#thomasfuchs

[philosophiesde]

🧠 Brain vs. Computer💻: Why This Analogy Is Misleading 🚫 We love to understand things by recreating them. Our modern technology is the measure of all things: what we can build, we believe we can also understand. But when it comes to our brain, we hit a limit that we often ignore. We tend to view the brain as complex hardware and consciousness as software. But in our new Zoomposium, Prof. Dr. Thomas Fuchs fundamentally challenges this perspective. Why the comparison falls short: • Irreducible: A complex life process cannot simply be broken down into data and algorithms. Consciousness is not a “program” running on biological circuits. • The Embodiment Paradigm: We do not think with a “brain in a jar.” Our cognition is inseparably linked to our bodies. We are not “data processors,” but living beings in an environment. • The trap of feasibility: If we view humans solely as machines, we reduce them to manipulable data points. This fails to recognize the uniqueness of our lived existence. In our interview, we discuss the following topics with Prof. Fuchs, among others: 👉 Why neuroconstructivism is reaching its limits. 👉 Whether machines can ever truly develop consciousness—or whether we are falling for a technological illusion here. 👉 The danger of confusing intelligence (data processing) with consciousness (experience). It’s time for a new paradigm: moving away from a mechanistic view toward an “embodiment of consciousness.” What do you think? Is our mind really just the sum of neural computations, or is there something that no computer could ever capture? Share your thoughts in the comments👇 📺 Interview: https://youtu.be/1ouxs6P3Enc 📎Information: https://philosophies.de/index.php/2022/11/20/das-verkoerperte-bewusstsein/

[philosophiesde]

🤖 AI Consciousness – Machines on the Path to Embodiment🦾 The idea that our mind ultimately functions like a computer program has been a part of cognitive science since the 1950s. But is the brain really just a biological machine? In conversation with Thomas Fuchs, it becomes clear just how strongly our understanding of the mind has always been shaped by the latest technologies: • once mechanical automata, • later radio and television, • today computers and artificial intelligence. While these analogies help explain complex processes, they also carry the risk of reducing living consciousness to technical models. Fuchs, on the other hand, advocates the paradigm of “embodied consciousness”: Consciousness does not arise in isolation within the brain, like software on hardware, but rather through the interaction of the body, the environment, and lived experience. This raises a central question of our time: 👉 Can machines truly develop consciousness—or do they merely simulate intelligence? Especially in the age of AI, big data, and algorithmic decision-making systems, this debate is gaining increasing social relevance. For perhaps consciousness is more than mere information processing. 🎥 In our Zoomposium, we will discuss: • the hard problem of consciousness • embodiment and enactivism • AI vs. human consciousness • the societal consequences of artificial intelligence

• and the question of what actually defines a human being. 📺 Interview: https://youtu.be/1ouxs6P3Enc 📎Information: https://philosophies.de/index.php/2022/11/20/das-verkoerperte-bewusstsein/

[philosophiesde]

✨ Consciousness – How it controls our brain and actions 🧠💪 Why did conscious experience evolve in the first place? An obvious answer is: because it offers a decisive advantage for the actions of living beings. Consciousness seems to register and integrate the multitude of processes in the brain and combine them into a single entity. This creates a kind of overarching perspective on organismic processes – a perspective that is capable of structuring and coordinating behavior. This is not about a “separate consciousness” that controls the brain from outside. Rather, consciousness is an integral aspect of the brain and body processes themselves, bringing these processes together at a higher level and giving them an organizing, so-called top-down effect. In a Zoomposium, we talk to renowned psychiatrist and philosopher Thomas Fuchs about precisely these questions. As head of the Phenomenological Psychopathology and Psychotherapy section at Heidelberg University Hospital, he is intensively engaged with the relationship between phenomenology, neuroscience, and the paradigm of embodiment.

The conversation covers topics such as: • the concept of embodied consciousness • the role of the body in perception and decision-making • possible alternatives to the dominant neuroconstructivism • the famous Hard Problem of Consciousness • and the question of whether artificial intelligence can ever develop consciousness An exciting dialogue at the intersection of philosophy, psychiatry, and cognitive science on one of the biggest questions of our time: How does consciousness arise—and what role does it play in our actions? 🎥 Interview: https://youtu.be/1ouxs6P3Enc 📎Information: https://philosophies.de/index.php/2022/11/20/das-verkoerperte-bewusstsein/

[philosophiesde]

🧠 💪 Brain & Muscles – How Consciousness Controls Our Speech 🗣️ How do we actually manage to speak? As we form words, our lips, tongue, and larynx move with high precision – without us knowing which individual muscle fibers need to contract and how. And yet it works. This seemingly self-evident phenomenon points to a fascinating interplay: consciousness not only accompanies neural processes, but also integrates, organizes, and controls them. In a top-down process, countless micro-processes in the brain and muscles are coordinated into a meaningful overall execution. Language thus emerges as a physically embedded action – not as a purely mechanical product of isolated brain activity. In the Zoomposium with Thomas Fuchs, we discuss precisely this perspective of “embodied consciousness.” As a psychiatrist and philosopher, Fuchs advocates a paradigm shift: away from reductionist neuroconstructivism, toward an understanding of the brain as a relational organ—embedded in the body, environment, and social interaction. What does this mean for the hard problem of consciousness? Can artificial intelligence develop consciousness—or do machines lack this very bodily embedding? And what does this say about our self-image in the age of big data and digitalization? A conversation about language, corporeality, and the question of how consciousness organizes neural processes—and is not merely generated by them. 🎥 Interview: https://youtu.be/1ouxs6P3Enc 📎Information: https://philosophies.de/index.php/2022/11/20/das-verkoerperte-bewusstsein/

[philosophiesde]

🪞🧠 Why self-awareness is the key to artificial intelligence 🔑🤖 What does it actually mean to be intelligent? Since the Dartmouth Conference in the 1950s, the term artificial intelligence has shaped our thinking. But as Prof. Dr. Thomas Fuchs points out, something crucial is often overlooked: 👉 Intelligence without self-awareness ultimately remains borrowed intelligence. Machines can appear astonishingly powerful—smart, efficient, even creative. But what we recognize in them is primarily our own human intelligence, translated into algorithms, data structures, and computing processes. What they lack is what really defines human thinking: self-awareness. In the Zoomposium, Thomas Fuchs talks about: • the relationship between intelligence and consciousness • the limits of current AI models • embodied consciousness as an alternative to neuroconstructivism • the question of whether machines can ever truly be conscious • and what social changes AI is already triggering today A philosophically and scientifically highly topical conversation about the future of humanity, technology, and responsibility. 🎥 Interview https://youtu.be/1ouxs6P3Enc 📎Information: https://philosophies.de/index.php/2022/11/20/das-verkoerperte-bewusstsein/

[philosophiesde]

🤖🧠 Why algorithms do not generate consciousness Even the best algorithms and AI programs do not truly understand what they are doing. They follow rules and process data, but they lack genuine understanding and awareness of their own actions. As Prof. Dr. Thomas Fuchs explains in the Zoomposium, the difference is that consciousness is always embodied. It is not just a process in the brain or an algorithm on a hard drive. Only a system that experiences the “coherence” of its experience can truly understand. We discuss: • Can AI ever develop true consciousness? • How does the embodiment paradigm help us understand the “hard problem of consciousness”? • What social changes will unconscious intelligence bring, which may soon know us better than we know ourselves (keyword: big data)? 🎥 Interview https://youtu.be/1ouxs6P3Enc 📎Information: https://philosophies.de/index.php/2022/11/20/das-verkoerperte-bewusstsein/

[philosophiesde]

💊 Trust in medicine – The influence of the doctor-patient relationship 👨‍⚕️🤒 Medical decisions are not always optimal in a purely statistical sense. But what is often underestimated is that it is not only what is decided that is crucial, but also the relationship in which this decision is made. The trust between doctor and patient is a key factor in medical practice – with measurable effects on healing, therapeutic success, and well-being. As Prof. Dr. Thomas Fuchs emphasizes, this relationship of trust itself has a healing effect: the subjective experience of being taken seriously and understood has a real medical effect – even to the point of what we know as the placebo effect. Healing is therefore not only a neurobiological or technical process, but a deeply relational one. In our Zoomposium, we talk to internationally renowned psychiatrist and philosopher Thomas Fuchs about embodiment, consciousness, artificial intelligence – and why medicine without relationships loses its human foundation.

🎥 Interview: https://youtu.be/1ouxs6P3Enc 📎Information: https://philosophies.de/index.php/2022/11/20/das-verkoerperte-bewusstsein/

[philosophiesde]

🧠🔧 Functionalism – The key to understanding the mind? Or a modern misconception? Functionalism continues to shape our understanding of the mind today: The brain as software, humans as programs, consciousness as a type of code. Pain is then nothing more than a “state” of neural programming – triggering signals in, motor responses out. But this is precisely where the problem begins: How does pure function give rise to subjective experience? Why does pain feel like pain—and not just happen? This is exactly what we will be discussing in the new Zoomposium with psychiatrist and philosopher Thomas Fuchs, who radically questions the functionalist model. His approach: an embodied view of the mind, in which consciousness is not produced in the brain, but arises from the lived interaction of body, environment, and relationships. Fuchs shows why the idea of a purely computational mind falls short – and why machines, even with growing artificial intelligence, cannot simply be equated with human consciousness. Because thinking is not just computing. Experience is not an algorithm. If we want to understand what consciousness really is, we must go beyond functions – toward embodiment, lived experience, and the relational nature of our self. A conversation about embodiment, AI, neuroconstructivism, and the future of our view of humanity.

🎥 Interview https://youtu.be/1ouxs6P3Enc 📎Information: https://philosophies.de/index.php/2022/11/20/das-verkoerperte-bewusstsein/