Seeing | Psychology | 2025-06-20
In this interview, Dr. Philip Cozzolino, an associate professor of psychiatry and neurobehavioral sciences at the University of Virginia, talks with Natalia Vorontsova about his research results and methods for dealing with the fear of death. He also delves into intriguing reincarnation-like cases and past-life memories in children, as well as the metaphysical implications of his research.
Seeing | Foundations of Physics | 2025-06-06
Dr. David Schmid, Dr. Lídia Del Rio and Hans Busstra explore a metaphysical shift that’s happening in the foundations of physics: the wave function is no longer regarded as something real, but just as a description of what we know about the world. In philosophical terms: the wave function is not ontic, but epistemic. And in more popular terms: the multiverse is science fiction, resting on a too-literal interpretation of a piece of mathematics called the Schrödinger equation.
Our previous video with Dr. Del Rio on the Frauchiger-Renner thought experiment:
Three other ‘epistemicists’, who’ve just been awarded a prestigious prize in the foundations of physics:
Chapters marks:
00:00:00 Introduction
00:03:30 — When did it dawn on you that QM is weird?
00:05:54 — The quantum phenomena that still scare David
00:07:53 — How to account for non-locality
00:12:19 — “What are the symbols representing?”
00:15:34 — What is the wavefunction really?
00:17:00 — “The standard view we are taught in the classroom…”
00:19:23 — Classically explaining quantum
00:20:23 — On Wheeler’s delayed choice experiment
00:28:38 — How to interpret the delayed choice experiment
00:32:56 — How can a single particle ‘know’ what’s going on at both paths?
00:36:41 — Quantum phenomena that remain weird: contextuality
00:44:38 — What are the viable ontological explanations we have?
00:48:26 — Is there evidence for an epistemic interpretation?
00:52:56 — Understanding epistemic interpretations
00:57:28 — Are we in a new era of physics?
01:00:43 — Lídia on what constitutes measurement
01:04:36 — How relevant are these recent theoretical findings?
01:07:36 — Experiments with AI as an observer?
01:08:36 — David and Lídia on what consciousness is
01:13:51 — Closing thoughts
Relevant scientific work of Schmid and Del Rio:
Why interference phenomena do not capture the essence of quantum theory
L Catani, M Leifer, D Schmid, RW Spekkens
Quantum 7, 1119
A review and analysis of six extended Wigner’s friend arguments
D Schmid, Y Yīng, M Leifer
arXiv preprint arXiv:2308.16220
Guiding our interpretation of quantum theory by principles of causation and inference
D Schmid, Thesis, University of Waterloo
https://uwspace.uwaterloo.ca/items/7aed8173-684a-40af-bff5-e625f29fe810
Thought experiments in a quantum computer,
Nuriya Nurgalieva, Simon Mathis, Lídia del Rio, Renato Renner:
https://arxiv.org/abs/2209.06236
Seeing | Semiotics | 2025-05-23
What if phenomenal consciousness, signs, communication, and interpretation are fundamental aspects of all living systems, whether or not we can detect brains? This is the departure point of biosemiotics, an interdisciplinary field that combines biology, semiotics (the study of signs and meaning), and philosophy. Environmental philosopher Dr. Yogi Hendlin is Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Biosemiotics and, in this conversation, Hans Busstra talks to him about the widespread meaning-making in nature. All living beings, from bacteria to plants to mammals, have an ‘Umwelt,’ a dashboard representation of the world. In a sense, biosemiotics states that our mind is in the world: we are embodied beings, and with every inhalation 50.000 microbes enter our body, and they communicate to us by influencing our microbiome.
Seeing | Neuroscience | 2025-05-09
Hans Busstra talks to Dr. Bernardo Kastrup about the groundbreaking work of Professor Michael Levin and Dr. Christof Koch. Levin’s research into bio-electric fields reveals that cellular networks use electrical signals not just for immediate physiological tasks, but to coordinate complex patterning and memory across tissues—suggesting a kind of distributed intelligence in living systems. Christof Koch, meanwhile, champions Integrated Information Theory (IIT), which proposes that consciousness is an intrinsic property of certain physical systems with high levels of causal interconnectivity. Both lines of inquiry challenge the traditional reductionist view that mind is merely an emergent byproduct of neural activity. Instead, they point to a more holistic, perhaps even fundamental, role for information and consciousness in nature. Though Levin and Koch make no explicit metaphysical claims in their work, their empirical findings and views are very much in line with analytic idealism.
For a more in depth analysis of IIT by Bernardo Kastrup:
Seeing | Parapsychology | 2025-04-25
Dr. Edward Kelly, a professor of experimental psychology, talks about his many years of study of a variety of psi and anomalous phenomena. In this interview with Natalia Vorontsova, he candidly shares how phenomenological evidence has led him to re-examine his metaphysical views on the nature of reality. Are our minds confined to our brains? Do we survive our biological death? Is mind primary to matter? Why should we take anomalous phenomena seriously? These are some of the topics covered in this conversation.
Seeing | Quantum Physics | 2025-04-11
Physicist Dr. Lídia Del Rio, Essentia Foundation’s Research Fellow for Quantum Information Theory at the University of Zürich, explains to Hans Busstra one of the strangest quantum conundra confronting the foundations of physics: the Frauchiger-Renner (FR) thought experiment.
Seeing | Metaphysics | 2025-03-28
Hans Busstra interviews theoretical physicist and complexity scientist James Glattfelder on his new book, The Sapient Cosmos: What a modern-day synthesis of science and philosophy teaches us about the emergence of information, consciousness, and meaning, published by Essentia Foundation. Glattfelder makes a plea for ‘syncretic idealism’: a worldview that synthesises ancient idealist texts and mystical experiences with physics, complexity science and analytic idealism.
Seeing | Metaphysics | 2025-03-14
This interview explores the fundamental premises of Analytic Idealism. Dr. Bernardo Kastrup, known for developing this philosophical system, discusses the nature of consciousness, life, God, and AI with Natalia Vorontsova. All questions are based on input from our audience.
Seeing | Quantum Physics | 2025-02-28
Hans Busstra, together with Essentia Foundation’s research fellow, physicist Lidia Del Rio, talks to Prof. Sandu Popescu about quantum non-locality. Popescu is Professor of Physics at the University of Bristol and a Fellow of the Royal Society. He did pioneering work in what became the field of quantum information and has won both the John Stuart Bell Prize and the Dirac Medal.
00:00 Intro
03:58 The superposition cannot be observed
04:17 We don’t observe the superposition itself
06:18 That you can compute something doesn’t mean you understand what’s going on
09:13 Sandu on the double slit
12:35 Einstein & History Of Quantum Mechanics
15:42 The EPR paper
18:57 Bell test
21:49 The obscurity of the EPR paper: Sandu on the history of physics
25:03 On the shut up and calculate era
28:31 Bell was 30 yrs dormant
28:57 The importance of Bell’s paper
30:59 Sandu explaining Bell
32:10 What Bell ruled out
36:29 What exactly is a no-go theorem?
40:30 The first Bell tests
42:21 Implications of Bell
51:31 Is metaphysics a matter of preference?
57:26 The counter intuitiveness of quantum mechanics
59:49 Sandu on the different interpretations of quantum mechanics
1:05:44 Time in quantum mechanics
1:08:04 Does ‘looking’ produce information?
1:11:17 Weak measurements, making measurements that are less disturbing…
1:13:51 Everything is a measurement
1:15:04 On the arrow of time in quantum mechanics
1:16:38 Schrödingers cat and past creation
1:22:34 Retro causality
1:24:31 Predicting rainbows: on the difference between quantum mechanics and classical physics
1:26:59 Is quantum mechanics related to parapsychological phenomena?
1:32:38 On consciousness causes collapse
1:37:05 Influencing random number generators?
1:41:02 Lidia’s ‘dreamed’ experiment
1:42:12 Has quantum mechanics changed your outlook on life?
Seeing | Neuroscience | 2025-02-21
Neuroscientist Dr. Christof Koch’s latest book has a title quoting the second act of the famous opera, Tristan und Isolde: “Then I Am Myself The World.” In this book Koch describes how he, during a psychedelic experience on 5-MeO-DMT, felt that he was one with the universe, which echoes the epic tale by Wagner. Essentia Foundation’s Hans Busstra interviewed Koch on his book, his psychedelic trip and, of course, Integrated Information Theory (IIT), the scientific theory of consciousness Christof Koch and Gulio Tononi are famous for.
IIT offers a mathematical way to quantify consciousness using a measure called Phi (Φ). Phi represents the degree to which a system is both highly integrated and differentiated—two essential properties of conscious experience. According to IIT, the higher the Phi of a system, the richer its subjective experience. In what can be considered a strength of IIT, it makes few assumptions about what a conscious system should look like: literally any system has a Phi that can be measured, whether it’s an AI or bacteria.
Interestingly, Koch points out that all current AI’s have a rather low Phi: though their computing power is daunting and they may very well simulate consciousness, their integrated information is still very low compared to the neurons in our brains.
But can IIT, next to offering perhaps the first truly scientific measure of consciousness, also account for the mystical-type experience Koch himself had? The difficulty here is that, for IIT to have any explanatory power, it needs a substrate to analyse. If Koch indeed had become part of a larger consciousness, what then was the ‘new’ substrate—extending beyond his own brain—to analyze?
But where IIT does have a strong advantage over computational theories, which regard consciousness as emergent from computation, is that it has a way to distinguish between ‘parts’ and ‘wholes.’ If two systems become highly interconnected, IIT predicts a measurable moment when the Phi of the interconnected system is higher than that of the sum of its parts. Then a new—say, ‘higher’—mind comes into existence, and the consciousnesses of the ‘lower’ parts cease to exist.
To watch the full conversation between Busstra and Koch on YouTube, click here:
00:00 Introduction
05:12 Is Integrated Information Theory as a materialist theory?
08:46 Unpacking IIT: intrinsic conscious experience as the starting point
11:05 Feelings have a specific structure
14:37 What is ‘intrinsic causal power’ and why is it important?
18:38 The difference between being in love and the mass of an object
21:05 Unfolding the intrinsic causal power of a system
21:51Can you give me the algorithm of the taste of garlic?
25:50Consciousness is NOT the brain
29:16The unfolded causal structure of a teapot
31:25The difference between IIT and panpsychism and the consciousness of bacteria and bees
35:03Consciousness vs Self-Consciousness
36:18The combination problem and how to establish the boundary of a (conscious) system
39:23The experiment of brain bridging
41:50Split brain experiments
49:45Brains are nog magical: neuro morphic engineering
52:11What is a whole and what a part?
55:55How a larger consciousness would wipe out you and me: the Borg example from Star Trek
57:03Christof Koch on his DMT trip
59:58The ontological shock of psychedelics
1:04:24How to make sense of the psychedelic experience?
1:08:50Is IIT idealist?
1:13:56Are hearts conscious?
1:15:16On the filter hypothesis
1:17:44What can IIT say about the psychedelic state and NDE’s?
1:25:40What could a couple billion dollars buy when invested in neuroscience?
1:27:31On the critique on IIT
1:30:40Why we have to remain skeptical
1:32:51 ‘Naive’ physicalism
1:34:55On the placebo effect
1:40:01 Everyone wants to do psychedelics
1:40:38 The Near Death Experience on 5-MeO-DMT
1:44:26Will psychedelics change your scientific career
1:47:04On the mental gravity of the self
1:48:16 Closing remarks
Natalia Vorontsova, MA
Prof. Philip Cozzolino, PhD
Hans Busstra, MA
Lidia del Rio, PhD
David Schmid, PhD
Yogi Hendlin, PhD
Bernardo Kastrup, PhD, PhD
Prof. Edward F. Kelly, PhD
James Glattfelder, PhD
Prof. Sandu Popescu, PhD
Christof Koch, PhD