Looking to make your search bar cast SAM Harris just enough to say that if your hearing this you are not currently honour subscriber feed, we here in the first part of this conversation in order to access full episodes of making sense, podcast you'll need to subscribe. Sam Aristotle work there, you'll find or private rss feed to add to your favorite pot catcher, along with other subscriber, only content. We don't run ads on the past and therefore made possible entirely through the support of our subscribers. So if you enjoy what we're doing here, please consider becoming one. today I am speaking with Stephen Fleming Stevens. A professor of cognitive Neuroscience at University College, London The author of the recent book know thyself the science

self awareness, Self Awareness is the topic of today's conversation. We talk about The relevant neuroscience thoroughly he's right between self knowledge and intelligence the evolution of medical mission. air monitoring. Theory of mind, mirror neurons deception, self deception, false confidence from ballistic reasoning where medic. Commission- fails cotton, decline. Those places where self knowledge might be counterproductive and other topics- and I have found it quite interesting- and I hope you do as well- and I bet New Stephen Fleming. I am here, was Stephen Fleming stay. Thank for joining me thanks very much. Some is an honour to be here.

So, are you written a very interesting book on perhaps the most interesting topic? The topic is self knowledge self aware Ass though the book is no thyself, the science of self awareness I am really eager to talk about them. The whole sweep of this, but damn before we jump in have you can summarize your your background, academically an intellectually sure So I'm curly a professor of Cognitive, Neuroscience University College, London I guess I mean I've, he's been interested in the science is. Am I left? high school without really know what I wanted to do once has been musicians, didn't apply scene of still, I or my friends were doing, and instead I took here a year off by then and works in an office job and it was while I was commuting. I started reading popular science books on cognitive Science is partly why

those interested in right. You want myself when I got the opportunity and action just found absolutely fascinating, had like no idea that there was a sign. of the mind out there. We didn't get exposed to that at school, a high school, so either became fix. It Don doing experimental psychology. I went to Oxford and lucky that to have as a tutor, Geico Paul as a party who works on blind site. This bizarre logical condition of consciousness and Paul. He convinced me that, There is a real rigorous sites out there of consciousness and there is possible to do you no good neuroscience on this and, I then went on to University College London to do a Phd in neuroscience with, and that was Cosi rise with the psychologists Chris Breath and then you're, a scientist, re rate airline and

both great people. I haven't met either butter of obviously read their papers yeah. No, it was. It was a fascinating time and in raised love, he was focused on studying decision making using reinforcement, models and it might tasty. I'm mostly focused on using brain imaging to study decisionmaking But on the side I was continuing to kind of have this often love affair with consciousness, which is kind of continued with me now and I I guess, towards the end of my pasty, I realized we could start applying some of the tools of decision making, research to also study how we make second order decisions, so how we think about and reflect on how were performing on various tasks and that's what psychologists refer to as Messer Cognition thinking about thinking and but the time though there was a united, tradition in psychology of studying this. This topic, but very few p who were held in Euro neuroscience. It s a commission- and I

the opportunity in a sense to get in on the ground floor of that and we ran a couple of the brain, imaging studies, looking at the relationship between prefrontal function and met, the I then went off to New York to do a postal and why you to build competent, learn how to computational models of mass immigration and then in two thousand fifteen me bacteria to London, unusual, where I now led my and research groups studying Mass Commission unconsciousness nice eyes well wish dead dispense with a one possible source of confusion at the outset, because an usher a half million. You are was with my work, especially on the topic of mine from ass, meditation, the nature of the self and I'm someone is given to say fairly regular intervals, that the self in allusion. Our best to construct at bottom is not what it seems, but

that's a very specific use of the word self and when we talk self awareness. think we're talking about something that is far more capacious than me. They sense of subject object, perception, which is really the linchpin of what. Of the self that I would argue that mindfulness ultimately reveals to be illusory asset. we're talking about the whole person much more often than were talking about the sense that there's a subject in the head independent of experience So, when we talk about self awareness. As you know, this is not the invited asian of anything. I have said about the status of of the selfish subject and, in other Context, and I am happy to talk about the self what he was well, but I just wanted to try to clarify that four people, because at this gonna be something here and there in the heads of many listeners

self is an illusion. What we possibly mean by self awareness. Well, self awareness extends to everything else. We can reflect on Beware of in a kind of second order way that relates to works, areas in our performance errors. The thing we just experienced I'm gonna go meaning lapses in memory, or it was just diamond her topic. How do you describe medical ignition? At this point? yeah. No, I think that's a really useful backgrounds in place a cause. I am talking about something distinct here too there this ethical notion of self wishes a complex objects, and here I am talking about something more practical, something more functional, which is this capacity to be aware of traits, skills are personalities up, behaviors and in some sense, see ourselves like other he and

We can study this in various ways. We can look at in very simple task: how people lies they made errors or how they able to estimate that confidence in their skills and abilities and so on, and is something that we often I think just take for granted. But the reason I find it so far That is because we think about it for a moment, is a kind of bizarre and wonderful feature. The human mind, though we can sum in some sites, think about. how our own minds are working, and this has very practical consequences. So you the reason we write a shopping list with me, cuz your face, because in some sense we realize the memory is not going to be good enough to hold all those items in mind and Sibley when we start to realize. Ah sites is failing, for instance, is not because we think the outside world has become blurry, because we realise that the something in our perceptual systems that needs fixing with new glasses and so on. So is this kind of practical reflective thought, that's not always obvious from the outside, but something that we

can study with the tools of psychological science year, and one thing he has increased the clear is that damn other people- I now even algorithms, KEN No what we're like better than we can certainly on specific topic. As I remember a friend once told me, I'm a story from a board meeting where he was. He was engaged in a very stressful conversation with the group. and some one in the meeting commented on how emotional he was getting an end to seem like they might want to take a break and he denied being overly emotional and somewhat at around the table, suggested that he bring his attention to the sensations at his upper lip and the moment he did that he burst into tears, while of

Apparently his lip had been quivering ass though he were about it. He was about to burst into tears and it was noticeable Tipp to that in the room and the idea will you can imagine just how much can be known about any one of us now, based on our Google search history, say or anything we do with our attention online and when it, when you, look at the data, of knowledge. That is the profile of Jabez those accruing in somewhere in the cloud and what might be gleaned from now. when you compare it to everything else in every other profile of every other person, in unjustly statistical knowledge there and the capacity to predict the next thing we ll find captivating yea they eat That is exactly what you said to take the view of oneself that another person could have opens the door to

times, mortifying at minimum interesting facts that are not necessarily visible, worried or salient when ones simply living one's life and, having once experience yeah city. A is interesting example you mention of the person, the boy because I feel, like I have through studying message, commissioner, become more. A two day, my own life, to how I might have this phasing out of self awareness at moments and is something that my wife said to me on occasion when things are stressful, with grant applications or whatever that I just become in our horrible persons alive with honour, for a few days time and I used to deny this complete as I I don't feel out of his changed. My behaviour- and I now I'll, come to realise that how could I have possibly known at that time? I mean there's a whole interesting story, thereabout stress and how it is detrimental format, the commission itself. So you can have this kind of

paradoxical situation where the times when you might need to be aware of how your behavior is becoming causing almost four others, those at times when Matter Commission and self awareness may actually be most impaired by have definitely, I think, become a bit more willing to accept and my own life that those fade out so self awareness can happen, and they do happen probably more often than I'd like to have met, and I then have this stronger tendency to trust what say my wife is saying about my behaviour and to try and correct it. I could yeah yeah. I thought what left some build up. This picture of medical ignition amended at the simple Esther or most common deafened listen, I one encounters. Is the fray Is knowing that you know right there the knowing of things has the cognition peace

and then there's the self awareness that you have the knowledge in this extends to knowledge, and all of its form to the semantic knowledge? If you ask me, could you name more than four states in the United States, I could say yes to that item. I could be sure about my knowledge there without actually going to the exercise of listing any states. So I have this more abstract understanding that near my knowledge, bank contains at least for state names and it was so much of what we know. Of course we can be wrong about that. We can actually think we could produce it specific concepts or memories and when asked actually fail, but generally begin. There is some there's a represent asian of what eyes, our storehouse of knowledge that doesnt work

choir us to actually go into the store house in order to cash it out in that moment, and so it is with even procedural. learning or in a motor memory, so they get it. Do you know how to write a bike? Could you raise your hands over your head. We be surprised to have our confidence about that Diskin firmed if we tried, but it Some. How would you build up the layers of what were calling met? cognition here. What what is it beyond this representation to oneself? That one knows certainty Yeah? I think so. I very nice, I'm thinking about this. This notion that are our representations that go beyond knowledge. one analogy thy. Times use, is not perfect one, because there's no housing actually work, but you can think of Mexico. Ignition is in some sense being like the index of a book and

index usually points you to the right page. In the book, the index makers got things wrong and the books cell, Knowledge is in some sense failed. Then sometimes there I will be an index entry that does not correspond to the actual text in the book and I think we can start to build a picture of how much the commission works by thinking of the brain as effectively a hierarchical system and the Ets does not only in code, information in memory? It does not only perceive and represent things out a first Oda level, but it also house What we think of his highroad representations- and we think passive association cortex like prefrontal and practical aspects, are important for this.

They bills representations ass, a more abstract level of how the system is working and I think that's that's. Probably the best wave conceptualizing met the commission after cognitive sister level that we have at the moment, and we can obviously take this in many different directions in terms of specific topics within the broader umbrella term, a bicycle mission, and how does it interact if it in ranks at all with the variable of intelligence. So this, I think be there, isn't it initial intuition. We have that intelligence is in some sense, allied with heavy good awareness of what we know and don't know, but as every turns on our definition of intelligence and empirically what we found perhaps have surprisingly in many of our studies- is that when we measure message, commissioner,

maybe it's useful to say a few words about how how we actually do that. So, typically, way we can quantify your message, commission and put a number on it in a particular task is by asking you to assess your before on a number of child so of the tasks we might give your memory task and after every detail in about whether this object was on the list that Europe to remember or not, we'd asked you how comfort you are about that choice, or we might give you a task involving perceptual judgments and then ask you how comfort you are about each choice and the keeping were interesting. There is not only performance on the memory and the perception tasks, but also how your confidence tracks your performance, so intuitively. If I have high confidence when I'm right a lower confidence when I'm wrong, that's what we call having good method, cognitive, sensitive

see or medical incivility, I'm what we found in those studies. Now we ve done cities of thousands of people is that performance on classical iq test is not a great predictor of Mexico. This committee, cohesive and this lines out with some other work in using other message domestic ignition, like whether we tend to be fooled by initially intuitive answers without reflecting on them. So these are things like the cognitive reflection tests that taps into most system to than system. One thinking and again there in their list shown that kind of test it does seem to be independent of classical like he measures- and I think one way of thinking about this on a very broad brush basis- is that the kind of neural and coaxing resources that we brings the table to solve reasoning, problems which is effectively

on IQ test is tapping into is that those are distinct, two or somewhat distinct to the kinds of neural and cognitive resources involved in reflecting on our performance in those tasks, including potentially even in, and I came to see you in theory, and we have done a little but of course you can measure was matter cognition about that performance on a test of intelligent, so in a sense both on a theoretical basis, but also also on an empirical basis. We think that the commission and I Q come upon an inch, delays here, you can. You can see that medical and performance have to break apart, because you would have perfect medical ignition if he were confident that you had utterly failed to perform. He hadn't. If, in fact, you had utterly failed to perform. You can just go through life, failing began again and and as long as you are aware, that is just one failure, after another will than your. Your men

cognition scores. Perfect, thus does right these accurate so- and I say I gotta make me throw a line in the book that mess Congress is often most useful when we're doing stupid things, because that's when you know need to be aware of making areas. So no that's absolutely right, but what picture do we have based on numb evolution? psychology of matter cognition. How do you think that have evolved in, and we know what are the benefits of being able to represent to oneself the likelihood that one whose made an error or minute I was the only one slice of medical ignition, but this second order referred. action. What how does this fit and in the context of evolutionary psychology, so was dying point for getting it question is to look at how and why either we shall Mexico cognitive capacities with other species, There has been an the line of work for many years in comparison,

how would you looking up task of confidence and uncertainty and era monitoring in animals and the general picture there? in many species you can have pretty sophisticated tracking of confidence tracking of areas, and so on so there's been some lovely workin dolphins, monkeys in rats showing that they pass confidence Tass symbols, the ones that we use with humans, but that, I think, is a m is a type of mythical mission Commission that occupies a different space. Two explicit self awareness in humans and the reason that we think that the cases because when we look at child development humans, that kind of implicit messy commission the ability to track confidence and monitor errors, that seems to be in place relatively early in life. So there's been some beautiful in

heroic studies done by security lab in Paris showing the baby's as young as twelve months. I think even younger than that in some of the studies, show signatures of error monitoring both in e g activity and also in their persistence for searching for sick lobbed. So when you use their persistence of searching for a toy, for instance, as a marker of confidence, then you get all the same. Metrics have met cognitive sense see that you can get out of the honour the the adult data. Now that seems to be that kind of lower level ability to self monitor seems to be in place quite early in life in humans, but when you actually when kids become verbal anew, then asked them about their confidence and about whether they know something. I don't know something there again, as I'm discovery at the moment with my two and a half year, old domestic opposition is terrible, think they know things they don't know they fail to

and I realize they need to ask you about something and so on. So is nonsense, EL, the age of around three or four, that children start to gain this explicit self awareness of what they know. I don't know- and we think that in studies in our humans that of more explicit level of self awareness is related more to theory of mine, the ability to think about other people who, as well as to think about ourselves, I'm not sure, answered your question, but hopefully a gotta started along the line. what does some new Lee differentiated from other animals. Even other primates, when you imagine that the that our awareness, egg, a comprehensive awareness of our own mind, is of a piece with with what we call theory of mind is goes, goes by other names like mind, reading and mine site, and but the estate ability to

represent the mental state of others such that you can recognize that other people can have rather often different beliefs and desires and expectations than you do and they end can be at odds with what is in fact, true of the world, as I opposite famous test of this is to say, oh play house with some dolls and and ass kids around the age of four what went one doll leaves the room and then another doll hides a cherished object somewhere in the play house and then you ass a kid. You know you wear it when this, when this other figure comes back. Where is here, she gonna look further the object it's only once they can develop the concept of another person, holding a false belief that they can give the correct answer, which is he's gonna. Believe it was where he, where will they were at last, was before he left the room, so

minimum remind me. I think we, while some possible basis for very rudimentary theory of mind in other primates? Am, I think, there's some something like this: section: it's not that it is still somewhat controversial to call it deception right, and I think we still don't. You think that other primates have a proper theory of mind is at yeah, that's what I mean is an evolving field and in fact, only in the past three years have they been cities suggesting that chimpanzees can represent false beliefs, at least to the extent of being able to shift their gaze towards where the object is actually gonna. Be sorry, whether to wear the objects will they think the objects will appear from the perspective of the other person button. So far, at least- and I was reading a review on this recently from lorries on tossing colleagues and so far at least the picture is

even though, if you use clever experimental techniques, you could get some hint that they can track false beliefs, at least but in behaviour. In though in in terms of being able to act upon those and use those to guide behaviour, it seems like there is a gulf there from The best experiments unkempt to humans, this quite a gulf, and this is not human autos. This is, as you say, kids age around four and was really interesting. There is that if you go back good that that field of research, that field on animal tat, mind was kicked off by this famous paper back in the seventies wish just have the title of does. Jumping chimpanzee have a theory of mind and going so that paper ye it. What what the authors of that pay, comment by theory of mind, was the ability to think about other people's mental state spur. Also, the ability to think about your own mental state. That term theory mine is kind of got used most often in the lifts. Jesse, you be about other people,

It was interesting now, I think, with this rise of work on the commission's that were starting to think. Ok, maybe this is just a more general computational capacity that some it is not only think about other people, but also think give ourselves here. This is, really interesting in this is this is a place where it does at least make a point of contact with the self that I often the greatest illusory, and it is this sense that our sense of our are our representation Ourselves in social space in the world is up he's with are concrete presentation of others, as others right that this really indelible sense of self and other emerges together. There are kind of it. Every single cognitive brush, strokes, and when you asked many people contest in experiences, meditation, unreasonable psychedelic when that boundary between. self and other erodes

You know it erodes again it's kind of a single boundary warrior if you're not really your fine self you're, not quite, Real fine other in quite the same way. in the normal course of events where we we feel like ourselves and surrounded by other minds day does seem intuitive to me that we're doing something quite similar when we're representing other minds and red ribbon and reflecting on our own ministers were worth thinking about same kinds of things and is in the end. Of our gaze. That is different, but it's it is in. This too many other results in neuroscience when you think of and the mirror neuron research- and you say you have: how is it that we interpret the behaviors of others? When you see someone reaching for an object to you, you have you, you understand their intention in a way that man saunter, you know what it's like to be you doing more or less the same thing reaching for objective of that kind.

is a kind of mirroring component here in the way we we understand it People's behaviour is ended. It is the research thus far. I think it appropriate to be somewhat sceptical of just how much has been made of the mirror neuron research, but it certainly seems that there is a kind of self mapping. That is the basis for understanding the behaviour of others yeah. I think this is there seems to be a lot of circumstantial evidence surrounding that linkages really hard to pen it down and what I find fastened in somewhat frustrating is in a calm. We catch thou in a more computational terms like what is that system really actually doing assuming it is a system that is, as you say, building a model of some one else and also the model of ourselves, but it does seem like that similar brain network are involved, and we recently did a matter analysis of all the studies of brain

studies of both the commission and compared that to classical theory of mind networks and that there was interesting overlap in regions of the media or prefrontal cortex, and we know, for instance, in Neuro degenerative diseases like dementia decline in self awareness is often accompanied by a decline in social cognition is, while undeveloped mentally, they seem to go hand in hand and children. So there's a lot a kind of, and it does seem to be a symmetry there and I'm attracted to the cemetery. I just think is hard, to find a good way, and we are thinking of trying to do this, but is hard to find a good way of direct comparing the kind of computations that my underpin self and other evaluation. Yes, it is we have just discussed. The theory of mind is the necessary precursor for dissent,

because it's not until you understand that other people have beliefs and and representations that you can then manipulate those beliefs and rubber, patients strategically with an awareness of that? This is a light, wait a producer and desired effect in their behaviour. But then there's this sub question of self deception, which some again as a somewhat controversial topic scientifically. It's there. There paradoxes that await us when we Try to think of self deception has been truly analogous to the deception of others, because then your left, with this quasi freudian picture of part of you consciously deceiving some other part of you, so that the part of you that is used in a deception business must know the truth in order to strategically hide it or or or distorted, for the rest of you. How do you think of self deception or the the phenomenology of

being flagrantly wrong about ones in early I for outer behaviour in ways that done invite this this analogy to deception? we do often summarize it is self deception or in a will. full ignorance him in the wilful part of it is perverse and inscrutable from a cod. The point of view- I am what words that fit into the discussion of medical ignition yeah ice, is interesting in terms of how that might connect to this notion of belief, decoupling from accuracy about confidence,

decoupling from performance, because I think that is something we do see routinely in many studies. People's message, commission is a very good. They are sometimes confident that they ve got there. I answer even though, is clearly wrong and we know that there are all these biases in belief and confidence that people like Daniel complemented famously documented. I think that's one place. It connects to the discussion. We were just having on theory of mind. Is there we model all we create narratives to explore the behaviour of others, thus passive Thee, the the depth of mental stay inference that we can do that, we can say well, they must have ignore me in the street because of you know what I did yesterday or something like that. You there's a kind of like a narrative that we create about the thought process is going on in other people's heads and

We seem to create a similar self narrative and that can come here more or less with reality and when it did pulls completely them where in the realm of psychosis or confabulation. So I think that there are the INA. We can start building up a story about why belief saw narratives might decouple from what is the ground truth of our behaviour role how we appears others. Why think is really interesting about your your question? Is had I hadn't really thought about before. Is that? Does that then, in some sense require system to also know the truth internally, and it is not clear to me that that is the case, although I think there could, it could be possible. That is the case in some circumstances, so we ve done a bit of work. This work led by a form of postal combined, I'm buying who has been really interested in this problem. He calls private public mapping, which is effectively. How do we

take our private beliefs and convert them into what we say to others, and so his example of this is in I. What do you say? to a kindly and has given you a terrible Christmas present and either you don't wanna, have a fairly say, you say an untruth, but you you do this strategically and we studied that, in the context of mass immigration, by being able to track using brain imaging the confidence that was being formed at any given moment, because we have a fairly good understanding now of the neural correlates have come of confidence in individual decisions, but then we require subjects to strategically adjust the confidence they communicate it to their partners in a collaborative game, and what we found was that there was a distinct, though distinct, networks involved in this private sense of confidence. However,

feel about my phone is now and another part of the prefrontal cortex was engaged when they have to strategically adjust that to communicate to the other person. So that will be is not quite deception, but it's some kind of strategic mapping between you know that this kind of private feeling of of what's going on and what were trying communicate to us. For the purposes of strategic manipulation? I'm so they be receiver interesting to know whether, where at some level doing that to ourselves that at some sense that same general circuit for strategic manipulation of others is also working under the hood for ourselves and I don't know of any work on your way when you look at the structure of much of our thought. It is conversation No, I'm aware we are talking to ourselves much the time as though there someone in us who is listening right, who needs to be done

certain things are the wiser. Much of our discursive thought is totally superfluous, the United in a wider you. What white, as part of you, say anything to them rest, a view as though the rest of you isn't aware of the thing. That being said, you know if you feel like, if I'm looking for an arms, and on my desk, I said I am I when I spotted, I might say oh there. It is right to myself silently with the voice of the mind, but if I'm the, to see it, why? Whom I telling oh there, it is right who needs that further linguistic information an I, though the one who is in possession of the eyes that have seen it you know it's looking at it in that moment and her. So much of our thought is dialogue, goal that one could imagine. A similar process is happening. Wiener were the thought her tumbling out our mouths when were speaking to others and then when we shut our mouths. We keep talking to ourselves about more less everything

yeah and I'm I'm very true city, their position that crisper thousands. that, in a sense- and this comes back to the conversation about an evolutionary story of medical Why did we stop building this yourself out of the abyss best concealed if you'd like to continue listening to this conversation, you'll need to subscribe, samharris dot org once you to you'll get access to all full length, episodes of the making sense podcast, along with other subscriber, only content, including bonus episodes in Amas. In the conversations I've been having on the waking up app the making sense, Podcast Ipad Free and relies entirely on listener support and you can subscribe Now- that's a org.