Dr. Christof (Christoph) Koch

We can agree on, you know, what's the wavelength, what's the wave, what's the mass, what's the molecular constituency.

We can't do that with consciousness.

I believe you're conscious.

In fact, I ask you, how are you feeling today?

You tell me, well, I'm a little bit depressed because what happened?

Well, so I'm trying to get at your state of consciousness.

But ultimately, it's always an inference, whether it's you or whether it's a baby or whether it's an animal that can't directly talk because language is another way to infer.

So that makes it interesting.

more difficult.

And the other part is people confound consciousness with consciousness of self.

So most people, if you're asking what's consciousness, they say, oh, it's to know that I'm a man and I will die one day and I know what I had for breakfast.

Those are all conscious experience, but they really pertain to self-consciousness.

But that's just one aspect.

You can lose self-consciousness.

Like, I know you had Alex Holup here, and I know from reading and listening to some of what he says, he says, when you're really climbing at an expert level, you flow over the rock,

you're sort of, you totally lose a sense of self, that inner voice, that critic that constantly speak to you is gone during those moments.

This is blessed silence, but you're highly conscious because you're highly conscious of, you know, where you are and what's the next, you know, the next place you need to go to.

So, and of course, doing psychedelic experience, doing states of flow, doing states of meditation, you can lose yourself, but you're still conscious.

So let's not confound self-consciousness, which is one aspect, a big aspect, particularly in adult people, literally highly educated people with consciousness to cool.

That's really a much broader set of the fact that you can feel your limbs, right?