Anil Seth

speaker

1,118 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2026 last heard 28 Jul

Anil Seth’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.

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Know Thyself · E205 - Anil Seth: Your Perception of Reality & Self Is a Hallucination · 28 Jul 2026 podcast

Now this is the true way to think of soul.

But I think there's something for me at least more appealing than the soul as disembodied cognition, this idea of what's really core to consciousness being inseparable from life and maybe manifest through breath.

I think we have to be very, very careful about what the contents of experience can tell us about the nature of consciousness.

I think the contents of experience are, and this may be so obvious it seems unnecessary to say, but I think they're very good evidence for the kinds of experiences that people can have.

And they can tell us a lot about the biases, the mechanisms, all the statistical acrobatics that our brains play around with when we open our eyes and see a world, experience a world.

But I think the nature of our experience is less reliable when we use it to make claims about the fundamental nature of reality or the fundamental relationship between consciousness and reality.

These are sort of metaphysical claims.

Like, for instance, if someone reports, maybe thanks to a psychedelic experience, maybe thanks to some very profound meditative journey, that they experience that consciousness is everywhere.

They have this very powerful experience that the whole universe is consciousness.

Maybe they have an experience of, I am that.

Is that evidence for I am that?

Is that evidence that consciousness is everywhere?

Well, it's compatible with that idea.

But I don't think it's particularly good evidence for that idea.

I think it's a big leap to take the content of experience as evidence for one metaphysics over another.

How are you using the word evidence?

Well, in a way, we might use it

I suppose, scientifically, rationally, like how do I update my beliefs about the way the world is?

How should I take the content of an experience when I'm reaching some conclusion about the nature of reality?

Partly.

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