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The Feeling of Life Itself
- Why Consciousness Is Widespread but Can't Be Computed
- Narrated by: Patrick Lawlor
- Length: 7 hrs and 34 mins
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Summary
Psychologists study which cognitive operations underpin a given conscious perception. Neuroscientists track the neural correlates of consciousness in the brain, the organ of the mind. But why the brain and not, say, the liver? How can the brain, three pounds of highly excitable matter, a piece of furniture in the universe, subject to the same laws of physics as any other piece, give rise to subjective experience? Koch argues that what is needed to answer these questions is a quantitative theory that starts with experience and proceeds to the brain. In The Feeling of Life Itself, Koch outlines such a theory, based on integrated information.
Koch describes how the theory explains many facts about the neurology of consciousness and how it has been used to build a clinically useful consciousness meter. The theory predicts that many, and perhaps all, animals experience the sights and sounds of life; consciousness is much more widespread than conventionally assumed. Contrary to received wisdom, however, Koch argues that programmable computers will not have consciousness. Even a perfect software model of the brain is not conscious. Its simulation is fake consciousness. Consciousness is not a special type of computation - it is not a clever hack. Consciousness is about being.
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- Ricky D.
- 31-05-24
Decently detailed account, but why no PDF?
Overall, this book is a decent account of IIT (Integrated information theory), and makes the theory somewhat clear, and the author clearly has great enthusiasm for the theory.
The only criticism i have is specifically for the audible version.... there are at least a couple of quite math/circuit heavy chapters where the book really gets into the weed of the theory, and these chapters repeatedly refer to diagrams, circuits and figures and the chapters are heavily based off analysis of these figures... so why on earth is there no PDF provided like other audible books with the figures? When this was being read, it must have occurred to someone they are heavily referencing diagrams. This is a major flaw unfortunately as it renders a couple of chapters impossible to make sense of (since it refers to figures which it never explains). This unfortunately rendered what might have been a great book just decent.
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