Welcome to Part one with Robert Lawrence Kuhn. Robert, among other things, is the creator, executive producer, writer and host of the PBS series Closer to Truth. In this conversation we explore Robert's encyclopedic paper reviewing the major theories of consciousness on what is consciousness. I think you'll find this fascinating. Welcome to Deep Transformation. Self, Society, Spirit, life enhancing, paradigm rattling conversations with cutting edge thinkers, contemplatives and activists. With Dr. Roger Walsh and John Dupuy join us in the evolutionary fast lane as we take a deep dive into transformational practice. Peak experience, profound understanding, powerful contribution.

I'm Roger Walsh, our co host is John Dupuy and our guest today is someone who you may well have seen on television, Robert Lawrence Kuhn, who is many things, an author, public intellectual and producer of the remarkably successful PBS series Closer to Truth which explores some of the great questions of all time, some of the fundamental questions of existence, deep questions, questions about the nature of life, the origins of the universe, God, consciousness. And Robert's remarkable in the wonderful way he approaches these deep questions by looking at many different viewpoints, being completely open minded and really welcoming a range of perspectives that's very rare in our sectarian and divided polarized society at this time. One of the great questions that Robert has investigated over his lifetime and the PBS series Closer to Truth is examined and some of his, I think almost more than 30 books is what is consciousness? And he's really reflected on this over much of his life. And last year he published a culmination of all this thinking and exploration in a remarkable article in Science Scientific Journal. The article is titled A Landscape of Consciousness and it surveys over 200 different theories, all the major theories of east and west, contemporary ancient theories of what consciousness is. I've been reading academic articles for 40 years, but Robert, I don't think I've ever read an article in which so much work went into. So this is the culmination of decades of really deep thinking and interviewing some of the deepest thinkers available. How did it feel to be writing this thing?

Roger, first of all, it's great to see you again. We were together very early, Closer to Truth. I think we were something like 15, 17 years ago. You look exactly the same, so I don't know what you're doing, but I should do some of this similar. John, it's great to meet you as well. Thank you Robert.

Same here.

Wonderful to reflect on the nature of consciousness. I recently scared myself and I went back and looked at the first draft of the article that would become the Landscape of Consciousness, Consciousness. And it had 8,000 words completely jumbled together. And my stomach nodded at that point. Because I knew that the person who wrote those 8,000 words was on a 15 month journey to wind up with 175,000 words. And it was a constant pressure that I felt during that period. I can tell you the backstory which is really important to me in this process. Because this was not something that I volunteered to do. Was not my idea to do. I had in the back of my mind maybe that some point I would write something. But I never, I never expected to because the burden of it would be too heavy. I love doing Closer to Truth. About a third of Closer to Truth is on consciousness. And consciousness related topics like free will, personal identity, artificial intelligence, alien intelligences within the orbit of consciousness. And that's been a great vehicle to express my interest. But I would have never taken the burden because I knew what it would take to do. To put something on paper as opposed to speaking. It's much easier to speak. We're much freer in terms of our expressions. And the difference between an and a. The when you speak is irrelevant, but on paper it can be vital. And so I never would have done that. But then somebody, a scientist who I met through Closer to Truth. Who was on the board of a scientific journal asked. Said that they were going to do the journal called Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology. They were doing a special issue on quantum consciousness. Which this author had particular interest in. And he asked me if I would do the introductory article for this special series. Just to give sort of an overview, a short overview. And I said no. I said, I'm too burdened, I can't do it, I don't have the time. And he kept encouraging me or pestering me or whatever. And at one point in the process, and it was a six month process of him talking about. And I began to think that this is something I should do and I won't do it. But maybe it's something that if I don't do it now, I will never do it. And so then I agreed to do it, not having any idea I knew the amount of work it would take. But in retrospect, what I worried about, in terms of the commitment of the process of writing. It turned out to be about 5% of the reality. So I was scared of that 5%. But the reality turned out. And maybe it's my obsessive compulsive personality or perfectionism or whatever it is. And so it began a very long process that I was totally obsessive about, and it was written mostly at night.

How long did that take? Robert, what's this long process from.

From the time I was asked to do it, I remember, I think it was in November of 2022. I agreed around March of 2023 to do it. And then the first draft was done in maybe it was 21, get my years right. But from start to finish, it was a little less than two years. But the actual writing of the process was probably a very intense nine or ten months. So an intense nine or ten months. When I say intense, I mean, you know, 12 hour days. And when I say days, they're really nights because I have family and other responsibilities during days. So I'd be writing from 8 or 9 at night till 4 or 5 in the morning, literally every single night. Now, there were periods of time when it went through peer review, but even during that time, I was continuing to update it. And I give the journal Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology credit for two things. First of all, they put up with my constant changes. After the final, final, final was done, we went through about seven changes that were just part of my compulsion. And they were super helpful. Not necessarily pleased, but super helpful in being responsive to that. And one thing that occurred, and this is how, I don't know, serendipity kind of works in life. I'm very sensitive. Anything I write, I'm super sensitive to. Once I finish writing, I forget about it. And if there are mistakes in it, it doesn't bother me. But before I push the button and this is final, I'm just crazy sensitive. And so I had a version I had submitted. It was the second or third peer review because each time I'd get a positive peer review with suggestions, I would add much more to it. So the editors felt that they needed to do another peer review because the article was not quite the same as the one that was peer reviewed the last time I added stuff, which was fine. And so on one of those processes, Elsevier, which is a top science publisher, has a policy, it's good policy, and says as soon as an article is accepted formally for publication, it's put on the website within two or three days. And so that's great for the scientific community. They don't have to wait a year because the actual print version of the article was eight months later. And so for scientific articles, you want to get out there. And so what happened was this incomplete version was released. And I was furious. I was so upset because it was really incomplete. It was about 130,000 words, a huge amount yet to do. And I'll explain what happened. I was really beside myself because this is. People are not going to read this thing twice. They're going to see it. This is their first impression. It's not perfect. And I was just crazy. And I bet, take it down. And they said, it's against policy. We don't do that. We put it up. And I said, let's escalate this. I was talking to an associate. Escalate. You've got to take this down. And then I spoke to someone who said, the only time we take things down is when there's fraud in the article. And if we take it down, everybody's going to think there's fraud in it or plagiarism or something bad. I said, I don't care. Take it down. And they took it down and they put a little note saying, we expect to put it back, but if we don't, we'll explain why. So people did suspect that there might have been some problem. But anyway, I tell the story because it turned out to be enormously fortuitous because a lot of people read it. It had words like consciousness or whatever that, you know, hit people's search engines. And I had probably 15 or 20 people write to me about the article. And about, I don't know, 12 or so were people who were really angry that I left out X or Y in all cases, I hadn't really heard of them, or some I had dismissed as somebody historical I didn't want to cover. And I learned a lot. And there was people who suggested other theories. And so as a result of that process, it was up on the Web for, I don't know, two weeks or three weeks. I was able to add about 10 or 15 theories that people had told me. So this became sort of a global effort to discern the best theory. So it turned out to be terrific. Every one of those people I credit in the article, you know, I don't know who they are. Fewer scientists, fewer, you know, people in various societies. Some I had one. In one case, I totally rejected it because it seemed so outlandish. But it had this very strong following. And therefore, to properly represent human explorations of consciousness, I decided to study that as bizarre as I thought it was, and to include it to the best of my ability. So I credit, you know, everyone who participated in this process. And there were, you know, many people who did. And I do credit them in the article for helping with this. So it's not only What I have known, and even through Closer to Truth. But I'd like to think it's a collective. And I'll mention one more thing. They'll stop that. As a result of this article, it had a very big impact, was published around July 1st of last year and cited 50 times. And it's looked upon as a standard. A lot of people encouraged me to write a book about this instead of a scientific paper. In fact, the first peer reviewer said this should be a book instead of a paper. But I resisted that and I'm happy I did. And so for a few days, I started to put together a book proposal. And then I realized if I do a book, what's going to happen is I'm going to spend a year changing it from a paper to a book, and then it's going to take another almost year to publish. And by that time, a third of the theories are going to be changed. There'll be more, It'll be out of date. So I stopped that and had the idea to do a Landscape of Consciousness website, which will be the central location where people can look for a scientific but not elaborate discussion of each of the major theories presented by the individuals themselves. And we're in the process of building that. We will do a beta launch this summer and a full launch before the end of the year. And it will be. We'll have all the theories, it'll have a lot of material, references, and an important point that there will be a notation on each theory when the author of that theory themselves authenticates it. Because the first version, I wrote everything and I use the author's words, and I did the best I can. When I did an individual theory, I would inhabit that theory for a day or two. And for that day or two, it was like it was my theory. And I was determined to explain that in the best possible way so that people understand it and it is the true answer. And so I want everybody to know it. I had that approach to every single theory, but it was still my words, a few of the theories. You know, of the 200, I think there are 200 major theories and another 50 sort of minor ones. About 30, 35 people of that group, some of the prominent names I know personally from Closer to Truth, and so I could send it to them ahead of time. I didn't feel badly about that because I knew them and everybody wrote back. Some made very few changes and a handful made significant changes. And I said, you know, sorry, I missed. And they said, no, no, you got it right. But that was three years ago. Now my theory is this, you were using an older, older papers. So we want this website to then be authenticated by the author themselves. And for those who, you know, sadly have died, we'll find the person in the world who is most knowledgeable, the expert about their theories. So we want this to be an organic process. We want it to be a process that globally people can engage with. Because I believe, and I know you do as well, that consciousness is perhaps the single most important question, unifying question that humanity can explore.

Well, well Robert, so much in what you said and I, I'm stunned to think, think of working till riding till 5am each morning puts my little effort in comparison. But some of the things that are really striking about this article, first is its size. It's just. Second, it's comprehensive. I think you really did include every major and a hell lot of minor theories I'd ever heard of in this survey. The other thing was the open mindedness. You are just not pushing any one theory and that's very rare in science and in the field of consciousness most people are pushing a particular theory, but you really are giving an open minded perspective. So anything you'd like to say about that? And also what are the main differentiators between the theories?

Okay, so let's deal with those separately. In the first part my approach is a desire I guess I have two fundamental ideas for the whole program which was the paper it's Closer to Truth to begin with, the paper itself and then the website which will be part of Closer to Truth website. And the first is that at this time in our intellectual spiritual call what you will development we should be looking to expand our way of thinking about consciousness, exploring all different opportunities and not close off discussion too early. That does not mean be irrational or accept crazy ideas. I mean it has to be a standard of rationality that somebody makes an arbitrary decision. But this is a time we need to be expansive in our understanding because as people have noted as we've learned more in neuroscience and that was my original degree, UCLA Brain Research Institute where I got my doctorate. So I'm very familiar with, with brain science. But as brain science has exploded over the, over the, I don't know, 60 years since I got my doctorate, the odd thing, and this Neil, Seth and Tiff Bain have pointed out, which I like, the odd thing is that the more you learn in science, the narrow and narrow you get on your theories. That's in particle physics, molecular biology, chemistry, whatever. But in consciousness studies, the more neuroscience has learned over these 60 years, the more theories we have and that contradicts an understanding. To me, that is a very telling thought. And therefore I don't want to close off discussion too soon. In fact, I begin the paper with something like this is the first of 175,000 words. The first paragraph says explanations of consciousness about bound. And the radical diversity of the theories is telling. That was telling us something. And that these explanations or theories work at astonishingly divergent orders of magnitude and putative realms of reality. So what that means is some consciousness theories are quantum in the sense of subatomic particles and the quantum entanglement of subatomic particles. And some theories work on parts of the brain, neural correlative consciousness, some on the whole brain, some on the, you know, circuitry of the brain. Gerald Ellen Edelund Neural recurrent circuitry or global workspace theory. And some work on just the entire brain itself. Electromagnetic theories or integrated information theory. And then some go beyond the brain in terms of extended mind in one sense and another sense, various transparency theory, where the external stimulus is involved in the process. And then we get into the spiritual aspects where some people think there's cosmic consciousness and consciousness is the entire sense of reality idealism. And so you have this enormous range of magnitude where the core of consciousness is and even the kinds of reality involved. And so that's point one of what I want to achieve. Point two is that the big questions that humanity asks historically and that we're focusing on today in some real sense because of AI consciousness. So what are those big questions? What is is there and what is meaning, purpose or value in life? Is there life after death? Could AI become conscious in a real sense as we are conscious? Is virtual immortality possible where you can upload your first person personality to a non biological medium and live beyond the decay of your body? What is free will? What is personal identity? These are the big questions of human sentience.

Why is there something rather than nothing?

Yeah, that's a different question. I like that. So let me get back to that one. But in terms of these big questions that I said, which are personal, something rather than nothing is a different question. It's not in this category. This category are the human kinds of questions. Do we live after death as AI consciousness possible? Can we upload what is free will, which is really a mystery, even though a lot of people think it's not. And personal identity, how do we maintain the same personality even though all our molecules change every few months or whatever? And so all of those kinds of questions which are addressed in a massive literature, historically and currently. All of those questions I say are dependent upon your theory of consciousness. And if you discuss any one of those without addressing a theory of consciousness that underlies it, you have underplayed and misguided your own thinking, because you may. You have to have a theory. You have a theory of consciousness, whether you know it or not. And that's the problem. Most people have a theory of conscious they are assuming when they explore these questions of free will or life after death or whatever, but they don't specify it and they don't realize there are other theories. For example, most of the people who expect AI to become conscious, in fact make. That is a fundamental, almost an assumption. I mean, it will at some point, whether in next week or in 10 years or in 50 years. I mean, it's just a question of when they are assuming a particular theory of consciousness called computational functionalism. We can analyze each of those terms later in terms of what that means. That's their underlying assumption. And if that theory of computational functionalism I have in the paper, one category is functionalism, another is computational. You put them together, if that is the theory of consciousness, then they're right. Then AI will become conscious. But I got 200 other theories in there that they don't even know about, that they're not even considering. So I'm not saying that that's wrong. I'm saying that underlying your approach to all of these fundamental questions is your theory of consciousness. So those are the two big ideas of the paper. One, to be expansive at expanding our universe of understanding of what consciousness is by exploring a whole bunch of theories. It's my arbitrary decision what's in and what's not. I've tried my best. I never say this is the be all and end all. That's why I call it a landscape of consciousness. Not the landscape. The landscape is too arrogant. I'm trying not to be arrogant. I'm trying to be, you know, and again, I'm in my early version. A lot other people had other theories that they were right, I included. And since the paper was published, I've gotten 100 or more theories, a few of which will be in the landscape website because they are worthy to be, that there's some interesting idea about them that is helpful. And so during this time, we want to be expansive. We want to be. That doesn't mean we're eliminating our critical thinking or evaluative process, But I want to get them all on the table. Then we can go through an Evaluation process. And this whole process will give us a richer understanding of consciousness. I'm under no illusion that I can come up with a real answer. But I do think that understanding the landscape and all these different theories will give us a deeper appreciation of, A, what consciousness is, and B, how to approach these big questions of human existence. Now, two other things that you both mentioned that articulate and you can tell me which one we should talk about. One is my own thinking, and there's a little story behind that. And the second is, why is there something rather than nothing? Because that is a critical question. And let me deal with that one first, John, because that is. That to me, wasn't the question, why is there something rather than nothing? And consciousness have been my two sort of spiritual burdens that I have kept since almost a child. And that those two have motivated me very strongly. And I've written not 175,000 words on why I said something rather than nothing, But I have written on that and have thought deeply about that is a major theme of close to the truth, why not nothing? We've explored that in very great depth. And that, to me, these are the two fundamental questions of existence. In my view, that question.

I'd heard it before, but when I was watching one of your shows, you reminded me of it became a big question for me too. Why is there something rather than nothing? And at first, it would just kind of freak me out. You know, I was like. And then at this point, anyway, I'm much more peace with it. Like, I'm. This is vast, unknowable mystery, and that's okay. And maybe we're getting closer to truth, but the unknowability of it is no longer freaking me out so much. It's kind of being okay. But I want you to know your. Your work. And you're asking. Putting that question out there in a major way has really deeply impacted my thinking.

Well, let me tell you a story how it affected me. So the story begins when I'm 12 years old and I'm at sleepaway camp. And I remember being so scared of something that I put it out of my mind because I was more frightened than I'd ever been in my life. And for decades, I could not remember what that was. I tried and I couldn't. And then suddenly I don't remember when. Maybe when I was 50 years old or 60 or it was later, I remembered that that was the sudden thought that, why isn't there nothing? Because nothing seems simpler than all this something. And so how did that happen. And nothing is very inclusive because nothing includes God, if there is a God, or cosmic consciousness, if there is cosmic. It subsumes everything. I wrote a short paper called Levels of Nothing where I talk about nine levels of nothing. It's a very short paper. Look it up in the web. Levels of nothing. And of the nine levels, the nothing of scientists, of quantum physicists is level five. So when physicists say something can come from nothing through quantum tunneling or quantum foam or Heisenberg uncertainty, whatever is the mechanism that quantum mechanics yields something from nothing, that's level five and nothing below that. There are four other levels of nothing which they don't even understand. And so that is very definitely a critical question. It's not the same question. It's a much deeper question than what is consciousness? But to my mind, those two questions, the questions why is there something rather than nothing? And the deep nature of phenomenal consciousness. We're talking about consciousness. There are many different kinds of consciousness. We're using consciousness as a exemplar for what's called phenomenal consciousness, which means what it's like our internal movie as we see the, you know, the smell of garlic cooking in oil, or Mahler's Second Symphony, the last movement, or seeing your newborn daughter and just born, whatever that experience is, that's what phenomenal consciousness. So those are the two big questions. I can talk about my own view because this. This is kind of a funny story that I like to tell. So when I wrote the paper and it was the first version, I sent it to some friends and people, and people said, you know, it looks great, but I looked for your view, I couldn't find it. And I said, the reason you couldn't find it, I didn't put it there. And they said, well, why not? I said, well, first of all, I said, there are two reasons. First reason I didn't put my own thinking there is that it doesn't matter what I think. What I think is the same as what everybody think. I put the value of my conclusion at the same level of anybody else's conclusion. I put no extra weight on my own thinking, even though I do have some thinking. That's the first reason. Second reason is that if I put my view in there, then everybody's going to think that the paper is skewed for that, and how I present other theories is going to be skewed by how I view my own theory. And I said, that's really not true. Because when I. And as I mentioned before, when I wrote this I inhabited each theory. I mean, each theory. When I wrote, I pretended and I fooled myself. I hypnotized myself into thinking this is my theory and I'm going to try my best to explain it. Because this is the truth and the world needs to know it. So that's the mentality I had on each theory. And I didn't want to undermine that by saying, and by the way, here's what I think. So then somebody else said, okay, we understand that most people understood it on the surface. Then somebody said, you know something? If when you say that we think you have a hidden agenda, so you're not telling us, but you're really skewing things so that people will come. So it's really a very sneaky way to approach the subject. So now I was caught on both sides. If I say what I think, it's going to skew in one way, but don't think people are going to think I have a hidden agenda. And sneakily, because everybody has to have your own theory. I mean, you know, we're not robotic in that sense, but everybody has a theory whether they put it or not. So I was then caught between the horns of this dilemma. And so what I decided to do was in the paper put a very short statement of what I think. And this is the way I describe it. The paper is 175,000 words. In explaining what I think, I use 39 words and then a footnote of 32 words. So it's a total of 71 words on what I think out of a total of 175,000 words. And I introduce what I think by saying basically what I said. Now I thought I shouldn't do it, but people think I'll have a hidden agenda if I don't. So for what little it's worth, and because everybody is pressuring me, here's what I think. And what I think is a non material kind of mashup between dualism and idealism in some sense. And then I put a footnote saying that's not right. My second category is something having to do with quantum, which surprised me because I was always very negative on quantum consciousness. But having explored it through the various different quantum expressions, even though a lot of people disagree with that, I think that's a possibility. And then counterintuitively, consciousness eliminativism with a representation. So I had again, 32 words in the text, or 39 words in the text, 32 in a footnote, 71 words out of 175,000. And that's what it's worth.

All right, Robert, you mentioned there's a unique feature about theories of consciousness and that is contrary to the way science usually progresses. And science isn't quite the right term here, but contrary to the way knowledge usually progresses, where the more information one gets, the more it refines and narrows one's range of theories. There's an explosion of theories here. What do you make of that?

I think it's a deep probe of the nature of consciousness. I think it says something about consciousness that is different than other aspects of science. And I agree with your questioning the word science because that has a particular structure, the scientific method, which deals with experimentation or observation, replication, prediction. It's a very specific process. And it may be the case that there are aspects of knowledge that are not amenable to that approach. But that doesn't mean that doesn't give you license to be irrational or illogical. And so there are things beyond this. And I say in the paper that I'm going to explore theories of consciousness that are not subject to the scientific method. And that to many people is an immediate disqualification. And I say that that for the nature of consciousness is not a disqualification. It's essential to include. I can tell you a short story about. And I give credit to the Journal of Progress in Biophysics Molecular Biology because when the first reviewer went through the article, it was very positive about all the scientific theories. He's made some excellent suggestions in particular one I had left out and then one I had rejected because I didn't think it was relevant. He thought it was. So then I included that it was very helpful. But he said that you deal with a lot of philosophical, deep philosophical ideas and theological ideas from different traditions. The readers of Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology are not going to be interested in those kinds of things. They'll be very interested in all the scientific theories. And so, you know, the recommendation you just take those out. And I said, responded with appreciation for all the help that he gave, which I don't know what's a he, he or she gave. And I really do and credit the person in the article for helping. I said, if I were in your case, I would say exactly the same thing. I'd say, you know, you should take those out. It was not appropriate for this journal. I said, and you're right that the readers of this journal, few if any, are going to be interested in these theories. The problem is, is that I have now started this process to do what to me is this landscape of consciousness. It's consumed me or at least has obsessed me, if not, not consumed me because I've done other things, but it's obsessed me for my entire life. And now I'm in the process of doing this and I'm not going to do it a second time. I'm only doing it this once and I have to do it the way I think I need to do it. And if it doesn't fit the journal, I feel terrible. But I understand. If I were you, I'd reject it for that reason, honestly I would. But I can't take that out because I'm only doing this once and it's going to be done my way. And I will find another venue or I'll self publish it or whatever I have to do, but I'm going to do it once we do it my way. And you know, to their credit, they agreed and published the entire thing in its entirety without any cuts. And so I appreciate the journal for having that flexibility in thinking. And part of it I should credit is Dennis Noble, who is a great biologist and visionary thinker who has been, shall we say, iconoclastic in some of his views in the biological sphere and has encouraged a more expansive approach to the nature of science, the nature of knowledge. So he invested in this journal that way of thinking. And I think that also led to its publishing all the material.

And so far we've been talking at a kind of meta level about the process of writing and the intentions and some of the assumptions underlying. So maybe we could get down to some of the actual theories. And I think it'd be very interesting and useful for. For our listeners to know what major groups of theories you came up with. And we may need to define some of the terms, but maybe you could just.

Sure. And that's important. And the first.

Can I make a comment and a question here? All of your work and all these different theories and philosophers and scientists and mystics that come up with all these different things, interesting enough is consciousness is a product of consciousness trying to understand its own nature. And what does that tell us about this mystery of consciousness?

That's a legitimate question. People bring it up and people use that same theory in terms of understanding the universe. How can we understand the creation of the universe or the existence of the universe? Because we are in the universe. So it presents sort of a self referential paradox in terms of understanding the universe is one kind of the other is in consciousness. I emotionally disagree with those criticisms. I think the capability of human mentality is capable of understanding these things. There are A number of very prominent people who disagree with what I just said, who said this human brain is incapable for one reason or another evolutionary. We were, you know, our brains were designed to, you know, escape tigers on the plain of Africa. So why should that have anything to do with a veridical understanding of the nature of reality? And you know, why should that have anything to do with understanding mathematics or quantum physics or anything else? So I believe that we can understand a lot and we're not limited by the self referential paradox. I could be wrong on that, but that's my feeling. And so I go into this not thinking I'm going to solve the problem and not thinking I'm going to. But I do think that I can encompass the problem sufficiently that my approach is not limited to the fact that I have a physical brain that was developed through an evolutionary process. Because of the evidence we have that we really understand how the universe works, et cetera. And we have a. We have this sense of what consciousness is. Again, I'm there are, you know, I have friends and very sophisticated people who don't believe that. And I express that view in the paper. So that's a good segue to get back to what Roger said and what is the organization of the nature of consciousness. So when I started, I began with an array of all these different theories just there on a spreadsheet or papers and began to feel. And then I said I need to structure this in some way so it's not just one theory after the other without any rationale. Because that will be a help. Because what I can do in this paper is, number one is I can collect all the theories that I think pass certain level of rationality. That doesn't mean I'm ultimate judge of things is my judgment. People can have another judgment. People, people did. They wrote to me and they criticized me for leaving something out. And in general I, you know, when the energy and the attack of me was so strong that I left it out, I put it in and studied it and spent a day or two and studied it and put it into the best of my ability. So cataloging this amalgam of theories is point one. Point two then is to organize them in or categorize them in some way to give a structure or understanding. And so I'm very clear that I'm giving one. But that's not the only one. There are many, you know, I'd be willing to listen to other types of structure. There's nothing special about my structure other than that's what Struck me as the best during this period of thinking. And so I began to categorize them in different ways. And you know, as you look at different theories, some of them can be placed in one category another and you have to make an arbitrary decision. And sometimes I'll put a note there, this could be in that category, this guy. I put it here for this reason. So as I began to look at this amalgam of theories, I noticed one thing. That of the Roughly call it 200 round number, it's more, but call it roughly 200 theories. Roughly about half of them, the way I had organized it were purely materialistic theories in the classical materialist, physicalist camp, roughly half. And so I took those and put them into materialism theories. But because there were a hundred or so in that category, I needed to in that case to subdivide it into subcategories. The paper then or the list of categories becomes asymmetric in the sense that the materialism categories has two levels. It has the main level materialism categories and then it has 10 categories below that which are different kinds of materialist theories. The way you look at materialist views. And then I have seven other categories of consciousness and I can describe them in a minute. And then that makes eight altogether. And then I have two other categories that are not theories of consciousness per se. The seven are, but the eight are. But these two are needed. The first one deals with phenomena that influence your theory of consciousness. And those phenomena are what I call anomalous or altered states. And that involves meditation, something I think Roger knows a little bit more than I do about being facetious. Knows a lot more. It involves psychedelics, it involves psi or parapsychological phenomena. None of those are theories of consciousness per se. But each of them influence and have significant impact on what a theory would be, even though they may differ among each other. So I have that as a separate category. And there are many subdivisions in that said like meditation or psychedelics, etc. The final category is what I call challenge theories. And these are people who have taken consciousness very seriously but have come to the conclusion that we can never solve the problem. Something some say similar to what John said about, you know, the self rental paradox. We're inside of it so trying to see what it looks like from the outside and that that's impossible. Others say our brain just didn't evolve for that purpose and we'll never be able to do it. And others have more, I don't know. A very honest, confused, tough minded point of view. Example that is Raymond Tallis, who's one of my intellectual heroes is in the uk. He was a neurologist, a very well known gerontology neurologist who's a magnificent writer. He writes every month in Philosophy Today. And he as a confirmed atheist is very anti material, very anti materialism. He coined the term neuromania. I've been thinking neuroscience can. So he has a very thoughtful, but he has no answer. But he knows that any of the answers he's heard doesn't work. And so I love that. And so that to me is part of this challenge category. So then to go quickly, the 10 categories I have are materialism theories which has roughly half of the theories, what's called non reductive physicalism, which has similar properties to what's called property dualism. Not the same, but that is a purely physical theory, but it's not a materialistic theory because it says there's something about the mind that's non reducible and there's something that involves the nature of strong emergence. It involves the nature of top down causality. There are various aspects of that. Some of the non reductive physicalism has emerged among Christian philosophers, very good Christian philosophers who believe in the materiality of the mind and the brain, but believe there is a God and therefore there's a resurrection, but there's no permanent nature of consciousness, but it's therefore non reductive in some sense. The third category is quantum theories. Now quantum theories, you know, can be a materialistic theory because it's part of the physical world. There's nothing mystical about quantum theories. I break it out because it's not a classical materialism theories which works at the neuro, you know, basically a lot of the neuroscience level. So quantum theories are very broad in that it goes from as I've said earlier, from activities that are going on at literally at the quantum level in the microtubules which Stu Hameroff and Roger Penrose have promoted for a long time, which in recent years has gotten more appreciation than it did when it originated, including for me, which I admitted. And it goes in all different directions. The person who invited me to, to write the journal is a, is a physiologist at ucla, very well known in his field who has a theory that has to do with symbiosis of cellular quantum theory, et cetera. So there's a, there's, his name is John Torday. So there are a lot of different kinds of quantum theories in that group. And then I have the fourth category is integrated information Theory, which I break out as a separate theory, not because I think it is because, you know, that's been in competition lately with global workspace Theory is a whole, whole activity about, you know, some people calling integrated information theory pseudoscience is a big brouha in the field. I'm not, I don't deal with that very much. But integrated information theory has characteristics that are difficult to classify under any other of the main categories. Some people say it's a, it's a panpsychism category, which I can understand why they say it. But the people who are the integrated information theory leaders, Julio Tononi, Christophe Koch, they say it's not. So I'm not going to put it in panpsychism if the people whose theory it is say it not. So I made that as a special theory. So first is materialism, non reductive physicalism, quantum theories, integrated information theory, and then the main isms come after that, panpsychism, monisms, dualisms and idealisms. And they're self explanatory. Panpsychism is, you know, that there's something in every part of reality that is either conscious or protoconscious. You have the combination problem. How do you get these little pieces of consciousness to make one big consciousness? And we have, we know that monisms is, is a broader category. You can classify many panpsychisms as monisms. There are different dual aspect monisms that are, you know, this one underlying thing, it's expressed in two ways. And then of course classic dualisms where most of your religious traditions in one way or another come from idealisms where consciousness is the ultimate reality and everything else is derived from it, either illusory as originated in the Indic and the Veda scriptures, or in reality, but nonetheless derived from it. And then as I said, the final categories are anomalous and altered states which reflect these different categories of meditation, psychedelics, esp, parapsychology, near death experiences, or out of the body experiences, all of these reflect and if any of those are, are real, then they have a legitimate call on skewing what the nature of consciousness really is. So if out of body experiences are real and veridical, which is controversial, even though, you know, when I present an open minded approach to both sides attack me, yes, that's a risk as being too skeptical or too credulous. But my point is neither. My point is that if this is the case and I'm not adjudicating it, that's not the place to adjudicate. Whether obes out of the body. Experiences are veridical or, you know, imaginary, not adjudicated. I'm saying, if it were the case, or if parapsychology were the case, what would be the implications of it? That's all I'm saying. And then the challenge theories, which in one way or another challenge the whole design. And, you know, people like, as I said, Raymond Tallis, Colin McGinn famously has talked about the unsolvability of the problem. He has additional views today versus his classical views, but very much a part of that. Paul Davies, who is a hardcore quantum physicist who believes that consciousness is, is somehow fundamental in the universe. It's not an accidental thing, although he's atheistic and is not given to, you know, spiritual excesses. When I deal with things in altered states, and we can maybe talk about meditation, but specifically psychedelics, I certainly appreciate, in fact, a lot of people who read the paper, not a lot, but a few people read the paper. There's a great paper, he says, but the fact that you have not taken psychedelics yourself, they say you should take psychedelics, that will change your view. And, you know, my answer is, I have not taken psychedelics. But if I were to take psychedelics and I'd have these great visions of something, I wouldn't trust what that would mean. So I have no trust in my own. So it's, it's really, it really wouldn't help me. I'm hopeless in that respect, hopelessly skeptical. But I've always felt that, you know, psychedelics has these things. But does that mean it is putting you in touch with ultimate reality and is veridical in terms of what it reveals? Or is it just like, you know, an exaggerated punch in the eye where you see stars? So I, I can't make that adjudication. I can describe what other people think about this. So in the paper, I do not try to dissect and analyze each theory. I. I dissect it and analyze. I don't adjudicate it. I don't say, well, this makes sense. This doesn't make sense. Here's the argument for it. On occasion, like the psychedelics, I'll say that I have been a skeptic whether this gives insight into ultimate reality. And here are some people who think it does, and I leave it at that.

And maybe to refine the question there, Robert, one could ask, well, do psychedelics or altered states of consciousness or any of the practices, contemplative practices, for example, that induce them, what kind of knowledge do they offer? There's of Course, what are the types of knowledge and how veridical are they and how can we test for them? And perhaps to refine your question, we could say, well, ultimate knowledge. That's a big question. Various kinds of psychological knowledge about the structure of the psyche, psychodynamics, etc. Probably so, and very profound.

I agree with you 100% on that. Absolutely. I don't consider myself an expert on either contemplative practices or psychedelics, but I absolutely agree with that, that there's enough data, enough evidence that shows that there is certainly therapeutic benefit to both. Undoubtedly that I think is almost scientifically irrefutable, that there's a therapeutic benefit to each of those under different conditions. There is kinds of information that is accessible that way about the nature of the psychology that is unavailable other ways, some of which can be scientifically tested, but probably some of which even cannot be scientifically tested. But I'd put a pretty large moat between all of that and ultimate reality.

Oh, yeah, Very, very wise. When we get to ultimates, we're talking big stuff.

Stay tuned for part two of this fascinating conversation with Robert Lawrence Kuhn. We continue to explore the many theories on what is consciousness. And as often happens in these convers conversations, we finish strong.

Enjoy.

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