Why Consciousness Needs a Body

What is consciousness? How does this differ from I don't know sentience or something like that? And what's the hard problem? Consciousness is really this possibility we have of knowing of our own existence and realizing That there is a world where others exist as well. But the key is really the discovery of our own existence. That's the central definition of consciousness. When you talk about emotion and feeling, you're not really talking about the same thing. Let me make that the following point of clarity. An emotion is something that you can see or hear in somebody else. I call an emotion an instance of theater. Emotion, as the name implies, is about movement. It is about movement directed at the outside. Emotere in Latin. You're doing theater for somebody else that will hear you or will see you. Feelings are private. It's inner, it's not visible or audible to anyone around us. I would not deny the possibility of some form of consciousness in AI systems which I don't think we have yet, but I would not deny that possibility. What I deny is that it looks at all, or it would look at all like our consciousness.

Hey, everybody. I'm talking to Antonio Damasio here. It's Michael Sherbert. It's time for another episode of the Michael Shermer Show with our returning champion, Antonio Damasio, the legendary neuroscientist from USC. But let me give him a proper introduction here. He's the David Dornseiff. Professor of Neuroscience, Psychology and Philosophy And director. of the Brain and Creativity Institute at the University of Southern California, the famous USC. He's the author of numerous popular and best selling books on neuroscience, including, I think I've read most of these, Descartes Error emotion, reason, and the human brain.

The feeling of what happens is of body and emotion and making of consciousness. feeling and knowing making minds conscious The strange order of things, life, feeling, and the making of cultures,

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