What this covers
Michael Pollan is one of the world’s most influential science writers, known for his authoritative journalistic investigations into food, plants, and psychedelics. In his latest book, "A World Appears: A Journey Into Consciousness," he turns to the nature of consciousness by rigorously exploring the leading scientific theories in the field.
In this interview, Pollan reflects on why he has come to doubt that materialism can fully account for consciousness, calling it “unproven or wrong,” and why he describes consciousness as “a labyrinth from which there is no exit.”
A World Appears, A Journey Into Consciousness: https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/443044/a-world-appears-by-pollan-michael/9780241509470
Een Wereld Verschijnt, Op Reis Door Het Bewustzijn: https://singeluitgeverijen.nl/de-arbeiderspers/boek/een-wereld-verschijnt/
More information on Michael Pollan's work: https://michaelpollan.com/
Great thanks to The Embassy Of The Free Mind for the beautiful recording location and personal tour: https://embassyofthefreemind.com/
Chapter marks:
0:00 Introduction 3:50 Pollan’s metaphysical journey 7:30 What is sentience? 9:20 Plant consciousness 9:59 Pollan on Karl Friston's free energy principle 11:08 Movement and the ability to feel pain 13:34 Talking to plants as epistemology 15:42 Michael Levin and bioelectricity 20:07 Transmissive theories of consciousness 23:30 Metzinger’s critique on Francis Crick 26:47 Politics and gender in consciousness research 30:55 Alison Gopnik and “Professor Consciousness” 32:46 The dream of conscious AI 36:02 The metaphysical landscape 42:13 Michael Pollan as a tragic comic figure... 43:22 Russell Hurlburt and inner experience 48:56 The end of Pollan’s journey 55:08 The gift of consciousness 57:15 Is there a war on consciousness? 59:02 Critique of computational functionalism
© 2026 Essentia Foundation. All rights on interview content reserved.
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Pollan argues that the scientific materialist approach to consciousness has fundamental limits and that a genuine understanding requires integrating subjective experience, phenomenology, and openness to alternative metaphysical frameworks beyond reductive neuroscience.
- Materialist neuroscience focuses narrowly on perceptual correlates while ignoring the contents and felt quality of consciousness itself
- Subjective experience—meditation, psychedelics, introspection—reveals dimensions of consciousness that third-person science cannot access or explain
- Consciousness may be better understood as a practice and mystery to be engaged with rather than a problem to be solved through computational or mechanistic models
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Russell Hurlburt has spent 50 years developing a portable beeper device to sample people's inner experience at arbitrary moments; his research reveals that most people do not think in words (contrary to common assumption), and that there are four basic types of inner experience: verbal, imagistic, unsymbolized thought, and very little inner life.
“So, you get the tragedy there, what I'm hinting at. Yeah, I get it. It's but it's tragicomic. [laughter] Um so, uh I was I got very interested in the contents of consciousness, which, you know, the the physical scientists don't deal with at all. No. Um and uh so, I found this guy, uh a psychologist at University of um Las Vegas. Uh his name is um Russ Russell Hurlburt, who for the last 50 years has been doing a single experiment. It's kind of a remarkable career. He had this idea he wanted to sample people's inner experience. Um kind of take a snapshot of consciousness.”
Michael Levin's planaria experiments show that memories are stored not in the brain or neurons but in bioelectric fields or the body: planaria learn a lesson, have their heads chopped off, grow new heads, and retain the learned memory.
“He teaches the planaria um some sort of conditions that give it some sort of lesson, uh which planaria can retain. And then he chops off their head, and then they grow a new head, and they remember the lesson. So, it was stored not in the brain, not in neurons, but in their bodies.”
Chatbots and AI-generated relationships represent an assault on human consciousness by limiting the amount of spontaneous thought we can have and replacing genuine human connection with simulated emotional bonds.
“And now we're forming, you know, emotional bonds with machines in the case of chatbots, and that's another I think assault on our consciousness and and and it limits the kind of you know, the amount of spontaneous thought we can have.”
Social media is attempting to hack human attention—consciousness is a finite resource that is allocated through attention, and various interests (corporations, AI companies) have designs on colonizing and controlling our consciousness.
“there are interests in our society that have designs on our consciousness. You know, social media is trying to hack our attention. What is that? But that's how we direct our It's how we allocate our consciousness, right?”
Sentience is basic awareness of environment and the ability to find valence (positive or negative) in environmental changes and to move toward or away from those changes; this may be a property of life itself, including unicellular organisms and possibly plants.
“sentience is just a basic awareness of your environment and the ability to find valence in changes there. It's these are positive or negative for you. Uh, and then the ability to move toward one and away from the other. Um, this may well be a property of life.”
Everyone experiences pure awareness—consciousness without self—for 500 milliseconds (or 750 milliseconds to a full second in unfamiliar settings) upon waking, during which there is a lag before the self reconstitutes and 'the story starts.'
“we all have it every morning for 500 milliseconds right when we wake up and there's this lag of um where am I, who am I? And and then you knit together the self. And the story starts. And [snorts] it's more than if you're in a hotel room in a foreign country, it's 750 milliseconds.”
Meditation for hours without distraction can produce a state of consciousness different from ordinary consciousness—characterized by spontaneous thought, freedom from planning, and a kind of presence that contrasts with goal-oriented thinking.
“I meditated for hours at a time, which I've never been able to do. Um utterly undistracted, alone with my thoughts, lots of spontaneous thought.”
Bioelectric fields—organized electrical patterns in cells—are involved in communication, division of labor in multicellular creatures, and storing memories, independently of DNA and neurons; these fields were known to exist since the 1930s but were not studied intensively until voltage-sensitive dyes became available in the 1980s.
“he's he does a lot of work with what are called bioelectric fields, yeah, which are a fascinating area of research that we've just begun to do. We We We knew they existed back in the '30s, but since they van- these fields vanish as soon as an animal is dead or a cell is dead, um very hard to study, whereas the DNA survives and you can analyze it and do all sorts of experiments. It's a classic case of um you know, looking for your keys under the streetlight. You know, we do what we do what we have the tools to do. But in the '80s, we got the tools to look at bioelectric fields. They developed these um voltage-sensitive dyes, and you put them on a bunch of cells growing in a dish, um and you see there's all this activity going on.”
Descartes began his thinking on dualism near the Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica in Amsterdam, which housed idealist and hermetic thought predating his work; this spatial and historical irony reflects how Cartesian dualism reversed preceding idealist frameworks.
“we have this funny Dutch story of Descartes being here, starting his writings. He didn't write his particular works on dualism here, but it did start his thinking started here. Like literally a couple hundred meters away from here, which led, of course, to the whole mind-matter divide in in western thinking.”
Plants make fruits and seeds meant to be eaten by mammals and birds, and grasses benefit from being grazed by ruminants; this suggests that eating plants is morally acceptable despite evidence of plant sentience.
“he also pointed out there's lots of plants plants make fruits, plants make uh, seeds that are meant to be picked up and eaten by by mammals and other and birds. And um, so and and grasses, you know, which is the bulk of our agriculture, of course, are benefit from being grazed by ruminants.”
Thomas Metzinger has empirically collected 1,500 accounts of people experiencing consciousness without self, mostly through meditation and sometimes through psychedelics, showing that pure awareness—consciousness stripped of self—is a real and accessible phenomenon.
“Metzinger's work, and he's done this very empirically for a philosopher. I mean, he's collected 1,500 accounts of people who who had an an experience of consciousness without self. Mostly through meditation, sometimes through psychedelics. And if you see if you discover that you can have consciousness without a self, it it might make the phenomenon more tractable.”
Michael Levin argues that neurons and DNA are overrated as shapers of life because nature is too unpredictable for evolution to hardwire all responses; instead, evolution creates cognitive beings that respond intelligently to novel situations they cannot make decisions within their lifetime.
“people like Michael Levin who who says, and Carl Friston says this too, that that nature, the world is too unpredictable to program every action, every contingency. You know, that you know, we talk about instinct or we used to talk about instinct as if um, you you hardwired all these responses in your DNA. Um, but nature just doesn't work that way because, um, there're too many things you can't plan, you know, that that the the DNA cannot foresee. And, um, and he says, uh, Levin says that, you know, what what evolution does is create these cognitive beings um, that can respond intelligently to whatever comes up.”
David Hume discovered in the 1740s that introspection reveals only thoughts, perceptions, and feelings—never a thinker, perceiver, or feeler; consciousness without an underlying subject is accessible through direct introspection.
“if you go looking for yourself in your mind, you will find thoughts and perceptions and feelings, but you won't find a thinker or perceiver or feeler.”
The self is a social construct, maintained through friction and interaction with others; when social interaction is removed (silence, no eye contact), the self melts and becomes permeable.
“it makes you realize what a social construct ourselves are. Because when you are not when you don't have friction with other people, it it it starts to melt. It it goes it gets very permeable.”
We need psychedelics to recover lantern consciousness because modern culture has systematically trained us out of it; psychedelics temporarily restore access to the diffuse, wonder-filled awareness we lost in childhood.
“And then in our culture we have to we have to sort of now we have ended up that we need those medicines, psychedelics for instance, to open up again.”
The hard problem of consciousness is often framed as an issue of subjectivity—the subjective first-person nature of experience—which third-person objective science cannot access; but if consciousness can exist without a self, then subjectivity is not essential to consciousness, making the problem potentially more tractable by removing the 'subject' requirement.
“It's often been thought that the problem with studying consciousness is it's subjective, which is to say it's the product of a self. And that subjective experience of being a self is impossible for the physical sciences to to get access to since they're based on this idea of objective third-person God's eye view. And um so, what do you do with that self? And the hard problem is often um phrased in this way that, you know, you don't have the right tools.”
Pain would not be adaptive for plants because they cannot move away from the source of pain; plants are likely sentient (aware) but not feeling pain—they respond to damage through chemical signals without the subjective suffering that makes pain functional for mobile creatures.
“pain would not be adaptive for a creature that can't run away. So we have pain so you can remove your hand quickly from the fire or, you know, escape uh, the source of pain. Um, plants can't do that. So he he thinks they're aware but not feeling pain. They they know they know that something's munching on their leaves. And they respond. They send toxic chemicals to uh, to thwart those caterpillars.”
Consciousness scientists promise to explain the experience of the rose, what red is, and the taste of coffee, but they do not actually deliver on those explanations—instead they focus narrowly on how perceptions become conscious rather than addressing subjective experience itself.
“When I read these accounts of consciousness by the consciousness scientist, they say, you know, we're going to explain the, you know, the experience of the rose and and what red is and the taste of coffee and but they don't.”
Unsymbolized thoughts are aspects of consciousness that have not been translated into words or images—they exist in a kind of superposition—yet they constitute a significant mode of human cognition.
“And then there people who think in unsymbolized thoughts, which are neither images or words. And I I think that did apply to me to some extent. Uh you just have this um idea that you have not translated into any kind of symbol, either visual or it's in a superposition.”
Animals are more conscious than humans in many cases because they must be present to the moment to avoid becoming prey; humans have a reducing valve filtering consciousness, making us less conscious than we might be if we allowed greater awareness.
“we think that animals are less conscious than we are, but in fact they're more conscious uh in many cases cuz they have to be. They have to be present to the moment. Otherwise, they could become another creature's lunch.”
Western culture has become progressively more focused on spotlight consciousness (narrow, goal-oriented) at the expense of lantern consciousness (diffuse, present-centered), and this cultural shift has consequences for human well-being and creativity.
“And I I also have that in my own work for the Essentia Foundation. I mean, you can walk around and forget that it's just in front of you. And and for me it's my kids, you know, the the the and that to me was also sort of uh almost emotional to thinking about lantern consciousness, being present, a rich stream of consciousness in the moment, playful, versus sort of and then we get older and goes like this, right?”
Computational functionalism—the idea that consciousness is software that could run on different substrates (brain, silicon)—is based on a faulty metaphor: brains are computers is not equivalent to brains are computers; the metaphor breaks down because brains lack a hardware/software distinction.
“there's a general belief that you could run consciousness on another substrate instead of you know, we run it on meat, it could be run on silicon. That that that's a general belief there, which is like it's a pretty wild idea. But they're they're operating from an a presumption that they're that computational functionalism um ex you know uh is true. And that is the idea that consciousness is essentially a kind of software or maybe algorithm that can can be run on different substrates. Um and it's based on a faulty metaphor. The metaphor is the that that brains are computers.”
Dave Chalmers reframed the hard problem by asking 'how does the water of brain chemistry turn into the wine of consciousness,' but the more fundamental question should be 'if at all'—asking whether the transition is possible rather than presuming it and asking how.
“He says This is also a funny one. He says Dave Chalmers, who you feature a lot in your book, you go back to Dave and he keeps sort of saying no, the problem is still hard. The problem is still hard. But Dave, but but Dave Chalmers, he's yeah, Alex Gomez Marin says Dave Chalmers just rebranded the death of materialism when he told us that the question is how does the the the the the water of brain chemistry turn into the wine of consciousness because it shouldn't be how, it should be if at all.”
Shamanic traditions report that plants communicate knowledge to them, particularly through ayahuasca, which they discovered through direct communication with the plants; this represents a true epistemology or source of knowledge that should not be dismissed as mere mythology.
“we always regard this notion that the plants can communicate with us, which is people what people report on psychedelic trips, right? And what shamans tell us is how they basically sort of discovered ayahuasca, right?... The plants taught them... we say from our with our western mind, that's mythology. That's just storytelling. Um and then you write, but maybe it could be that those are like true epistemologies.”
Alison Gopnik distinguishes between 'spotlight consciousness'—focused, narrow, one-thing-at-a-time attention—and 'lantern consciousness'—a 360-degree awareness that children possess, taking in information from all directions without predictive filtering.
“spotlight consciousness, right? It's an extreme version of spotlight consciousness. And she and then she also talks about as an um opposing term to spotlight consciousness um lantern consciousness. So, instead of aiming a spotlight at one thing and and focusing, which we need to do to succeed in school and succeed in work, children have this um you know, light in 360° so, they're taking in information.”
Michael Levin suggests that consciousness scales up gradually as a spectrum or gradient with no definitive boundary, offering no discrete answer to where consciousness begins, which problematizes materialist reduction.
“Michael Levin will say it's it scales up, and it's just this gradient, but you cannot pinpoint where it happens.”
Michael Levin created xenobots—novel organisms never before existing in nature—from tadpole skin cells that form three-dimensional creatures, repurposing cilia as locomotion, and navigate mazes; their DNA instructs them to become frogs, yet they form spontaneously without that developmental program.
“He takes um cells from tadpole skins and puts them in a nutrient solution, and they do something really interesting. Freed of their day job as skin cells, uh you know, two-dimensional skin cells, they clump together forming three-dimensional creatures. They repurpose their cilia, which which skin cells have to repel uh infectious agents of various kinds. They re They repurpose those as a mode of locomotion, and then they can, you know, swim around and navigate mazes and all this kind of stuff. There's nothing in their DNA that dictated that that structure. It's completely original structure, spontaneously formed.”
We cannot escape metaphysics—all worldviews rest on ground assumptions about fundamental reality; even agnosticism is a form of metaphysics; the question is what best guess we make about the fundamental nature of reality.
“at certain but we're trapped in sort of any uh world belief or you cannot live without a certain sort of ground assumption of what you're in and if if So, even an agnostic viewpoint to my in my opinion is a form of metaphysics. So, we cannot sort of escape sort of metaphysics”
There is a thread of personal continuity connecting one to one's childhood self, but this thread is constructed through memory and narrative; it is unclear whether it represents a real metaphysical continuity or is a functional illusion created to organize experience.
“there's a thread connecting us today to our 6-year-old or 13-year-old self, which is, you know, we've changed in so many ways since then, yet we still feel a kinship with that boy. Um and is that real or just a function of, you know, we've created all these memories that that make us feel like it's real?”
The Secret Life of Plants (1970s) made outrageous claims (plants like Mozart, can identify murderers in lineups) that were completely discredited, set back real plant research, and warned about the danger of pseudoscience in consciousness studies.
“There was a book published in the '70s called The Secret Life of Plants that set back our understanding of plants because it was so it was completely discredited. It made outrageous claims. It said that, you know, plants liked Mozart, didn't like other music, didn't like rock music, um like but liked to like grew better when you played music for them. No evidence has been found for that. Um but the most outrageous charge was that you could use them in a lineup to identify a criminal, a murderer.”
Neurons are not like transistors; unlike transistors, neurons are influenced by chemicals, neurotransmitters, hormones, and drugs, which change the intensity and inhibition of firing in ways digital computation cannot model.
“Neurons are also not like transistors. Yes, they fire or don't fire. In that respect, they're sort of digital, but they're also influenced by chemicals, uh you know, the intensity with which they fire, the inhibitions, um you know, hormones, neurotransmitters, drugs, all change uh what neurons do.”
William James argued in Varieties of Religious Experience that metaphysical questions cannot be answered with certainty but should be treated as hypotheses and tested against other kinds of science; this pragmatic approach guides how to evaluate consciousness claims.
“William James in Varieties of Religious Experience, he said we can't answer some of these metaphysical questions for for certain. We should treat them as hypotheses, uh, and then test them against other kinds of science.”
Psychedelics open Huxley's 'reducing valve' wider, giving users temporary access to expanded consciousness including sensory overload, emotional intensity, and the dissolution of subject/object boundaries.
“And um he he imagined the brain as a reducing valve. And what psychedelics did, he decided, was to open the reducing valve wider and you felt like you had more consciousness than you do ordinarily.”
Novelists and poets know more about consciousness than neuroscientists because they study the contents and felt quality of consciousness, while neuroscientists study only neural mechanisms.
“And for this I found that they were kind of useless and that it was worth turning to novelists and poets who know an awful lot about consciousness, um who've been studying it longer than the scientists have. And in terms of the experience of being a conscious being, they're far ahead. Um they're not explaining how it comes to happen, but they're explaining what it's like.”
Feelings are fundamental to consciousness and distinct from thoughts; it is unclear whether machines can have genuine feelings, and claiming machines have feelings (without embodied vulnerability and mortality) is unfounded.
“I think feelings are different than thoughts. Um Not everybody does. Chalmers doesn't agree with that. He he thinks all mental contents are the same, and you could have you could have consciousness without feelings, and he points to Dr. Spock, a fictional character I might I might point out.”
Jung's concept of the collective unconscious raises questions about mechanism: does the shared pool of mythological ideas reside in DNA, emotional proclivities, or a field outside us? Jung never settled on a mechanism to explain collective consciousness.
“I don't know if Jung ever um settled on a mechanism to describe how we we would have this shared pool of mythological ideas. Um whether it was in the DNA like other inclinations or emotional proclivities or it came from some field outside of us. Um I don't know.”
The conventional self is useful for navigating the world and has instrumental value, but it also obscures deeper aspects of consciousness; self-construction is a process that happens through social interaction and can be deconstructed through meditation and ritual.
“There's a conventional self, there's the one we're using right now, and it helps us. And in fact, it reifies our sense of self.”
Joan Halifax, a 82-year-old Zen teacher, runs a retreat center in Santa Fe called a 'factory for the deconstruction of selves' where 2-week retreats involve silence, no eye contact, and meditation, causing people to experience a crisis where they 'give up the self' and merge with the group.
“Yeah, her name is Joan Halifax, and she's a um 82-year-old uh Zen teacher, very wise woman. Um and I went to her because I'd heard that her retreat center in Santa Fe was a she she'd called it a factory for the deconstruction of selves. And people go on these 2-week retreats and they have a a moment, kind of a crisis moment, where they give up their self and kind of, you know, merge with the group.”
Most consciousness scientists are men, and this gender disparity reflects a masculine, problem-solution-oriented approach (spotlight consciousness) that misses affective dimensions of consciousness like wonder, awe, and the diffuse awareness of children (lantern consciousness).
“Well, there there really is a kind of interesting gender split in this world. And that most of the consciousness scientists, the people trying to solve the hard problem are men. And um And as the book goes on, I sort of transition from looking at the science closely, getting somewhat dissatisfied with it or frustrated with it because it really it's making progress, but it's not um it it hits a wall.”
Kalina Christoff studies spontaneous thought (mind-wandering, daydreaming, intuition), a field that lacks funding because it is deemed unproductive by capitalist standards; yet spontaneous thought is essential to creativity and meaning-making in human life.
“Uh Christina um uh Kalina, I'm sorry, Kristoff [29:33] Hadjilivia. She's a Bulgarian-Canadian um psychologist. And she studies spontaneous thought, which I didn't even know was a field. And this is mind wandering and daydreaming and intuition and um sort of how um thoughts emerge from the unconscious, where there's a lot going on that we don't have access to, but every so often certain things come into consciousness for reasons we don't totally understand and by a process we don't understand at all. Um and I said, "Why don't more people study spontaneous thought? This sounds really interesting." And she said, "Well, cuz it's unproductive. There's no you know, there's a lot of money in studying decision making and things like that, rational thought." Um but there's no money in studying, you know, daydreaming.”
Materialism cannot adequately explain consciousness because emergence—the claim that consciousness emerges from matter—lacks explanatory power when pressed; it sounds like 'abracadabra' (magical thinking).
“materialism, that consciousness is an emergent property of brains... although no one can explain that. And emergence, when you press on it, sounds a lot like abracadabra. Um it it just, you know, doesn't really it doesn't really have that much explanatory power in in the case of consciousness.”
Plants can learn and remember, and some plants have longer memory spans than fruit flies—experiments show plants can see and respond to environmental stimuli.
“I looked at plants and what they can do and and there were amazing experiments being done to indicate that plants can learn and remember, that they can see and they”
When Pollan spent several days in a cave at Halifax's retreat center—meditating for hours without distraction, with no running water or electricity—he realized he had gotten trapped in a Western, male, Cartesian problem-solution framework for understanding consciousness, and discovered consciousness is better approached as a practice and gift rather than a problem.
“I meditated for hours at a time, which I've never been able to do. Um utterly undistracted, alone with my thoughts, lots of spontaneous thought. Um And it made me realize that I'd gotten kind of trapped in this framework, which was very Western, very male, very Cartesian, of problem-solution. And that there was another way to think about consciousness, which is as a practice.”
Michael Levin proposes that a third force shapes organisms: platonic patterns (goal-driven experience, sense of purpose, intention) that exist independently—similar to how mathematical patterns preexist mathematics—and that organisms 'ingressively' participate in or embody these patterns.
“he suggest he he's come to the conclusion that there are um that there is a third force shaping a creature like this, which is a a platonic pattern. And in the same way math has these patterns that preexist us. I mean, most most mess mathematicians would say that. Uh that three angles adds up to 180°, or whatever it is. Um that there are patterns dictating things like goal-driven experience, goal-driven um you know, a sense of purpose in the world, intention. Um and that we uh or creatures and possibly machines can ingress is the term that is used. It's a Whitehead uh Whiteheadian term. Um, that these patterns are what's organizing this behavior.”
There are three major metaphysical frameworks for understanding consciousness: materialism (consciousness emerges from brains), panpsychism (consciousness is fundamental and distributed in all matter), and idealism (consciousness is primary and matter is derivative).
“I mean, I see three big metaphysical ideas around consciousness. Maybe I'm missing some. One is materialism, that consciousness is an emergent property of brains.”
Panpsychism faces the hard combination problem: if consciousness is distributed in every particle, how do all these micro-conscious particles combine to form a unified, fully conscious being like a human?
“But there's a hard problem there, which is how do you combine all these um proto-conscious [snorts] things to make a fully conscious being like us or an animal.”
The voice in one's head raises an ambiguity: are we listening to the voice or speaking it? This ambiguity reveals something fundamental about consciousness—the inability to separate observer from observed.
“we have a voice in our head, but are we listening or are we speaking?”
The quest for consciousness is tragic because the scientific method itself excludes the subjective phenomena—consciousness—that it seeks to explain.
“the tragedy is when you sort of of course, beautifully describe someone like Karl Friston. But of course, you're tired. I I've spent time with Karl Friston. I spent time with Christof Koch. So, I And And I just see you being tired.”
Pollan's journey shifts from a closed materialist mind to an open mind that accepts mystery and uncertainty; the book reflects a trajectory of increasing uncertainty rather than increasing certainty.
“Well, I mean, I think the book the trajectory of the book is toward from a closed mind to an open mind. Mhm. I mean, really. I mean, I don't settle, you know, I say right in the beginning, you may know less at the end of this book than you do right now.”
Alison Gopnik warned Pollan that consciousness researchers have an unusual form of consciousness—'professor consciousness'—enabling them to sit in a chair for hours thinking about one thing and blocking out everything else, a highly specialized, disembodied mode of attention.
“She gave me an interesting caution when I started on this project... she said, 'Don't ever forget that the people doing this work who study consciousness are have a very unusual kind of consciousness themselves... These are people who can sit in a chair for a very long time thinking about one thing and blocking out everything else.'”
The transmission theory of consciousness, traced through Henri Bergson, William James, and Aldous Huxley, proposes that the brain functions as a reducing valve that filters a vast ocean of consciousness outside the self, admitting only a trickle needed for survival.
“Aldous Huxley's version, which is where I first encountered it, although there hints of it in William James, too. Uh and I think it traces to Henri Bergson. Uh [snorts] who had a big influence on Proust, um and is a very interesting philosopher. Um, but Huxley is where I first encountered it, and he had a like Kristof Koch had this um uh psychedelic experience on mescaline. And um he he imagined consciousness at he he saw the brain's function as editing this giant mass, this ocean of consciousness that's out there and um and admitting only uh the the trickle, he called it, that we needed to survive.”
Bernardo Kastrup proposes that idealism's separation problem can be addressed by analogy with dissociative identity disorder: just as one person's mind can contain multiple personalities, a universal consciousness could contain multiple individual consciousnesses without transparency.
“Bernardo has proposes this idea that it's, you know, it's think of it as dissociative identity disorder, which is a metaphor in this case. Um and in the same way people with this disorder can have multiple personalities in one head, like up to 20. Yeah. But so in that sense it's more than a metaphor, it is a mechanism we see in nature. It it's happening in brains. But it but Bernardo extends that to a universal mind.”
Christof Koch, a prominent neuroscientist, had a psychedelic experience on mescaline that convinced him consciousness transcends the brain—he experienced 'mind at large' (consciousness outside the brain) and concluded there is a vast consciousness that the brain receives and filters.
“we had him on the channel. know. Exactly, where is he now? Cuz I mean, we talked and he was he was deeply curious about idealism. He had had this experience on psychedelics that changed his thinking because he experienced mind outside of the brain. He called it mind at large, just like Aldous Huxley.”
Kingsan Man, a consciousness researcher protege of Antonio Damasio, initially believed robots could have genuine feelings through sensory feedback, but after a 5-MeO-DMT experience, concluded there is a 'spark of divinity' in humans that robots will never possess.
“Do you So, do you think the feelings of your robot, if you build it, will be real feelings?" And he said, "I Yes, I I did believe that until I had an experience on 5-MeO-DMT, a very powerful, short-acting psychedelic." And he had this amazing, wonderful, ecstatic experience, but he came out of it thinking there's a spark of divinity in all of us that no robot will ever possess.”
One major achievement of the book is to question the fundamental assumption that brains generate consciousness, raising this question for many readers represents a radical shift in thinking.
“one of the things you probably didn't know for the average reader that I in my head was this assumption that brains generate consciousness. And to simply to question that idea or show the limitations of that idea for a lot of people represents a pretty radical um change.”
Bioelectric fields—voltage gradients across cell membranes—have been largely ignored in consciousness research because they vanish upon death and are harder to study than DNA, whereas DNA survives and is analyzable; this is a case of 'looking for your keys under the streetlight' where we do what we have tools to do rather than what matters most.
“We We We knew they existed back in the '30s, but since they van- these fields vanish as soon as an animal is dead or a cell is dead, um very hard to study, whereas the DNA survives and you can analyze it and do all sorts of experiments. It's a classic case of um you know, looking for your keys under the streetlight. You know, we do what we do what we have the tools to do.”
The book The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho illustrates the principle that the object of the quest has been present all along—suggesting that consciousness, which we seek to explain scientifically, is immediately present and accessible through direct experience.
“I I was it was in that sense it was touching to me. It also reminded me think of um the book The Alchemist, you know, by Paulo Coelho, I think, the writer. It's it's a story of being in search of something, this long quest all to discover it it's just in front of you all the time you've been”
Francis Crick, the discoverer of DNA's double helix structure, responded to Metzinger's philosophical questions about the definition and scope of consciousness research by dismissing the need for definitions early in science, implying philosophers should not interfere with empirical work—but this avoided addressing fundamental conceptual issues.
“He said, 'What's your What's your definition? What do you What are you trying to solve?' he's the super ego of the field. that's that's nice. So it's all just great storytelling. But Dave, but but Dave Chalmers, he's yeah, Alex Gomez Marin says Dave Chalmers just rebranded the death of materialism when he told us that the question is how does the the the the the water of brain chemistry turn into the wine of consciousness because it shouldn't be how, it should be if at all.”
Alex Gomez Marin, a neuroscientist who has had near-death experiences and psychedelic insights, argues there is a 'war on consciousness' being waged by Silicon Valley and AI advocates who promote a physicalist materialist agenda claiming humans are machines, which is unscientific and represents an assault on consciousness.
“Yeah, he's this neuroscientist, physicist, very much into psi phenomena. So, he sort of he had a near-death experience himself. Also interesting, Mike Michael, you didn't go into sort of parapsychology, near-death experiences. Maybe nice to touch upon that in in sort of this one, but Alex has sort of become much more radical. He spoke at the Science of Consciousness Conference last year, and he said sort of time's up. I can sort of start sort of doing my work as a scientist, but the thing's becoming political now. There's a war on consciousness.”
Consciousness is an extraordinary gift—a private space where we have complete privacy and can think whatever we want. Yet we squander this gift, taking it for granted and not appreciating the mystery and wonder of having subjective experience.
“I hadn't appreciated it quite enough that we have this private space in our heads where we are, you know, we have complete privacy, we can think whatever we want. Um we can talk to ourselves. Um it's this incredible gift. And we squander it. We take it for granted. We don't even think about it.”
Pollan is attracted to the transmission idea because it is a beautiful theory with explanatory power; Aldous Huxley articulated it based on his mescaline experience, and Henri Bergson influenced this lineage of thinking, which also appears in William James.
“I'm very attracted to the transmission idea. I think it's a beautiful theory. Um, and it has some explanatory power. And Aldous Huxley's version, which is where I first encountered it, although there hints of it in William James, too. Uh and I think it traces to Henri Bergson.”
Pollan's book may propel the hard problem of consciousness into mainstream cultural awareness, similar to how his earlier book on psychedelics propelled psychedelics into mainstream discourse.
“I really hope that this book will do and I've I I have high hopes for it that it will do that what your previous book did which sort of it did sort of propel psychedelics into the mainstream and I think this book very well may sort of propel the hard problem into sort of the mainstream like we do have a really hard problem.”
Levin's work is largely ignored in biology but has found significant interest among researchers in computation and philosophy who appreciate its challenge to the neurocentric paradigm.
“he's quite ignored in biology, but people from computation and philosophy love his work.”
On psychedelics, Pollan had an experience where the plants in his garden all appeared to be conscious, which is a common experience on psychedelics—a sense of animism where the world seems more alive and conscious than ordinarily perceived.
“I had an experience that was similar in some ways in which the plants in my garden all appeared to me to be conscious. And, um, it's very common on psychedelics to have a sense of uh, almost animism, you know, that the world is more alive, more conscious than you thought.”
Pollan is agnostic about transmission theories of consciousness because he doesn't know how to prove them or whether they could be proved to anyone's satisfaction—the fundamental problem with metaphysical ideas.
“I'm really agnostic on these theories because uh or these metaphysics because I don't know how to how to prove them. Um, I don't know how they could be proved to anyone's satisfaction. That's the problem with metaphysical ideas, a lot of them.”
Huxley had the philosophical inclination toward the reducing valve theory before his mescaline experience; the experience supported an idea he already held, rather than originating from the drug experience.
“He had this idea before he had the mescaline trip. This is so it's it's a case where he had a philosophical inclination that was supported by his experience.”
The critique of materialism is easier to construct than a viable alternative; Pollan finds it simpler to show materialism's failures than to propose a replacement that addresses all difficulties.
“I think the critique of materialism is easier to make than the the proposal of the alternative.”
Pollan warns that saying 'you may know less at the end of this book than you do right now' is not a good marketing strategy, but it is honest and reflects genuine epistemological humility.
“I say right in the beginning, you may know less at the end of this book than you do right now... I know that's not selling idea, but um but it's honest”
Sartre had a bad mescaline trip in the 1930s that destabilized him for months, with hallucinations of crabs following him around; this case illustrates both the power of psychedelics to alter consciousness and the epistemological difficulty of knowing whether such experiences reveal truth or distortion.
“Yeah, it it really destabilized him for months. Yeah, so he didn't crabs were following him around. Yeah. And uh they were he would ask them to shut up when he was lecturing. Yeah, it's so funny. And this is the This is the '30s.”
When wearing Hurlburt's beeper, users become highly self-conscious about when the next beep might occur, making it discomforting to wear beyond a few hours; subjects typically engage in only 5 beeps per session over a few hours rather than all day.
“you can't wear it all day cuz it makes you really self-conscious. You know, you're constantly like, what if it goes off now? Well, we we do five, which would take a few hours. Um and then I, you know, I seldom wore it past lunch cuz it was very dis- discomforting.”
Many of Pollan's thoughts captured by the beeper were mundane, often concerning food—particularly forgetting to add pepper to a salmon fillet—and he joked that he remembered almost nothing worth censoring, suggesting little inner erotic life.
“A lot of my thoughts were banal and had to do with food... Um and not a not enough about sex, right? No, there was nothing that, you know, for You wrote that. I found that funny, right? Yeah, it was like, nothing worth suppressing um or censoring.”