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12 Archived Talks on the Mystery of Human Consciousness

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While we wait for in-person programming to return to the world, it’s a good time to take stock of the archive. We’ve collected some favorite Thought Gallery thinkers here, taking on consciousness and the study of the mind in lectures recorded in recent years.

Neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux, author last year of The Deep History of Ourselves: The Four-Billion-Year Story of How We Got Conscious Brains, was recently live in New York. You can find him addressing the Copernicus Center for Interdisciplinary Studies in 2011 with “Our Emotional Brains.”

Princeton is offering free courses with online learning company Coursera. Professor Robin Wright, author of Why Buddhism is True, presents a lecture series on “Buddhism and Modern Psychology,” making connections between religion, neuroscience, and evolutionary biology.

Legendary physicist Sir Roger Penrose, an expert on space and time, asks How Can Consciousness Arise Within the Laws of Physics?

The Artificial Intelligence (AI) podcast welcomes David Chalmers, an expert in philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, and consciousness, for a look at The Hard Problem of Consciousness.

Head over to The Royal Institution for Professor of Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience Anil Seth, who takes a deep dive into “the neuroscience of consciousness” and how biology creates the experience of individuality.

Also looking into the neurological basis of identity is neuroscientist Heather Berlin, who joined TED for the question “Who Is Your Brain?”

Philosopher and cognitive scientist Daniel Dennett joined Talks at Google for an exploration of his 2017 book, From Bacteria to Bach and Back: The Evolution of Minds. The always-provocative Dennett makes the case for a materialist theory of mind.

Cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman ponders “Do we see reality as it is?” at a TED2015 talk.

Matriculate at Stanford, at least for a spell, and the chance to learn human behavioral biology with professor Robert Sapolsky.

Berkeley neurobiology professor David E. Presti joined a “Sleep, Consciousness and Lucid Dreaming” symposium to present Neuroscience and Consciousness: Present and Future Directions.

Head over to Science and Nonduality (SAND) to hear neuroscientist Riccardo Manzotti on the notion that “We Are The World That We Perceive.”

Professor of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Sydney Peter Godfrey-Smith has described cephalopods as “probably the closest we will come to meeting an intelligent alien.” Find him at Talks at Google presenting his book Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness.

This is of course a rich vein of material. Did we miss something essential? Pay a visit to our Facebook page and let us know.

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