Then I Am Myself The World: Dr. Christof Koch’s journey into psychedelics
Seeing | Neuroscience | 2025-02-21
Hans Busstra, MA
Christof Koch, PhD
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
Essentia Foundation communicates, in an accessible but rigorous manner, the latest results in science and philosophy that point to the mental nature of reality. We are committed to strict, academic-level curation of the material we publish.
Recently published
|
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.
|
Dr. Dolezal invites us to consider the uncanny similarities between the ancient stories of creation, across many religious and philosophical traditions, and how the human imagination, when prompted or triggered by words, creates entire universes.
From the archives
|
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.
|
Philosopher Ola Nilsson is back with another one of his mind-boggling, and yet irresistibly compelling, thought experiments. This time he shows, with surprisingly few words, how one universal mind can appear to be many, such as you and I, simply because of time and will. Buckle up for this amazing ride!
|
Arthur Haswell offers a devastating and delightfully well-argued deconstruction of the absurdities inherent in physicalism and its sibling, illusionism.
Reading
Essays
|
Much of the discord in today’s philosophical debate on the nature of mind and reality arises not from argument, but from a peculiar mindset that prevents some from explicitly cognizing their own consciousness, argues Arthur Haswell. This mindset relates to Cotard’s syndrome (the rare delusion of being already dead) and necrophilia (a love for all that is mechanical and inanimate, as opposed to alive and organic). Haswell suggests that it may be as futile to argue against this mindset as it is useless to explain color to someone born blind.
|
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.
|
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.
|
Philosopher Ola Nilsson is back with another one of his mind-boggling, and yet irresistibly compelling, thought experiments. This time he shows, with surprisingly few words, how one universal mind can appear to be many, such as you and I, simply because of time and will. Buckle up for this amazing ride!
|
Arthur Haswell offers a devastating and delightfully well-argued deconstruction of the absurdities inherent in physicalism and its sibling, illusionism.
Seeing
Videos
|
CPU inventor and physicist Federico Faggin, together with Prof. Giacomo Mauro D’Ariano, proposes that consciousness is not an emergent property of the brain, but a fundamental aspect of reality itself: quantum fields are conscious and have free will. In this theory, our physical body is a quantum-classical ‘machine,’ operated by free will decisions of quantum fields. Faggin calls the theory ‘Quantum Information Panpsychism’ (QIP) and claims that it can give us testable predictions in the near future. If the theory is correct, it not only will be the most accurate theory of consciousness, it will also solve mysteries around the interpretation of quantum mechanics.
|
Not only does John von Neumann’s seminal work in the mathematical modelling of quantum mechanics imply the irreducible nature of mind, the resulting idealist understanding of nature could lead to profound, and positive, changes in how we relate to one another and the world at large in the context of our economic system, writes Dr. Cocks.
|
In this wide-ranging interview with Natalia Vorontsova, Professor Marjorie Woollacott draws remarkable parallels between 9th-10th century Kashmiri Shaivism and modern idealism, pointing to the fundamental and irreducible nature of consciousness. Moreover, her study of near-death experiences empirically supports this very hypothesis of the existence of a fundamental consciousness without neurons and beyond our five senses. This is an open conversation about life, death, and who we really are as ‘points of consciousness.’
Let us build the future of our culture together
Essentia Foundation is a registered non-profit committed to making its content as accessible as possible. Therefore, we depend on contributions from people like you to continue to do our work. There are many ways to contribute.
