"The Spontaneous Brain" with Georg Northoff (BS 174)
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BS 174 is an interview with neuroscientist and philosopher Georg Northoff about his fascinating book The Spontaneous Brain: From the Mind–Body to the World–Brain Problem. We explore the significance of the growing evidence that most of the brain's activity occurs independently of external stimuli with a focus on the implications of this finding for our understanding of how the brain generates consciousness.
We recently explored the importance of the brain’s spontaneous activity with György Buzsáki (BS 172), but Northoff suggests a surprising implication. He proposes that if mental features such as consciousness and our sense of self are generated by the brain’s alignment with the world then perhaps we should abandon discussion of the so-called Mind-Body (or Mind-Brain) problem and instead consider the relationship between the world and the brain. This is what he calls the World-Brain problem.
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Links and References:
The Spontaneous Brain: From the Mind–Body to the World–Brain Problem by Georg Northoff
The Brain from Inside Out by György Buzsáki (BS 172)
Surfing Uncertainty: Prediction, Action, and the Embodied Mind by Andy Clark (BS 126)
Northoff G, et al. Is temporal-spatial dynamics the “common currency” of brain and mind? In Quest of “Spatiotemporal Neuroscience”. Why Life Rev (2019), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.plrev.2019.05.002
Georg Northoff website: http://www.georgnorthoff.com (for videos, talks and additional papers
Episode Transcript contains additional references
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