One of the Most Unsettling Facts About Consciousness That Science Can't Solve

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0:12 Cynthia had never experienced an emotion in her entire life.

0:16 At a young age, it was clear that she was very unusual,

0:19 that her life would be very different.

0:21 When she was around 4 years old,

0:23 Cynthia's parents began noticing weird behaviors.

0:25 She was often unfazed, non-reactive, and unpredictable.

0:29 She would cry or laugh in situations that seemed entirely misaligned

0:32 with what was happening around her, like she was giving a performance,

0:35 but on the wrong queue.

0:37 When other children might laugh, Cynthia might cry.

0:40 When they cried, she might smile.

0:42 Her parents assumed it was a developmental delay

0:44 or inongruity that would correct itself over time.

0:48 That's what teachers and doctors told them, at least.

0:50 As Cynthia got a bit older and she could communicate more comprehensively,

0:54 things only became more unclear.

0:56 When asked why she was doing something or not doing something,

0:59 her answers were almost always,

1:00 "I don't know." or "I thought that's what you were supposed

1:04 to do." She struggled to connect with her peers and classmates.

1:08 When her parents or teachers asked if she felt lonely or different,

1:11 Cynthia seemed to not even understand what they meant.

1:13 When they pushed a bit further and asked

1:15 why she wasn't engaging with her classmates,

1:17 she almost always responded with literal reasons.

1:20 She would say something like, "They're outside right now.

1:23 I'm inside." or when they asked why

1:25 she seemed upset or disinterested, she might say,

1:28 "My stomach hurts." Or, "My head feels weird." Everything

1:33 reached a turning point when in third grade art class,

1:36 Cynthia, along with all the other students were asked to paint

1:39 a portrait of themselves in a moment when they felt happiest.

1:42 All her classmates painted bright,

1:43 vibrant figures with big smiles and wide eyes placed in settings

1:47 like a beach or a baseball field or a fair.

1:50 Cynthia, however, painted a girl with no facial features at all.

1:54 It was merely an outline of a figure painted in seemingly arbitrary dark colors,

1:59 and the background was empty.

2:01 When the art teacher saw, at first,

2:03 they assumed it was an act of defiance against the instructions.

2:06 But when they asked Cynthia if she was going to add anything,

2:08 she responded with genuine confusion.

2:11 "No, why?" she said.

2:14 "Well, what makes you the happiest here?" the art teacher asked.

2:18 "Me?" Cynthia said in a tone that tried

2:20 to be a statement but came off as a question.

2:23 After the art teacher notified Cynthia's parents about the exchange,

2:26 her parents could no longer remain passive.

2:29 Later that year, after consultations with various psychologists and specialists,

2:33 Cynthia was diagnosed with alexathyia,

2:36 a condition in which an individual struggles to identify,

2:39 understand, and express emotions.

2:41 In Cynthia's case, it was so severe her neurologist recommended that she

2:45 undergo a brain scan to ensure

2:46 there weren't any other more serious complications.

2:49 When the MRI scans came back,

2:51 they showed that Cynthia's brain was structurally totally normal.

2:55 No signs of damage or underlying abnormalities at all.

2:59 Later fMRI scans, however,

3:01 revealed tangibly weak to almost no activity in various regions of her brain.

3:06 Regions generally associated with emotional activity and awareness.

3:10 The signals that typically painted experience with feeling were functional

3:13 but largely dormant or not interfacing with the rest of her brain.

3:17 It was as if the emotional regions of her brain were isolated and set apart.

3:21 A remote island that could be seen but not reached or communicated with.

3:26 Is there anything that could be done at all?

3:28 Cynthia's mother asked the neurologist.

3:30 Her voice strained and trembling.

3:32 Her eyes were glassy and her cheeks were wet.

3:34 We're willing to try anything.

3:36 Cynthia's father looked stoic, staring forward, just like Cynthia.

3:41 Unfortunately, there aren't any direct treatments for this condition.

3:44 The neurologist said there was a brief silence that seemed to plead for hope.

3:49 That said, the neurologist continued,

3:51 "Science and technology are advancing rapidly in this area.

3:54 We can continue to reassess options as new understandings and approaches emerge.

3:59 And since Cynthia is so young,

4:00 it's also possible her brain will adapt more as she develops.

4:04 Though Cynthia didn't experience an emotional reaction to this information,

4:08 it troubled her in a literal, rational kind of way,

4:11 she now knew, as a matter of fact, that she was very different,

4:15 that she was missing out on something very important.

4:18 On the drive home from the neurologists,

4:20 Cynthia stared out her parents' car window,

4:22 watching as the trees rushed by against the backdrop

4:24 of a bright blue sky and vibrant sun.

4:27 She wondered if colors felt like anything.

4:29 She wondered if images and scenes felt like anything.

4:33 She felt sick to her stomach.

4:35 For the first time, she wondered if that sick,

4:37 weird sensation was supposed to be part of something else.

4:41 Cynthia turned toward the front of the car.

4:43 "What is emotion like for you guys?" She asked her parents softly and plainly.

4:48 Her mother looked at her father, her father glancing back away from the road.

4:52 "Um, they feel like like sensations in the brain,

4:56 in the in the mind," her mother answered clumsily.

5:00 "Like a headache?" Cynthia asked.

5:03 Sort of.

5:04 Sometimes they can, but they can they can feel like all sorts of things.

5:08 Often softer, more subtle, more like.

5:11 Cynthia's mother paused, realizing how hard it was to describe

5:14 emotions as anything other than themselves.

5:17 Almost like temperatures and textures.

5:20 Cynthia's father interjected.

5:22 Some can feel warm, others feel cold, hard or soft, sometimes bright or dark.

5:28 H.

5:29 Cynthia murmured as she turned back toward the window.

5:32 So your brain feels warm and hard and stuff.

5:35 Sort of.

5:36 Yeah, her mother responded hesitantly.

5:39 So, are you thinking it or feeling it?

5:41 I don't get it.

5:42 Kind of both.

5:43 Cynthia's father responded.

5:45 What do you feel right now?

5:47 Cynthia asked.

5:48 There was a brief silence.

5:50 Um, I feel sad, her mother answered.

5:55 Why?

5:56 Cynthia asked earnestly.

5:58 Because I I feel sad for you, honey.

6:00 You could feel emotions for other people, too, sometimes.

6:03 And I Why do you feel sad for me?

6:06 There was another brief silence.

6:07 Her mother turned all the way around towards Cynthia.

6:10 Because you can't, she said, quickly,

6:13 turning around so Cynthia wouldn't see the tears running down her cheek.

6:18 This moment changed everything for Cynthia.

6:20 The diagnosis, the conversation, the knowledge that something so important

6:24 was missing fractured her world completely.

6:27 She had jumped from one world to another,

6:29 a world that looked the same but contained

6:31 the knowledge that it was entirely incomplete.

6:35 Cynthia became obsessed with the concept of emotion.

6:38 She constantly asked her parents, her family members, her teachers,

6:42 and her classmates what they were feeling and what emotions were like for them.

6:45 Still, in early childhood, Cynthia's naive hope was that in hearing

6:49 and understanding enough about emotions, she might experience them.

6:53 Of course, most people happily obliged Cynthia's requests.

6:57 In fact, many found the exchanges to be deeply invigorating,

7:00 an opportunity to consciously recognize just how

7:03 miraculous and ethereal emotions and consciousness are.

7:06 The problem was, however,

7:08 everyone struggled to articulate what their emotional experiences were like.

7:12 They either needed to use other emotional terminology or analogies.

7:16 But of course, neither helped Cynthia.

7:18 Other emotional terms were just concepts she also didn't understand.

7:22 And saying an emotion felt warm, for example,

7:24 was like telling a blind person that orange feels warm.

7:27 If you don't understand the reference and you touch an orange object,

7:31 you only discover the temperature of the room.

7:34 By her teens, Cynthia had begun delving

7:36 into the philosophy and science of emotion.

7:39 She read every book and article and watched every video she could find.

7:43 She soon discovered that a similar

7:44 issue that occurred when asking individuals what

7:46 emotion was like for them was occurring in science and philosophy more broadly.

7:51 The confusion and nebulousness of the topic

7:53 only further revealed itself in college

7:55 when Cynthia studied psychology and learned more about all the existing models,

7:59 frameworks, and theories around emotion.

8:01 How they were mostly all contradictory or incomplete.

8:04 She couldn't believe that humanity was apparently

8:06 an emotionally driven species that lived and died on feelings and yet it did not

8:10 even have a shared complete definition of emotion.

8:15 One college course in particular changed everything for her, philosophy of mind.

8:20 On one of the first weeks of class,

8:22 Cynthia sat in the front row of the lecture hall.

8:24 The professor stood at the front with a projector screen behind him.

8:27 On it was an illustrated profile of a figure staring at a monochrome apple.

8:31 A thought bubble extended above the figure's

8:33 head with the colored apple inside it.

8:36 Qualia, the professor said,

8:38 pointing at the colored apple inside the thought bubble.

8:40 Redness, softness, happiness.

8:44 It is what we call the subjective firsterson

8:46 experiences of raw physical processes in the brain.

8:49 The professor changed the slide on the screen

8:51 to an image of a brain in a neuron.

8:53 Cynthia watched and listened intently.

8:56 How on earth does that work, huh?

8:58 Raw physical events equating to subjective first person experiences.

9:02 Modern philosophers and neuroscientists are quite divided on the matter.

9:05 As you might imagine,

9:06 some believe that this divide between what is happening in the brain

9:08 and what is felt by the person is a permanent fault line,

9:12 an untraversible creasse between knowledge and experience.

9:16 The professor changed the slide again.

9:18 This time the screen showed an image of a man

9:20 and a bat along with a quote next to the image.

9:22 The professor read it.

9:24 If the subjective character of experience is

9:26 fully comprehensible only from one point of view,

9:29 then any shift to greater objectivity,

9:31 that is less attachment to a specific viewpoint,

9:34 does not take us nearer to the real nature of the phenomenon.

9:37 It takes us farther away from it.

9:39 That's a quote from philosopher Thomas Nagel.

9:41 He argues that knowing all the objective facts about the brain in the experience

9:44 of a perception would not and could not

9:47 equate to actually knowing what the perception is like.

9:50 It inherently leaves something out.

9:52 The professor changed the slide again, revealing an image of a different man.

9:56 Other philosophers, he continued, like Daniel Dennett,

9:59 believe we can or could know what

10:01 it's like to experience a particular perception.

10:04 If we had all the facts related to the perception,

10:07 we would know it fully enough,

10:09 including its subjective character, to predict or imagine the experience,

10:13 we could even recreate it.

10:15 The professor changed the slide again,

10:16 revealing a black and white illustration of a woman sitting in a room

10:19 with a computer in front of her and books surrounding her.

10:22 At the bottom of the image, text read,

10:25 "Mary's room." Cynthia stared up at the screen as the professor's

10:28 voice faded into a light garble behind her thoughts.

10:31 Watered by a storm of rumination, of new knowledge and new confusion.

10:35 Her obsession with emotion was blooming now more than ever.

10:39 This was what she was going to dedicate the rest of her life to.

10:42 Assisting science in acrewing enough knowledge on emotion,

10:44 on all the facts of the brain, so she could experience them for herself.

10:50 Cynthia would go on to obtain her PhD

10:52 in cognitive neuroscience from one of the world's leading programs.

10:55 During this time, she became increasingly

10:57 immersed in computational modeling and brain mapping.

11:00 Following her PhD in the year 2025, she began working for a large NGO

11:05 focused on developing full-scale highresolution brain mapping.

11:08 Cynthia quickly moved through the organization and obtained

11:11 the role of director of computational neuroiming.

11:14 By the early 2030s, largely as a result of Cynthia's

11:18 leadership and her work on various algorithms and image processing frameworks,

11:22 the NGO developed the first brain scan technology with neural resolution

11:26 at the level of individual synapses with less than a millisecond of latency.

11:31 An unbelievable breakthrough.

11:33 In both human brains and digital simulations,

11:35 Cynthia could now see every detail,

11:37 component, and pattern of every known emotion.

11:40 she could build them up and break them down

11:42 from their total bodily form to their minute neural components.

11:47 In 2035, Cynthia published a book, The Grand Theory of Emotion.

11:52 It was the culmination of her entire life's work,

11:54 a unifying theory of emotion that melded biology and computation.

11:59 Almost overnight, she went from being a leading researcher

12:01 in a developing area of science to a major public figure.

12:05 She was asked to host events and lectures.

12:07 She appeared on massive mainstream podcasts and shows

12:10 and she sold millions of copies of her book.

12:13 Her story was unbelievable.

12:15 Without reportedly having ever experienced an emotion in her entire life,

12:19 she was the expert on emotion.

12:21 She knew everything there was to know.

12:23 the physics of it, the processes by which different events stimulate the brain,

12:27 how these triggers create different neural patterns,

12:29 the exact framework and nature of these patterns,

12:31 and how consciousness interprets and experiences the neural

12:34 activity in the form of concepts and feelings.

12:38 Of course, Cynthia and her work didn't go without criticism.

12:41 Many scientists and philosophers debated the completeness of her theory.

12:45 Some argued that if she truly knew all the facts about emotion,

12:47 then she must also know how her own brain would respond objectively.

12:51 In other words, she must have known what emotions were like,

12:55 or at least in principle,

12:56 she should have been able to imagine or simulate the experience of them.

13:00 But Cynthia claimed she couldn't.

13:02 She claimed that there was still something left for her to learn.

13:06 Not long after publishing her work,

13:08 Cynthia was recruited by one of the world's leading neuroch companies, Pelios.

13:12 It branded itself as engineering human feeling.

13:16 At the time, its primary focus was on developing, producing,

13:19 and commercializing emotion regulating brain computer

13:22 interfaces for the mainstream consumer market.

13:25 A device that could register, regulate, and produce emotions.

13:30 They were still missing crucial components for their system to work,

13:32 however, components that Cynthia's work provided.

13:37 Once on board as director of neural systems architecture,

13:40 Cynthia helped Helios fully integrate real-time

13:42 mapping of both the brain and body.

13:45 Thanks to her, soon the device worked.

13:49 It could produce precise, complete emotional experiences.

13:53 Cynthia was given the opportunity to be the first to try it.

13:57 She accepted.

13:59 On June 1st, 2042, she underwent the brief implant procedure.

14:03 Then she put on a set of small wearable sensors.

14:07 Sitting in the Pelleo's lab, she faced out at her colleagues.

14:10 They all understood what this moment meant.

14:12 A lifelong journey toward understanding every

14:14 facet of emotion about to be complete.

14:17 "Are you ready?" The Pelleo CEO asked Cynthia,

14:21 prepared to flip the toggle of the device

14:22 on and trigger the emotion Cynthia had selected.

14:25 Cynthia looked over at him.

14:27 Then she looked at everyone else.

14:29 "Yes," she replied, staring forward.

14:32 The CEO flipped the toggle on, then he pressed the button,

14:36 reading, "Run Joy." A moment passed.

14:40 Every eye in the room widened, every breath shallowed.

14:44 Cynthia stayed steady, her face and body unmoving.

14:48 Then she looked over at the CEO and said,

14:52 "It's running." "Yes." The CEO replied with a bit of unease.

14:58 For a moment, Cynthia looked confused.

15:00 The crowd began to as well.

15:03 Then Cynthia smiled.

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