“… Consciousness creates brain activity, and indeed creates all objects and properties of the physical world …” ~ Donald Hoffman
Exploring the nature of consciousness is of interest to those on the journey of self realization but in today’s world it is also a current subject for leading edge scientists, philosophers, and thinkers.
Donald Hoffman is one of many such scientists. He is a cognitive scientist and psychologist who was educated at UCLA and MIT. Some of his research interests include Cognitive Science, Consciousness, and Evolutionary Models of Perception. He has also developed a mathematical model of consciousness.
In the fascinating, engaging, and insightful PBS show, Closer To Truth, host Robert Lawrence Kuhn converses with Donald about:
“Is consciousness deepest reality, the ground of being of the cosmos? If the question is “What brought all into existence?” the answer is “Consciousness”. Some say this is a ‘cosmic consciousness’ of which our personal consciousness is a small part. Others, that the ultimate consciousness is God. Others, that consciousness and cosmos are both deep reality.” ~ excerpted from Closer To Truth’s page of this video (see link below).
Watch and enjoy Closer To Truth’s 8:19 minute video clip of this conversation by clicking on the image below:
Donald Hoffman’s conclusions are not that different from Peter Russell, a theoretical physicist, experimental psychologist, and computer scientist: “… all our experiences—all our perceptions, sensations, dreams, thoughts and feelings—are forms appearing in consciousness …” …. and …. “… the nature of this ultimate source {the source of everything that exists} is consciousness itself, nothing more and nothing less …”
Here’s a related post on this topic featuring Peter Russell.
“The world presented to us by our perceptions is nothing like reality.” ~ Donald Hoffman
We highly recommend exploring Closer To Truth website for such fascinating and insightful dialogs …
Donald’s short BIO, below, is excerpted from Closer To Truth. Our Teacher page for Donald Hoffman will be added shortly … and as is typical of our Teacher pages, it will provide a much more comprehensive view about Peter’s background, and work.
“Donald D. Hoffman is Professor of Cognitive Science, University of California, Irvine and author of Visual Intelligence: How We Create What We See and coauthor of Observer Mechanics: A Formal Theory Of Perception.
He received the Troland Research Prize of the US National Academy of Sciences and the Early Career Award of the American Psychological Association. He earned his BA from the University of California, Los Angeles in Quantitative Psychology, and his PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Computational Psychology.“
Images: 1) Delicate Arch by skeeze, CC0 Public Domain (edited and logo added, this is also the post’s featured image), 2) Hoffman and Kuhn: Snapshot from this video clip.
