Post Lecture Laziness- Consciousness Copout

Last night, I headed down to the beautiful Bell House in the Gowanus section of Brooklyn for the latest Secret Science Club lecture, featuring Dr Heather Berlin of Mount Sinai School of Medicine. Dr Berlin's talk was focused on consciousness. John Searle defined consciousness as "what goes away when you fall into a deep, dreamless sleep", another definition is "what if feels like to be you" Dr Berlin attended a conference in which the consensus was that consciousness is "first person subjective experience".

I have to confess, I forgot to bring my notebook to the lecture (and I drank a whole lot of beer, and I have to deal with a lot of people going in and out of the workplace tonight, so my attention is focused elsewhere)- luckily, I found a video of Dr Berlin's presentation which is virtually identical to last night's lecture. Crack open a beer and watch Dr Berlin lecture on perception, subliminal stimuli, and dissociation:





For those pressed for time, here is a short version of the talk:





One amazing bit of data from her lecture is that the unconscious tends to play more of a role in major decision making than in minor decision making- buying a phone tends to be more of a "conscious" choice, while buying a house tends to be more of a "gut" decision. In my gut, I know that I am slacking off in the recap of yet another top-notch Secret Science Club lecture.