Philosophy
What does it mean to be you? How is it that the physical matter making up the many neurons in your brain somehow produce your subjective, conscious experience? Are your neurons themselves conscious? While we're at it, what exactly is consciousness? Where does your sense of self come from? Do you actually have a self? Can you be made to experience your self from outside your body? Can your consciousness be transferred to an inanimate object, or to someone else's body? If you are your consciousness somehow, do you get to consciously make your own choices, or are these determined by factors over which you have no conscious awareness and control?
Those are just some of the fascinating questions that Marcus du Sautoy explores in the following mind-bending documentary that gets right to the intersection of philosophy, psychology and neuroscience:
For more, check out the Brainspotting tag.
- Animal Consciousness
I'm teaching a seminar on The Origin of Species this semester with a colleague who is writing on animal consciousness and it's generated a bunch of conversation around these parts, so I figured I'd raise the question here. At what point do...
- Déjà Vu ? Meaning
What is the meaning of déjà vu? Is déjà vu real and is there any scientific explanation of déjà vu phenomenon? Some people argue that the feeling of déjà vu has a spiritual meaning, others call it just a dream. The best way to define déjà vu...
- Philosophy: Brain In A Vat Argument ? Truth Revealed
Brains in a vat? That sounds terrifying, doesn?t it? Brain in a vat argument is one of the newest thought experiments in philosophy of mind (discussed by John Pollock). Many people raise objection to the brain in a vat theory but are there in fact any...
- David Eagleman - The Brain And The Law
There is almost universal agreement among philosophers, neuroscientists, cognitive psychologists, and other mind researchers that the mind has a physical basis in the brain. Sure, we don't yet understand the particular mechanism through which the...
- Brainspotting - Part 3
As you can probably tell from the majority of my blog entries, I love science, but even science with all its evidence, experiments and equipment can't compare with the kinds of questions that philosophy investigates and seeks to answer. Here is a...
Philosophy
The Secret You
What does it mean to be you? How is it that the physical matter making up the many neurons in your brain somehow produce your subjective, conscious experience? Are your neurons themselves conscious? While we're at it, what exactly is consciousness? Where does your sense of self come from? Do you actually have a self? Can you be made to experience your self from outside your body? Can your consciousness be transferred to an inanimate object, or to someone else's body? If you are your consciousness somehow, do you get to consciously make your own choices, or are these determined by factors over which you have no conscious awareness and control?Those are just some of the fascinating questions that Marcus du Sautoy explores in the following mind-bending documentary that gets right to the intersection of philosophy, psychology and neuroscience:
For more, check out the Brainspotting tag.
- Animal Consciousness
I'm teaching a seminar on The Origin of Species this semester with a colleague who is writing on animal consciousness and it's generated a bunch of conversation around these parts, so I figured I'd raise the question here. At what point do...
- Déjà Vu ? Meaning
What is the meaning of déjà vu? Is déjà vu real and is there any scientific explanation of déjà vu phenomenon? Some people argue that the feeling of déjà vu has a spiritual meaning, others call it just a dream. The best way to define déjà vu...
- Philosophy: Brain In A Vat Argument ? Truth Revealed
Brains in a vat? That sounds terrifying, doesn?t it? Brain in a vat argument is one of the newest thought experiments in philosophy of mind (discussed by John Pollock). Many people raise objection to the brain in a vat theory but are there in fact any...
- David Eagleman - The Brain And The Law
There is almost universal agreement among philosophers, neuroscientists, cognitive psychologists, and other mind researchers that the mind has a physical basis in the brain. Sure, we don't yet understand the particular mechanism through which the...
- Brainspotting - Part 3
As you can probably tell from the majority of my blog entries, I love science, but even science with all its evidence, experiments and equipment can't compare with the kinds of questions that philosophy investigates and seeks to answer. Here is a...