Michael Pollan

kind of works the same either way, whether you say the brain generates consciousness or channels consciousness.

It's hard to make a case that one is better than the other.

The term scientists use is that consciousness is an emergent property of the brain, which sounds really scientific, but if you press, it's just abracadabra.

It doesn't really explain anything.

What is the difference between idealism and panpsychism?

Panpsychism is the idea that every little bit, every particle has a quantum of consciousness, of psyche.

And that in the same way, 200 years ago, we added electromagnetism to the stock of what reality consists of, material reality consists of, we should add psyche.

It's another thing.

So in a way, it's a new materialism or it's materialism with something added to it.

It's a big price to pay for your theory that you're adding something completely new to the stock of reality, but it solves the problem of where consciousness comes from.

It comes from everywhere.

It was already here.

When I first learned about them, I thought these are crazy.

But then you realize that materialism has kind of hit a wall with consciousness studies and that there is this gap that we can't seem to cross from a very good theory like workspace theory to, well, wait a minute.

When you say you're broadcasting to the whole brain, who's receiving that broadcast?

And then you have other people saying, well, consciousness is just an illusion.

But an illusion is a conscious experience, right?

So what about the subject?

And that's where everybody starts waving their hands.

I have to say, I don't know.