Consciousness and Spirituality | Michael Graziano

Michael, you make what some would say is an outrageous claim, that your very physical neurobiological theory of consciousness can explain spirituality. Defend it. Well, I would say that one of the things we do as people, we're very social obviously, very social animals, one of the things we do is attribute mind states to each other. And in particular, we attribute awareness to each other. We're built to do this. We're very good at this. This is what makes us successful as a species. And one of the side effects of being so good at that is we tend to attribute awareness not just to ourselves, not just to other people, but to everything. I mean, we attribute awareness to pets, of course. People attribute awareness to their plants. Some people talk to their plants. Who hasn't gotten mad at their coffee machine when it doesn't work right? Children attribute awareness to their toys. And I think we attribute awareness sometimes to empty spaces. I think everyone's had the experience. You're in an empty house, it's at night, and you get this spooky sense of a person in the next room over. This is your brain, the social machinery in your brain, constructing essentially a model of another person and another person's mind and attributing it to that space over there. We do this at the drop of a hat. And this, I think, is the basis for human spirituality. It's basically a very exuberant social attribution, attributing mind states to trees and rivers, such as in animistic societies, or to the universe as a whole, or to the intention and awareness that maybe lies behind all the otherwise inexplicable events in the universe. All of this is exuberant attribution of awareness. I think the claim that human beings attribute awareness is a legitimate one. Whether that therefore can encompass all the mysteries of the universe is another whole question. But I think we should explore the power of human beings to impute awareness. One of the examples that I really like, that I bring up in my talks often, is ventriloquism. And I like this example because it shows how you can intellectually know there's nothing there, but you can't help the illusion. And so I often bring a friend to help me here. Uh-oh. Okay. Wow. Please welcome Kevin. Hi, Kevin. Hi. Hi, Kevin. How are you? Kind of cute. Oh, thanks. How are you? Nobody's said that to me recently. I learned ventriloquism because my son insisted that his stuffed animals talk to him. And he's a very harsh taskmaster, because I have to practice every day, many hours. Isn't that right? Oh, yeah. I like it. And what's interesting here is, you know there's no brain or mind in there, but- Are you insulting? I don't have a brain, but I'm conscious. I think that means his theory's wrong. Sorry, sometimes he just sort of gets out of line like that, but the point is you really get this vivid sense of this awareness kind of emanating out of him. You can't help it. And so there's this real distinction between what you know to be true and this, what you might call, real raw social perception. And I think that's very powerful. It's a very powerful illusion in this case. Well, spirituality is expressed obviously in many different ways. It's expressed in kind of, on one extreme, kind of a harmony with the universe or rhythms of the universe and resonate with those within you. And in Western religions, it's reflected in the belief in omnipresent, all-knowing God that's all-powerful and can do all sorts of good things. So how do you apply that then to the different exemplifications of spirituality? I like bananas. Maybe you put him away for now. Oh, man. So- Bye, Kevin. Sorry, Kevin. You know- I'm feeling bad. You put him in a suitcase now. I mean, you've done it to me. He doesn't like the suitcase. So yes, there's this huge range of phenomenon that you could call spiritual. Now, you could think in the most narrow definition, spirituality is the belief that there are spirits, that there are other minds that are not linked to a physical body. And it's in that sense where this kind of theory that we have works so well. There may be other spiritual experiences that- I wrote a piece at some point about music and spirituality and whether one of the reasons why music is a kind of spiritual experience is because it begins to evoke some of the social machinery. That is, we react to the music because we see intentionality and organization in it. And so we start thinking about what kind of mind would have put that together. And we develop a kind of a relationship with that mind that we perceive in the music. So there may be quite a huge range of spiritual experience that comes out of us as social beings. So we're saying it's not just the obvious of imputing a mind to Kevin. Yes. And generalizing that, but there may be second order approaches where that same powerful inner requirement of evolution that is built in us will then express itself in broader ways that might not even be recognized at subsequent stages. Yes, exactly. Yes, yeah. And so does that undermine all spirituality in your mind? Well, I don't know about undermine. I think that, you know- You can tell me the truth. I often get it from both sides on this question. Because I find religion and spirituality completely fascinating. I am not a religious person. I'm an atheist. But I find it completely fascinating. I think it's completely irrational and fascinating. And one of the reasons why I don't mind it and I think it's perfectly great, you know, is because there's so many other aspects of my life that are also quite irrational that I enjoy. Like music, that is, you know, an irrational endeavor and there's no real utility in putting food on your plate or whatever. But, you know, that's what we are as humans. We're these wonderful social beings with all kinds of interesting social connections to each other that defy precise logic. So I see nothing wrong with these religious beliefs. I'm not one of these atheists who think that religion should go away. In fact, I think that studying it and understanding it at some scientific level is a type of homage to it. And so this theory that we're working on, that awareness itself is something- It's an attribution. We attribute it to ourselves. We attribute it to other people. And we attribute it to gods and angels and ghosts and so on. This kind of theory is not a disrespect to religion. It's a way to try to understand it.