Tag Archives: Consciousness

Ginger Campbell is doing a series on consciousness

Posted on August 24, 2019 by

I’ve highlighted Dr. Ginger Campbell’s excellent Brain Science Podcast before.  It’s an invaluable resource for anyone interested in the science of the brain.  Many of the books and concepts I’ve highlighted here over the years, I first heard about on … Continue reading →

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The reflex and the feeling

Posted on August 22, 2019 by

Stephen T. Asma and Rami Gabriel have an interesting article at Aeon on emotions.  Their main thesis is that many emotions are biological, universal, and rooted in evolution.  And that they arise through “the strata of consciousness”: the physiological, the … Continue reading →

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Is the ultimate nature of reality mental?

Posted on August 15, 2019 by

Philosopher Wilfrid Sellars had a term for the world as it appears, the “manifest image.”  This is the world as we perceive it.  In it, an apple is an apple, something red or green with a certain shape, a range … Continue reading →

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Detecting consciousness in animals and machines, inside-out

Posted on August 11, 2019 by

An interesting paper came up in my feeds this weekend: Indicators and Criteria of Consciousness in Animals and Intelligent Machines: An Inside-Out Approach.  The authors put forth a definition of consciousness, and then criteria to test for it, although they … Continue reading →

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Higher order theories of consciousness

Posted on August 1, 2019 by

I’ve posted on HOT (higher order thought theories of consciousness) before, but there’s a new paper out covering the basics of these types of theories.  Since first reading about HOT many months ago, the framework has been growing on me.  … Continue reading →

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The problems with panpsychism

Posted on July 31, 2019 by

Late last week, there was a clash between philosophers on Twitter over panpsychism.  This was followed by Philip Goff, an outspoken proponent of panpsychism, authoring a blog post arguing that we shouldn’t require evidence for it.  This week, Susan Schneider … Continue reading →

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Platonism and the non-physical

Posted on July 25, 2019 by

On occasion, I’ve been accused of being closed-minded.  (Shocking, I know.)  Frequently the reason is not seriously considering non-physical propositions, a perception of rigid physicalism.  However, as I’ve noted before, I’m actually not entirely comfortable with the “physicalist” label (or … Continue reading →

Posted in Philosophy | Tagged , , , , | 146 Comments

The difficulty of subjective experience

Posted on July 14, 2019 by

As I indicated in the Chalmers post last week, phenomenal consciousness has been on my mind lately.  In the last few days, a couple of my fellow bloggers, Wyrd Smythe and James Cross, have joined in with their own posts.  … Continue reading →

Posted in Mind and AI | Tagged , , , , , | 111 Comments

Consciousness science undetermined

Posted on July 8, 2019 by

An interesting paper by Matthias Michel on the underdetermined nature of theories of consciousness. Consciousness scientists have not reached consensus on two of the most central questions in their field: first, on whether consciousness overflows reportability; second, on the physical … Continue reading →

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Chalmers’ theory of consciousness

Posted on July 7, 2019 by

Ever since sharing Ned Block’s talk on it, phenomenal consciousness has been on my mind.  This week, I decided I needed to go back to the main spokesperson for the issue of subjective experience, David Chalmers, and his seminal paper … Continue reading →

Posted in Mind and AI | Tagged , , , , , , | 116 Comments