{"id":223919,"date":"2025-10-24T05:38:54","date_gmt":"2025-10-24T10:38:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/10\/karl-j-friston"},"modified":"2025-10-24T05:38:54","modified_gmt":"2025-10-24T10:38:54","slug":"karl-j-friston","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/10\/karl-j-friston","title":{"rendered":"Karl J. Friston"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<p><iframe style=\"display: block; margin: 0 auto; width: 100%; aspect-ratio: 4\/3; object-fit: contain;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Jtp426wQ-JI?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope;\n   picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Professors Karl Friston &amp; Mark Solms, pioneers in the fields of neuroscience, psychology, and theoretical biology, delve into the frontiers of consciousness: \u201cCan We Engineer Artificial Consciousness?\u201d. From mimicry to qualia, this historic conversation tackles whether artificial consciousness is achievable \u2014 and how. Essential viewing\/listening for anyone interested in the mind, AI ethics, and the future of sentience. Subscribe to the channel for more profound discussions!<\/p>\n<p>Professor Karl Friston is one of the most highly cited living neuroscientists in history. He is Professor of Neuroscience at University College London and holds Honorary Doctorates from the University of Zurich, University of York and Radboud University. He is the world expert on brain imaging, neuroscience, and theoretical neurobiology, and pioneers the Free-Energy Principle for action and perception, with well-over 300,000 citations. Friston was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences (1999). In 2000 he was President of the international Organization of Human Brain Mapping. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2006. He became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology in 2012 and was elected as a member of EMBO (excellence in the life sciences) in 2014 and the Academia Europaea in (2015).<\/p>\n<p>Professor Mark Solms is director of Neuropsychology in the Neuroscience Institute of the University of Cape Town and Groote Schuur Hospital (Departments of Psychology and Neurology), an Honorary Lecturer in Neurosurgery at the Royal London Hospital School of Medicine, an Honorary Fellow of the American College of Psychiatrists, and the President of the South African Psychoanalytical Association. He is also Research Chair of the International Psychoanalytical Association (since 2013). He founded the International Neuropsychoanalysis Society in 2000 and he was a Founding Editor (with Ed Nersessian) of the journal Neuropsychoanalysis. He is Director of the Arnold Pfeffer Center for Neuropsychoanalysis at the New York Psychoanalytic Institute. He is also Director of the Neuropsychoanalysis Foundation in New York, a Trustee of the Neuropsychoanalysis Fund in London, and Director of the Neuropsychoanalysis Trust in Cape Town.<\/p>\n<p>TIMESTAMPS:<br \/> 0:00 \u2014 Introduction.<br \/> 0:45 \u2014 Defining Consciousness &amp; Intelligence.<br \/> 8:20 \u2014 Minimizing Free Energy + Maximizing Affective States.<br \/> 9:07 \u2014 Knowing if Something is Conscious.<br \/> 13:40 \u2014 Mimicry &amp; Zombies.<br \/> 17:13 \u2014 Homology in Consciousness Inference.<br \/> 21:27 \u2014 Functional Criteria for Consciousness.<br \/> 25:10 \u2014 Structure vs Function Debate.<br \/> 29:35 \u2014 Mortal Computation &amp; Substrate.<br \/> 35:33 \u2014 Biological Naturalism vs Functionalism.<br \/> 42:42 \u2014 Functional Architectures &amp; Independence.<br \/> 48:34 \u2014 Is Artificial Consciousness Possible?<br \/> 55:12 \u2014 Reportability as Empirical Criterion.<br \/> 57:28 \u2014 Feeling as Empirical Consciousness.<br \/> 59:40 \u2014 Mechanistic Basis of Feeling.<br \/> 1:06:24 \u2014 Constraints that Shape Us.<br \/> 1:12:24 \u2014 Actively Building Artificial Consciousness (Mark\u2019s current project)<br \/> 1:24:51 \u2014 Hedonic Place Preference Test &amp; Ethics.<br \/> 1:30:51 \u2014 Conclusion.<\/p>\n<p>EPISODE LINKS:<br \/> - Karl\u2019s Round 1: <a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/Kb5X8xOWgpc\">https:\/\/youtu.be\/Kb5X8xOWgpc<\/a>.<br \/> - Karl\u2019s Round 2: <a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/mqzyKs2Qvug\">https:\/\/youtu.be\/mqzyKs2Qvug<\/a>.<br \/> - Karl\u2019s Lecture 1: <a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/Gp9Sqvx4H7w\">https:\/\/youtu.be\/Gp9Sqvx4H7w<\/a>.<br \/> - Karl\u2019s Lecture 2: <a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/Sfjw41TBnRM\">https:\/\/youtu.be\/Sfjw41TBnRM<\/a><br \/> - Karl\u2019s Lecture 3: <a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/dM3YINvDZsY\">https:\/\/youtu.be\/dM3YINvDZsY<\/a><br \/> - Mark\u2019s Round 1: <a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/qqM76ZHIR-o\">https:\/\/youtu.be\/qqM76ZHIR-o<\/a>.<br \/> - Mark\u2019s Round 2: <a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/rkbeaxjAZm4\">https:\/\/youtu.be\/rkbeaxjAZm4<\/a><\/p>\n<p>CONNECT:<\/p>\n<div class=\"more-link-wrapper\"> <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/10\/karl-j-friston\">Continue reading \u201cKarl J. Friston\u201d | &gt;<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Professors Karl Friston &amp; Mark Solms, pioneers in the fields of neuroscience, psychology, and theoretical biology, delve into the frontiers of consciousness: \u201cCan We Engineer Artificial Consciousness?\u201d. From mimicry to qualia, this historic conversation tackles whether artificial consciousness is achievable \u2014 and how. Essential viewing\/listening for anyone interested in the mind, AI ethics, and the [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":511,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,30,47,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-223919","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-ethics","category-neuroscience","category-robotics-ai"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223919","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/511"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=223919"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223919\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=223919"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=223919"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=223919"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}