Author Archives: SelfAwarePatterns

Debate: Do split-brain patients have two minds?

Posted on November 16, 2019

I went to the NYU Consciousness site this morning hoping to see if the recent debate on the relationship of prefrontal activity to consciousness had been posted yet.  It hasn’t, and based on what I can see, it might be … Continue reading →

Posted in Zeitgeist | Tagged , , , , | 4 Comments

Add feelings to AI to achieve general intelligence?

Posted on November 11, 2019

Neuroscientists Kingston Man and Antonio Damasio have a paper out arguing that the way to get artificial intelligence (AI) to the next level is to add in feelings. “Today’s robots lack feelings,” Man and Damasio write in a new paper (subscription required) … Continue reading →

Posted in Zeitgeist | Tagged , , , | 41 Comments

The problems with the Chinese room argument

Posted on November 10, 2019

In 1950, Alan Turing published a seminal paper on machine intelligence (which is available online).  Turing ponders whether machines can think.  However, he pretty much immediately abandons this initial question as hopelessly metaphysical and replaces it with another question that … Continue reading →

Posted in Mind and AI | Tagged , , , , , | 62 Comments

The difficulty of isolating evidence for the location of consciousness

Posted on November 2, 2019

In the ongoing debate in neuroscience between those who see consciousness being in the back part of the brain, among the sensory processing regions, or in the front of the brain, in the cognitive action planning regions, there are issues … Continue reading →

Posted in Zeitgeist | Tagged , , | 64 Comments

Integrated information theory

Posted on October 29, 2019

I think most of you know I’m not a fan of integrated information theory (IIT).  However, it is a theory proposed by scientists, and I’ve always had a mildly guilty conscience over not having read about it other than through articles … Continue reading →

Posted in Mind and AI | Tagged , , , , , , | 101 Comments

Angst over mini-brains

Posted on October 26, 2019

Organoids, the small pieces of neural tissue grown from stem cells, dubbed “mini-brains”, and used in research, have been getting a lot of attention lately.  Apparently a few neuroscientists are concerned that the organoids might be sentient, and suffering as … Continue reading →

Posted in Zeitgeist | Tagged , , , , | 6 Comments

Michael Graziano on mind uploading

Posted on October 20, 2019

Michael Graziano has an article at The Guardian, which feels like an excerpt from his new book, exploring what might happen if we can upload minds: Imagine that a person’s brain could be scanned in great detail and recreated in … Continue reading →

Posted in Zeitgeist | Tagged , , , | 204 Comments

A competition between integration and workspace

Posted on October 17, 2019

Back in March, I did a post on a proposed Templeton Foundation project to test major scientific theories of consciousness.  The idea was to start with a head to head competition between the integration information theory (IIT) and global workspace … Continue reading →

Posted in Zeitgeist | Tagged , , , | 49 Comments

The problems with post-empirical science

Posted on October 9, 2019

Jim Baggott has a pretty good piece at Aeon on the problems with post-empirical science.  I’ve highlighted Baggott’s views before.  Along with others like Sabine Hossenfelder and Peter Woit, he calls attention to a serious issue in physics, the rising … Continue reading →

Posted in Zeitgeist | Tagged , , , , | 67 Comments

Recommendation: Memory

Posted on October 2, 2019

I’ve noted before that I think science fiction author Linda Nagata is an underrated talent.  She crafts mind bendingly imaginative tales.  I’ve recommend several of her books, all in The Nanotech Succession series, which she has recently started adding to … Continue reading →

Posted in Science Fiction | Tagged , , | 14 Comments