Ponderings of science, philosophy, history, society, and many other topics
I often say that consciousness lies in the eye of the beholder, a notion that many dislike and often push back against. To be clear, I do think that for any precise definition of "consciousness", there is a fact of the matter about whether it exists and what has it. Many respond by offering up … Continue reading Hierarchy of consciousness, January 2021 edition
This video does a pretty good job at outlining the idea and stark challenges with mind uploading. (Watching it isn't necessary to understand this post, unless you're completely unfamiliar with the idea. It's 14 minutes long, although the last few minutes are an advertisement.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4b33NTAuF5E Kurzgesagt: Can You Upload Your Mind & Live Forever I'm … Continue reading Mind uploading and the philosophy of self
Mark Solms is coming out with a book on consciousness, which he discusses in a blog post. Solms sees the key to understanding consciousness as affects, specifically feelings, such as hunger, fear, pain, anger, etc. In his view, the failure of science to explain the hard problem of consciousness lies in its failure to focus … Continue reading The dual nature of affects
In the last post, in response to my criticism of Chalmers for relying on the standard but vague "something it is like" definition of phenomenal consciousness, someone pointed out that Chalmers has talked before metaphorically about a movie playing in our head, notably at the beginning of his TED talk on consciousness. I think this … Continue reading The problem with the theater of the mind metaphor
This talk by David Chalmers on the relationship between consciousness and moral status is pretty interesting. You don't have to watch the video to follow this post, but it's in response to arguments he makes in the talk. The video is 75 minutes but the talk only lasts about 50 minutes with a Q&A afterward. … Continue reading Consciousness and moral status
(Warning: neuroscience weeds) Earlier this year I discussed Victor Lamme's theory of consciousness, that phenomenal experience is recurrent neural processing, that is, neural signalling that happens in loops, from lower layers to higher layers and back, or more broadly from region to region and back. In his papers, Lamme notes that recurrent processing is an … Continue reading The unproductive search for simple solutions to consciousness
For some reason, Mary's room has been garnering attention lately. This TED Ed video on it was shared on Aeon's site this week. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGYmiQkah4o The wording of the actual thought experiment is important, so quoting Frank Jackson's words (via the Wikipedia article on the knowledge argument): Mary is a brilliant scientist who is, for whatever reason, … Continue reading The problem with Mary’s room
Jonathan Birch has an interesting paper in Noûs: The search for invertebrate consciousness. Birch notes that there is no consensus on whether any invertebrates are conscious, and no agreement on a methodology for establishing whether they are. He starts off assessing the difficulties of applying many human centric theories, such as global workspace, which don't … Continue reading The facilitation hypothesis
The hard problem of consciousness, a term coined by philosopher David Chalmers, asks how physical systems can produce phenomenal consciousness. Chalmers' term, coined in the 1990s, applied to an older problem that's been around for along time, the mind-body problem. More recently, Chalmers noted his intuition that the hard problem is widely and intuitively held … Continue reading Regular people: What hard problem of consciousness?
When I was very young, the top of my feet started itching, so I started scratching. The itching continued for weeks and months, with me constantly scratching. My poor mother, seeing my red and scratched feet, implored me to stop. But the itching was relentless and I was maybe five or six, so I kept … Continue reading The complex composition of pain
