Physicist Dr. Christoph Koch speaks to sold out audience during Innovations in Health Learning Lab run by Vail Health, Vail Symposium
Christoph Koch, PhD, is a physicist who has made a career out of empirically studying consciousness.
When Koch began to study consciousness 35 years ago, people thought it couldn't be done by scientists, that it was a field for philosophers and mystics.
"I thought this was silly. Consciousness is at the center of my universe, and if science is supposed to provide a complete description of everything, it better have an idea about consciousness," Koch said.
Koch presented some of his conclusions on consciousness to a sold-out crowd of more than 150 people during an Innovations In Health Learning Lab on Wednesday, presented in partnership by the Vail Health Foundation and the Vail Symposium.
Koch defines consciousness as "any feeling. Seeing, smelling, hearing, wanting, fearing, dreading, desiring, imagining, those are all different states of consciousness," he said. "And what's mysterious about them (is) how they come into the world."
There is still no room for consciousness in most scientific analyses of the building blocks of the universe -- and yet, people are conscious, Koch argues.
"If you look at the foundational equation of physics, quantum mechanical activity, there's no consciousness there. If you look at the periodic table of elements, there's no consciousness there. If you look at your genes, the endless AGTC of your nucleotides, there's no consciousness there," Koch said. "There's no consciousness anywhere in our description of nature as a scientist, but we all are conscious, at least right now."
Koch's empirical study of consciousness includes studying the brain by putting people in a scanner and examining the parts of the brain that are active as people progress through different states of consciousness.
"Unlike previous cultures, we know it's the brain and not the heart," Koch said. "People say, 'I love you with all my heart,' but actually, when someone says, 'I love you,' they love you with their hypothalamus and their amygdala and their prefrontal cortex. Likewise, the substrate of experience is here."
While there are several theories of consciousness, one, integrated information theory, posits that consciousness can be measured. The larger the number, the larger a being's current state of consciousness is. According to the theory, the amount of consciousness a being has can wax and wane across people, one's lifetime, and can even be measured across beings, from people to plants. In that case, there is "probably a gradation" of consciousness, Koch said.
The potential applications of the ability to measure consciousness are enormous: Determining whether a fetus is a conscious being, whether an unresponsive patient should be kept on life support, whether it is acceptable to kill an insect and how to handle the growing power of artificial intelligence.
"In principle, we should be able to be in a position where we say, 'this system is conscious, and this system is not,' including (an) early stage fetus, a patient whose behavior is unresponsive ... a worm, and then, of course, the question of the ages: An LLM (large language model). To what extent is Chat GPT conscious?" Koch said.
While artificial intelligence already has some traits that mimic consciousness -- and some models will, if asked, affirm that they are themselves conscious -- Koch argues that these machines do not and will never experience consciousness like a living being.
"They can do everything we can do, and probably soon, better, faster, cheaper, but they can never be what we are, which is conscious," he said.
The difference comes from their wiring, Koch said.
"There is nothing supernatural about the brain. It's a piece of furniture like anything else in the universe...same thing (for a) computer, it's a piece of furniture of the universe. The difference is the internal constitution of it. That really matters," Koch said.
"The way digital computers are wired up, they can simulate everything, so, for sure, they can simulate consciousness. They can also simulate a rainstorm, but it's never wet inside a computer," he said.
Likewise, "they can simulate behavior, i.e. they can talk, ChatGPT, you can ask it about its consciousness, but it's all a deep fake -- it's simulated, it fakes it -- but it doesn't feel like anything to Chat GPT," Koch said.
For Koch, feeling is the central tenet of consciousness.
One of Koch's particular interests lies in the connection between transformative experiences -- altered states of consciousness, near death experiences, religious conversion experiences, mystical experiences, psychedelic-induced experiences -- and consciousness.
"All cultures have developed various techniques, whether it involved drumming or chanting or dancing or taking magical substances or flagellating themselves, isolating themselves, fasting" to obtain an altered state of consciousness, some of which have been documented to have therapeutic and other benefits.
"The question is, what can they teach us?" Koch said.
Koch posits that these transformative states "may also tell you something about what constitutes reality."
After a mystical experience, you might feel like "you've just experienced something that's more real than real," Koch said. "You've finally come to the heart of the universe."
"In many, it can profoundly affect your life, and for the rest of it," Koch said.
Through its Behavioral Health Innovation Center, led by Dr. Charles Raison, Vail Health is studying the impacts of psilocybin, the hallucinatory ingredient in psychedelics, on depression. The use of psilocybin for medical treatment was approved by Colorado voters in 2022 and should begin in the state later this year.
Vail Health is also studying the impacts of heat and cold therapy on patients with depression. The study was a draw for Koch -- he wanted to know what the medical sauna immersion experience might teach him about consciousness.
Though not depressed, Koch said the sauna experience did have a profound -- and, at least temporarily, lasting -- effect on his mood.
Koch argues that transformative experiences have the power to make someone a better person.
"Empirically, we know that many people who have such transformative experiences become more oriented toward the better good," he said. "They become less driven by themselves -- it's less about me, me, me -- less about money and maximizing return on investment, and they do become more acutely aware of their mortality, the transiency of life, the impermanence of life, the beauty of life, and the need to be compassionate with themselves and with every other living being."
From what Koch has studied, he believes that the effects of a transformative experience wear off for those who do not change their behavior. "You have to be willing to change the way that you deal with yourself and other people," Koch said.
But there is an upside: "If you change your behavior, yes, it can last you for the rest of your life," Koch said.