Ponderings of science, philosophy, history, society, and many other topics
With quantum physics, we have a situation where a quantum object, such as a photon, electron, atom or similar scale entity, acts like a wave, spreading out in a superposition, until we look at it (by measuring it in some manner), then it behaves like a particle. This is known as the measurement problem. Now, … Continue reading The measurement problem, Copenhagen, pilot-wave, and many worlds
Joel Frohlich has an interesting article up at Aeon on the possibility of detecting consciousness. He begins with striking neurological case studies, such as the one of a woman born without a cerebellum, yet fully conscious, indicating that the cerebellum is not necessary for consciousness. He works his way to the sobering cases of consciousness … Continue reading Building a consciousness-detector
Occasionally Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal captures an important insight, in this case, people's attitudes toward the social sciences. My attitude toward the social sciences is that they are quite capable of being scientific. They're not always, but then even the "hard" sciences have their lapses. On the one hand, what social scientists are studying exists … Continue reading SMBC: Social Science
Recently, there was a debate on Twitter between neuroscientists Hakwan Lau and Victor Lamme, both of whose work I've highlighted here before. Lau is a proponent of higher order theories of consciousness, and Lamme of local recurrent processing theory. The debate began when Lau made a statement about panpsychism, the idea that everything is conscious … Continue reading The issues with biopsychism
A few weeks ago, I started having a problem with comments showing up on the blog. I consulted with WordPress support, and was informed that it was a bug with my old trusty Twenty Ten theme, which I was also informed is no longer supported. To fix the issue, I'd have to change to a … Continue reading Site issues, and a question for mobile users
I've often noted here the importance of predictions, both in terms of our primal understanding of reality, such as how to get to the refrigerator in your house, or in terms of scientific theories. In truth, every understanding of reality involves predictions. Arguably a fundamental aspect of consciousness is prediction. Of course, not every notion … Continue reading Predictions and retrodictions
I've seen the TV show Devs come up in a number of conversations on social media, and several people recommended it. But it was JamesOfSeattle's recommendation that finally got me to check it out. The result was, as usual for a show I really enjoy, a weekend binge. As the show starts, we find Lily … Continue reading Devs
(Warning: neuroscience weeds) Recently I noted that one of the current debates in cognitive science is between those who see phenomenal and access consciousness as separate things, and those who see them as different aspects of the same thing. Closely related, perhaps actually identical, is the debate between local and global theories of consciousness. Local … Continue reading Postdictive perception and the consciousness finish line
One of the current debates in consciousness research is whether phenomenal consciousness is something separate and apart from access consciousness. Access consciousness (A-consciousness) is generally defined as perceptions being accessible for reasoning, action decisions, and communication. Phenomenal consciousness (P-consciousness) is seen as raw experience, the "something it is like" aspect of consciousness. Most researchers accept … Continue reading Subjective report doesn’t support the idea that phenomenal consciousness is separate from access consciousness
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