You may be confused about the word “consciousness” because it is used broadly to mean anything that has awareness of any kind — from a fungus to a dolphin to a human being. Unfortunately, this has been the way that we speak with each other about consciousness since Darwin came onto the scene. Consequently, as humans we do not know what our unique features of consciousness are nor how they are related to our emotional development and life. You may know the word “ego,” but you probably do not know how it relates to your self-conscious emotions, like shame or guilt, or even that you have self-conscious emotions. In this podcast, you will find out precisely the meaning of how humans are conscious because you will hear a conversation with Dr. Michael Lewis, an expert on human consciousness. The psychologist Dr. Michael Lewis from Rutgers University is famous for providing the exact test and the precise investigation of the birth of self-consciousness in humans. We are the only organism here on earth that is aware of its awareness in such a way that we abstract and theorize our own identities. Then, of course, we fight about them and get polarized. In this informative conversation, Dr. Lewis talks with Polly and Mike about the beginnings and developments of human consciousness. Dr. Lewis is the foremost researcher on the self-conscious or social emotions in the United States, having spent 65 years investigating them in his laboratory at Rutgers University. Michael Lewis PhD is University Distinguished Professor of Pediatrics and Psychiatry and Director of the Institute for the Study of Child Development at the Rutgers University Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. He is also Professor of Psychology, Education, and Biomedical Engineering at Rutgers. Dr. Lewis is a Fellow of the New York Academy of Sciences, the American Psychological Association, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science. He is one of the most prominent social scientists in the United States and is a recipient of the Urie Bronfenbrenner Award for Lifetime Contribution to Developmental Psychology (American Psychological Association) and the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award in Child Development from the Society for Research in Child Development.

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“What did the council decide on item 42?” — answered with the speaker and the moment.

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