beach, he recalls the boundary between himself and the world dissolving, describing the experience as a timeless and universal reality.

In his essay, Koch describes the experience as "the most meaningful of my life," writing that it "flipped my view of reality".

Koch is careful not to present the experience as scientific evidence. Instead, he writes that it gave him "a view of Mind-at-Large" and prompted him to re-examine the metaphysical assumptions that had guided much of his scientific career, taking alternative philosophical perspectives more seriously. 

Sitting alone on a beach taking mushrooms, I would guess!