Sentientism | "Ought flows from sentience" - neuropsychologist & "Hidden Spring" author Mark Solms - Ep:112 @Sentientism | Uploaded May 2022 | Updated October 2024, 9 hours ago.
Mark is a psychoanalyst & neuropsychologist, best known for his discovery of the brain mechanisms of dreaming & his use of psychoanalytic methods in contemporary neuroscience. He holds the Chair of Neuropsychology at the University of Cape Town and Groote Schuur Hospital and is the President of the South African Psychoanalytical Association. He has published more than 250 articles & book chapters, & 6 books. His latest book, on the hard problem of consciousness, is The Hidden Spring.
In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “what matters?”
Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The audio is on our Podcast: apple.co/391khQO & pod.link/1540408008.
We discuss:
00:00 Welcome
01:29 Mark's Intro
- The brain as the organ of the mind
- Breaking from behaviourism
- Studying psychoanalysis (first person) alongside neuroscience (studying from the outside)
- The value of interdisciplinary studies of consciousness
- Artificial intelligence perspectives
06:08 What's Real?
- Sunday school, Christian mother
- At 5-6 yrs old, father said "Your mum believes in all that stuff, I don't."
- Brother's horrific accident & brain damage: "He came back from the hospital... a changed person." "Who is this guy and where is Lee?"
- "I was forced at an early age to confront this question of the relationship mind & body... the person & the organism"
- "My sentient being must somehow be bound up with the functions of this bodily organ"
- "I think we underestimate little kids... they really do think about these things"
- "Clearly he is his brain"
- Finding it terrifying... intimations of our own mortality
- Lying in bed in panic: "I am going to cease to exist"
- Depression: "what's the point?"
- Becoming atheist, now agnostic. Appreciating the limits of human comprehension (through working with patients)
- "We're only able to comprehend as much as the instrument we use... is capable of... it's not a perfect instrument"
- Taking a comfort in ignorance & the limits of our capability
- "Do the best we can to understand" but "science has limits"
- Un-testable/falsifiable beliefs. Delusions as a response to frightening uncertainties
26:50 What Matters?
- Starting out with cultural defaults, but "that's not what drives me now"
- "The fundamental basis of my ethical & moral compass now... is derived neither from religion or philosophy, but rather from neuroscience"
- Discovering the brain mechanisms of dreaming in the brain-stem
- Jaak Panksepp: "Deep, evolutionarily ancient (200m yrs) circuits sourced in the brain stem which give rise to our (all mammals & some with all invertebrates) basic emotions"
- "This must surely be the foundation of all of our values" "They pre-date by a very long shot any philosophy, any religion... it's nothing to do with culture and education"
- "Pain is bad - everyone knows that just because it is"
- Basic circuits of fear, disgust, pain, rage, lust, separation distress "it's bad to separate a baby from its caregiver"
- Nurturing & compassion instincts
- Dealing with conflicting values. "That's where learning & education & enculturation kick in"
- We evolved to live in very different environments, so now we need laws, governance etc.
- "The idea that if you don't hold to a religious worldview then you have no basis for being ethical... that's nonsense"
- The innate need to play... negotiation, social navigation, reciprocity
- Emotion, affects, experiences, sentience, consciousness "deeply confluent terms"
- "The reticular activated system is where the light switch is"
- Damaging 2 cubic mm of the Parabrachial Complex will cause a coma: "the most concentrated consciousness generating tissue that we know"
- "In its most elementary form, consciousness is valence... the whole point of consciousness is for the creature to know how it's doing... I feel this is going well/badly so I can make voluntary choices (vs. reflexive)."
- "The term consciousness is synonymous with feeling", representation is then secondary
- "It was a big mistake... to focus on the uniquely human forms of consciousness as our model"
- Sentience as the morallly salient aspect of consciousness & also it's foundation
- Without the feeling, the rest collapses
- "I still have many an argument with highly respected animal neuroscientists (e.g. Joseph LeDoux) who have great difficulty in accepting [animal sentience]"
- Supernatural & naturalistic anthropocentrism
- Zoomorphising humans
- The problem of other minds & solipsism...
And much more! Full show notes are at sentientism.info - they wouldn't fit here.
Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at sentientism.info/. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall sentientism.info/wall/.
Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. E.g: facebook.com/groups/sentientism.
Thanks Graham! twitter.com/cgbessellieu
Mark is a psychoanalyst & neuropsychologist, best known for his discovery of the brain mechanisms of dreaming & his use of psychoanalytic methods in contemporary neuroscience. He holds the Chair of Neuropsychology at the University of Cape Town and Groote Schuur Hospital and is the President of the South African Psychoanalytical Association. He has published more than 250 articles & book chapters, & 6 books. His latest book, on the hard problem of consciousness, is The Hidden Spring.
In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “what matters?”
Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The audio is on our Podcast: apple.co/391khQO & pod.link/1540408008.
We discuss:
00:00 Welcome
01:29 Mark's Intro
- The brain as the organ of the mind
- Breaking from behaviourism
- Studying psychoanalysis (first person) alongside neuroscience (studying from the outside)
- The value of interdisciplinary studies of consciousness
- Artificial intelligence perspectives
06:08 What's Real?
- Sunday school, Christian mother
- At 5-6 yrs old, father said "Your mum believes in all that stuff, I don't."
- Brother's horrific accident & brain damage: "He came back from the hospital... a changed person." "Who is this guy and where is Lee?"
- "I was forced at an early age to confront this question of the relationship mind & body... the person & the organism"
- "My sentient being must somehow be bound up with the functions of this bodily organ"
- "I think we underestimate little kids... they really do think about these things"
- "Clearly he is his brain"
- Finding it terrifying... intimations of our own mortality
- Lying in bed in panic: "I am going to cease to exist"
- Depression: "what's the point?"
- Becoming atheist, now agnostic. Appreciating the limits of human comprehension (through working with patients)
- "We're only able to comprehend as much as the instrument we use... is capable of... it's not a perfect instrument"
- Taking a comfort in ignorance & the limits of our capability
- "Do the best we can to understand" but "science has limits"
- Un-testable/falsifiable beliefs. Delusions as a response to frightening uncertainties
26:50 What Matters?
- Starting out with cultural defaults, but "that's not what drives me now"
- "The fundamental basis of my ethical & moral compass now... is derived neither from religion or philosophy, but rather from neuroscience"
- Discovering the brain mechanisms of dreaming in the brain-stem
- Jaak Panksepp: "Deep, evolutionarily ancient (200m yrs) circuits sourced in the brain stem which give rise to our (all mammals & some with all invertebrates) basic emotions"
- "This must surely be the foundation of all of our values" "They pre-date by a very long shot any philosophy, any religion... it's nothing to do with culture and education"
- "Pain is bad - everyone knows that just because it is"
- Basic circuits of fear, disgust, pain, rage, lust, separation distress "it's bad to separate a baby from its caregiver"
- Nurturing & compassion instincts
- Dealing with conflicting values. "That's where learning & education & enculturation kick in"
- We evolved to live in very different environments, so now we need laws, governance etc.
- "The idea that if you don't hold to a religious worldview then you have no basis for being ethical... that's nonsense"
- The innate need to play... negotiation, social navigation, reciprocity
- Emotion, affects, experiences, sentience, consciousness "deeply confluent terms"
- "The reticular activated system is where the light switch is"
- Damaging 2 cubic mm of the Parabrachial Complex will cause a coma: "the most concentrated consciousness generating tissue that we know"
- "In its most elementary form, consciousness is valence... the whole point of consciousness is for the creature to know how it's doing... I feel this is going well/badly so I can make voluntary choices (vs. reflexive)."
- "The term consciousness is synonymous with feeling", representation is then secondary
- "It was a big mistake... to focus on the uniquely human forms of consciousness as our model"
- Sentience as the morallly salient aspect of consciousness & also it's foundation
- Without the feeling, the rest collapses
- "I still have many an argument with highly respected animal neuroscientists (e.g. Joseph LeDoux) who have great difficulty in accepting [animal sentience]"
- Supernatural & naturalistic anthropocentrism
- Zoomorphising humans
- The problem of other minds & solipsism...
And much more! Full show notes are at sentientism.info - they wouldn't fit here.
Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at sentientism.info/. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall sentientism.info/wall/.
Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. E.g: facebook.com/groups/sentientism.
Thanks Graham! twitter.com/cgbessellieu
