His Journey to the Source of Consciousness: Mark Solms on His New Book, The Hidden Spring

Mark's book "The Hidden Spring" is available now: https://geni.us/CWaA​ Additional links below the notes. A traumatic experience early in life led Dr Mark Solms on a quest to understand the source of consciousness. The difficult experiences of his childhood led to depression born of nihilism but out of that, he found a way to teach himself how to approach life with enthusiasm and discipline when he decided that the only thing that was worth doing was to try and understand what Being is. When his career in neuroscience didn't provide all the answers he was looking for, he then trained in psychoanalysis, so he looks at this issue both from a scientific view but also from that of a clinician with real world experience of people's stories. Consciousness arises out of feelings located in the brain stem, in the ancient, lowly brainstem. Reticular Activating System arouses cortical function as a way of maintaining homeostasis. The biological mechanisms of life resist the2nd law of thermodynamics and minimize entropy. The function of feelings is to deal with uncertainty. Cognition can go on in a completely unconscious way, but when a need arises (thirst, hunger, suffocation, etc) we must make choices. Feelings make a demand upon the mind for work and conscious cognition is the work that is demanded. "What must I do to satisfy my needs?" We have a predictive model. Memories are about the past but for the future. Increasing entropy increases the number of questions, increases the uncertainty when your decisions don't succeed. The need to play. Piaget, Panksepp. Seeking, a foraging drive - engage with uncertainty, risk taking, play. Solms does not have a totally reductionistic, mechanistic view of the world. The lived life of the mind, subjectivity, the importance of story. Freud: "My case studies read like short stories." Narrative medicine Oliver Sacks endangered his career by exploring these things. In response to a question about Barfield's theories of the evolution of consciousness, Solms brought up: David Lewis Williams, archaeologist, two books: The Mind in theCave Deciphering Ancient Minds. The ratio between the known and the unknown is like a single grain of sand on one beach among all the beaches on earth. Talk at The Royal Institution:    • The Source of Consciousness - with Mark Solms   Solms' Q & A:    • Q&A: The Source of Consciousness - with Ma...   A class on psychoanalysis taught by Mark Solms: https://mark-solms-in-lock-down.teach... DNA animated:    • Animations of unseeable biology | Drew Ber...   Energy Conversion Processes in a Light Harvesting Organelle:    • Energy Conversion Processes in a Light Har...   Karen's websites www.karenwongart.com www.themeaningcode.com