Michael Pollan explores consciousness, AI and the brain

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  For Scientific American Science Quickly, I'm Kendra Pierre-Louis in for Rachel Feldman.

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  Over the past three and a half decades,

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  journalist and author Michael Pollan has written about a dozen books,

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  many of which are in some ways a meditation on what it means to be human and how we interact with the natural world.

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  In his latest book, A World Appears, a Journey into Consciousness,

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  He tackles his subject head-on with a deep exploration of what consciousness is or is not.

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  Siam's associate books editor, Bree Kane, spoke with him about his new book.

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  Here is their conversation.

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  Just to get us going on something really easy,

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  I wanted to ask you, Michael Pollan, are you conscious?

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  Do you know if I'm conscious?

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  And are you 100% certain that this microphone is not conscious?

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  I can't be sure you're conscious.

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  I have to infer that from the evidence that you're the same species

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  as me and our species can be conscious.

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  And we have something called philosophy of mind,

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  which is an imaginative faculty that allows us to imagine what other people are thinking.

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  I know I'm conscious.

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  I think that's actually the thing we know with the greatest certainty.

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  I mean, Descartes told us that.

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