Neuroscientist Mark Solms: consciousness begins in raw feeling from the brainstem, not the cortex

TOEwithCurt · x · 2026-11-02

The Theory of Everything podcast hosts Mark Solms, neuropsychologist and psychoanalyst at the University of Cape Town, on where consciousness begins.

Solms argues consciousness originates not in the cortex but in raw feeling arising from the upper brainstem.
He discusses patients who lost REM sleep but kept dreaming, and what that implies for Freud's wish theory.
Children born without a cortex still giggle and startle, supporting his subcortical view of consciousness.
He contends the hard problem has been tackled from the wrong end, starting with visual perception instead of feeling.
The conversation also covers dual-aspect monism, Markov blankets and the free energy principle, his attempt to engineer an artificial agent that feels, and why at death the second law of thermodynamics wins.

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