Bruce Damer, PhD, is coauthor with David Deamer, of a new theory on the origins of life that was featured in a Scientific American cover story in 2017. His professional interests also include space exploration, virtual reality, and entheogens. He is author of Avatars: Exploring and Building Virtual Worlds on the Internet. His website is https://www.damer.com/.

Here he offers a preview of the keynote address he is preparing for the annual conference of the Institute of Noetic Sciences. He points out that he does not understand what consciousness is. But, based on his own research into the boundary between living and nonliving systems, he can offer some suggestions. He expresses his belief that biological consciousness is far more complicated than will be obtainable through artificial intelligence. Referring to Carl Jung’s notion of synchronicity, he expresses his belief in a “synchronous field” that can be responsive to human interactions.

(Recorded on July 15, 2019)

Published on July 19, 2019