Uploaded July 2026 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
Explore the fascinating concept of the mind's dissociative boundary—the cognitive layer separating our internal thoughts from the vast, transpersonal mental processes of nature. Discover how reality persists even when we're not observing it. #MindBoundaries #Consciousness #Philosophy #Psychology #Reality Full podcast with Bernardo Kastrup: youtu.be/lAB21FAXCDE
Explore the fascinating concept of the mind's dissociative boundary—the cognitive layer separating our internal thoughts from the vast, transpersonal mental processes of nature. Discover how reality persists even when we're not observing it. #MindBoundaries #Consciousness #Philosophy #Psychology #Reality Full podcast with Bernardo Kastrup: youtu.be/lAB21FAXCDE






![The Unsettling Truth About Consciousness
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Peter Godfrey-Smith, professor at the University of Sydney and author of Other Minds: The Octopus and the Deep Origins of Consciousness, joins to explain why he thinks meeting an octopus is the closest well get to meeting an alien. Hes now developing a new, speculative theory of consciousness centered on rhythm. The conversation explores why he thinks having a mind is a graded property rather than a yes-or-no one — and what that implies for earthworms, bacteria, and plants. We discuss how many selves may exist inside a single octopus. Godfrey-Smith explains why he suspects rhythmic, large-scale electrical activity in the brain — not just point-to-point neural firing — is essential to consciousness. He also addresses what Anthropics discovery of a workspace inside Claude does and doesnt show, and why he assigns computers a very low probability of being conscious. Finally, he makes the case for why a silicon neuron could never do exactly what a biological one does. This is an in-depth conversation with Peter Godfrey-Smith.
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TIMESTAMPS:
- 00:00:00 - Cephalopods: The Closest Aliens
- 00:05:30 - Defining the Unconscious Mind
- 00:10:40 - Selfhood vs. Information Processing
- 00:16:10 - The Graded Nature of Mind
- 00:22:15 - Deflating the Concept of Life
- 00:29:00 - Convergent Evolution of Intelligence
- 00:35:40 - Distributed Neural Control Systems
- 00:42:50 - Multiple Subjects in One Body?
- 00:48:40 - Global Workspace Theory Critique
- 00:56:10 - AI and the Conscious Workspace
- 01:01:28 - Simulation Hypothesis Probabilities
- 01:08:40 - Biological Hardware Constraints
- 01:16:10 - Rhythmic Consciousness Theory
- 01:22:30 - Mind Uploading and Silicon Neurons
- 01:31:00 - Neural Dynamics of Subjectivity
- 01:37:00 - Deep Ocean Intelligence
LINKS MENTIONED:
- Other Minds [Book]: https://amazon.com/dp/0374227764?tag=toe08-20
- Peters Website: https://petergodfreysmith.com/
- Reality+ [Book]: https://amazon.com/dp/0393635805?tag=toe08-20
- A Materialist Theory of the Mind [Book]: https://amazon.com/dp/0415100313?tag=toe08-20
- Rodolfo Llinas: https://med.nyu.edu/faculty/rodolfo-llinas
- Brunos Research: https://qbi.uq.edu.au/groups/vanswinderen
- Dehaenes Commentary on Language Models [Paper]: https://www-cdn.anthropic.com/files/4zrzovbb/website/cc4be2488d65e54a6ed06492f8968398ddc18ebe.pdf
- A Cognitive Theory of Consciousness [Book]: http://cogweb.ucla.edu/Abstracts/Baars_88.html
- Oscillations in the Central Brain of Drosophila Are Phase Locked to Attended Visual Features [Paper]: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2010749117
- The ENCODE Project: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/genomics/encode-project.html
- What Is It Like to Be a Bat? [Paper]: https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~cavitch/pdf-library/Nagel_Bat.pdf
- The Explanatory Gap [Paper]: https://philpapers.org/rec/LEVMAQ
- Inferring Consciousness in Phylogenetically Distant Organisms [Paper]: https://direct.mit.edu/jocn/article/36/8/1660/120485/Inferring-Consciousness-in-Phylogenetically
- Remarkably Bright Creatures [Book]: https://amazon.com/dp/0063204150?tag=toe08-20
- Giant Cuttlefish: https://australian.museum/learn/animals/fishes/giant-cuttlefish-sepia-apama-gray-1849/
- Cuttlefish Exert Self-Control in a Delay of Gratification Task [Paper]: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article/288/1946/20203161/86132/Cuttlefish-exert-self-control-in-a-delay-of
- Stanford Marshmallow Experiment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_marshmallow_experiment
- How We Found the Giant Squid: https://www.ted.com/talks/edith_widder_how_we_found_the_giant_squid
More links at https://curtjaimungal.substack.com
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