Search Results

“Nobody expects a computer simulation of a hurricane to generate real wind and real rain,” writes neuroscientist Anil Seth.

“Is it possible that consciousness is a much more basic phenomenon in nature and is essentially pervading everything?”

The biases that shape our understanding of the mind.

Neuroscientist Christof Koch on human minds, AI, and bacteria.

What can drugs teach us about consciousness?

“Everything that we care about, everything we experience, everything we know, we know it through our conscious awareness of it.”

Many, from neuroscientists to philosophers to anesthesiologists, have claimed to understand consciousness. Do physicists? Does anyone?

“We do not experience primarily because we have brains; we experience because we are alive.”

A paradigm should be elastic enough to accommodate new data and broad enough to explain the world. For Rupert Sheldrake, ours does neither.

Locked inside their minds, thousands await a cure. Neuroscientist Daniel Toker is racing to find it.

Do our thoughts have any meaning whatsoever?

The Malling-Hansen writing ball, with its potential and limitations, redefined Nietzsche’s philosophical and creative expression.

Mark Weinstein outlines a new path for social media that protects, respects, and empowers the regular users.

“If we did create beings that were more like non-human animals, we ought to treat them much better than we now treat non-human animals.”

A look inside Mindstate Design Labs’ effort to design drugs that reliably produce specific states of mind.

Consciousness isn’t just a problem for philosophers. On this episode of Dispatches, Kmele sat down with scientists, a mathematician, a spiritual leader, and an entrepreneur, all trying to get to the heart of “the feeling of life itself.”

An excerpt from renowned neuropsychologist Nicholas Humphrey’s book “Sentience: The Invention of Consciousness.”

Do humans share one consciousness? This psychologist says yes.

Propofol, a drug commonly used for general anesthesia, derails the brain’s normal balance between stability and excitability.

At a fundamental level, only a few particles and forces govern all of reality. How do their combinations create human consciousness?

High-frequency oscillations that ripple through our brains may generate memory and conscious experience.

Could AI develop true intelligence without sentience? Philosopher Jonathan Birch explores the boundaries of artificial and evolved minds.

James Fadiman PhD, who has 60 years of experience in the field, believes they are.

While we’re busy wondering whether machines will ever become conscious, we rarely stop to ask: What happens to us?

“It’s not about being perfect. It’s about reducing suffering where we can, and right now, we’re choosing not to.”

Even with the best technology imaginable, you’d probably never be able to exist as a consciously aware brain in a vat.

Even if a leading theory of consciousness is wrong, it can still be useful to science.

“Many people get stuck in feeling responsible for their psychological state, and there’s a way in which simply being with whatever uncomfortable emotions rather than believing that you are controlling them can be extremely beneficial for psychological wellbeing.”

By designing smart systems, we can help ourselves live up to our best intentions — and perform even better in our workplaces.

A University of Oxford professor explains how conscious machines are possible.