 But you but you can say something about the question which you really would wish to know the answer to and I mean for me It would be what what's consciousness? Because because that's that's totally baffling Richard you know what I think I agree not that you asked but what I think on this is I consciousness has kind of baffled us for a while, okay, and Evidence that we haven't a clue about what consciousness is is drawn from the From the fact of how many books are published on the topic, right? We're not really continuing to publish books not really on like Newtonian physics. It's done. All right, so so the fact that people keep publishing books on consciousness is the evidence We don't know anything about it because if we knew all about it, you wouldn't have to keep publishing So so what I wonder What I wonder Richard is whether There really is no such thing as consciousness at all and that there's some other Understanding of the functioning of the human brain that renders that question obsolete To that I've got to say like oh wow I What is so funny about that of course that last voice was Bill Nye the science guy who was up there with him, too What he was astonished Bill was astonished I mean The idea that maybe consciousness is not there. It's probably the weirdest Stupidest idea ever conceived by human thought. I mean where does thought take place? It takes place in consciousness So here we have consciousness Speculating about the possibility that consciousness does not exist and it may not be there I mean the very thought is is that in your face Contradiction and the fact that something like this is not only seriously entertained but even verbalized by a person with the public exposure of the gentleman we just saw is is a Worrying sign of cultural sickness a very serious one You know the other thing that got me and I hope you just comment on because you are a Philosopher and expert in logic and you've your books you do a wonderful job of Deconstructing this silliness down to a level that is extremely comprehensive and well-thought-out, but I love Book thing I thought was just Stunning, you know, I mean What kind of logic is that they're not writing any books about physics? They're not ready And he's saying no Tonya fish. I mean I think first of all books you mean papers Don't you mean peer-reviewed published papers and aren't they doing a lot of work on gravity and you know Issues in physics that are central to preposterous at so many levels and it Just again, it's just really really funny But to his credit he did say the laws Newtonian laws so classical Newtonian physics but given that given that I mean this is I guess kind of interesting in that We build on these laws, right? So no one has said that the laws of Newtonian physics are quote-unquote wrong. They're just Incomplete they just describe a certain aspect of what we observe and the same could be said for this insistence that Consciousness is physical biological a brain-based all those things are not Wrong per se. They're just incomplete in terms of our understanding of consciousness Consciousness is as we'll talk about somehow fundamental then everything gets turned on its head But that doesn't mean that there aren't some neural correlates to consciousness and brain function So that's where I think it's it's just it just shows a deep Misunderstanding I guess would be generous or Of what they're really talking about when he talks about I think I think what motivates even the question because you see how they Formulated the question how Richard Dawkins formulated the question He said what is consciousness and what what they're trying to get at is a reduction What you're trying to answer the form of the answer. They are looking for is Consciousness is just this this and that operating in this that way Under this and that condition in other words They're trying to explain consciousness in terms of something else in terms of something that isn't consciousness That would be the answer to the question. What is consciousness? And and that is indeed a baffling question because you see who is trying to answer It is consciousness that is trying to answer. So you get a self-reference there that Makes the question indeed very baffling if you're framing it that way if you're trying to reduce consciousness And that's where it goes wrong. Nobody well very few people have stopped to think that Maybe we shouldn't formulate the question that way. Maybe what we have to ask is How can we explain everything else in terms of consciousness? Which is the given of reality? It's the basis of knowledge. It's that within which we know and inquire