Ponderings of science, philosophy, history, society, and many other topics
I think the brain is a computational system and what we generally refer to as the mind and consciousness are some of its computations. But I'm also aware that the brain works very differently from how a typical digital computer works. One criticism of computationalism that I have some sympathy with is the word "computation" … Continue reading The unity of storage and processing in nervous systems
This week, WordPress.com announced that all of their blogs would now have the option to join the Fediverse. The announcement included instructions on how to enable it. As Twitter, now X, has become increasingly less usable, a number of other platforms have been vying to be its replacement: Mastodon, Bluesky, Threads, and several others. Unfortunately, … Continue reading Hello Fediverse!
Eric Schwitzgebel had an interesting paper come out this week, exploring the question of whether there can be cases of borderline consciousness, that is, cases where a system is neither determinately conscious nor determinately non-conscious. For example, maybe humans, dogs, and cats are determinately conscious, rocks and protons are determinately not conscious, but something like … Continue reading Borderline consciousness?
Last week, when writing the TV notes post, which included remarks about the Foundation TV show, I opened the first Foundation book to check on something. I found myself falling into the story and kept on reading. I finished the third book in the trilogy yesterday. (The books are short by contemporary standards and Asimov's … Continue reading The original Foundation trilogy
