In the last post, I mentioned that I was reading Joseph LeDoux's new book, The Deep History of Ourselves: The Four-Billion-Year Story of How We Got Conscious Brains. There's a lot of interesting stuff in this book. As its title implies, it starts early in evolution, providing a lot of information on early life, although … Continue reading Joseph LeDoux’s theories on consciousness and emotions
Tag: Consciousness
The problem of animal minds
Joseph LeDoux has an article at Nautilus on The Tricky Problem with Other Minds. It's an excerpt from his new book, which I'm currently reading. For an idea of the main thesis: The fact that animals can only respond nonverbally means there is no contrasting class of response that can be used to distinguish conscious … Continue reading The problem of animal minds
Ginger Campbell is doing a series on consciousness
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 her show. Campbell, a medical doctor, pretty much focuses on neuroscience rather than philosophy, but … Continue reading Ginger Campbell is doing a series on consciousness
The reflex and the feeling
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 experential, and the conceptual. They start off casting aspersions on computationalism, evolutionary psychology, and artificial … Continue reading The reflex and the feeling
Is the ultimate nature of reality mental?
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 of sizes, a thing that we can eat, or throw. The manifest image can be … Continue reading Is the ultimate nature of reality mental?
Detecting consciousness in animals and machines, inside-out
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 emphasize that these can't be "hard" criteria, just indicators. None of them individually definitely establish … Continue reading Detecting consciousness in animals and machines, inside-out
Higher order theories of consciousness
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. The paper is not too technical and I think would be accessible to most interested … Continue reading Higher order theories of consciousness
The problems with panpsychism
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 did a (somewhat confusing) Big Think video arguing that panpsychism isn't compatible with physics, and … Continue reading The problems with panpsychism
Platonism and the non-physical
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 "materialist", or other synonyms or near synonyms). While it's fairly accurate as to my working … Continue reading Platonism and the non-physical
The difficulty of subjective experience
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. We've had a lot of interesting discussions. But it always comes back to the core … Continue reading The difficulty of subjective experience
SelfAwarePatterns 