168 | Anil Seth on Emergence, Information, and Consciousness

<p>Those of us who think that that <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/2101.07884" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">the laws of physics underlying everyday life</a> are completely known tend to also think that consciousness is an emergent phenomenon that must be <a href="http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/19311/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">compatible</a> with those laws. To hold such a position in a principled way, it's important to have a clear understanding of "emergence" and when it happens. Anil Seth is a leading researcher in the neuroscience of consciousness, who has also done foundational work (often in collaboration with <a href="http://users.sussex.ac.uk/~lionelb/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Lionel Barnett</a>) on what emergence means. We talk about information theory, entropy, and what they have to do with how things emerge.</p> <p><em>Support Mindscape on </em><a href="https://www.patreon.com/seanmcarroll" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><em>Patreon</em></a><em>.</em></p> <p>Anil Seth received his D.Phil in Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence from the University of Sussex. He is currently a professor of cognitive and computational neuroscience at Sussex, as well as co-director of the Sackler Centre for Consciousness Science. He has served as the president of the Psychology Section of the British Science Association, and is Editor-in-Chief of the journal <a href="https://academic.oup.com/nc/pages/Editorial_Board" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><em>Neurosci</em>ence of Consciousness</a>. His new book is <a href="https://www.anilseth.com/books" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><em>Being You: A New Science of Consciousness.</em></a></p> <ul> <li><a href="https://www.anilseth.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Web site</a></li> <li><a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=3eJCZCkAAAAJ&amp;hl=en&amp;oi=ao" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Google Scholar publications</a></li> <li><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anil_Seth" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Wikipedia</a></li> <li><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Anil-Seth/e/B00KPRB5PM" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Amazon author page</a></li> <li><a href="https://twitter.com/anilkseth" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Twitter</a></li> <li><a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/2106.06511" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Barnett and Seth, "Dynamical independence: discovering emergent macroscopic processes in complex dynamical systems" (2021)</a></li> </ul> <p><br /></p>